The Divinization of Matter, and the Snake

January 12, 2006, afternoon


    After visiting the rooms of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry, we return in the afternoon to our Keet (thatch) hut in the community called Adventure (Auroville) for a rest and a change of clothes. As Ron is in the process of changing, a snake falls through the roof our our Keet hut, missing Ron’s head by about a foot. It hits the floor with a slap and slithers frantically for a while. Ron leaps on the bed so as to avoid it. I think about how to capture it and put it outside. The hut has a solid floor which makes it difficult for anything without legs to escape.

    I don’t know what kind of snake it is, but it is small, perhaps two feet long, and quite skinny, with beautiful markings. It is brown along the top with black and golden stripes along it’s sides and a yellow underbelly. It may be one of the highly poisonous varieties in this region - we have no way of knowing, being ignorant in these matters.

    After the major slithering stops, Ron goes to the shower. I sit on the bed watching the snake and have such an insight. We have just spent the morning in the rooms of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, raising our human selves up in the ways that we could to the Divine. Surely it is no accident that a snake dropped through the ceiling and fell into matter. Perhaps this was the coiled serpent in reverse. As a symbol for the ascent of the kundalini through the muladhara chakra and upwards, perhaps, too, in the Divinization of Matter, there is a coiling down of the Divine into the material world. It seemed obvious that this snake was a symbol for that. That as we ascend, the Divine descends and the Divine co-creates with us  its fullest expression in the material realms.

    With that in mind, I sang to the snake for no known reason other than it seemed like the right thing to do. It coiled itself up in a spiral and looked like it was going to sleep in the corner. Ron returned from his shower and we went about our business with the snake resting there. Later I left the hut for about ten minutes and when I returned, Ron was taking a nap. The snake was gone and there was no sign of her anywhere. Neither of us could figure out where she went or how she might have escaped as it wasn’t an easy thing to do. She wasn’t in any of our luggage or under the pillows or in the bed. The hut is sparsely furnished and there is really no adequate place to hide. She was simply gone.

    That was the lesson of the snake.