Alok Da, either remarkable individuals or historical collectives, I’m coming to feel that there’s a specific kind of God/Spirit animating them throughout. Observing Sri Aurobindo’s writing, life and thought from the play he wrote when he was 18, I can feel as if the seed is here which is going to blossom into his Bande Mataram writings with it’s fervour of Kali and Freedom,… 🦚[…]

Evolutionary Vision that’s going to blossom into the Life Divine and the poetic spirit into Ilion, Savitri etc… Similarly when I observe someone like Friedrich Nietzsche, he was writing poems to the old germanic storm god Wotan when he was a teenager and later making it his mission to revalue the old values of morality, proclaiming the superman ideal and declaring himself the Anti Christ and finally having a psychotic breakdown at the end of his life, I feel there’s a persistent thread throughout. And Sri Aurobindo even calls the nazis the children of Wotan and invokes him indirectly, “We are the human Titans, the supermen dreamed by the sage”. Even in historical periods, looking at the Vedic period with all its devotion and fervour for Indra, Agni, etc. … as if they are right in front of them leading their March, the God Yahweh is all across the ancient Jewish collective psyche. The Greeks revered their Gods, including Zeus, Athena, Dionysus, and Apollo. The Romans consecrate all their martial victories and conquests to Jupiter; Islam, in its beginning stages, bursts open with its fervour of submission to Allah. Poets and artists have often invoked a muse/daemon, and many scientists have reported that their breakthrough revelations occurred in a dream where someone whispered or presented an imagistic vision. What’s happening in all these examples? Is it something like a collective unconscious that possesses a certain people at a certain time? At a personal level, my life feels quite dry with no such powerful spirit guiding it, and you mention being an instrument of the Divine quite frequently in your talks. How do I make myself fit to be one? How do I channel a larger spirit through myself? Reading Bhavani Mandir, Hymns to Durga or an Article like the Demand of the Mother in Bande Mataram makes me wonder how much of the Kali spirit that Sri Aurobindo has channeled into himself, I don’t feel like my dry life is worth living without being a receptacle of such Higher Force and I understand the danger of being possessed by adverse forces… so, how do I navigate this?

It is true that all greatness is either due to Nature rushing to exceed herself in and through her creations and/or God pouring Himself into a prepared human vessel or driving a collectivity as the Zeitgiest. The collective unconscious is simply a term to describe a process that Jung himself did not fully grasp. It simply implies that human beings are not aware of what drives them towards the greatness of their deeds. The spiritual man would simply say, ‘The Spirit bloweth where it listeth.’ In short it is difficult to say why God choses certain human vessels to fulfill His Purpose in the play of Time. But the one who seeks to be an instrument of the Divine Will or a channel for His mighty Purposes must, along with aspiration, consciously cultivate humility and plasticity as well as complete surrender and acceptance of the Divine Will in oneself. The more we get rid of the egocentricity, the more we grow in inner peace and equanimity, the more we get rid of the mixture of desire and ambition, the more likelihood of the Divine using us for the Divine Purpose. That is all we can say. The rest remains hidden in the inexplicable Wisdom of Grace. 

Having said that, one should never despair in life, as it cuts us off from the universal. Great or small is our ignorant view of things. There is nothing great or small in God’s eye. Seek Him through Love. Love all beings and creatures and the rasa will return. 

Affectionately,

Alok Da