The Unexpected Future
It may appear inevitable that our future will be one dominated by machines – a world where robots are ubiquitous; super-intelligent world-spanning AIs organise society; genetic engineering enhances our biological heritage; and 3D printers miraculously create objects in our homes and factories. The technological cornucopia that has delivered much over the last few hundred years seems destined to bring humanity into a future marked by a complete reliance on the Machine. In the next few centuries, there seems to be no way we can escape from the shackles of the genie that has, in any case, brought us so much.
Yet Sri Aurobindo, with his prescient and radical eye, predicts a very different trajectory from that supposed by conventional wisdom, which linearly and unimaginatively projects a future of more and more machines from the conditions of the present. The broad outlines of his ideas on a spiritual society and the ‘supramentalisation’ of the human race are quite well known. He predicts the holistic transformation of the human organism by the divine Spirit, leading to a creation of a renewed humanity co-existing with a new ‘superhuman’ species (the ‘supramental being’). This, in turn, will culminate in the complete reign of God in individuals and in society. To many, such a vision is a downright delusion. To others, this is a distant ideal- a ‘good to have’ that is one of the far possibilities of future: the kingdom of God that may well come but nobody is too clear about the how and the when.
Yet, in the Human Cycle, Sri Aurobindo has in fact set up a precise road map on the attainment of this ideal. Indeed, it is clear, in this writer’s opinion, that he is predicting extraordinary things that we shall see in the next few decades. As if to help us to watch for the signs of the times, so that we can collaborate and aspire, he has predicted three overlapping stages of social evolution where humanity will change from a society with a rationalistic materialistic focus into a society with a ‘subjective’ focus on the vital force as the ultimate reality (‘vital subjectivism’), before attaining an era focused on the mind as the ultimate reality (‘mental subjectivism’):
The human intellect in modern times has been first drawn to exhaust the possibilities of materialism by an immense dealing with life and the world upon the basis of Matter as the sole reality, Matter as the Eternal, Matter as the Brahman, annaṁ brahma. Afterwards it had begun to turn towards the conception of existence as the large pulsation of a great evolving Life, the creator of Matter, which would have enabled it to deal with our existence on the basis of Life as the original reality, Life as the great Eternal, prāṇo brahma. And already it has in germ, in preparation a third conception, the discovery of a great self-expressing and self-finding inner Mind other than our surface mentality as a master-power of existence, and that should lead towards a rich attempt to deal with our possibilities and our ways of living on the basis of Mind as the original reality, the great Eternal, mano brahma. (The Human Cycle, 253-4)
And it is the final stage that prepares the spiritual advent:
The true secret can only be discovered if in the third stage, in an age of mental subjectivism, the idea becomes strong of the mind itself as no more than a secondary power of the Spirit's working and of the Spirit as the great Eternal, the original and, in spite of the many terms in which it is both expressed and hidden, the sole reality, ayam ātmā brahma. Then only will the real, the decisive endeavour begin and life and the world be studied, known, dealt with in all directions as the self-finding and self-expression of the Spirit. Then only will a spiritual age of mankind be possible. (254)
He is also precise in the timing of these changes:
After the material formula which governed the greater part of the nineteenth century had burdened man with the heaviest servitude to the machinery of the outer material life that he has ever yet been called upon to bear, the first attempt to break through, to get to the living reality in things and away from the mechanical idea of life and living and society, landed us in that surface vitalism which had already begun to govern thought before the two formulas inextricably locked together lit up and flung themselves on the lurid pyre of the world-war. (250)
At the time of the first appearance of this passage, the ‘world war’ in question can only be World War One. Hence Sri Aurobindo, writing from the Arya publication period of 1914-1921, is looking backwards to the heyday of materialism, which he views as being already past, to his era dominated by vitalistic creeds, and towards a future that is already in seed. The era of vital dominance will later find its darkest developments in the advent of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, where the worship of Power and the reign of the Asura reached its climax—and where this ‘Titanism’ ended, as Sri Aurobindo has predicted, in ‘something violent, huge and “colossal”, foredoomed in its very nature to excess and ruin, because light is not in it nor the soul’s truth nor the sanction of the gods and their calm eternal will and knowledge’ (251).
The end of World War Two in 1945 and the fall of the ‘Titanic’ nations of Germany and Japan, marked the closing or at least the final stage of the vitalistic era. After this, vitalistic thought, whether in politics, philosophy or biology, fell generally out of fashion. Intriguingly, World War Two also marked the invention of the first electronic computers, which were first used for cryptography. The late 1940s also witnessed the publication of Claude Shannon’s seminal paper on Information Theory, a field that had an enormous impact on fields such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics. It made possible the basic infrastructure of our ‘information age’ – wireless communications, satellite communications, and of course, the internet. Vitalism was out. Computational theories and metaphors took over the intellect of humanity, and its countless technological applications have revolutionized the world.
While the era from 1945 till today appears to be of triumphant materialism: of moon landings, genetics, the microchip and all—yet a deeper eye informed by the writings of Sri Aurobindo will see all such developments as in fact the first stage of an era where humanity ‘attempt to deal with our possibilities and our ways of living on the basis of Mind as the original reality’. Inevitably, the beginnings will be marked by an increased understanding and deployment of the physical mind and the externalised reason. The mechanical manifestations of the physical mind—the supercomputer and the internet are the wonders of our age, and true AI, super-intelligent, immortal and mighty, is seen by many as a worthy successor to humanity. On the other hand, there has been a mass democratisation of education and mental training, till literacy, numeracy and the basic ability to reason based on external facts have been attained by a wider portion of humanity than ever before. Yet, for all the dazzle, this is no more than a small beginning. Indulged in for too long, this era will prove to be an abortive dead end or even a dangerous trap that brings catastrophe. As Sri Aurobindo writes
This first stage is foreshadowed in an increasing tendency to rationalise entirely man and his life, to govern individual and social existence by an ordered scientific plan based upon his discovery of his own and of life’s realities. This attempt is bound to fail because reason and rationality are not the whole of man or of life, because reason is only an intermediate interpreter, not the original knower, creator and master of our being or of cosmic existence. It can besides only mechanise life in a more intelligent way than in the past; to do that seems to be all that the modern intellectual leaders of the race can discover as the solution of the heavy problem with which we are impaled. (251)
Even when reason has been raised to super-reason by the advent of our planetary computing infrastructure, the problem remains fundamental. Mechanisation and the Machine, and an externalised education of external facts—the highest developments of the physical mind and a reason enmeshed in the senses, cannot resolve the deep problems of existence that God has strewn in our path. It can prolong life and extend a certain happiness, but it cannot conquer the inevitable darkness of the inconscience, nor release the hidden Love at its heart; it can increase our efficiency at knowing some of the surface secrets of the universe - but it cannot plumb the vortexes and currents that rage and sweep in from the hidden universes that layer our small material existence. It cannot bring a lasting peace and good to humanity, whether collectively or individually. God, unity and true freedom remain infinitely beyond its grasp.
The real purpose of our Information Age is to construct the physical foundation and nervous system for an age of Mind. It is to bring our foundational mental powers, the physical mind and external reason, to their fullest development. To a great degree, this has been accomplished. Never before can even the humblest members of society access so much information, and therefore, power at their fingertips, and at such extraordinary speeds. Never before, in a reversal of the parable of the Tower of Babel, could humanity work together and collaborate with such ease. Never before could humanity develop our individual and collective minds with such facility. And never before, has an interconnected network of artificial minds been developed with such fantastic speed and power. The very richness of the development of our planetary ‘intelligence’, juxtaposed with the very frustrating reality that our fundamental problems remain quite unresolved, is a clear sign that humanity is ready to move on to the next arc of our development.
This next stage, in my view, will be something we can expect to flower in the immediate future. Sri Aurobindo is again very precise in outlining this highly important stage of ‘mental subjectivism’, which will eventually make possible the spiritualisation of humanity:
But it is conceivable that this tendency [to mechanize life] may hereafter rise to the higher idea of man as a mental being, a soul in mind that must develop itself individually and collectively in the life and body through the play of an ever-expanding mental existence. This greater idea would realise that the elevation of the human existence will come not through material efficiency alone or the complex play of his vital and dynamic powers, not solely by mastering through the aid of the intellect the energies of physical Nature for the satisfaction of the life-instincts, which can only be an intensification of his present mode of existence, but through the greatening of his mental and psychic being and a discovery, bringing forward and organisation of his subliminal nature and its forces, the utilisation of a larger mind and a larger life waiting for discovery within us. (251-2)
Sri Aurobindo thus predicts an extraordinary era for humanity – where the barrier is breached, on a collective level, between our surface mentality , and what he terms our ‘inner being’, our hidden larger minds, life and subtle bodies. This will, like the earlier revolutions, first take place on a small scale in pioneering communities, where one can expect developments empowering a collective widening and greatening of consciousness, love and power. Sri Aurobindo outlines the first signs of this birth:
Such a turn of human thought, effort, ideas of life, if it took hold of the communal mind, would evidently lead to a profound revolution throughout the whole range of human existence. It would give it from the first a new tone and atmosphere, a loftier spirit, wider horizons, a greater aim. It might easily develop a science which would bring the powers of the physical world into a real and not only a contingent and mechanical subjection and open perhaps the doors of other worlds. It might develop an achievement of Art and Beauty which would make the greatness of the past a comparatively little thing and would save the world from the astonishingly callous reign of utilitarian ugliness that even now afflicts it. It would open up a closer and freer interchange between human minds and, it may well be hoped, a kindlier interchange between human hearts and lives. Nor need its achievements stop here, but might proceed to greater things of which these would be only the beginnings (252).
A new astonishing art, a new science and technology that offers deep self-knowledge and a true reign over nature, new possibilities for unity and loving interchange, and a higher aim to social endeavor and effort – all these great things that basically escape us - and all these, only as first beginnings to even greater things. These are what we can look forward to, not in the far future, but very likely, in the coming decades as the next stage of the age of Mind commences.
It is important to realize that an age where the ‘subliminal being’ opens up collectively, will also imply the fullest development of the inner knowledge that Sri Aurobindo calls ‘occultism’. Shorn of its diabolical and fantastical implications, Sri Aurobindo defines the true aim of occultism as ‘the discovery of the hidden truths and powers of the mind- force and the life-power and the greater forces of the concealed spirit. Occult science is, essentially, the science of the subliminal, the subliminal in ourselves and the subliminal in world-nature, and of all that is in connection with the subliminal, including the subconscient and the superconscient, and the use of it as part of self-knowledge and world-knowledge and for the right dynamisation of that knowledge’ (The Life Divine, p. 910). This, evidently, will be the future ‘science’ that will supplant and yet include our physical science. It is not a linear progression that indicates our future most clearly – but an extraordinary bending of the curve that will take humanity to unforeseen horizons.
The ‘Atlantean Arc’
With these conclusions in mind, it is now possible to consider the few hints left by Sri Aurobindo on the legend, if we may call it that, of Atlantis, and its relevance to the coming of the age of mental subjectivism. In fact, I shall argue that the recovery of the earlier gains of the ‘Atlantean cycle’ is indispensable to the full blossoming of mental subjectivism.
Perhaps Sri Aurobindo’s earliest reference is in 1910 in ‘The National Value of Art’:
For man intellectually developed, mighty in scientific knowledge and the mastery of gross and subtle nature, using the elements as his servants and the world as his footstool, but undeveloped in heart and spirit, becomes only an inferior kind of asura using the powers of a demigod to satisfy the nature of an animal. According to dim traditions and memories of the old world, of such a nature was the civilization of old Atlantis, submerged beneath the Ocean when its greatness and its wickedness became too heavy a load for the earth to bear, and our own legends of the asuras represent a similar consciousness of a great but abortive development in humanity.
In one of his later Letters on Yoga, he left us further clues:
Along with the mental evolution of man there has been going forward the early process of another evolution which prepares the spiritual and supramental being. This has had two lines, one the discovery of the occult forces secret in Nature and of the hidden planes and worlds concealed from us by the world of Matter and the other the discovery of man's soul and spiritual self. If the tradition of Atlantis is correct, it is that of a progress which went to the extreme of occult knowledge, but could go no farther. In the India of Vedic times we have the record left of the other line of achievement, that of spiritual self-discovery; occult knowledge was there but kept subordinate. (4)
He also mentioned in the same letter that:
A small minority (of humanity) has pushed beyond the barriers, opening the doors to occult and spiritual knowledge and preparing the ascent of the evolution beyond mental man into spiritual and supramental being. Sometimes this minority has exercised an enormous influence as in Vedic India, Egypt or, according to tradition, in Atlantis, and determined the civilisation of the race, giving it a strong stamp of the spiritual or the occult (Letters on Yoga, 3)
In these cases, he qualifies his statements with a conditional reference to ‘tradition’ (of Plato, theosophy and so on). Yet, we know from the Evening Talks, that in private, he uses much stronger language when speaking of Atlantis:
Disciple: Their theory is that there was a great civilisation on the continent of Atlantis.
Sri Aurobindo: Yes, there is every possibility that it is true.
….
Sri Aurobindo: There is always some truth at the bottom. For instance, there is every likelihood that the continent of Atlantis had a great civilisation.
Thus, it is plausible that Sri Aurobindo’s qualifications in his published works is a concession to the possible skepticism of readers, and in truth, he is basing his assertions on something he has directly seen with his yogic vision. Indeed, in that same dialogue, he tantalisingly added:
Sri Aurobindo: ...On the vital plane there is nothing that you cannot see: you can recast the whole history of the world. It is not the mental plane — really speaking it is the mental-vital. I was in that condition for ten days and any number of things came at that time.
If so, then Sri Aurobindo gives a vague but intriguing outline of a precocious and ancient civilisation that went far beyond its peers in the direction of the occult, taking it to the very extreme. And while those Atlanteans who were fully fledged occultists were a minority, they exercised an enormous impact on their civilisation, possibly generalizing their capacities, inventions and knowledge to some extent – analogous to our modern world, where there are only a small number of trained scientists and engineers, yet humanity as a whole has some understanding of scientific concepts, and the ability to apply and benefit from ubiquitous technological devices.
Crucially, if Atlantean civilisation has attained a generalized and extremely developed inner knowledge, then it has in fact attained to a degree the stage of mental subjectivism. While Sri Aurobindo does not say so directly, a holistic consideration of his writings indicate that mental subjectivism is a stage that humanity is recovering instead of attaining for the first time. And in line with Sri Aurobindo’s outline of mental subjectivism, we can infer that the Atlantean arts and sciences, both physical and psychical, and their degree of social harmony, likely reached heights unattained by any civilisation since. Atlantis, at its peak, well deserved its traditional reputation as a glorious ‘isle of the gods’.
Atlantis was also likely to have lasted a long time. Sri Aurobindo writes that ‘this mental and psychic subjectivism would have its dangers, greater dangers even than those that attend a vitalistic subjectivism, because its powers of action also would be greater’, though he adds that ‘it would have what vitalistic subjectivism has not and cannot easily have, the chance of a detecting discernment, strong safeguards and a powerful liberating light.’ (P.252-3). Presumably the safeguards and enlightened guardianship of the ‘elite’ of Atlantis allowed the civilisation to persist for a long time, not unlike India or Israel or Egypt.
Sadly, in the end, Atlantis clearly failed to progress further beyond the stage of mental subjectivism. There was no breakthrough to a generalized spirituality that Sri Aurobindo writes of as a capital necessity. Perhaps the mass of humanity was unready, and Atlantis was a precocious achievement too far ahead of its time. The grave dangers of mental subjectivism were in any case always present, and at some point, the balance was lost. Concerning the destruction of Atlantis, Sri Aurobindo or the Mother do not offer many clues. All traditions, however, whether from Plato, the Bible, or those modern psychic ‘readings’ such as those from Edgar Cayce, are quite unanimous that the land of Atlantis was lost and had sunk beneath the waves. The exact cause of that varies – though some form of severe corruption had set in, and ‘the earth was full of violence’, to quote the well-known tradition of the great flood in the book of Genesis. Probably there was widespread warfare caused by the corruption and technology of the Atlanteans. The result was the destruction of their civilisation and much of the earth. Certainly, archaeological evidence finds little on Atlantis, but plenty on the birth or rebirth of civilisation following the traditional Atlantean period given by the Greek philosopher Plato (around 11,000 years ago).
If the above suppositions are correct, the first importance of Atlantis for the coming age is that the earth is recovering the mental subjectivism first attained by Atlantean civilisation. We are, in other words, reentering a new Atlantean age, and the next decades represent an ‘Atlantean arc’, where a small number of communities re-attain the mental subjectivism that raised and doomed Atlantis. The various futures expected by our intellectual and political leaders for the future—whether dystopian, plebeian or utopian—are likely to be very mistaken. Instead of space colonies and giant robots, genetically engineered creatures and cybernetic humans, we should be expecting an inconceivable eruption of a forgotten past into the present.
Visions for the Future
Extrapolating from Sri Aurobindo’s writings, we could fix some firm possibilities. The first, and most certain, is that we could look forward to the development of a new type of science and technology that will make all our previous achievements look like trifles. What our scientific age has achieved so far is a discovery, or perhaps even just a recovery of a systematic knowledge of the physical, and an application of it to solve certain surface problems. In the future foreseen by Sri Aurobindo, groups of individuals will break the barriers and begin the knowledge and mastery of the subtle physical, the vital and the mental universes, and their associated energies. Consider how the mastery of electricity, or the elements of the periodic table, has fundamentally changed our civilisation. Imagine then, the mastery of hundreds of forces as significant as electricity, and a ‘periodic table’ with hundreds of layers and millions more elements. Imagine also a direct sovereignty of the mind and spirit over these forces without the mediation of cumbersome machinery, or as Sri Aurobindo puts it, ‘a science which would bring the powers of the physical world into a real and not only a contingent and mechanical subjection’. That was, perhaps, what was attained by the greatest of the Atlantean line of ‘mages’ and seers. The possibilities of such mastery are unfathomable. It is for good reason that the coming new science ‘would cast into insignificance even the last miraculous achievements of material Science’ (The Human Cycle, 252).
The second possibility is that there is going to be a strong and wide application of this new science to the purposes of spirituality. While our current science and technology are mostly used for the external welfare of humanity, with minimal application to inner growth, one should expect otherwise for the new science. Clearly one could expect the new science to be able to do everything that the old science can do, whether in the fields of medicine, communications, business, transport, energy, materials, military hardware and so on — and do them better, Indeed, it should fully subsume the physical sciences since the new ‘Atlantean’ science includes the knowledge of the physical as a base and indispensable foundation.
However, the mastery and knowledge of the mental and vital layers, and their intricate interaction with the physical and subtle-physical, allow for much more important spiritual possibilities. Certainly, Sri Aurobindo believes that the occult science can potentially be an immense help to spirituality. In The Life Divine, he lists the development of occult knowledge as one of the four paths in which the spiritual consciousness in humanity has been preparing its emergence (the other being religion, philosophy and direct spiritual experience). The holistic aim of occultism can include the knowledge of ‘the secret movements and dynamic supernormal possibilities of mind and life and spirit’ that empowers ‘the greater effectivity of our mental, vital and spiritual being’. The one model that Sri Aurobindo mentions is Indian Tantra, which ‘was not only a many-sided science of the supernormal but supplied the basis of all the occult elements of religion and even developed a great and powerful system of spiritual discipline and self-realisation’ (909).
Through empowering deep and wide self-knowledge and mastery, the new science can permit a far more precise and efficient inner transformation for individuals.
There are powers of the mind and the life-force which have not been included in Nature’s present systematisation of mind and life in matter, but are potential and can be brought to bear upon material things and happenings or even brought in and added to the present systematisation so as to enlarge the control of mind over our own life and body or to act on the minds, lives, bodies of others or on the movements of cosmic Forces.
...we are all the time undergoing a battery of suggestions, thought suggestions, impulse suggestions, will suggestions, emotional and sensational suggestions, thought waves, life waves that come on us or into us from others or from the universal Energy, but act and produce their effects without our knowledge. A systematised endeavour to know these movements and their law and possibilities, to master and use the power or Nature-force behind them or to protect ourselves from them would fall within one province of occultism: but it would only be a small part even of that province; (907-8)
Furthermore, by allowing a clear knowledge of the higher forces and planes of the Truth, the new science also permits a divine chemistry that empowers more effective transformation and conscious collaboration with the divine Grace. The science can also lead to effective methods of spiritual defense and hygiene against the dark forces that corrupt spirituality. With the much greater accumulation of spiritual force and experience in our age, and with the mistakes of Atlantis in our subliminal collective memories, it is possible that this time, the Atlantean science will be used on a wide scale for spirituality. Indeed, even in the Atlantean age, it is possible that the small elite of the civilisation did deploy their inner sciences for spiritual realizations—just that they failed to generalise their gains. Possibly, the Integral Tradition that the Mother often spoke of, that branched off into the Vedic and the Chaldean spiritual branches, may well have its ultimate origins in Atlantis.
Finally, it is quite possible that ‘the greatening of his mental and psychic being and a discovery, bringing forward and organisation of his subliminal nature and its forces, the utilisation of a larger mind and a larger life’ ( The Human Cycle, p.251) that Sri Aurobindo predicts, is itself made possible by a recovery of the occult science working with the greater Spirit that has descended on the earth - especially since the supramental manifestation of 1956 and the descent of the surhomme consciousness in 1969. Perhaps it is the added ingredient of a highly developed occult science with a spiritual aim, that will give the necessary power, precision and knowledge that empower a mass breaching of barriers and the development of the first communities with widespread access to their subliminal consciousness.
In this context, the Mother has stated that ‘occult knowledge without spiritual discipline is a dangerous instrument, for the one who uses it as for others, if it falls into impure hands. Spiritual knowledge without occult science lacks precision and certainty in its objective results; it is all-powerful only in the subjective world. The two, when combined in inner or outer action, are irresistible and are fit instruments for the manifestation of the supramental power. ‘ In the coming decades, we will see the development of an advanced ‘inner science’ - and its combined action with the Spirit should prove irresistible in opening the doors to first the age of mental subjectivism and then to the true spiritual age.
What will help this process immensely is that the memories and arts of old Atlantis are likely to re-surface individually and collectively as we re-enter into the age of mental subjectivism. From a dim dream of confused contradictory voices, we shall enter the clear daylight where Atlantis is no longer myth but history. This process should take many forms—from subjective uncanny ‘memories’ of individuals to archeological discoveries of Atlantean artifacts and sites that revolutionize our thinking.
The Atlantean Stones and the Future
The most important rediscovery will be that of the ‘Atlantean Stones’. Testified to by traditions of varying reliability, though not directly by Sri Aurobindo or the Mother, they represent the apex creation of the Atlanteans. At the very beginning of their civilisation, the founding Ancestors mapped the inner worlds, possibly up to what Sri Aurobindo later called the ‘Overmind’ plane, and mastered their spiritual and occult energies. They then sought to incarnate many of these forces on earth so that those who come after them can work with these forces with much greater facility. Working together, they forged numerous living and conscious ‘stones’, each incarnating in their physical and subtle bodies carefully chosen forces. Collectively, the stones form a ‘circuitry’ that readily makes available on the physical plane a vast range of important occult energies that are usually reached with immense difficulty. It is as if the ladder of creation has been flattened, turned into a wheel and pressed onto the earth. Unlike the cumbersome machinery of the modern world, the stones, like other living beings, have subtle bodies that allow their energies to be reached and channeled with concentrated thought and will from anywhere—so long as the user is properly empowered and has the requisite knowledge. Subsidiary artifacts also exist to allow the more efficient channeling of the stones and their powers—but these are not essential. Collectively, this ‘infrastructure’ empowered the mass efficient weaving of miraculous feats, machinery and artifacts inconceivable in our current cycle of civilisation.
The Atlantean stones allowed for such great power and potential for abuse that access to them was carefully guarded. Likely, there were always few who were initiated into their full use and deployment. Many, however, probably tapped unconsciously or in fragmentary fashion into these blazing ‘gates’ of power (as was the intent of the Ancestors). Fundamentally, the Ancestors intended the stones as irrevocable gifts to humanity to accelerate its inner and outer development. The existence of the stones was certainly one key reason why the use of occult forces reached such extreme development in Atlantis –their access to these forces was much more direct than ours.
Perhaps the stones were lost in the destruction. But what if, in an almost complete configuration, these stones still exist, hidden away by the Atlantean survivors long ago? That, at least, is what certain traditions testify. While speculative and not attested to directly by Sri Aurobindo, it is logical that a mental subjectivist age carries the potential for the recovery of these stones and the memory of their use. A decisive intervention from the Ancestors is also possible as the world reenters the ‘Atlantean arc’, allowing the world to recover in some fashion the use of the stones (which would, however, remain physically hidden for a long time). Such a recovery will enable fledging communities experimenting in mental subjectivism to have a readily accessible foundation of power and technology that will greatly accelerate their progress. It is also possible the stones, in particular some of those that were allegedly ’weaponised‘ in the final days of violence, will serve as a defense against egotistic political and economic powers that may well increase greatly in power in this century.
It may even be that the stones may be one of the main keys for the final formation and materialisation of the ‘supramental body’. Discussing the constitution of the supramental being, the Mother said in the Agenda (30 September 1966): ‘This would be a transformation infinitely greater than that from the animal to man; this would be a passage from man to a being who would not be built in the same manner, who would no longer function in the same manner, who would be like the condensation and concretisation of “something”.... Up to now, that corresponds to nothing we have yet seen physically, unless the scientists have found something I do not know about….It seems to me that between what exists at present, the way we are, and that other form of life, many intermediary stages will be needed.’ In their other works (e.g. The Supramental Manifestation on Earth, Notes on the Way), the Mother and Sri Aurobindo gave tantalizing hints on the nature of this Body and indeed, the Mother gave a description of her prototypical supramental body in the subtle physical in the Agenda. Without going into details here, the constituting supramental material substance and the radically different functioning and structure of the body of the supramental species make it very likely that this body may need to be directly ‘materialized’, instead of being born through the normal animal way. Sri Aurobindo wrote about such an occult method in his final writings:
It should be possible and it is believed to be possible for an object formed in this subtle physical substance to make a transit from its subtlety into the state of gross Matter directly by the intervention of an occult force and process, whether with or even without the assistance or intervention of some gross material procedure. A soul wishing to enter into a body or form for itself a body and take part in a divine life upon earth might be assisted to do so or even provided with such a form by this method of direct transmutation, without passing through birth by the sex process or undergoing any degradation or any of the heavy limitations in the growth and development of its mind and material body inevitable to our present way of existence. It might then assume at once the structure and greater powers and functionings of the truly divine material body which must one day emerge in a progressive evolution to a totally transformed existence both of life and form in a divinised earth-nature.
Essays in Philosophy and Yoga, 549.
It is this direct materialization of the supramental body and substance that is one of the cardinal challenges that the humanity of the mental subjectivist cycle must address. The birth of a new science, the recovery of humanity’s lost memories, and perhaps, the surfacing in some unexpected fashion, the master artifacts of old Atlantis – all these will lead to a revolution and likely make possible, in hitherto impossible fashion, the birth of the first supramental beings with truly supramental bodies.
Doubtless, there are many other issues, both individual and social, that must be solved before the superman can ‘reign as king of life’. It will be the future ‘nations of the dawn’ which will prepare the way for the final transition. Among them, this writer believes, will be a restored Atlantis. Purged of the mistakes of the past, Atlantis shall rise once more as a glorious home of wisdom and a teacher of humanity. It shall again be the mighty guardian of the stones and an architect of new ones that incarnate the forces of a greater age. And after the End, when the new heaven and new earth have arrived, the Ancestors themselves shall walk in supramental bodies among their people, guiding and blessing them once more. It is to this extraordinary future that Sri Aurobindo points.
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