1 THE AVATAR – SRI AUROBINDO or ... SAMBHAWAMI YUGE-YUGE Sambhawami Yuge-Yuge 2 3 THE AVATAR – SRI AUROBINDO or ... SAMBHAWAMI YUGE-YUGE Dwarika Prasad Gupta Foreword By Georges Van Vrekhem Introduction By Dr. Alok Pandey SRI AUROBINDO SOCIETY RAJASTHAN STATE COMMITTEE JAIPUR Sambhawami Yuge-Yuge 4 First Edition: 2012 © Dwarika Prasad Gupta Published by: Sri Aurobindo Society Rajasthan State Committee Jaipur, Rajasthan Price : Rs. 300/- Our acknowledgement to Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry for permission to use extracts from the Works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Type set & Cover design: Hemlata Subodh Printed at : Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Puducherry Printed in India 5 Contents Acknowledgement ... 8 Foreword by Georges Van Vrekhem ... 9 Preface ... 11 Introduction by Dr. Alok Pandey ... 17 Chapters 1. The Wonder that was India ... 25 2. What is Avatar ? What is the Purpose and Work of an Avatar ... 49 3. The Avatar of the Gita ... 69 4. Early Avatars ... 117 5. Buddha Avatar ... 150 6. Kalki: The Avatar — Sri Aurobindo ... 161 7. The Integral Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo ... 247 8. The Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo ... 289 Conclusion ... 345 Sambhawami Yuge-Yuge 6 Acknowledgement First of all, I owe my deep gratitude to Amal Kiran (K.D. Sethna), a legendary figure in the annals of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, who endorsed my views on Avatarhood of Sri Aurobindo identifying him with Kalki, the last of the ten Avatars of Hindu mythology, that form the basis of this book. I also express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Alok Pandey, who kindly wrote the Introduction of this book. I am equally indebted to Georges Van Vrekhem from Auroville, the distinguished author of the internationally famous book 'Beyond Man' for writing the Foreword confirming my faith in the dual Avatarhood of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the Two-in-One. Further, I owe my immense and deep gratitude to Shri Amod Kumar, the Chairman of the Rajasthan State Com- mittee of Sri Aurobindo Society as also Shri Lakshmi Narayan for their magnanimous help, guidance and yeoman's ser- vice, but for that this book would have never seen the light of day . I am also grateful to Ashalata Dash for her kind help to establish contact with Amal Kiran for his blessings and a message to "let it circulate more and more." I am obliged to my children Bhagawat and Vinita for their affectionate persuasion as also for creating necessary conditions enabling me to attempt this work. I can't forget to thank Mrs. Chetna Verma for taking pains to improve the language of the text by her editorial touch. Lastly, I express my sincere thanks to Hemlata and Subodh for painstakingly and patiently doing the typesetting and cover design inspite of many revisions and sometimes even slow pace from my side. Author 7 Foreword The followers of Sri Aurobindo consider him to have been an Avatar, and many of them accept the Mother as an incarnation of Mahashakti, the Great Mother. This raises the question: If Sri Aurobindo and the Mother were Avatars, or an Avatar, what or which Avatars or Avatar were they? Strange to say, more than sixty years after Sri Aurobindo left his body this question has remained unanswered. There can be no doubt that Sri Aurobindo and the Mother — the Two-in-One — were the Kalki Avatar. The crucial importance of their mission and realisation for the evolution in general and humanity in particular, to progress from the lower to the higher hemisphere of existence, and thereby to lay the foundations of the supramental world in Matter, is the typical task of Shri Kalki. Two elements have prevented from seeing or accepting this. The first is the description of the Kalki Avatar in the Puranas, when even the concept of Supermind was unknown. The second element is that the supramental being will be without or beyond the difference of the genders, which in the present evolutionary context necessitated the Avatar of the Supermind still to consist of an apparently male and female being, but intimately united in the Two-in-One. Having come to this rather evident conclusion and having made it public, I was glad to find support for it from an authority like Amal Kiran, a.k.a K.D. Sethna. In one of his books he had already mooted the opinion that Sri Aurobindo was the Kalki Avatar. On a letter in which Dwarika Prasad Gupta summarised the arguments elaborated in the present book, Amal Kiran wrote in the Sambhawami Yuge-Yuge 8 year 2000: "You are quite right", and "Sri Aurobindo is definitely Kalki, the last all-fulfilling human Avatar", signing both statements with his name. (He wrote "human" because, once the work intended by Shri Kalki is accomplished, a new kind of evolution, super-human, will have started.) I write these words for the book by D.P. Gupta with pleasure because it will contribute to a better appreciation of the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, and of their real Identity. Georges Van Vrekhem (The author of the famous book 'Beyond Man')1 12.02.2012 Auroville- 605101, Tamilnadu, India 1. Georges Van Vrekhem, a Belgian Fleming, has been living in Auroville since 1978. His seminal book Beyond Man – The Life and Works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, widely appreciated world over, has meanwhile been published in six languages. He also wrote The Mother – The Story of Her Life and Hitler and His God, a historical study of background of the Hitler phenomenon and its relevance for the work of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. 9 PREFACE Sri Aurobindo is already widely known world over as a multifaceted genius, an original new age evolutionist- thinker and philosopher, the greatest seer and mystic of the modern times, a prophetic poet with a futuristic style and substance adding a new dimension of spiritual sense to the modern continental Poetry and above all, an explorer of a new plane of consciousness higher than the mind, the Supramental. But having gone thoroughly through his writings and revelations one feels that he is still something greater, something much more. He bewilders and stuns his rational readers by his sharp logical analysis leading them through many lanes and corridors to a vast clearing of synthesis, where all apparent opposites happily meet in a harmonious unison and all rationality is inundated in the sea of suprarationality. His extraordinary approach even to the most trivial things, core-deep comprehension of problems here in life and there after life, far-reaching vision, his adventure into infinite consciousness, his explanations into the secrets of Spirit and Matter, all these are so much beyond the ordinary human compass that these can be done only by some extraterrestrial being, by some supernatural power, a divine power. The Mother, who was his divine collaborator, was first to recognise and declare him as an Avatar of the Supreme Divine in the human mould, “a decisive action direct from the Supreme,” followed later by their devotees and followers. In the critical studies of Sri Aurobindo’s life and works most authors have highlighted his sui generis intellectual Sambhawami Yuge-Yuge 10 acumen of a thinker and philosopher, poetic genius, his aspect of seer and yogi and his vision of divine life on earth; the aspect of his Avatarhood remains veiled or side-lined. But the present work is meant to highlight his Avatarhood, his Divine personality as the main aspect of his life; all other aspects, spiritual or intellectual, are bound to accrue from his divinity. But if he is an Avatar, does he fall in line with the ten Avatars as described by Hindu mythology? Or is he an Ansha Avatar like Ramakrishna, Chaitanya or Christ? I was keen to know. I therefore wrote to a senior sadhak and leading spokesman of Sri Aurobindo, Shri Amal Kiran (Shri K.D.Sethna) about a decade ago with a request to kindly clarify and throw light on this. My letter is reproduced here: Shri Amal Kiran Editor, ‘ The Mother India’ Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry Sir, You have been not only an associate of Sri Aurobindo for a long time but also dived deep into his philosophy and yoga and poetry under his guidance. You are the best enlightened mind to kindly comment on my view and faith as stated below: Sri Aurobindo has explained quite at length the principle of Avatarhood in his ‘Essays on the Gita,’ besides, in many 11 of his letters written to his disciples on the topic. In the light of these, I feel, he himself falls in line with the chain of ten Avatars filling the gap of the last one — Kalki, on the basis of the following main points: 1. Sri Aurobindo came to announce the next step in the evolutionary process with exhaustive details of a new life — the life divine, substantiating with his personal experience. According to him this is what an Avatar descends for. 2. A new Avatar comes at the time of an evolutionary crisis when man’s all expressed energies give in and he does not know where to go further. Sri Aurobindo also has come on the earth, when she is on the brink of total deluge. 3. Kalki is supposed to come in the end of ghor Kaliyuga or dark age. This is the end of Kaliyuga according to prophesies of many saints and Sri Aurobindo’s himself. He is very much on time with us. 4. Kalki is supposed to come on a white horse which is a figurative expression for purity. Sri Aurobindo has used ‘white’ word quite often in his epic Savitri and purity is the buzz word of his Sadhana.