Elements of understanding of Sri Aurobindo’s poem ILION

Book One

The Herald’s Book

Claude de Warren

October 2018

Original text of Ilion from: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, First Edition 1957

Break the moulds of the past,

but keep safe its gains and its spirit,

or else thou hast no future.

Sri Aurobindo, Aphorism 238

FOREWORD

Until today, the poem Ilion was practically ignored by those who have studied the work of Sri Aurobindo, for the simple reason that he never gave the keys necessary to its comprehension or any indications concerning the symbolic contents of this poem.

It nevertheless addresses an essential question in the great spiritual turning point that is being experienced by humanity today, namely what can be conserved of the structures and realisations supporting the most advanced efforts of the ancient Yoga aiming towards more consecration, more devotion and more knowledge of the Divine, and what the bases of the new yoga will consist of.

During his studies in England, Sri Aurobindo had acquired a deep understanding of Greek culture, and was able to compose poems in ancient Greek. Furthermore, we can deduct from his words that he had acquired a deep intuitive comprehension of the signification of the myths during his time in prison in Alipore. He then undertook the task of confirming, in a colourful manner, what Homer had “seen” more than three thousand years ago: Troy had to be mercilessly destroyed, and all its inhabitants killed. In fact, Troy represents the structures established through a permanent access to the illumined mind in order to support the Yoga and the most advanced realisations. However, the Achaean coalition which opposes it is based on the higher mind, a plane which humanity as a whole will have to access during the centuries or millennia to come, starting with the realisation of its unification.

For the adventurers of consciousness, the problem that occurs is that of the bases of the new yoga. Homer addressed this problem by placing the only survivors of Troy, Aeneas and his son Anchise, in the lineage of Assaracus, whose name means “equality”. They are the ancestors of the lineage who will have to establish “The future Troy” based on a progression in love, since Aeneas is the son of Aphrodite, the goddess who sees to the progression of love within humanity. Homer does not say more about this in the Iliad, only explaining the transformations necessary to the change of direction in the Odyssey.

Sri Aurobindo confirmed this vision by claiming that no yoga could be undertaken if a perfect equality or equanimity had not been realised beforehand. And in order to do so, a thorough purification had to be achieved. For, he tells us, Love can only grow on a base of Truth, when the world is still mostly ruled by lies. In fact, what humans call love is often its contrary: not necessarily hatred, which we automatically associate as the opposite of love, but the manifestation of the movement of possession and of all its complex forms of expression which will sometimes go as far as taking the form of devotion, sacrifice or charity.

Sri Aurobindo set the foundations of the new Yoga very clearly, its guidelines being:

  • a complete offering of oneself into the hands of the Divine Mother or Shakti, the power of realisation of the Divine ; in other words, a complete offering of oneself to the Divine or to That, no matter what name we choose for it (also called “surrender” or “consecration”)

  • a powerful aspiration, which must progressively grow in order to become constant and unshakeable (a “need” for something else, for more truth, more joy)

  • an equality or equanimity

Equality means a quiet and unmoved mind and vital; it means not to be touched or disturbed by things that happen or things said or done to you, but to look at them with a straight look, free from the distortions created by personal feeling, and to try to understand what is behind them, why they happen, what is to be learnt from them; what is it in oneself which they are cast against and what inner profit or progress one can make out of them; it means self-mastery over the vital movements,-anger and sensitiveness and pride as well as desire and the rest,-not to let them get hold of the emotional being and disturb the inner peace, not to speak and act in the rush and impulsion of these things, always to act and speak out of a calm inner poise of the spirit. It is not easy to have this equality in any full perfect measure, but one should always try more and more to make it the basis of one’s inner state and outer movements.” (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, Vol. 23, p. 661)

  • a progressive sincerity

Sincerity that Mother defined as a progressive surrender of all the parts of the being to the Divine: 14-7-1965 « To be sincere is to unify all of one’s being around the supreme inner Will.» 9-02-1972 « The complete unification of the whole being around