Our present owes its roots to scientific developments that have been taking place at an enormous rate during the past two centuries. Above all this in an age of electricity – whose discovery synchronized with the discovery of the planet Uranus by Herschel. It synchronized also with the first revolution in Modern Times of an ideology, however unplanned or unsatisfactory, “The French Revolution that started with the slogans of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity”. Thus three events transpired together, the scientific, the astronomical and the social or statal; and if astrology be believed, this coincidence may be due to the new or novel action of the powers of Uranus on this planet and on the lives of men and nations. Uranus is the planet of revolution, electricity, invention and genius. It is the planet of unity and rebirth and Order (Rta) Cosmic and Divine. For Uranus is Varuna. His bipolar activity – one on the adhyatmika side and the other on the adhibhautika side, - yokes the present age to the Evolutionary theory. We may see in the lives of the most brilliant discoverers and inventive geniuses that this planet Uranus is somewhere very dominant in their horoscopes. Mystics as a rule have this planet dominating their lives¹. Equally when Neptune was discovered there happened a clear indication that forces of a superterrestrial nature were released on this planet to quicken the evolution of men even to the destiny of the goods. Aerial inventions and aerial navigation became almost a rule, and by the same token on the astral side and adhyatmic side, we have a deepening sense of mystery of the Unconscious Unity in all, the cosmic memory, as Jung would say, becoming a factor in the lives and thoughts of men. It is again no queer incident in the history of the human race that large spiritual societies guided by masters of wisdom, and godmen like Sri Ramakrishna and others were born in India and elsewhere to key up the pace of the transformation of man in two-fold directions, such as ‘technical transformation’ of our material environment or rather efficient material and scientific life on the one hand and an efficient and large spiritual unfolding on the other side. The great interest in the psychological and psycho-analytical sciences in modern times has indeed played a supreme part and men no longer go by the outer symptoms of disease or personality but by the inner coherence of personality-factors. Further there has arisen an awareness in the minds of men that an age of scientific technocracy cannot go together with isolated and primitive thoughts and instinctive crude adaptations to novel developments. That way leads to disaster. A1 machinery cannot be handled by C3 minds. An earlier age when the scientific discoveries were not made by superior and inventive minds was an age of A1 brains with C3 machinery. Now that such a state of affairs has been reversed, the insecurity of the modern man has become more patent. No culture can permit itself to be annihilated by machinery, for culture is always the dominance of mind over matter, plan over chaos, it ‘is a life-form that is the direct manifestation of Spirit’². Mind cannot rule matter unless it can probe into the secret recesses of itself on the one hand and on the other into the secret processes of matter. Growth in knowledge of matter is directly proportional to the inwardness achieved by mind. For Mind and matter are in reality sustained by a third, Absolute Spirit whose manifestations (subjective and objective) are these. By the route of matter we shall arrive at the Spirit but these processes cannot happen unless the route of matter is accompanied by the lower mind according to its own route”³.

 

Thanks to the discovery of (lost or) ancient civilizations (like that of Mohenjodaro, Ur, etc.) the new and wide distribution of the truths of all religions and faiths, a growing uniformity in the content of knowledge of all minds, brought about by the phenomenal growth of newspapers and other means of communication including the radio-developments, wireless and others, the Unconscious of man has been stirred deeply to the foundations. This is a cosmic Yoga; a churning process of civilizations making them yield whatever treasures life underneath the waters of the Unconscious, stilled by surface automatisms. This is the cause of great upheavals in every direction. All racial and geographical conflicts which till now were covered by a veneer of religious tolerance have been thrown up for solution or extinguishment. That is why despite all talks of intellectual co-operation and cultural understandings the greatest of fanatical war is being waged, for it is now the cosmic universal values that are set against the private and instinctive and unconscious values of the old age. The Unconscious has become conscious and is stirring fiercely and ruthlessly the primitive elemental values. Our intellect must either rise to the occasion or perish. The serpent-poison has at long last been exuded and like primeval fire it is burning everything that is before it. The present war, the fourth within a century and a half, has the characteristics of elemental cosmic fury.⁴ It is necessary to extinguish this fire of the unconscious, this poison that is terrible to life-cosmic. And this can be done only by a consciousness poised on the infinite and eternal values of Universal Divine Life, beneficent, transforming and radical.⁵ Imperialistic aims either individual or racial or national have no place in that consciousness and have no value for that Consciousness.

Thus mind has to enter into its own celestial cave and worship at the altar of Spirit. It has to invoke itself to take a direct hand in its transformation from the private company of instinct to the universal company of intellect and rationality. It has to become supermind, more than mind and intellect and instinct. By such a path it would be able to release the Unconscious of its violence and fury and make it capable of universal beneficence. The Unconscious has in it the supreme capability to resonate with the Conscious, and as such the super-conscious must be more and more made to occupy the field of consciousness so that we may be in tune with the beneficence of the Supermind and invoke or instigate the harmonic rhythms in the Unconsciousness which today typify the material nature. This is what I mean by the ‘leading up of the Matter through its own route with the help of the mind that has gone into its own recesses and unified itself with the Spirit Transcendent!⁶

Thus a descent of the superconscious or supermind or Spirit into the intellect of the modern man must be achieved or else an ascent into the states of the Supermind must be made by the mind. But we have seen that any radical transformation of the private and possessive into the universal and integral could only be done by a force transcending the mind, which is universal and integral in its very nature. The first flush of the descent of such a super-consciousness may be such as to produce all sorts of conflicts or to throw up all the biological memory of the individual so that the new tenement may be fit for a permanent residing of the higher consciousness or it may even entail in some cases total giving up of terrestrial or material being itself through a total immergence in Absolute Spirit (Saccidananda). The first paragraphs of this address will reveal that the descent of higher universal forces was not by any means accidental but purposive and providential and necessary for the next step in Divine Evolution and therefore the last of the alternatives would appear to be not specially the goal of the historical Process of Evolution.

Thus we are confronted with a new cultural impulse, a new pattern of society and individual, a new dimension in the psychic organization and a new biological mutation. Unlike previous epochs in known history it is universal and integral and the drive of the inner Spirit of man has been two pronged or many-pronged. Old religions and traditions have to undergo and are undergoing transformations suited to the new age that is emerging and the new race with its genius for symbolic interpretation on psychological and spiritual lines will transform the meaning of these religions in such as to present fundamental truths of Spirit which is unity and multiplicity, perfection and creation, Intelligence and power, revolutionary and beneficent. Our old cultures may have to pass if they cannot adjust themselves to this new force which is multi-dimensional and multi-planal and integral.

A cosmic or ecumenic age is upon us, and a divine nature alone will be able to fulfil its demands. Our entire being has to be sublimated, transformed and transcended. It is not enough to become universally-minded in some respects; materially, for it cannot be secure for ever without a new education that makes men think and feel and sense universally, globally and divinely, for that is the characteristic of beneficence in all our undertaking. The fundamental goal of man is universal delight and universal happiness and fulfilment. Universal Truths are impersonal, and may or may not be beneficent, even like universal power which may act, impersonally, imperially, and ruthlessly. What is necessary is the universal goodness and love what transforms the brute and exalts the truth and makes for beneficence in all activities. This is the inner secret of Divine transcendence. From love is born truth, and from truth power.

But love is here not impersonal but more than personal. It is the secret unity of the One with its many, that makes it pour itself, lose itself and find itself in the many. It is the sacrifice, the Yajna, the perpetual Yoga of the Divine Nature to be and to express itself in universal and divine terms on all planes and existences which hang together in It and by It, and are held together as their Substans and Truth.

In the cosmic terms of space-time-causal nexus it is the glory of that One, the true infinite, to manifest His supreme transcendence in the many of his eternal Nature. Such is the Lila, that it can only imperil false infinites and not true Infinity. Perfection can yet be possible in terms of these conditions and under these conditions there can be what is called a pulsation of infinite dynamism which will integrate symbolically with the Whole and the transcendent find thus form oneness or identity or more truly resonate in perfect union. To sound the one is to tune the other. Such a creativity on the part of the individual integral being will make it continuous with the entire reality in and through the Divine Nature and man would have ceased to be the intellectual private creature he is and become a divine being with super-senses (samjnana), super-knowledge (vijnana), super-power (prajnana), and Ananda (super-feeling).⁷

This is the future of mankind. To become organic with the integral Divine, limbs and organs or instruments or vehicles of the Divine Universal in action, transformed in every fibre of being so as to respond to and resonate imperfect unison with, the universal Super-personal Divine One. Such is identity in nature (Brahma-sampatti) possible to the individual, so much so the Divine would have transformed utterly the human into His own nature, for His own beneficent dynamism and enjoyment and Being.