Rakshasas
Collected Poems
“The Rakshasas”
(Amal Kiran:) “[World War II] brought into play two figures whom Sri Aurobindo and the Mother recognised as extending into the physical plane the occult Evil at its most dangerous. Hitler was seen as possessed by the Rakshasa-aspect of that Evil. The Rakshasa is a devouring ‘Giant’ who openly declares his enormous greed and makes no secret of his ambition to dominate the world with a master-race of ruthless henchmen. Hitler's Mein Kampf is a glaringly open manifesto of such greed and ambition. In Stalin Sri Aurobindo and the Mother discerned a phenomenon not merely of possession but of incarnation, a vital being born in a human form and not just employing that form as its medium – and here was the Asura-aspect. The Asura is an all-gripping ‘Titan’ who is even more destructive than a ‘Giant’ but with a cold cunning intelligence which conceals its subversive policy under a mask of high ideals like economic equality and social classlessness. Stalin's pronouncements are all couched in noble-sounding terms borrowed from Marx and Lenin but directed to nefarious ends.”[1]
- “This is man’s progress; for the Iron Age
- Prepares the Age of Gold. What we call sin,
- Is but man’s leavings as from deep within
- The Pilot guides him in his pilgrimage.
- He leaves behind the ill with strife and pain,
- Because it clings and constantly returns,
- And in the fire of suffering fiercely burns
- More sweetness to deserve, more strength to gain.
- He rises to the good with Titan wings:
- And this the reason of his high unease,
- Because he came from the infinities
- To build immortally with mortal things”[2]
- ↑ Amal Kiran, Our Light and Delight: Recollections of Life with the Mother, p.167
- ↑ Collected Poems, p.244, “In the Moonlight”
See also