Does Christ still hang on the cross in Jerusalem?

A mystifying aphorism by Sri Aurobindo explained by the Mother

I ended my last post with a YouTube link to my Zoom talk about “Physics and Consciousness: Classical Indian Philosophy to the Rescue.” One of the participating physicists later wrote to me (cc to all participants) that he was “personally not attracted to” the Aurobindonian/Upanishadic view of reality “because it diminishes the reality of instances of intense human suffering.”

Huh?

What came at once to my mind was the following aphorism by Sri Aurobindo:

Men are still in love with grief; when they see one who is too high for grief or joy, they curse him & cry, “O thou insensible!” Therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem. (Essays Divine and Human, p. 427)

I refrained, however, from quoting it to him. Instead, I sent him Sri Aurobindo’s answer to a question posed by the French writer, poet and playwright Maurice Magre—apparently (and unsurprisingly) to little avail.

But what did Sri Aurobindo actually mean by that cryptic aphorism?

On July 29, 1967 (Mother’s Agenda, Vol. 8) the Mother spoke of “a very, very deep vision” which placed the Christian religion “among all the others, in a very definite place in the earth evolution—in the evolution of the earth consciousness.” During the experience she recalled Sri Aurobindo’s aphorism, which was “like the intellectual way of expressing what I was seeing.” Here is what she said:

Christianity (I mean the universal, or anyway terrestrial, origin of what expressed itself on earth as the Christian religion), the action of this religion on earth has been to “deify suffering” because men needed to understand—not only to understand but to feel and adhere to the raison d'être (the universal raison d'être) of suffering on earth as a means of evolution. We might, basically, say that they sanctified suffering so it may be recognized as a means indispensable to the evolution of the earth.

This action (of the Christian religion), the Mother concluded, has now “been exploited to the full and more, and ought to be gone beyond, and that’s why it must be left behind in order to find something else.”

Two weeks later, on August 12, 1967, she elaborated:

According to my vision, what happened was that in the history of the evolution of the earth, when the human race, the human species, started questioning and rebelling against suffering, which was a necessity to emerge more consciously from inertia, ... man ... began rebelling against suffering, naturally also against the Power that permits and perhaps uses (perhaps uses, to his mind) this suffering as a means of domination. So that is the place of Christianity.

There was already before it a pretty long earth history—we shouldn’t forget that before Christianity, there was Hinduism, which accepted that everything, including destruction, suffering, death and all calamities, is part of the one Divine, the one God.... There was that, here in India. There was Buddha, who on the other hand, was horrified by suffering in all its forms, decay in all its forms, and the impermanence of all things, and in trying to find a remedy, concluded that the only true remedy is the disappearance of the creation.

Such was the terrestrial situation when Christianity came in. So there had been a whole period before it, and numbers of people beginning to rebel against suffering and trying to escape from it.... Others deified it and thus bore it as an inescapable calamity. Then came the need to bring down on earth the concept of a deified, divine suffering, a divine suffering as the supreme means to make the whole human consciousness emerge from Unconsciousness and Ignorance and lead it towards its realization of divine Beatitude ... in life itself: accepting suffering (the crucifixion) in life itself as a means of transformation in order to lead human beings and the entire creation to its divine Origin.

Still on July 29, the Mother said that her vision was

as if suddenly emerging from a conventional atmosphere of thought, which is like a terrestrial atmosphere (I don’t mean it’s an ordinary thought, I mean it’s in the field of human mentality). And there is, above, something that sees things quite differently. As if [...] Yes, things are ordinarily seen like this (gesture from below upward), while “that” sees like this (gesture from above downward), so when you enter there, you see things that you know here (you know them, they aren’t new), but you see them with a totally different vision. And naturally, the notation is also done differently....

It came in two ways. Those things are seen, you understand, seen. Words come afterwards to try and transcribe what was seen. The first thing that came was thus:

“Christians divinize suffering to make it a means of the earth's salvation.” [Les chrétiens divinisent la souffrance pour en faire un moyen de salut de la terre.]

Then it came with just a small difference—from an intellectual standpoint, these are subtleties without value, but up there you seem to be almost touching the heart of things, that is, the essence—the deeper essence of events. So then, it came quite simply, like this:

“Christianity deifies suffering to make it the instrument of the earth's salvation.” [Le christianisme déifie la souffrance pour en faire l’instrument du salut de la terre.]

With regard to the second transcription, the Mother explained on August 12:

It isn’t just a little remark noted down in passing: it’s a vision. One can always present it as something conceived mentally, but it’s not that; it was, if you like, a necessity in the development. And it puts things in their true perspective.

She went on to say:

Islam was a return towards sensation, beauty, harmony in the form, and the legitimization of sensations and joy in beauty. From a higher viewpoint, it wasn’t quite of a superior quality, but from a vital viewpoint, it was extremely powerful, and that’s what gave them so much power to spread, to appropriate, seize, dominate. But what they did is very beautiful—all their art is magnificent, magnificent! It was a flowering of beauty.

Then there were others, and every religion came as a stage in the development and the relationship with the Divine, to lead the consciousness towards a oneness which is a totality and not a removal of an entire reality so as to obtain another. The need for totality, completeness, is what caused those religions to come like that, one after another....

And so Sri Aurobindo’s sentence assumes its whole value.... Christianity came because men were rebelling against grief and trying to escape from the world in order to escape from grief.... Then, with the years going by and the unfolding, men took a liking to suffering! And because they love it..., “Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem.” It assumes its full significance.

When the Mother said that now “that action [of the Christian religion] has been exploited to the full and more, and ought to be gone beyond, and that’s why it must be left behind in order to find something else,” the disciple reminded her of her New Year message for 1957: “A Power greater than that of Evil can alone win the victory. It is not a crucified but a glorified body that will save the world.”

What the Mother meant by a “glorified body” has been explained in this post.

On January 2, 1957, the Mother recounted how this message came to her (Questions and Answers 1957–1958):

One day, I don’t know when exactly, I suddenly remembered that I had to give a message for the year.... I asked myself, or rather I asked whether I might receive a clear indication of what was to be said.... A few hours later I had a booklet in my hands which had come from America and had been published as a kind of account of a photographic exhibition entitled The Family of Man. There were quotations in this booklet and the reproduction of a number of photographs, classified according to the subject, and all for the purpose of trying to awaken the true sense of fraternity in men. The whole thing represented a sort of effort—immense, pathetic—to prevent a possible war. The quotations had been chosen by a woman-reporter who had come here and whom I had seen. And so, all this came expressing in a really touching way, the best human will which can manifest on earth at present, from the collective point of view. I am not saying that some individuals have not risen much higher and understand much better, but they are individual cases and not a collective attempt to do something for humanity. I was moved.

And then I came to the end of their booklet and to the remedy they in their ignorant goodwill suggested to prevent men from killing one another....

It was so poor, so weak, so ignorant, so ineffective, that I was truly moved and—I had a dream, that this exhibition would come here, to Pondicherry, that we could show it and add a concluding fascicule to their booklet in which the true remedy would be revealed to them. And all that took shape very concretely, with the kind of photographs which would be necessary, the quotations that should be put, and then, quite decisively, like something welling up from the depths of consciousness, came this sentence. I wrote it down, and as soon as it was written I said to myself: “Why, this is my message.”

This means that it is just the thing which can make the goodwill of mankind, the best being expressed on earth today, progress. It has taken a rather special form because this goodwill came from a Christian country and naturally there was quite a special Christian influence, but this is an attitude which is found everywhere in the world, differently expressed according to the country and the religion, and it was as a reaction against the ignorance of this attitude that I wrote this....

Because until now evil has been opposed by weakness, by a spiritual force without any power for transformation in the material world, this tremendous effort of goodwill has ended only in deplorable failure and left the world in the same state of misery and corruption and falsehood. It is on the same plane as the one where the adverse forces are ruling that one must have a greater power than theirs, a power which can conquer them totally in that very domain. To put it otherwise, a spiritual force which would be capable of transforming both the consciousness and the material world. This force is the supramental force....

It is neither sacrifice nor renunciation nor weakness which can bring the victory. It is only Delight, a delight which is strength, endurance, supreme courage. The delight brought by the supramental force.

I remember having seen that booklet in my teens, when I was much into photography. (I even won prizes!) The Family of Man was hyped as “The greatest photographic exhibition of all time—503 pictures from 68 countries created by Edward Steichen for the Museum of Modern Art.” Here is short video (44 secs) showing a few photos from the exhibition:

Interestingly, New Year 1957, for which the Mother’s message was intended, was the first New Year following the Supramental Manifestation in 1956, which the Mother announced in two messages:

Lord, Thou hast willed and I execute,
A new light breaks upon the earth,
A new world is born.
The things that were promised are fulfilled.¹

The manifestation of the Supramental upon earth is no more a promise but a living fact, a reality. It is at work here, and one day will come when the most blind, the most unconscious, even the most unwilling shall be obliged to recognise it.

Here is how the Mother described the event, which took place during the common meditation on February 29, 1956:

This evening the Divine Presence, concrete and material, was there present amongst you. I had a form of living gold, bigger than the universe, and I was facing a huge and massive golden door which separated the world from the Divine.

As I looked at the door, I knew and willed, in a single movement of consciousness, that “the time has come,” and lifting with both hands a mighty golden hammer I struck one blow, one single blow on the door and the door was shattered to pieces. Then the supramental Light and Force and Consciousness rushed down upon earth in an uninterrupted flow.

On May 2, 1956, in one of her “Wednesday classes,” the Mother was asked about “the things that were promised”:

What are these things?

Ah, that’s ignorance indeed! This was promised a very long time ago, this was said very long ago—not only here—since the beginning of the earth. There have been all kinds of predictions, by all kinds of prophets; it has been said, “There will be a new heaven and a new earth, a new race will be born, the world will be transformed....” Prophets have spoken about this in all the traditions.

You have said, “They are fulfilled.”

Yes. And so?

Where is the new race?

The new race? Wait for something like... a few thousand years, and you will see it!

1. In her Prayers and Meditations, on September 25, 1914, the Mother wrote:

The Lord has willed and Thou dost execute:
A new Light shall break upon the earth.
A new world shall be born,
And the things that were promised shall be fulfilled.

Notice the change from future tense to present tense.