THE MOTHER-13/...3-6. The Four Asuras There is an important part of the Cosmic Tradition that has not yet been touched upon: the explanation of how a world like ours is the result of God’s workings — and can only be such a result, as there is nothing else but God, or That, or the Divine, or the Supreme. The Mother talked about a ‘very old Tradition’ several times, always emphasizing that the story, as narrated by her, sounded like a children’s tale, but that its symbolism was profound and referred to the actual facts. Once it so happened that ‘God’ decided to exteriorize himself ‘in order to know himself in detail.’ To that end he first manifested his Consciousness, which is the Universal or Divine Mother, and ordered her to make a universe. The Universal Mother emanated four beings, representing the four essential powers of God (and therefore of herself): Truth, Consciousness (that is Light), Life, and Ananda (which means Bliss).111 Those four beings ‘were indeed altogether very high beings, of the highest Reality.’ But God had also expressed the wish that his manifestation should be based on freedom. ‘He wanted all that went forth from him to be absolutely independent and free so that it might unite with him in freedom, not through compulsion.’ Because of their freedom, those high and essentially godlike beings each deemed themselves to be the very Godhead himself, which of course is an absurdity, for the Divine is One. This meant that, in a manner of speaking, they distanced themselves from their origin, thereby turning into its opposites. Truth became Falsehood; Consciousness-Light became the black Inconscient; Life became Death; Bliss became Suffering. (One finds in this story the elements of many great traditions all over the world, although most remember only part of it. The Bible, for instance, mentions only the Being of Light.) The manifestation had taken a turn for the worse. The Universal Mother, upon seeing this, was greatly disturbed and turned to God, asking him to come to her aid. God said to her: ‘Start again, but this time try to do it in such a way that the beings are less independent.’ And it was thus that the Great Mother created the gods. ‘But as the first four had come before them, at every step the gods ran into them, and so it was that the world changed into a battlefield’ between gods and demons, Good and Evil, as all the great traditions tell. Time and again the gods have to do battle with the first four Asuras and with their emanations — for the Asuras had the power to multiply into ‘cascades’ of millions of lesser beings who resembled them and assisted them in their work. If the world had to continue like this, it would never turn godlike, it would never become its divine Origin again. But when she emanated the gods, the Great Creatrix poured her divine Love into the dark Inconscient. It is this Love that is the driving force of the development of the world, of its evolution on the way back, or up, to its divinization. And as all forces are beings and all beings forces, this Love is a divine Being ever present at the core of the manifestation, which some call ‘creation.’ It is this Being who incarnates in what in India are called the Avatars, the series of direct divine interventions in the unfolding of the evolution. In the Revue cosmique Mirra published a vision she had — an occult experience — in which she met that Being in a deep cave at the bottom of the ocean of existence. It radiated all the positive forces which cooperate in the development of the world and which are concretely and personally present in its history as Avatars (incarnations of the essential Divine) or as Vibhutis (incarnations of divine powers). That Being was apparently asleep, she wrote, but when she approached it, it opened its eyes. Why is it worth knowing all this? Because the Asuras never incarnate as such, only in partial representations or emanations. And because Mirra became closely associated with the direct emanations of all four original Asuras. Her encounters with three of them are well documented. Asuric beings, like the gods, exist in non-evolutionary worlds and are therefore immortal. To change, to evolve to a higher status — to a divine one for example — they have to take on an earthly body, and most of them refuse to do this. The reason is that in an earthly body they are subject to the forces of the earthly evolution, while in their own worlds they are intangible and sovereignly immortal. The Cosmic Tradition, as we have seen, taught that the earthly evolution is leading to a divinized being in a corps glorieux — as Sri Aurobindo in a faraway part of the globe was also discovering. It was therefore Mirra’s endeavour to convert the Asuras and to make them take up a material form, for without their conversion, or their disappearance by reintegration into their Origin, a new species on Earth could not be achieved because of their insuperable resistance to it. By their conversion or disappearance, the fatal change of the four essential aspects of the Godhead into their contraries — the Fall at the beginning of our universe aeons ago — would be reversed, and the manifestation could continue in its Godward evolution. Mirra met the Asura of Light (actually the Asura of the dark Inconscient) on her occult explorations under Théon’s guidance during her first stay at Tlemcen. In the Semitic traditions this Asura of Light is called Lucifer or Satan. He agreed to her request to collaborate and consented to be ‘clothed in a body,’ but only a subtle, vital one. ‘You could feel him the way you feel a draught.’ He refused to be born of human parents, which is the only way to get a material body. Théon wanted to keep the converted Asura in his power, for the master occultist felt perfectly at home in the vital also. Mirra, well knowing who Théon really was, pretended she had not understood him and let the converted Asura freely choose the way in which he wanted to collaborate. ‘He said that he was going to set in motion the Chinese revolution... “Mark my words, [he said,] it will happen in exactly five years”... I noted it down. And exactly five years later it happened.’ The last Chinese emperor, a child, was overthrown in 1911 by the revolutionaries led by Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925). ‘That,’ the Asura said, ‘will be the beginning, the first terrestrial movement heralding... the new world upon Earth.’ But then, who was Théon? The Mother has said repeatedly that he was an emanation of the Asura of Death. This explains his great powers, his fearlessness, and his combative character. It also explains why he was so interested in the mantra of life (and death), and why his anger was potent enough to cut Mirra’s lifecord. And with this goes a story. When Mirra was fifteen, she went with her mother to Italy, where Elvire, Mathilde’s sister, was living with her family. Mirra, who spoke Italian well at that time, and her mother visited the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, the Palace of the Doges, situated next to the San Marco basilica on the world-famous Piazza San Marco. Visitors on a tour through the palace pass through the cells where formerly the prisoners were locked up. Those cells are beside a narrow canal crossed by the Bridge of Sighs, from where prisoners taken to their execution had a last look over the lagoon, symbol of mighty seafaring Venice. The walls in the prison cells are covered with graffiti, scribbled by the prisoners. Strangely, Mirra felt attracted to a graffito there and knew that it was from her own hand. And she ‘saw’ how she had been there with a prisoner, how some people suddenly had burst into the cell, caught hold of her, tied her up and thrown her through a window into the canal. The experience was so vivid and overwhelming that she had to leave the palace and breathe some fresh air outside. As she was always looking for explanations of her experiences, she discovered what had happened. ‘I researched in museums, looked up archives, found out my name, other people’s names.’112 A doge had usurped the throne of his predecessor and thrown the latter’s son into prison. But unknown to the usurper his daughter was in love with the son of his rival, the imprisoned young man whom she secretly went to visit. Her father, having discovered her secret visits, fell into a fit of rage and ordered his daughter to be drowned. His order was executed without delay. By now the reader will have understood who the hot-tempered doge and his daughter were at the beginning of the twentieth century. It seems, besides, that one of the Venetian doges, portrayed by Titian, bears a close resemblance to Max Théon, of whom Mirra drew a remarkable portrait in 1906.113 In that former Venetian life, and (briefly) in this one too, Mirra had been killed by the Asura of Death. Did she succeed in converting Théon? The following words of the Mother are probably applicable to him: ‘There is one [Asura] who has almost made an attempt at conversion, but he has not been able to do it. When it had to be done, he felt it as quite unpleasant. So he put it off till another time.’ One should remember that Asuras are beings of immense power, with an ego on a similar scale. If it is already so difficult for a human being to surrender its ego to the Divine, the difficulty for beings of that order, who since the beginning of the manifestation have been the lords of the universe, to surrender their self-will must be enormous. And this, of course, is why their conversion is crucial for the destiny of the world. Mirra’s encounter with a third emanation — an emanation of the Asura of Falsehood, who calls himself ‘Lord of the Nations’ — will take up part of the following chapter. Mirra Morisset’s connection with the Cosmic Movement had lasted five years, for her a period of enormous progress and change. Her life as an artist and her marriage gradually came to an end. A page of her life was being turned, and on the following page nothing but questions were as yet to be read. Mirra knew that she was being carried, just as in her early youth, and that the call to her mission would have to be answered one day. But now she knew also who she actually was, for Alma had told her.
Posted on: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 11:56:01 +0000
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