9. The Exit Door

Throughout this book, we have tried to demonstrate the existence of cycles influencing the mind. We have assembled a convergent beam of elements. Even if they are not definitive evidence, they lead us in its favour despite the presence of many obscure points which still require answers.

If this thesis were to be finally accepted one day, it would entail the revision of many fields of human knowledge: history, philosophy, etc as well as profound upheavals in education and politics. But there is a long way to go before such changes see the light of day. In the meantime, we are going to have to deal with the immediate future times.

Indeed, if we have written this book, it is not for the purpose of vain intellectual or metaphysical speculation, nor to allow unhealthy predictions about the events to come, nor to try to bring another perspective of history or that of philosophy. If we have written this book, it is because the period that comes is a difficult time, because, as we have said, the maximum amount of separative forces is always located, by inertia, after the climax.

If we concede the existence of the cycles we have mentioned, the most probable is that we will be living, in the centuries to come, in a period homothetic to that of the Roman Empire, at its peak and its decadence, but even more grandiose. This is not the work of prophecy, for all the signs are already there. The American Empire settles in an imperious manner with the assent of all. It already outpaced old Europe, who is beginning to wallow in corruption, denying the most basic values of democracy that were its pride of yesteryears. The arrival of the American Augustus, and the triumph of private interests, which sound the end of democracy, cannot be delayed. The revolts of those left behind, which will probably be harshly suppressed, echo the uprising of the slaves at the times of Rome.

No doubt the old continent will try to oppose its Europe to the conquering power, as attempted by the league of Greek cities. But we can already anticipate who will win. At most it is possible to wonder which state of Europe will dare, like Corinth, stand up against the giant and offer itself as a victim atoning to be slain by its ally of yesteryear, an ally who had vouched for its freedom. Or even wonder, if we can still ignore, what form the looting of the provinces of Asia will take today.

All of this, in itself, would not be too serious if it were only a small-scale repetition of the events of the past. But for the past two thousand years, the power of the separative movement of the big cycle has increased, reinforcing the already perceptible effects. Under the effect of this same power, which is, let us recall, a force of progress, mankind has endowed itself with destructive capabilities far beyond what existed in the Greco-Roman period.

And at the same time, individual and collective egos, those of nations and people, have become much more complete, more conceited than ever in their opinions, their arrogance, their inability to admit difference. The estrangement of the sexes is undoubtedly a consequence of this extreme separateness: one can therefore only bear what is similar to it.

In the Bible’s Apocalypse (Revelation), when the shift occurs, when the Dragon delivers its power to the Beast, the Ego dominates the world. The Beast is the opposite of the wisdom symbolised by the Sphinx. It has a lion’s face, bear paws and the body of a panther, that is to say only the three inferior bodies, mental, vital and matter, (without the spirit), under the guidance of the lion, i.e. the ego pride. Its bear paws undoubtedly symbolise its insensitivity and its panther body, cunningness and felony. The Beast is each of us, each of the people and nations in its magnified ego.

And the Age of Aquarius will only be able to fulfil the human brotherhood that some people proclaim when mankind is done with the challenges of the opposite sign, the Lion, i.e. the conflict of the egos. The exit door is not the end of the fight through the disappearance of all fighters, but the transmutation of the ego and its submission to the soul. But it is still necessary for mankind to find its soul.

Perhaps one must think that we are painting a dark depiction of the times ahead, but that is not the case. For by adopting the point of view of Nature, on the scale of the immense and patient work carried out by Nature to achieve the prodigy that is mankind, some tens of thousands or a few hundred millions of deaths probably have little importance. It is our sickly and hypocritical sensitivity, nurtured by the media, which fill us with thrills to satisfy an existential void, which tends to give to the body and to human life an importance that is totally denied elsewhere.

No. That is not the danger. If danger there is, it is that man, separated from the Real, (from consciousness), seeks to experience his full power. And that by any means whatsoever. To be all powerful for man, under the influence of his ego, is to be either absolutely destructive or absolutely creative, the two often going together as Nazism has shown: attempt to create a perfect race and destruction of lower races.

As humanity still has to live several centuries in this separative extreme, we are absolutely not immune to new attempts of this kind that could rely on mutations and genetic crosses. And even supposing that the experiments would not be done on man, genetically modified nature could turn into a huge mess that we can hardly imagine, warns Jean Marie Pelt (Plantes et aliments transgéniques. Fayard). With the rupture of the balance of Nature, destruction of species, and threat of extinction of any form of life on Earth due to human unconsciousness. The greed of nations is even more visible in the serious problem of global warming, now global boiling.

More than ever, everyone’s responsibility is involved, not out of this world but in this world. For in this period of uncertainty and floating, of crisis of meaning, it is tempting to flee our responsibilities and seek refuge in ways that may have made sense at certain times of the development of mankind, but which cannot serve as a solution in the present day. The path cannot be a flight within the spirit that would only lead to an individual salvation and leave the world unchanged, nor a flight into matter, which science tries to make us accept as the God of tomorrow.

Nor can it be a return to the past, which would be idealised as a childhood dream, a nostalgic memory of lost paradise, nor a flight into the future, with the hope that it could be better on the basis of current human possibilities. A return to the past that could take the form of all the manifestations related to the second religiosity, which represent only marginal phenomena that accompany credulity, false harmony, superstition and chance, the famous Tyche. The cycles of the mind and the average development of humanity today as we have presented them annihilate this hope. There is no exit in all types of society which end in “ism”, neither in ideologies nor in religions, which are only aids in the development of the mind. And the likelihood of a sudden leap of mankind into a world without ego is almost nil.

So these are the two directions of space, the spirit and the matter, and the two directions of time, the past and the future (on the present basis) that are closed to us now. There is only one way out; the centre, within. Man, in a first stage, is condemned to find his soul, his truth, his essence or to perish.

These great cycles which seem to confine us endlessly in the meanders of the mind, could make our heads spin or lead us to a deep despair if there weren’t this exit door that is the soul. It has already been announced by the great beings who from time to time deliver a message of hope to men and tell them the way. They all told us that the mind was not the ultimate stage of maturation of man. That another state of being, that they named the inside fire, Agni, psyche, soul, was waiting for us once we will have gone through the stages of maturation of the mind. Because we are not destined to stay in the adolescent stage in which we are currently. Man must meet his divine fiancée, his soul, and consume with her the marriage of heaven and earth, matter and spirit. And this meeting can only happen if Man goes searching for his fiancée.

(For many, all this may only be big words. We hope that they will resonate with the few – who distrust our present humanity.)

Certainly, this will not happen within one day to mankind as a whole. We are working here with immense durations compared to that of man’s life. But at the individual level, the encounter with the soul means the exit from time; the penetration into a space/time where the mental cycles no longer matter.

The big difference with past times, if we keep the image of the parallel of the growth of mankind with that of man, is that we are now called to take control of our own development. The teenager leaves the family world to meet his fiancée. Humanity-or at least a large fraction of the population – has liberated itself from God, from the frightening and jealous male God reigning over the mind, and from the Earth goddess who imposes the constraints of Nature. It revolted against God and all the gods. It rejected all the images, all the symbols.

If it is so disorientated these days, it is that it experiences thoroughly this adolescent crisis without which there is no freedom, this crisis which destroys all the old landmarks, all dogmas, all structures felt as oppressive. To flee from God at all costs, to destroy him, to trample him, to flee everything that resembles him, morals, all the forms and all the images which had been endorsed, seems to be the watchword.

Man has not yet understood that he cannot destroy something that is none other than himself. For the wise ones have always said and repeated that the Divine is within us and nowhere else. But the teenage humanity was not yet ready to hear this message, for the time of the interiority had not yet come. It is on its way, appearing through the convulsions of adolescence.

To cooperate with this process of maturation, mankind will have to understand and integrate the phases of development of the different bodies: the physical, the vital, and the mind to reach the supramental or solar body, the seat of the soul. They all go through successive phases of growth: gestation, birth, childhood, adolescence or individualisation, maturation or union, and radiation.

We cannot, in the context of this book, detail all the processes that lead from the current state of mankind, from the current ordinary mind of reason to the solar body, to the soul. We can only cite the main steps, as they were given by Sri Aurobindo according to his personal experience:

• Mind of reason or intellect
• Higher mind
• Illumined mind
• Intuition
• Overmind
• Supermind

This enumeration of the stages of development of the mind allows us to suggest that the path is still long, because mankind as a whole has hardly exceeded the level of the ordinary mind of reason, the advanced minds and the great poets that of the stage of the higher mind. As for the stage of the illumined mind, few men have reached it yet, although this seems to be a growing phenomenon.

The last five stages of the growth of the mind require permanent contact with the inner being, which, as we can see, is not about to be achieved by humanity as a whole. But already, to reach the stage of the illumined mind, man must renounce the tyrannical domination of the ego, and work in order to put his personality at the service of his inner being. For always Nature proceeds thus: what was for a time the basis of development must be given up to the benefit of broader potentials. But this presupposes that this base is fully developed.

The transition is difficult. For individual egos, with the support of collective egos, are almighty.

And even if women take the torch in the coming centuries – because the transition will be slow – they will also have to confront themselves with the process of the ego, with the difficulties that are specific to their nature. Their task will be to build a world of Unity in freedom, not a world of fusion or magic. They will have to walk with man and not against him.

Faith will be their banner. Faith in Humanity, in the sacred Matter from which they derive their strength. For millennia they watched man do, with his dreams, his “isms”, his moments of excitement, all his hopes, without ever really believing in it.

And in the first place, mankind will have to take care not to reject, forget or destroy one of the most precious achievements of the last twelve millennia, even if it is not yet perfectly developed, and for which it has suffered so much; discernment.