Compilations from the Works of Sri Aurobindo - On 15th august - Sri Aurobindo's birthday

On 15th august - Sri Aurobindo's Birthday

On the occasion of the unveiling of sri Aurobindo’s statue in the Indian Parliament on 25^th August 2006

Sri Aurobindo had dreamt great dreams, and his dreams were made realities. He spoke of five of his dreams in his message of 15^th of August 1947, which was his own birthday and was also the first birthday of free India. In that message, he spoke of his dream of India as a free nation and of the realisation of that dream. Another of his dream was for the resurgence and liberation of the peoples of Asia, and Sri Aurobindo declares:

“Asia has arisen; large parts are now free and are at this moment being liberated…”

The third dream was a world union, and Sri Aurobindo declared:

“That unification of the human world is under way;… the momentum is there and it must inevitably increase and conquer.”

The fourth dream of Sri Aurobindo was that of the spiritual gift of India to the world, and Sri Aurobindo declared:

“India’s spirituality is entering Europe and America in an ever increasing measure. That movement will grow…”

And the fifth and final dream was a step in evolution which would raise man to a higher and larger consciousness and begin a solution of the problems which have perplexed and vexed him since he first began to think and to dream of individual perfection and of a perfect society. And he declared:

“The difficulties in the way are more formidable than in any other field of endeavour, -- but difficulties were made to be overcome and if the Supreme Will is there, they will be overcome.”

It is this dream of a new evolution which is centrally related to the human destiny. As Sri Aurobindo describes this destiny in Savitri:

A greater destiny waits you in your front:

This transient earthly being if he wills

Can fit his acts to a transcendent scheme…

Authors of earth’s high change, to you it is given

To cross the dangerous spaces of the soul

And touch the mighty Mother stark awake

And meet the Omnipotent in this house of flesh

And make of life the million-bodied One. (Book IV. Canto 3, page 370)

And Sri Aurobindo holds out a promise in the following lines of Savitri:

A seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour

A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;

Nature shall overleap her mortal step;

Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.

                                                  (Book III, Canto 4, page 346)

Sri Aurobindo’s life can properly be described as God’s labour. This labour has been described in Savitri through the words of Narada, the great immortal Rishi, the Devarishi:

But when God’s messenger comes to help the world

And lead the soul of earth to higher things,

He too must carry the yoke he came to unloose;

He too must bear the pang that he would heal:

Exempt and unafflicted by earth’s fate,

How shall he cure the ills he never felt?...

The sorrow of all living things shall come

And knock at his doors and live within his house…

The weeping of the centuries visits his eyes…

The poison of the world has stained his throat…

He dies that the world may be new-born and live…

Hard is the world-redeemer’s heavy task;

The world itself becomes his adversary,

His enemies are the beings he came to save…

This world is in love with its own ignorance,

Its darkness turns away form the saviour light,

It gives the cross in payment for the crown.

                                                     (Book VI, Canto 2, pages 446-448)

In his poem entitled A God’s Labour, Sri Aurobindo describes his own labour to translate his dream into reality. He declares:

I have been digging deep and long

     Mid a horror of filth and mire

A bed for the golden river’s song,

     A home for the deathless fire.

I have laboured and suffered in Matter’s night

     To bring the fire to man;

But the hate of hell and human spite

     Are my meed since the world began.

My gaping wounds are a thousand and one

And the Titan kings assail,

But I cannot rest till my task is done

And wrought the eternal will.[1]

And, indeed, we stand today in the presence of that Rishi who has never failed, and when this statue of Sri Aurobindo is being unveiled, we hear the summary of his divine labour and his promise:

A little more and the new life’s doors

     Shall be carved in silver light

With its aureate roof and mosaic floors

     In a great world bare and bright.[2]

The supermind that he spoke of and the great supramental transformation that he described in his magnum opus, The Life Divine, was attained and it is witnessed in his poem, Transformation

My breath runs in a subtle rhythmic stream;

          It fills my members with a might divine;

I have drunk the Infinite like a giant’s wine.

Time is my drama or my pageant dream.

Now are my illumined cells joy’s flaming scheme

     And changed my thrilled and branching nerves to fine

     Channels of rapture opal and hyaline

For the influx of the Unknown and the Supreme.

I am no more a vassal of the flesh,

     A slave to nature and her leaden rule;

I am caught no more in the senses’ narrow mesh.

My soul unhorizoned widens to measureless sight,

     My body is God’s happy living tool,

My spirit a vast sun of deathless light.[1]

That supramental transformation is radiating in the entire atmosphere and here, too, where we have gathered we can feel the radiation. This statue that is unveiled here can be regarded as powerhouse of that transforming power, and all who have gathered here will share the uplifting force of that supramental radiation. It is to that supramental radiation that we dedicate ourselves on this day, which is also once again Sri Aurobindo’s birthday.