Time

From Auroville Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

The Synthesis of Yoga
“Towards the Supramental Time Vision”

The Synthesis of Yoga - Pt.4 Ch.25 Towards the Supramental Time Vision.jpg
PDF (20 pages)


(Mother:) “The effort to see and to understand this gripped me all night. And when I woke up this morning, I thanked the Lord; I said to Him, “Obviously, if You were to keep me totally in that consciousness, I could no longer ... I could no longer do my work!” How could I do my work? For I can only say something to people when I feel it or see it, when I see that it's what must be said, but if I am simultaneously in a consciousness in which I'm aware of everything that has led to that situation, everything that is going to happen, everything I'm going to say, everything the other's going to feel — then how could I do it!”[1]


(Sri Aurobindo:) “The idea of eternal recurrence affects with a shudder of alarm the mind entrenched in the minute, the hour, the years, the centuries, all the finite's unreal defences. But the strong soul conscious of its own immortal stuff and the inexhaustible ocean of its ever-flowing energies is seized by it with the thrill of an inconceivable rapture. It hears behind the thought the childlike laughter and ecstasy of the Infinite.”[2]


(Yvonne Artaud:) “If the movement is a circular one of eternal return, why do we take progress so seriously?”

(Medhananda:) “Sri Aurobindo has said that if human beings took themselves and their progress less seriously, the supramental world would have manifested long ago.
         Yesterday I experienced the eternal return. Before that, I knew about it mentally from reading about it in Sri Aurobindo, but the experience brought a great joy and a great liberation. Today I am still seeing it everywhere; but I can very well understand that it might seem abominable to a limited consciousness, although it is an intense delight to a consciousness without limits.
         We are part of an orchestra that is rehearsing. And suddenly a baton stroke stops everything. It is the end of the world. “Now, children, where were we?” asks the conductor. “We'll start again at the earthworm, or just a little before that, at the marine worm. How many births do you have, you there? Three million – very good.” And we start again. We have played the marine worm part so often, it's no trouble to practice it once more. It is a repetition, but always with some variation. Some marine worms are luminous. And then, we are everything. It is only a tiny little part of us that goes back to the worm.
         Imagine that after millions of years of striving, of intense yoga, you have become a great archangel; and suddenly the great archangel remembers a little sister he has left being a worm at the bottom of the sea. What would you do? He can't appear to her as a great archangel. He will take the same form as she has. He doesn't need his full archangel power for that: just a tiny part will do. And he dives down. But the little part that dives into the obscurity of the inconscience, even if it knows that a big brother is there up above, will often feel very lonely. It ought to be a great help, so long as it isn't an obstacle, to know that almost all of our being is up on high, exempt from incarnation. But the incarnated consciousness that has reached its fullness and lost its limits sees itself everywhere.”[3]


(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri:)
“All we attempt in this imperfect world,
Looks forward or looks back beyond Time’s gloss
To its pure idea and firm inviolate type
In an absolute creation’s flawless skill.
To seize the absolute in shapes that pass,
To fix the eternal’s touch in time-made things,
This is the law of all perfection here.
A fragment here is caught of heaven’s design;
Else could we never hope for greater life
And ecstasy and glory could not be.
Even in the littleness of our mortal state,
Even in this prison-house of outer form,
A brilliant passage for the infallible Flame
Is driven through gross walls of nerve and brain,
A Splendour presses or a Power breaks through,
Earth’s great dull barrier is removed awhile,
The inconscient seal is lifted from our eyes
And we grow vessels of creative might.
The enthusiasm of a divine surprise
Pervades our life, a mystic stir is felt,
A joyful anguish trembles in our limbs;
A dream of beauty dances through the heart,
A thought from the eternal Mind draws near,
Intimations cast from the Invisible
Awaking from Infinity’s sleep come down,
Symbols of That which never yet was made.
But soon the inert flesh responds no more,
Then sinks the sacred orgy of delight,
The blaze of passion and the tide of power
Are taken from us and, though a glowing form
Abides astonishing earth, imagined supreme,
Too little of what was meant has left a trace.”[4]


(Sri Aurobindo:) “Time presents itself to human effort as an enemy or a friend, as a resistance, a medium or an instrument. But always it is really the instrument of the soul.
         Time is a field of circumstances and forces meeting and working out a resultant progression whose course it measures. To the ego it is a tyrant or a resistance, to the Divine an instrument. Therefore, while our effort is personal, Time appears as a resistance, for it presents to us all the obstruction of the forces that conflict with our own. When the divine working and the personal are combined in our consciousness, it appears as a medium and a condition. When the two become one, it appears as a servant and instrument.
         The ideal attitude of the sadhaka towards Time is to have an endless patience as if he had all eternity for his fulfilment and yet to develop the energy that shall realise now and with an ever-increasing mastery and pressure of rapidity till it reaches the miraculous instantaneousness of the supreme divine Transformation.”[5]


(Shyam Sundar:) “One thing is beyond my understanding: how can You find time to do all that You do? Perhaps physical time does not exist for You?

(Mother:) The body is able to bear the pressure of time because it knows and feels quite concretely that it is not itself that lives and acts but only the Supreme Lord exists and only He lives and acts.
         This, moreover, is the secret of all endurance.”[6]


(Mother:) “And so, after all, one doesn’t care a rap for obstacles and difficulties. What can that do to you?... It doesn’t count. One laughs at time also. What does it matter to you if it takes long? For a much longer time you will have the joy of aspiration, of consecration, of self-giving.
         For this is the one true joy. And this joy fades away when there is something egoistic, and because there is a demand — which one calls a need — which is mixed in the consecration. Otherwise the joy never disappears.”[7]


(Medhananda:) “Sri Aurobindo has said it clearly: the last human victory and the first supramental victory is over time.”[8]




  1. Mother's Agenda, 11 October 1960
  2. Essays Divine and Human, p.141, “The Beginning and the End”
  3. On the threshold of a new age with Medhananda, p.48
  4. Savitri, p.108, “The Kingdom of Subtle Matter”
  5. The Synthesis of Yoga, p.68, “The Four Aids”
  6. En Route (On the Path): The Mother's Correspondence with Shyam Sundar, p.19
  7. Questions and Answers 1955, p.396
  8. On the threshold of a new age with Medhananda, p.88


See also