Skip to Content

1. The Force that Descended in 1956

Human helplessness

There are occasions in life when Man is utterly helpless, has no one to rely on, and has nothing to resort to. At such moments Man turns to God in despair. The response from God is immediate and total. It appears to us as instantaneous miraculousness. A tourist while in a foreign country lost his purse and passport. Having exhausted all his efforts, he thought of the various centres of God he had visited in his travels. He tried the methods he had learnt or heard of at such places, but nothing worked. At last he recollected the Divine Mother's saying, "When you are helpless, call ME, I shall readily respond, because it is the best human moment". He called HER and his purse was restored. Mother responds readily, as at that moment, Man is utterly naked and unfettered by any belief. The human soul is in direct touch with the Divine Soul when it sheds the psychological beliefs it has acquired and withdraws from the mighty social support on which it has been nurtured. The greatest of forces is released when man is in direct touch with God. It is far more so since February 29, 1956.

God is constantly at work in our human world as well as in the upper hemisphere of creation, usually called the cosmos. Tradition has it that God tried several times to create a perfect universe but was not satisfied. Each time a pralaya - dissolution - rose and wiped out the creation. Our own world is the seventh attempt of God. God created the world for his lila. We do not know why. Sri Aurobindo explains why God created the world:

  • God, Sri Aurobindo says, created the world for Delight.
  • This world of delight has no pain in it at all.

  • God seeks that delight by Self-discovery.
  • God hid in Himself and has forgotten that he has hidden so.
  • To discover the hidden Self yields Supreme Delight.
  • God is in pursuit of that delight. It is His work.
  • To fulfil that work, HE created Ignorance.
  • That work is done in Time.
  • Such a work has its rhythm. It is a rhythm of cosmic work.
  • Aeons of God's work create an Hour of fruition.
  • At that Hour, what can be achieved in a thousand years can be accomplished at once. Sri Aurobindo says this is such an Hour of God.
  • In this Hour, He says, Man can evolve into Supramental Being and usher himself into the World of Delight, a world of Spiritual Opulence.

Sri Aurobindo came into our world to bring that Hour into human life. He brought the consciousness of that Hour into His own consciousness but could not do so in the consciousness of the earth. He withdrew in 1950, and worked in the subtle plane for that end. On February 29, 1956 that Force - the Supramental Force - descended into the earth's atmosphere. It is an evolutionary force of immense power. Mother called February 29th "the Day of the Lord".

  • Because that Force came into the earth and is growing in power, Man's call to the Divine is readily heard and the prayers so far not answered are readily answered now.

If you have a prayer unanswered until today, you can now pray to this Force. Your experiment will convince you of its existence and efficacy. This power has come into the world for man to evolve into the Supramental being, the next species. Those who take to the yoga of Sri Aurobindo, variously called Integral Yoga, Purna Yoga, or Yoga of Self-perfection, will launch themselves into an evolutionary movement. All are not meant for yoga. But all belong to the wider yogic movement, which can be called yogic life. The scientist discovers the rocket, TV, computer, plane, etc. We too can become scientists. Whether we can or not, we can use scientific discoveries and belong to the scientific age. All men can become yogis. Before that, all men can use the yogic Force in their lives and can belong to yogic life.

  • Such a yogic life belongs to a world of Delight.
  • It is a world of Spiritual abundance.

Even to use scientific products, we need training. It is called scientific culture. This book pleads that Man can enter such a life - a life of higher yogic consciousness - and endeavours to place before the reader the tenets of Mother's life, reporting innumerable experiences of devotees.

There was a retired last grade servant in the late sixties. His ambition was to build a house with brick walls and thatched roof. His half starved life gave him a faint. At the hospital they revived him but without nutritious food, they said, he could not live for long. He again fainted after a year or two. This time also he was restored to life. A year later he was hospitalized and was on oxygen. By then his son had become a devotee of the Mother. He desired his father to live longer. He invoked this Supramental Force, and spoke to his father encouragingly about building the house. The father returned home fully recovered. Very soon he built a terraced house and lived for another 25 years. Such instances are daily occurrences in the lives of devotees. They all receive the results, but do not see the Force at work. As human beings, we should have worked for this descent. We have not, as we were not aware of it. Sri Aurobindo worked for it. Now that the Force is on earth, what should be our response to it?

To receive it with gratitude is our obeisance to it.

Each village must endeavour to provide itself with water, roads, schools and hospitals even as they start shops, tea stalls,etc. The villagers are incapable of it. Now the government has started schools in the villages. They should send their children to school and draw the intended benefit. Similarly, when the Force has descended on earth without man doing anything for the descent, Man should gratefully participate in its work and grow evolutionarily. Such a growth has two ends. At the higher end, one receives the maximum and evolves into the next species, the Supramental Being. At the lowest end, there is the householder. He can receive it as luck.

Thus luck that is now elusive can become a permanent feature of our lives.

Luck is the unexpected good that descends on us without our effort. The three levels of that Force are Super grace, grace and luck. Simply stated, luck means whatever we attempt will be a success or even a great success. If that ever happens in India, poverty will be a forgotten ghost. The West banished poverty resorting to scientific technology. The result is affluence in the external life and emptiness in emotional life. Also it has a by-product of violence and terrorism. To cap it all, pollution looms large, destroying our very existence on earth. Naturally we are eager for technical advance. It now means acid rain, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, poisoning of ground water, depletion of ozone, etc. The question is, do we seek affluence along with these things or avoid technology? The Indian answer is real affluence is a spiritual opulence which issues out of making the negative side effects impossible. Is it practical? If so, what is its theoretical justification?

Science is a mental accomplishment. Mind accomplishes in an area it chooses. It implies another area is left out. The growth of science in one area compels the growth of something else in another area. Cell phone that is spreading fast helps criminals communicate better. It is inevitable. When some children go to school, rivalry between the educated and the uneducated in the next generation arises. When the entire population of children goes to school, no rivalry is ever possible. This force being a force of a whole - it is a force of the being that is always a whole - wholeness or totality is one of its characteristics. The results brought out by this Force are wholly beneficial. It is incapable of creating rivalries, conflicts, contradictions, or negative side effects. Even when this force settles a dispute between two contending parties, it does not do so at the expense of one. Its results are beneficial to both. Such are its characteristics of totality or integrality.

An MLA and another party man came to blows. Both belonged to the same political party. The party which was a whole wanted to set right the conflict between the parts. It settled the quarrel between them by offering the victim much of its higher favours. Creation is out of Sachchidananda, called Sat for short. Sat is a Being commonly known as Sat Purusha. A force issues out of Sat or its other version Chit, which has created this universe. That force is in Time while the Being, its origin, is in Timelessness. This force is limited, but the Being is a whole. The Divine Mother was born at the point the force issues out of the Being. Therefore Mother's power is always of the whole. All this philosophy may be frustrating, but towards the end of this book, I will be suggesting an experiment whose results will speak for themselves. There will be no philosophy there, but practical results brought about in your own experiment.

Sri Aurobindo calls this force Supramental Force. It was Swami Vivekananda who led Him to that. Sri Aurobindo divides the region between Supermind and the human mind into four levels successively belonging to the Muni, Rishi, Yogi and the Gods. The Supramental plane is superior to the plane of the gods. The gods themselves were born of the supramental plane. Therefore the Force of the Supermind brings about wholesome benefit and never creates negative side-effects. The following are the characteristics of this Force.

  1. It grants all sincere prayers. It gives more than asked for. It gives us what we do not know exists. A person who tried to buy one acre ended up with three hundred acres.
  2. When you see the results exceed your prayer, you can be sure it is this Force that is at work. Excess is its stamp.
  3. One man getting a boon from this Force enables all such men to receive the same. One man receiving electric connection thus leads to all getting it. Such a sphere of influence goes on widening endlessly.
  4. If the present laws stand in the way of our getting justice, the Force changes the law.
  5. An unemployed devotee was unjustly arrested under an act related to the Press. He intensely prayed for release. The act itself was rescinded and all those arrested under it were released.
  6. The Force mostly acts through a method so far not known. A company analysing space utilisation came to Mother.It got an enormous boon in another field of technology.
  7. The Force acts best when it acts through new channels. It acts through the existing channels because it honours our beliefs.
  8. Devotees often see that when they seek help, they find the Force already in readiness to help. It plants a friend as the sanctioning officer, a favourable law in existence but not in vogue, etc. Prayers are often granted before they are voiced in the sense Mother makes Life ready to grant it.
  9. Pray for a benefit, the Force grants the very source of it. One who needed a good rented house got his own house. One who was furiously working to get a dealership became a director in that company.
  10. An attack on the devotee changes into an opportunity. A senior officer in the public sector was falsely charged with corruption. Without the knowledge of the concerned officer, an inquiry was set up. It proved him to be the only incorruptible officer. The Ministry made him the chairman of the company overlooking a dozen persons.
  11. Cheerfulness is the sensation of this Force.
  12. A devotee has everything to receive from this Force.Conscientious officers will inevitably rise to the top postof the organisation.
  13. Ask for a part, get the whole on easy terms is one more characteristic of this Force.
  14. The Force dissolves your karma.

Humanity has its sacred souls. The Avatar is at the peak. The vibhuti is next. Napoleon, Shivaji, and Shankara are of that level. Genius comes next. Below that lies the level of remarkable personalities like Kennedy, Nehru, Churchill, etc. Men of accomplishment are the next level. Sir S.Radhakrishnan, Rajaji, Bill Gates, and Narayanamoorthy belong to that type.

Man can rise to Supermind. Or he can by widening his inner receptivity aspire for any of the above levels. Such an aspiration has no methods like japa, meditation, asana, or pranayama. All methods belong to various parts of our being. Sincerity, opening, receptivity, and consecration are the methods Sri Aurobindo advocates. When we pray, we ask for a specific thing. Having applied for a job, I naturally seek selection. Consecration differs from prayer in that we come forward to accept whatever the Divine grants. The Divine may grant something else or more or less. The capacity to accept what the Divine offers leads to spiritual progres

Sri Aurobindo wanted to avoid the Second World War. He saw in the occult worlds the dark forces organized. Had India attained Freedom before the First World War, even that war could have been avoided. In 1910 God told Sri Aurobindo that Indian Freedom was accomplished in the subtle plane and He was meant for another work. Had the country resorted to armed resistance in the years following 1910, Mother India would have attained political freedom retaining the geographical unity given by the British rule. Her Spiritual Stature would have prevented the world from suffering the two world wars. Sri Rama went to the battlefield, carried arms and destroyed the Asura. Sri Krishna went to the battlefield, but carried no arms. It was not necessary for the Avatar to wield weapons. Sri Aurobindo did not go to the battlefield. He sent his Force and won World War II and prevented the Third World War.

Sri Aurobindo says a yogi can send his force anywhere from where he is. He can do so without moving from his place. Though the yogi can send his force to anyone, not all people receive it fully. Sri Aurobindo says the Westerner has an organized personality. When a force is sent to him, the force goes into his organisation and does the work in a sustained way for long. The same force sent to an Indian has a very different result. The Indian is like one in a coma. On receiving the force, he jumps up, dances for a while and falls back into the coma. In the Indian there is no ORGANISATION of personality or character. He is an unformed mass of low consciousness. Still the light of the Rishis is in his body, whereas the body of the Westerner is dark.

This Force will not effectively work in an authoritarian field. It needs a field of total freedom. The organisation the Force needs is an organisation established in freedom. Sophisticated technology will not work in a primitive workshop. It needs a sophisticated organisation.

Essentially this Force is for accomplishing work that remains so far undone or unattempted. This is not meant for routine work. The bridge near Reserve Bank, Madras was built after Kamaraj became the Chief Minister. Prior to that traffic was congested there. Because Railways was somehow involved, the acquisition of land was facing administrative hurdles. On any showing, it was ending in a dead lock. Kamaraj was determined to build it and called the Railway Minister and all the concerned officials. The discussion was going along the same route. The Railway Minister was frustrated and got up to go. Kamaraj raised his voice and told him, "Don't get up. Sit down. We are here to do what remains undone. It is not necessary for us to meet to declare it can't be done." A way was hewn, the bridge was built.

This Supramental Force is not a force of the body or dynamic force of the vital. Nor is it the idea-force of the mind. Strictly speaking, it is not the force of the Timeless Spirit, the witness Purusha of the Jivatma. This is the force or power of our evolving soul, the Psychic Being, which remains constantly with us, knows no failure and has the capacity of being cheerful forever. It is the higher force that created the world acting through our minds. Its essential character is joy. It is best received by human gratitude. It stays on with us forever by our learning the process of its working. It does not move at the speed of sound or even light. It exceeds the speed of Mind and even that of Light. Mother is the channel for this force. Sri Aurobindo is the Origin. Let us try to know all about this force or at least all that concerns us in this force. Before that, it is helpful to know some biographical details of the Mother and the Master.



book | by Dr. Radut