Book One Canto IV Summary

Having freed his soul from the bondage of Ignorance that ties as a helpless creature to the stake, Aswapati now turns his gaze deeper to discover the Secret Wisdom that has gone forth into the creation. He seeks and discovers the Master plan of this universe, its occult cause and moving force, the great Purpose and the Will that labours in the atoms and the stars, the far-off goal towards which creation moves. Step by step he discovers the secret Knowledge, secret because we cannot find it through the mind or the senses but can discover it through other faculties and powers which have now awakened in Aswapati. It is a great grand reversal, a reversal of understanding, a reversal of our self-regard and world-view, a reversal of the very basis of our action and our values. Along the path of this discovery, one of the first and fundamental discovery is that of the secret Fire that burns within everything. This Fire is the Divine Will that hides behind the mask of forms and names. It is the Glory of God whose sparks illuminate creation and lead our life towards the Divine and creates even here a response to all that is True, Good and Beautiful. In man this spark develops into a flame, the psychic center that survives death and returns again into the great adventure of life for the great fulfillment.

But all this is hidden and what we experience here is only a half-light or grey shadows of the Unseen Reality cast by our surface mind. Yet man can connect with this deeper Source of Wisdom and Power and thereby reorganize his entire life. This is the yoga of Earth that is going on since its inception. Earth is the chosen place for this work wherein the Divine hid within matter uncovers and manifests Himself progressively. We call it evolution but from a spiritual perspective all evolution is simply a growing manifestation of that which is concealed within.

Therefore it is inevitable that one day the Divine hid in forms will manifest Himself fully and thereby our present life based on Ignorance and suffering and error will change into a life of Truth and Beauty and Bliss and Love, in one word ‘the Life Divine.’

Man is meant to be the catalyst for this great change. Now he moves between two poles of One tremendous Reality. On one side of our human consciousness, below it so to say, is the dark pole of existence where all is a shadow and ignorance. On the other side are the flaming powers and potencies of God. But the most important Truth is that within us is the One who is present in each and every element and particle of creation. He is ever close to us and intervenes with His powers and His Grace to lead creation out of chaos and confusion towards Light and Beauty and Truth. Behind all the surface anomalies of life there is a Guidance that bails us through everything and leads us even in this ignorance towards the great divine disclosure.

What follows next are some long and engaging passages describing how the One becomes the Two for His Play. Soul and Nature, Purusha and Prakriti, Iswara and Shakti are various poises of the One Reality for the sake of creation. So too Knowledge and Ignorance, Gods and the Titans are luminous and shadowy masks of the One. It is He who has become all these various objects. It is He who has become Space and Time and Creation. It is He who has become bird and beast and man. In and through man He climbs towards still greater heights of supermanhood and of a divinized humanity. Since God has become man, since man is created in the image of God so to say, man must become one with God. He is so already in essence as indeed all creation is. But what is within him in essence must become his normal and natural state. This is the purpose of creation, its eventual design. What we however see now is a half-finished product. The emergence of divinity in man is the next logical step, the inevitable next disclosure of creation.

Finally, Sri Aurobindo takes us on the entire evolutionary journey of man from the most primitive stages where man is conscious only of the immediate material world and physical existence through various degrees of self-awareness and world-awareness until he becomes a seeker of Truth and Light and begins to be drawn towards what lies beyond his mind and his present limited consciousness. The Canto ends once again with the hope and the certitude of a New Creation upon earth, a divine creation with the full manifestation of divinity, of the Divine Truth and Power and Glory upon earth and man.

A sailor on the Inconscient’s fathomless sea,
He voyages through a starry world of thought
On Matter’s deck to a spiritual sun.
Across the noise and multitudinous cry,
Across the rapt unknowable silences,
Through a strange mid-world under supernal skies, Beyond earth’s longitudes and latitudes,
His goal is fixed outside all present maps.
But none learns whither through the unknown he sails
Or what secret mission the great Mother gave.
In the hidden strength of her omnipotent Will,
Driven by her breath across life’s tossing deep,
Through the thunder’s roar and through the windless hush, Through fog and mist where nothing more is seen,
He carries her sealed orders in his breast.
Late will he know, opening the mystic script,
Whether to a blank port in the Unseen
He goes or, armed with her fiat, to discover

A new mind and body in the city of God
And enshrine the Immortal in his glory’s house And make the finite one with Infinity......
He travels on through waking and through sleep. A power is on him from her occult force
That ties him to his own creation’s fate,
And never can the mighty Traveller rest
And never can the mystic voyage cease
Till the nescient dusk is lifted from man’s soul And the morns of God have overtaken his night. As long as Nature lasts, he too is there,
For this is sure that he and she are one;
Even when he sleeps, he keeps her on his breast: Whoever leaves her, he will not depart
To repose without her in the Unknowable.
There is a truth to know, a work to do;
Her play is real; a Mystery he fulfils:
There is a plan in the Mother’s deep world-whim, A purpose in her vast and random game.

Opening Remarks

In the previous Cantos we are told that by the power of Intuition, the Seer-King Aswapati discovered, “A Secret knowledge masked as Ignorance.”

Indeed this knowledge can only come as our consciousness is more and more intuitivised. One cannot arrive at this knowledge by studying and analyzing the surface phenomenon by our surface mind and its limited operations. One cannot arrive at this knowledge by analyzing the sensory data alone. A higher light, a deeper seeing must emerge to lead us to the doorway of this secret knowledge hidden in the heart of creation. That is why it is secret since it cannot be arrived at by the senses and the mind.

In this canto we are given a glimpse of this secret knowledge discovered by the yogi and seer Ashwapati.

The Lost Immensities pp 46-47

Opening remarks

Seer-king Ashwapati is now fully awakened to the workings of a higher and deeper Intuition that has changed his perception and understanding of life. He is now in possession of powers and faculties that are not ordinarily experienced in the normal operations of nature though they work secretly from behind. It is his experiences or shall we say Sri Aurobindo’s own experiences and realisations revealed to us through Aswapati that are being shared. The very first thing we are told is that there is much that lies beyond the ken of our normal perceptions, beyond the ranges of mind and its ordinary functioning.
The height that looks towards greater heights
On a height he stood that looked towards greater heights.
The ascent of consciousness is often felt like climbing a mountain. Each height we reach opens up to still greater heights.

Sunrise splendours

Our early approaches to the Infinite
Are sunrise splendours on a marvellous verge While lingers yet unseen the glorious sun.

  

Truth is beyond all formulas and dogmas because it is by its very nature Infinite. Each experience is a beginning of still greater things to come. Therefore one should not stop at any particular experience or realization or build philosophical systems or cults around it. It is only when we reach the Origin that we can discover the total secret. Here the Intuitive planes are being compared to the sunrise splendours whereas the very Home of Truth is the Supramental Sun where we can find the Integral Knowledge, the perfect Truth that reconciles the different approaches towards the Infinite.

Shadow of what must come

What now we see is a shadow of what must come.

This is the attitude of progress we must keep. Not to rest at any stage, however high it may be compared to our present humanity, but to go higher, ever higher until we find the shadowless Light, the integral and infinite Truth.

The epic climb

The earth’s uplook to a remote Unknown Is a preface only of the epic climb
Of human soul from its flat earthly state To the discovery of a greater self

And the far gleam of an eternal Light.

The soul’s upwards ascension is an epic journey towards a remote Unknown that is yet to manifest. Our highest mental idealism, our most profound spiritual experiences and occult vision, our loftiest philosophies, our widest religious aspirations are mere preparations and far off glimpses of what is yet to come, – the supramental transformation.

An unborn Power

This world is a beginning and a base
Where Life and Mind erect their structured dreams;
An unborn Power must build reality.
The efforts of our life and mind to create a better world are like the initial tuning of the earthly instrument. But it is only when the Supramental Power remoulds our body and earthly life that the true Divine Perfection can be established upon earth. This is the unborn Power that Aswapati, the yogi-seer and the Avatara is seeking to bring down upon earth.

Forgotten vastnesses

A deathbound littleness is not all we are:
Immortal our forgotten vastnesses
Await discovery in our summit selves;
Unmeasured breadths and depths of being are ours.
There are much greater planes of consciousness than what we are accustomed to now. There is much more concealed within us than we can presently even dream of. What has manifested until now is nothing compared to what yet must come.

Neighbours of Heaven

Akin to the ineffable Secrecy,
Mystic, eternal in unrealised Time,
Neighbours of Heaven are Nature’s altitudes.
The Heaven being spoken of here is not the heaven of Religions but high states of consciousness that await our discovery. These high states border on eternity and are glimpsed when we climb upon the high peaks of Nature where the great gods dwell in blissful and luminous peace.

High-peaked dominions

To these high-peaked dominions sealed to our search, Too far from surface Nature’s postal routes,
Too lofty for our mortal lives to breathe,
Deep in us a forgotten kinship points

     

And a faint voice of ecstasy and prayer
Calls to those lucent lost immensities.
There are vast domains of Light and Peace and Bliss. We search for these states instinctively but we know not the route. Our surface nature is unaware and our death-bound life unable to reach out to these domains now sealed to our vision and search. Yet we get hints and glimpses of these states when our heart gathers in a one-pointed prayer and a breath of joy is felt upon our lives descending from Above.

Temples to the godhead none can see

Even when we fail to look into our souls
Or lie embedded in earthly consciousness,
Still have we parts that grow towards the light,
Yet are there luminous tracts and heavens serene
And Eldorados of splendour and ecstasy
And temples to the godhead none can see. (p 47 begins)
Still, even in our state of utter darkness and ignorance, even in our unconsciousness there is a divine impulsion pushing us towards these luminous heights. Even when we are not conscious of it, still we grow towards the Light. There lies within us wealth and riches beyond measure, and pathways of light and peace and bliss that lead us to the sanctum sanctorum where the Unseen Divine reigns in all His Splendours.

A short miraculous escape

A shapeless memory lingers in us still
And sometimes, when our sight is turned within,
Earth’s ignorant veil is lifted from our eyes;
There is a short miraculous escape.
Yet there are moments of Grace when an inner door or window opens upon the Infinite. If instead of being turned always outwards involved and engaged with outer things, we turn our sight within we escape momentarily from this dense veil of Ignorance and stand before the gates of the Infinite.

Narrow fringe of clamped experience

This narrow fringe of clamped experience
We leave behind meted to us as life,
Our little walks, our insufficient reach.
These are moments when we step out of the ordinary everyday life with its smallness of motives and narrow purposes tied around petty cares and worries that hardly carry us afar.

Calm immensities of spirit space

Our souls can visit in great lonely hours
Still regions of imperishable Light,
All-seeing eagle-peaks of silent Power
And moon-flame oceans of swift fathomless Bliss And calm immensities of spirit space.

There are moments when our soul stands alone with the wonderful Divine Presence and breathes Its luminous atmosphere of Calm and Wideness and Bliss and shares His silent Power. It can bathe in the Divine Wisdom and Power that has gone into creation. Such is the possibility open for man.

Closing remarks

This is the vast background of Seer-King Aswapati’s discovery, a discovery accessible to all who so aspire. But ordinarily we are too much tied to and preoccupied with the surface life to even think about it.

The Chosen Human Vessel pp 47-48

Opening remarks
The Secret Knowledge does not come by tapasya (concentrated personal effort towards spiritual evolution) alone. While there is no denying the necessity of human effort, the Divine revelation in man is an act of Grace, – ‘the wind bloweth where it listeth’ [the wind blows where it wishes], as the word goes.

     

Or as the Upanishad puts it, yameveshe vranute, – he whom the Self chooses to reveal Itself. It is this mystery of a human vessel that is being revealed now as also the various ways in which the divinity comes to us.
The inexpressible Mystery
In the unfolding process of the Self
Sometimes the inexpressible Mystery
Elects a human vessel of descent.
All our life is a progressive unfolding of the Divine Self within. But a time comes when the Divine Self takes up the life and works of a chosen human vessel. Then life is filled with the marvel of a wonderful Grace working in and through the human vessel.

A figure of eternal Peace

A breath comes down from a supernal air,
A Presence is born, a guiding Light awakes,
A stillness falls upon the instruments:
Fixed, motionless like a marble monument,
Stone-calm, the body is a pedestal
Supporting a figure of eternal Peace.
The signs of this mysterious Grace choosing the human vessel and laying Its luminous hand upon it is the awareness of a Divine Presence within and a Divine Guidance in life. There also grows along with it a peace and stillness enveloping and permeating us. Initially this Peace and Stillness are felt during some special moments, divine moments so to say, when the body and mind fall quiet effortlessly with the divine Touch.

Revealing Force

Or a revealing Force sweeps blazing in;
Out of some vast superior continent
Knowledge breaks through trailing its radiant seas,
And Nature trembles with the power, the flame.
Peace is the first to come and prepares the ground for the true Knowledge. Once the Mind and Vital grow quiet, the Divine Force comes with the Light of Truth. There is a downpour of ‘Knowledge’ from vast and luminous realms Above. Human nature and our natural instruments, such as the body and brain take time to adapt to this rain of ‘power and light’.

Master of our souls

A greater Personality sometimes
Possesses us which yet we know is ours:
Or we adore the Master of our souls.
We recognize this Presence as the Master of our souls. With this recognition, there grows in us love for the Divine. We experience the Divine Personality taking hold of us from time to time heightening, refining and glorifying the instrument.

One with Nature and with God

Then the small bodily ego thins and falls;
No more insisting on its separate self,
Losing the punctilio of its separate birth,
It leaves us one with Nature and with God.
As our Nature is possessed more and more by the Divine Consciousness, the ego-sense and the limited personality linked to a particular name and form thins out and vanishes. All movements are experienced as waves arising out of universal Nature. And behind all is felt the Divine Presence, the Upholder, Origin and Goal of everything.

Our spirit sits alone

In moments when the inner lamps are lit
And the life’s cherished guests are left outside, Our spirit sits alone and speaks to its gulfs.

     

These are indeed divine moments that come to the chosen soul as gifts of Grace. These luminous moments are given to us for contemplation upon the deepest mysteries of existence. During such God-moments, the strong-hold of desires and all that we cherish is loosened and meditation becomes natural and spontaneous.

Timeless Glory

A wider consciousness opens then its doors;
Invading from spiritual silences
A ray of the timeless Glory stoops awhile
To commune with our seized illumined clay
And leaves its huge white stamp upon our lives.
An inner door then opens on the Infinity that surrounds us. The forces and powers of Consciousness from higher realms descend and seize our instruments to express and manifest a greater and higher Truth- Light. Initially, these divine touches withdraw after sometime but only to return again and again. They leave their stamp upon our life giving it a definitive turn and making it easier for the experience to return.

Closing Remarks

This passage about a chosen human vessel should not be taken as if others are not called or excluded. Rather it is in the sense that ‘many are called, few are chosen.’ What is meant by this is that everyone gets his opportunity to realize the Divine and for each one it is an equal opportunity. But not all are ready to take it. Of course they too will realize it in due course of time but their time has not yet come. Chosen simply means that the time has come for this soul to realize the Divine or to become a conscious and willing instrument of the Divine Work.

It is then that this contact and these experiences of higher states of Consciousness begin to flow naturally and spontaneously into the prepared and ready human vessel.

Signals of Eternity pp 48-49

Opening Remarks

The Divine revelation takes a number of forms and proceeds along several lines of spiritual experience. Some of these are being described here, especially the various forms in which we come into contact with the inner Fire, the divinity within man.
Prophet eyes of trance

In the oblivious field of mortal mind,
Revealed to the closed prophet eyes of trance
Or in some deep internal solitude
Witnessed by a strange immaterial sense,
The signals of eternity appear.
When the mind falls quiet and is disengaged with outer things, it withdraws inside so to say; then an inner eye opens upon the Truth that was hidden so far to us. The solitude spoken of here is an inner state when the consciousness is turned within and the inner senses awaken and experience the touches of the Eternal. It is these inner senses that experience the contact with the Divine, a contact as vivid as or even more vivid than the contact with material things through our gross senses.

A bright Omniscience

The truth mind could not know unveils its face, We hear what mortal ears have never heard, We feel what earthly sense has never felt,
We love what common hearts repel and dread; Our minds hush to a bright Omniscient;

A Voice calls from the chambers of the soul; We meet the ecstasy of the Godhead’s touch In golden privacies of immortal fire.

(p 48 begins)

   

In these moments when we are in contact with the Divine within, the doors of divinity open to us. There is a reversal of consciousness changing our values and valuation of things. The old measures fall off and a new vision and a new basis of action begins to appear. A new knowledge awakens within the heart and a vast impersonal love begins to spread far and wide including in its scope the outcast and the fallen. Our minds grow quiet with the downpour of a New Knowledge from the Superconscient Above and the ecstasy of God touch and the inner Guidance calling and leading us higher and higher becomes for us something real and concrete.

The tongue of celestial fire

These signs are native to a larger self
That lives within us by ourselves unseen;
Only sometimes a holier influence comes,
A tide of mightier surgings bears our lives
And a diviner Presence moves the soul;
Or through the earthly coverings something breaks,
A grace and beauty of spiritual light,
The murmuring tongue of a celestial fire.
Though these experiences seem so new to us, in fact they are always there within us. It is just that our gaze is turned outside and hence these God-touches pass unnoticed by our outer mind engaged with the small life of the ego-self. These glimpses and touches come to us from Above, from higher realms as a refreshing and rejuvenating breath of Grace that begins to take charge of our life and move us as Its instrument. During these Divine moments, aspiration leaps up and the light and beauty of the soul breaks through our layers and we feel the Godheads touch even in our outer earthly life.

A high stranger

Ourself and a high stranger whom we feel,
It is and acts unseen as if it were not;
It follows the line of sempiternal birth,
Yet seems to perish with its mortal frame.
It is the secret divinity within us, our true self that persists and returns through ever changing masks of name and personality and form. The ego-self feels it to be a stranger though, in reality, it is who we truly are.

The Apocalypse

Assured of the Apocalypse to be,
It reckons not the moments and the hours;
Great, patient, calm it sees the centuries pass,
Awaiting the slow miracle of our change
In the sure deliberate process of world-force
And the long march of all-revealing Time.
The psychic being is endowed with faith and the certitude of Divine Victory and its eventual fulfillment through all our seeming successes and apparent failures. The mind may have doubts and seek for proof, the vital may give up and wander in a state of confusion straying from the straight road but the soul knows that whatever time it may take, the Divine Realisation is as certain or even more certain than two plus two is four. That is why it is never disheartened and waits patiently for the Divine Moment even as it moves through the complex of forces that constitute our life.

Unborn divinity

It is the origin and the master-clue, (p. 49 begins) A silence overhead, an inner voice,
A living image seated in the heart,
An unwalled wideness and a fathomless point, The truth of all these cryptic shows in Space,

The Real towards which our strivings move, The secret grandiose meaning of our lives.

   

A treasure of honey in the combs of God,
A Splendour burning in a tenebrous cloak,
It is our glory of the flame of God,
Our golden fountain of the world’s delight,
An immortality cowled in the cape of death,
The shape of our unborn divinity.
It is a most marvelous and comprehensive description of the psychic being which holds the thread of our past as also the blueprints of the future. It is the true inner voice that comes from the silence in the depths of the heart. It holds the truth, the key to the true understanding of all the events and circumstances of our life. It is the secret Fire that bears within it nectar-cup of God’s sweetness and Delight. This is the immortal element within us; that which we are really seeking consciously or unconsciously through all the various meanderings of our life. It is the inner divinity within us that burns day and night towards the Divine Revelation of tomorrow and carries us from life to greater life through an interregnum of death.

The eternal seed

It guards for us our fate in depths within
Where sleeps the eternal seed of transient things.
It is the key to understand the enigma of life, the doorway to our future. It is the divine seed within us which is destined to grow towards the intended and pre-ordained divinity regardless of time and the varied circumstances of life and the difficulties of nature.

The magic Key

Always we bear in us a magic key
Concealed in life’s hermetic envelope.
The secret soul, the psychic being in us is the magic key that can open our doors to Truth and Light and Peace and Harmony and Beauty and Bliss. It is the key that can lead us to the Divine Life. But our mind has lost this key that was given to us and never taken away. It is clothed in the coverings of nature that is within our mind, life and body.

Heart of the mystery

A burning Witness in the sanctuary
Regards through Time and the blind walls of Form;
A timeless Light is in his hidden eyes;
He sees the secret things no words can speak
And knows the goal of the unconscious world
And the heart of the mystery of the journeying years.
The key to resolving the mystery of life, of being the master of fate is given to us. What appears as an unsolvable riddle to the mind is solved by the discovery of this secret soul within. The soul knows the truth that our mind misses. It knows the mystery of creation and the steps of the long journey through many lives. It is the inner Guide, the knower of the Path we must take to reach the goal.

Closing Remarks

Thus we see that the soul is the connecting link between our nature and personality and the Divine. It is through this that we can understand the mystery of creation and the meaning of our own lives. It is through the soul that we receive the touches of the Divine in our life.

The Ignorant Mind’s View pp 49-50

Opening Remarks

Sri Aurobindo, like a Master Artist, contrasts the deeper view of a spiritual gaze with the superficial one that we are accustomed to.
Spiritual gaze
But all is screened, subliminal, mystical;

It needs the intuitive heart, the inward turn, It needs the power of a spiritual gaze.

     

These deeper mysteries of existence, these profound truths are not accessible to the surface mind nor can we discover them through the analytical mind, engaged in and turned towards outer things. They are self- revealed in an intuitive light as we turn within and grow in spiritual power.

Our waking mind’s small moment look

Else to our waking mind’s small moment look
A goalless voyage seems our dubious course Some Chance has settled or hazarded some Will, Or a Necessity without aim or cause

Unwillingly compelled to emerge and be.

To the surface mind all appears a meaningless chaos without any direction or purpose, – a senseless void from which creation has somehow emerged.

The dense field and the net of death

In this dense field where nothing is plain or sure,
Our very being seems to us questionable,
Our life a vague experiment, the soul
A flickering light in a strange ignorant world,
The earth a brute mechanic accident, (page 50 begins) A net of death in which by chance we live.

It is the very nature of this material field that it immediately covers our soul-vision with obscurity and the dense veil of Ignorance. Then to this obscure surface view, our very existence is riddled by doubt, our life and soul appear as by-products, and earth itself the result of an accident where, defying all odds, life has somehow emerged amid the dead and hostile silence of space.

A doubtful guess

All we have learned appears a doubtful guess,
The achievement done a passage or a phase
Whose farther end is hidden from our sight,
A chance happening or a fortuitous fate.
Knowledge is always riddled with doubt in this dense field. At best it is a passage towards a yet greater Unknown. Until the inner doors open and an intuitive light awakens, we can never find the definitive answer to the riddle of earthly life. Here all appears a play of blind fate and chance happenings without any coherence or meaning in it.

From the unknown to the unknown

Out of the unknown we move to the unknown.

This is our state as long as the two farther ends of creation remain hidden to our view.

Fate’s starting line

Ever surround our brief existence here
Grey shadows of unanswered questionings;
The dark Inconscient’s signless mysteries
Stand up unsolved behind Fate’s starting-line.
On the one side is the Inconcient, – the dark and obscure beginning out of which life seems to somehow manage to be born. Yet we do not know what exactly is this primal Darkness from which creation seems to have emerged and into which through an unfolding of events has a tendency to collapse.

The paradox of life

An aspiration in the Night’s profound, Seed of a perishing body and half-lit mind, Uplifts its lonely tongue of conscious fire Towards an undying Light for ever lost; Only it hears, sole echo of its call,
The dim reply in man’s unknowing heart And meets, not understanding why it came

     

Or for what reason is the suffering here,
God’s sanction to the paradox of life
And the riddle of the Immortal’s birth in Time.
Creation is a mystery riddled with opposites. A thick veil of Darkness and Night hangs over this mystery. Yet something is lit up and awake even in this Darkness. Something aspires, even in this obscure terrestrial robe, something that strives to discover some lost secret, something that climbs towards Light and Truth. But there is hardly an answer in the human heart towards this call, towards the undying Light. Thus the riddle of the birth of an immortal Soul in a field of suffering and transience and mortality remains unsolved.

Closing Remarks

This is our human state as long as we remain subject to Ignorance, as long as our soul has not yet found its freedom.

The Yoga of the Earth pp 50-52

Opening remarks

To the spiritual vision of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, the Earth is not just a piece of mud and clay but a conscious being, a soul, a goddess that has been crystallised for s specific purpose. It occupies a special place in creation since it is only upon Earth that there is found the psychic presence. That is why we see here upon Earth an impulse for evolution, which becomes in human beings an urge for conscious growth, conscious progress and ultimately an aspiration for yoga. The unconscious yoga that is going on within the being of Earth becomes in man a conscious yoga for the earth. In the passages that follow we see the Master Poet revealing to us some of these subtle and profound truths about the yoga of the Earth, her aspiration and seeking and strivings and longings that are nourished within her core.

The Earth Goddess

The Earth-Goddess toils across the sands of Time.

The earth we inhabit is not just dead matter but a living Goddess who wears a material body. She is engaged in a deep and vast labour since its very formation, to bring out the Divine Presence that is hidden within her.

A field of progressive manifestation

A Being is in her whom she hopes to know,
A Word speaks to her heart she cannot hear,
A Fate compels whose form she cannot see.
The Earth is a field of progress, a field of progressive manifestation of the Divine hid within its core. The outer body of earth seeks to know and grow conscious of her inner being and to give it an appropriate form and voice. For this she struggles and strives, building one form after another through which she can discover herself more and more. She is moved by an inner impulsion that she herself does not fully understand. She is driven towards a Fate still hidden to her eyes.

The beauty that must die

In her unconscious orbit through the Void
Out of her mindless depths she strives to rise,
A perilous life her gain, a struggling joy;
A Thought that can conceive but hardly knows Arises slowly in her and creates
The idea, the speech that labels more than it lights; A trembling gladness that is less than bliss
Invades from all this beauty that must die.

    

The yoga of the Earth is still incomplete. What she has accomplished so far is at best partial touches and far off glimpses of the divinity concealed in her. And even these glimpses do not stay for long surrounded and submerged as they are in a field of Unconsciousness, Darkness and Death. Even the best and most beautiful creations here cannot endure and perish after a time. She is haunted with impermanence and transience so to say.

An inward urge

Alarmed by the sorrow dragging at her feet
And conscious of the high things not yet won, (p. 51 begins)
Ever she nurses in her sleepless breast
An inward urge that takes from her rest and peace.
Yet she refuses to give up the labour to build divinity here with transient things, to discover immortality with mortal elements. Driven by the whiplash of sorrow on the one hand and an inward aspiration for Truth-Light and Peace and Harmony, she is unable to rest from her vast labour and struggle.

A breath of Godhead

Ignorant and weary and invincible,
She seeks through the soul’s war and quivering pain
The pure perfection her marred nature needs,
A breath of Godhead on her stone and mire.
Earth aspires even in its unconsciousness. The very matter of earth aspires towards Perfection and the manifestation of divinity in clay. It is for this that earth was formed, it is for this that she strives and struggles and waits for the fulfillment, for the day when she can become an equal of Heaven and feel the breath and force of God upon her mud and mire.

A faith, a love, a truth

A faith she craves that can survive defeat,
The sweetness of a love that knows not death,
The radiance of a truth for ever sure.
This is the secret longing that is embedded in earth and all earthly beings. It is the aspiration we inherit by being born upon earth, – the aspiration for love, truth, light, bliss, immortality.

The one needed truth

A light grows in her, she assumes a voice,
Her state she learns to read and the act she has done,
But the one needed truth eludes her grasp,
Herself and all of which she is the sign.
Slowly, the light hidden in her bosom grows and expresses itself through the mind and speech. Yet the Mind cannot arrive at the ultimate truth or the intended perfection. Therefore the ultimate Mystery, the divinisation of Matter continues to elude her. This is the intended perfection that awaits its hour.

The truth that she has missed

An inarticulate whisper drives her steps
Of which she feels the force but not the sense;
A few rare intimations come as guides, Immense divining flashes cleave her brain,
And sometimes in her hours of dream and muse The truth that she has missed looks out on her As if far off and yet within her soul.

    

From time to time there have been manifestations of divinity in this house of clay but the divinization of matter itself is still a far-cry. There have been attempts and efforts at a self- exceeding but the victory of Spirit over matter is a task that is yet to be done. Yet it is for this that she was made, to feel the touch of divinity in the house of matter or rather to turn this house of clay into the city of God.

A change comes near

A change comes near that flees from her surmise
And, ever postponed, compels attempt and hope,
Yet seems too great for mortal hope to dare.
This has been the history of all attempts to establish a reign of Beauty and Truth upon earth. There are approximations and brief-lived successes, but eventually there is a collapse. The successes however partial and brief inspire hope whereas the failures fill man with doubt. But the effort is bound to continue and bear fruit and the crown of lasting victory will come one day.

Mighty kinsmen lost

A vision meets her of supernal Powers
That draw her as if mighty kinsmen lost
Approaching with estranged great luminous gaze.
The powers that dwell in the higher realms continue to labour for the Divine Victory and come again and again to prepare the Earth for the fulfillment of her highest aspirations. In fact these higher realms have gone into the Earth’s formation. They are embedded within the being of earth and are bound to emerge one day.

Stretches her arms to be

Then is she moved to all that she is not
And stretches arms to what was never hers.
It is this repeated contact with beings of higher worlds that aspiration awakens in earth and her heart is moved to pray for things that are not yet but must be one day.

What most she needs

Outstretching arms to the unconscious Void, Passionate she prays to invisible forms of Gods Soliciting from dumb Fate and toiling Time
What most she needs, what most exceeds her scope, A Mind unvisited by illusion’s gleams,

A Will expressive of soul’s deity,
A Strength not forced to stumble by its speed,
A Joy that drags not sorrow as its shade. (p. 52 begins)
This is the Earth’s persistent aspiration, – the unmixed Truth free from all error and doubt, the ever victorious Power and Strength, the Will that acts in perfect unison with Truth, the shadowless Light and undiminished Bliss. Though this prayer dwells within her heart it assumes a conscious voice in man.

Heaven’s privilege

For these she yearns and feels them destined hers:
Heaven’s privilege she claims as her own right.
Indeed she is Heaven’s child and justly claims Heaven’s riches as her rights. A faith is in her that compels her to strive on and a certitude that one day she will become the Home of the All- wonderful and Blissful.

    

Just is her claim

Just is her claim the all-witnessing Gods approve,
Clear in a greater light than reason owns:
Our intuitions are its title-deeds;
Our souls accept what our blind thoughts refuse.
Souls born upon earth inherit this aspiration and faith. A deep intuition and conviction of our divine possibilities exists within us that refuses to die despite a thousand doubts and denials. Indeed the existence of this faith and aspiration is a sign that it has the approval of the Gods.

God’s sign of things to be

Earth’s winged chimaeras are Truth’s steeds in Heaven,
The impossible God’s sign of things to be.
What our intellectual mind discards hastily as mere imagination is very often the first indication of a deep possibility of the Divine seeking to manifest upon Earth.

Closing remarks

This is the yoga of the Earth that starts from the soul’s aspiration towards perfection and would end with the divinization of matter.

The Ignorant Vision of Man pp 52-53

Opening remarks

In the passage that follows Sri Aurobindo shows us the present condition of man tied to the limits of understanding imposed upon him by the senses and the physical mind.
The matted hedge of sense
But few can look beyond the present state

Or overleap this matted hedge of sense.

Ordinarily we are told that what we see, touch, hear is true. But in fact the senses do not reveal the Reality to us, they only cover it as a hedge covers a ground full of Light. Thus we see not Reality or the Truth but bits and pieces that give us the impression of form and reality. But it is a trick, an illusion conjured by the senses. Yet it is not easy to get past these appearances that the senses weave for us.

An Illimitable Plan

All that transpires on earth and all beyond
Are parts of an illimitable plan
The One keeps in his heart and knows alone.
Truth is indeed One and Limitless but the action of the senses presents It to us as a broken discontinuous fragments. Yet all is a single plan, a single chain held by the One, taking place in the Consciousness of the One.

Laws of the Unknown

Our outward happenings have their seed within, And even this random Fate that imitates Chance, This mass of unintelligible results,
Are the dumb graph of truths that work unseen: The laws of the Unknown create the known.

All authentic creation is an outburst from within outwards as a seed breaks out into roots and stems and a plant. So too the real causes of events and happenings lie within. What we see on surface are mere results whose deeper logic is hidden from our sight. That is why it appears as

      

blind chance. But there are deeper and subtler laws and forces at work in the very heart of creation of which we are ordinarily unaware.

Spirit’s sun of hidden powers

The events that shape the appearance of our lives Are a cipher of subliminal quiverings
Which rarely we surprise or vaguely feel,
Are an outcome of suppressed realities

That hardly rise into material day:
They are born from the spirit’s sun of hidden powers
Digging a tunnel through emergency.
What we see and sense, seem to know and understand is only tip of the iceberg. The larger play of forces remains hidden, submerged and suppressed below the threshold of our outer awareness. These hidden forces are set into motion by the spirit that lies concealed within us and uses every possible means to emerge and express itself, including events and circumstances that seem terrible and catastrophic to our eyes. In fact sometimes to make us take a leap towards the future our soul chooses to take upon itself circumstances that seem extremely difficult but this crisis of outer situations is for the soul an opportunity to bring out its divine wisdom and strength.

The cryptic gulf

But who shall pierce into the cryptic gulf
And learn what deep necessity of the soul
Determined casual deed and consequence?
But our awareness, limited to the surface phenomenon and the data of earthly senses is unable to give us this deeper vision. We cannot get past the appearances that separate us from Reality. The cryptic gulf is our inner being where we find the passage to the inmost soul and arrive at the true understanding of the hidden causes and forces that move us.

Hidden cause of things

Absorbed in a routine of daily acts,
Our eyes are fixed on an external scene;
We hear the crash of the wheels of Circumstance
And wonder at the hidden cause of things.
This is our present state where in we are absorbed so much by external events and scenes, preoccupied with outer circumstances that we forget to look within and discover the real cause. Driven from moment to moment, from scene to scene we miss the Wisdom and the Guidance that uses everything for our soul’s progress and evolution.

The Muffled Daemon Voice

Yet a foreseeing Knowledge might be ours,
If we could take our spirit’s stand within,
If we could hear the muffled daemon voice.
But it is neither necessary nor incumbent upon us to remain in this state of Ignorance. Man can be privy to the Future, he can have the foreknowledge and also the inner necessity of going through the crisis, if he opens the doors to a higher and deeper intuition. The voice of the soul within, ever ready to show us the truth behind appearances, is however muffled and drowned in the mental noise and the vital chatter that goes on within us.

The world’s mind and ours

Too seldom is the shadow of what must come (p 53 begins) Cast in an instant on the secret sense

    

Which feels the shock of the invisible,
And seldom in the few who answer give
The mighty process of the cosmic Will
Communicates its image to our sight,
Identifying the world’s mind with ours.
Ordinarily the cosmic Will that operates in the world hidden from us. In fact the ego-self not only fails to recognize it but also deflects and distorts it. It is only when an inner door opens and we are freed from the strong grip of the ego-self, even if for a moment, that we enter into the cosmic vastness and our subliminal being senses what our outer mind has missed.

Light of the Unknown

Our range is fixed within the crowded arc
Of what we observe and touch and thought can guess
And rarely dawns the light of the Unknown
Waking in us the prophet and the seer.
But such moments of revelation are rare. Ordinarily however we remain bound to the limits of our senses, living like blind and deaf through having eyes and ears. It is only when the Ray of Divine Wisdom touches us and wakes up our inner powers to see and feel that the seer and the prophet is born in us.

Mind keeps the soul prisoner

The outward and the immediate are our field,
The dead past is our background and support;
Mind keeps the soul prisoner, we are slaves to our acts;
We cannot free our gaze to reach wisdom’s sun.
We are tied to appearances. We are held back by our past. We are imprisoned by our mind and its dogmas, its beliefs and non-beliefs. The Mind with its doubts and divisive vision cannot show us the face of Truth. It can build theories by stringing together bits and pieces of information but cannot know all the forces at play within and without. The subtler and deeper mysteries completely elude us. But the seat of Wisdom is not in the Mind but in the Soul.

Child in Nature’s mighty hands

Inheritor of the brief animal mind,
Man, still a child in Nature’s mighty hands,
In the succession of the moments lives;
To a changing present is his narrow right;
His memory stares back at a phantom past,
The future flees before him as he moves;
He sees imagined garments, not a face.
But the movements of Nature take place at a much larger scale than we can even imagine. Nature acts on the basis of a deeper vaster Intelligence that is hidden within its core and of which we are unaware. We are held back by the past which exists in us as habit and memory even when it ceases to exist outwardly. It yet prompts us to act in habitual ways and patterns to which we are accustomed. The future is as yet only an imagination for us, an image we build with our hopes and despairs. All that is given to us is the fleeting present whose outer image we see and not the inner Reality that it represents. In the enormous vastness of Nature we are in our infancy and whatever we have accomplished is nothing compared to what we are truly capable of and which is yet to come.

Limited precarious strength

Armed with a limited precarious strength,

   

He saves his fruits of work from adverse chance. A struggling ignorance is his wisdom’s mate:
He waits to see the consequence of his acts,
He waits to weigh the certitude of his thoughts, He knows not what he shall achieve or when; He knows not whether at last he shall survive, Or end like the mastodon and the sloth

And perish from the earth where he was king.

This is our predicament as long as we remain tied to the outposts of Ignorance. For all our development and progress we remain insecure and unsure of the future. Uncertainty and error constantly weigh us down. We do not know whether we shall even survive as a race or be wiped out the way it has happened with some species in the past.

His high and splendid Fate

He is ignorant of the meaning of his life,
He is ignorant of his high and splendid fate.
Yet this is not all we are. Much greater possibilities await us in the high peaks of Nature. In fact this is our real purpose, to grow and evolve into the Godhead that is hidden within us. This is the hope for the future that Sri Aurobindo keeps bringing to us, a hope that inspires us to go beyond and discover the real sense and purpose of our life that is embedded and engraved within our soul.

Closing remarks

Thus Sri Aurobindo bids us to rise from our present state of Ignorance into the Light and Truth of an illimitable vast Consciousness Beyond and Above and Within us. Until we do that we shall remain tied to the outposts of Ignorance and never really fathom the true cause and the inner reason that moves our destiny. We can never really be secure against the complex forces that move our life until we have broken free from this net of Ignorance into which we are caught. And yet there is hope, and the passage closes with a glance into the Future that is bound to be splendid and meaningful.

The Immortal Gods pp 53-55

Opening remarks

The passages that follow describes the plane of the gods that seeks to manifest upon earth and intervenes from time to time to help humanity march towards a more luminous future. What is that Wisdom which impels them to act and with what intention? This understanding of the action of the gods enlarges our own vision and helps us to see things in a new light.

The Immortals on their deathless heights

Only the Immortals on their deathless heights
Dwelling beyond the walls of Time and Space,
Masters of living, free from the bonds of Thought,
Who are overseers of Fate and Chance and Will (p 54 begins) And experts of the theorem of world-need,

Can see the Idea, the Might that change Time’s course, Come maned with light from undiscovered worlds, Hear, while the world toils on with its deep blind heart, The galloping hooves of the unforeseen event,

Bearing the superhuman Rider, near

   

And, impassive to earth’s din and startled cry,
Return to the silence of the hills of God;
As lightning leaps, as thunder sweeps, they pass
And leave their mark on the trampled breast of Life.
This passage is about the beings of a higher Consciousness (whom we generally call as gods) who sometimes take a human birth to assist the evolutionary march of mankind. In India they are called as Vibhutis who especially surround the period of time when the Divine Himself descends as the Avatara. Some come before the Divine Advent to prepare Earth for the coming, others come along with the Avatara to assist in various ways the Divine Work; still others plunge into the play after the Avatara withdraws so as to sustain the evolutionary impetus and the new momentum imparted by the Divine’s descent into the human play.

Dwelling on the high peaks of Creation they come armed with the knowledge and Power that can change the tide of Time and realign the world-march towards the Light and the Right. Guided by the inner voice that the world cannot hear, bearing the light of intuition in their hearts, unheeding the surface play, they do the work they come missioned to do and return back to the high and luminous worlds from which they came. Their work bears fruits even after they have gone, even if it remains unrecognized by men. Leaving their mark on the heart of life they give us a brief glimpse of the superhuman possibility hidden within man.

The world-creators

Above the world the world-creators stand,
In the phenomenon see its mystic source.
These are the original powers that have gone into creation. Their action is often veiled in the Light and poorly understood by our humanity since they are able to see the deeper law of truth hidden behind the surfaces of things.

The deceiving outward play

These heed not the deceiving outward play,
They turn not to the moment’s busy tramp,
But listen with the still patience of the Unborn
For the slow footsteps of far Destiny
Approaching through huge distances of Time,
Unmarked by the eye that sees effect and cause,
Unheard mid the clamour of the human plane.
While humanity moves from scene to scene, these superhuman beings, wait for the promptings of the Future that is trying to manifest. And when the call comes they are moved as instruments of Destiny engineering and precipitating the “change”. Man is too busy and caught up by the ever- changing appearances whereas these beings of a higher order know that a Divine Truth is working Itself out through the conflict and clash of forces on the surfaces of life and it uses everything for Its secret purposes.

The unseen Truth

Attentive to an unseen Truth they seize
A sound as of invisible augur wings,
Voices of an unplumbed significance,
Mutterings that brood in the core of Matter’s sleep.

While we are held back by the ‘visible’ and the ‘seen’ and mistake it for the truth of things, these beings who come driven by the breath of God feel the hidden Truth that broods in the depths of Matter struggling to emerge.

  

The heart’s profound audition

In the heart’s profound audition they can catch
The murmurs lost by Life’s uncaring ear,
A prophet-speech in Thought’s omniscient trance.
This deeper truth hidden behind the play of surface nature can be glimpsed in the depths of the heart or on the heights where thought falls silent and speech becomes merely an instrument of the higher Consciousness.

The Bliss for which earth’s heart has cried

Above the illusion of the hopes that pass,
Behind the appearance and the overt act,
Behind this clock-work Chance and vague surmise,
Amid the wrestle of force, the trampling feet,
Across the cries of anguish and of joy,
Across the triumph, fighting and despair,
They watch the Bliss for which earth’s heart has cried
We put our hopes on appearances that keep changing. Therefore we are easily bewildered when they dash to the ground. We are carried away by the surface clash and conflict of forces and thereby swiftly despair. But the super humanity of tomorrow will see behind and beyond the crash and the smash that is itself used to prepare the Earth for the Bliss for which she was made. After the bad dreams of the Night there is the smiling dawn that awaits the human race. This we can see only when we are stripped of the illusion that traps us and holds us back from the deeper Truth.
Guide the unheedful world
On the long road which cannot see its end
Winding undetected through the sceptic days
And to meet it guide the unheedful moving world. (p 55 begins)
Human life is brief when we compare it to the toil of the Ages. Therefore we are easily prone to skepticism. It is during this difficult passage that these beings come down to give hope and help and guide humanity, giving it faith and strength to walk the long way.

Closing Remarks

The above lines assume a great significance in today’s times especially when men easily take to cynicism going by the appearances. But those endowed with a deeper vision are not thus deceived and see Hope knowing that the Almighty Wisdom uses everything for its incalculable purposes. Instead of being bewildered by passing appearances that easily deceive we should rather tune ourselves to the inner Truth that is trying to manifest. Instead of living on the surfaces of the present moment and caught up in its flow we should also remain focused on the future that is struggling to emerge from the depths. Then we too shall share the wisdom of the gods and our actions leave a trail of light towards the future.

The Divine Promise of a Luminous Future p 55

Opening Remarks

The lines that follow give man supreme hope that whatever the appearances, the transformation

    

is going to be. It is being prepared behind the veil and often the darkest hours are the one’s followed by the New Dawn that is bound to arrive.
The masked Transcendent
Thus will the masked Transcendent mount his throne.

The Divine is the invisible King of His creation and one day He will throw away the dark mask He has worn. He will one day reclaim His world for Truth and Beauty and Light and Bliss. Darkness is only a passage meant to hasten the coming of New Creation.

The covert tread

When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp,
As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread
Of one who steps unseen into his house.

Veiled by the Night He shall come and grow in man’s heart, unnoticed and unrecognized by the ignorant mind of man. Man’s house of clay will hold His Splendour one day. The darkest hours shall prepare the most luminous dawns.

Earth grow unexpectedly divine

A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey,
A Power into mind’s inner chamber steal,
A charm and sweetness open life’s closed doors
And beauty conquer the resisting world,
The Truth-Light capture Nature by surprise,
A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss
And earth grow unexpectedly divine.
The soul of man shall hear what the outer being of man refuses to acknowledge. His mind shall be illumined by the growing inner Light. The charm and sweetness of the Lord will one day conquer all resistances and open the now closed doors of our life to the All-Beautiful. Man’s ignorant nature surprised and uplifted by the Truth-light and his heart compelled by God’s bliss, Man will outgrow his human state and our earth shall be transformed into a figure of divinity.

In Matter shall be lit the spirit’s glow

In Matter shall be lit the spirit’s glow,
In body and body kindled the sacred birth;
Night shall awake to the anthem of the stars,
The days become a happy pilgrim march,
Our will a force of the Eternal’s power,
And thought the rays of a spiritual sun.
What is foreseen and prophesied here is the transformation of earthly life by the Light and Glory of the Spirit. Matter itself will be illumined and our very bodies will be transformed into a perfect image of the divinity that dwells within it. Then Darkness will yield its hidden core of divinity and make of our consciousness now split into bright and dark parts a single unity. Our will united with the Divine Will recover the Divine Force inherent within it and our thoughts lifted to luminous heights discover the ways of Knowledge that come from consciously living in an intuitive Light.

God shall grow up

A few shall see what none yet understands;
God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep; For man shall not know the coming till its hour
And belief shall be not till the work is done.

    

This is the superhumanity that is destined to emerge upon earth. But the coming of the Superman will pass unnoticed except by a few. Yet he shall be the link for the divinization of earthly life. But it is quite possible, even likely that the average man lost in the din and cry of surface life will not know it until the Divine Work that is going on upon Earth since its formation is finally accomplished.

Closing remarks

These prophetic lines give us Hope for a divine future despite all the darkness and resistances that humanity experiences today in its ascension towards Truth and Light. They are not just an assurance but a promise of the Lord that the Earth shall be saved and its matter divinized by the influx of a greater and higher Consciousness into it. The transformation is going to be even if all our human logic and analysis of surface events cannot foresee it, even as all our resistances to the Truth-Light cannot forestall it. We can take these wonderful lines not only as a pronouncement of the Future but also the Promise of the Lord to Earth and men.

Ignorance and Knowledge pp 55-57

Opening Remarks

What follows now is a brief but concise description of the state of Ignorance which is a state of division. Presently, our consciousness operates through this Ignorance which arises due to the Mind which is our highest peak. But it is possible to change this Ignorance into Knowledge which is a state of integrality and unity and oneness.

An interregnum

A Consciousness that knows not its own truth, A vagrant hunter of misleading dawns, Between the being’s dark and luminous ends Moves here in a half-light that seems the whole: An interregnum in Reality

Cuts off the integral Thought, the total Power; It circles or stands in a vague interspace, Doubtful of its beginning and its close,
Or runs upon a road that has no end;

Far from the original Dusk, the final Flame
In some huge void Inconscience it lives,
Like a thought persisting in a wide emptiness.
It is a perfect description of the human mind that cannot know the Integral Truth. Mind is a limited consciousness forgetful of its origin. Moving between the Inconscience and the Superconscient states it sees all things in a partial and limited light. Leaning on one side it misses the other, thereby always dividing the One Reality into two separate and distinct halves such as God and World, Spirit and Matter. Mind lives in a partial light that knows not either its Origin or its Goal. Far from its supramental Home of Truth, it has emerged from the Inconscient that holds earth-nature in its grip. It is thus caught mid-way between the heights from which it fell into the swoon of Inconscience and the abyss from which it seems to emerge through a slow and difficult process of evolution.

An unintelligible phrase

As if an unintelligible phrase (p 56 begins) Suggested a million renderings to the Mind, It lends a purport to a random world.

   

Therefore the world and creation appears to it as an absurd and random phrase to which one can attach any meaning towards which the Mind leans.

A message misunderstood

A conjecture leaning upon doubtful proofs,
A message misunderstood, a thought confused
Missing its aim is all that it can speak
Or a fragment of the universal word.
Our Mind is a partial light that leaves out much more than it illumines. It either tries to fill the gaps in its knowledge by conjectures or else by doubtful proofs. It sees only a fragment and not the whole Truth. Therefore it misses the true aim of life and misunderstands the very purpose of creation.

The middle sign

It leaves two giant letters void of sense
While without sanction turns the middle sign
Carrying an enigmatic universe,
The two giant letters remind one of the great mystic syllable AUM. The first and the last are the origin and the end. The mind is ignorant of these and knows only the connecting intermediary letter, that is the creation as it appears to it, – a sudden and inexplicable movement surrounded by a vast “Nothingness” on all sides.

A present without future or past

As if a present without future or past
Repeating the same revolution’s whirl
Turned on its axis in its own Inane.
Seen on the surface, all movements of life appear as habitual and mechanical without any real meaning in it. They move as if driven by a senseless machine. We know not the Original impulsion that set all things into motion nor the far off distant end towards which these gyrations and movements are carrying us.

A portion of a parable sublime

Thus is the meaning of creation veiled;
For without context reads the cosmic page:
Its signs stare at us like an unknown script,
As if appeared screened by a foreign tongue
Or code of splendour signs without a key
A portion of a parable sublime.
Sri Aurobindo compares this state of Ignorance to which we are subjected as someone reading a small portion of a profound text written in a foreign tongue with an unknown script. Knowing neither the language nor the background or the context we miss the meaning of what we are trying to read. He assures that creation holds within itself a sublime sense but the Mind has lost the key to understanding this profound parable.

A fire in the Night

It wears to the perishable creature’s eyes The grandeur of a useless miracle; Wasting itself that it may last awhile,
A river that can never find its sea,

It runs through life and death on an edge of Time; A fire in the Night is its mighty action’s blaze.

    

Though this creation, even in its outward appearance appears a grand miracle, yet without the true key it appears as meaningless and useless. It is a grand waste of energy so to say. Or else the flow of Time appears as a river that is moving forever but unable to find its end point or destination in the sea. Its two shores are life and death. In our present state of Ignorance, the action of the Mind is like a fire that burns dimly in the Night surrounded by vast areas of darkness.

Our deepest need

This is our deepest need to join once more
What now is parted, opposite and twain,
Remote in sovereign spheres that never meet
Or fronting like far poles of Night and Day.
Our Mind hangs between the dark Inconscient pole and the self-luminous Superconscient Truth. Mind is an intermediary consciousness that is meant to become a bridge between what is or has been and what yet can be. The Mind must find that meeting point between the two hemispheres of existence, and transform the state of dualities and opposites into a harmonious synthesis. It is given to man to become the junction, the bridge to unite these two seemingly opposite and opposed poles of existence.

Renew the secret bond in things

We must fill the immense lacuna we have made, Re-wed the closed finite’s lonely consonant With the open vowels of Infinity,
A hyphen must connect Matter and Mind,

The narrow isthmus of the ascending soul:
We must renew the secret bond in things,
Our hearts recall the lost divine Idea,
Reconstitute the perfect word, unite (p 57 begins) The Alpha and the Omega in one sound;

Then shall the Spirit and Nature be at one.

But this sense of separation is itself an illusion. There is no real separation. Behind the differences and differentiations of Nature there is always the hidden Unity waiting to be discovered. In our dividing Ignorance we see the Spirit and Nature or God and World as opposites, forever separate and distinct. But to a deeper vision they are not two but One Reality that has arranged Itself hierarchically in creation as the many colours of a spectrum that emerge from and fuse together in the parent white. The key to their synthesis lies in our inmost heart where the reconciling Truth dwells as the Divine Presence immanent in whole creation. By discovering the Divine Presence in the heart man can rediscover the unity with creation that his dividing mind has lost. Then shall he discover the perfect word, the Idea-Force of the Divine that dwell within and moves all things.

Closing Remarks

Essentially the Mind is a dividing consciousness that by its very nature cannot arrive at an Integral Truth. It is only by removing the dense veil of Ignorance and discovering the Divine Truth hidden in our hearts that we can rediscover the lost Unity.

The Realm of the Gods pp 57-58

  

Opening Remarks

Though the Reality is One it is also and at once many tiered, just as the one parent white light fragments or rather arranges itself into a rainbow patterned colours. This rainbow patterned arrangement of layers and levels of the One Infinite Consciousness helps build an evolutionary ladder through which the being that has plunged into creation through an involution of the Original Power can climb back and in the process lead to the emergence of several possibilities that may have otherwise remained hidden in the One. In the passage that follows we have a description of the upper pole of the ladder, the stair where the great Gods reside, the Overmind world that borders on the Supermind. Sri Aurobindo describes the relation these great and luminous beings have with our world, the mysterious and ill-understood way of their working, their effect and influence upon our humanity.

The two ends of the mysterious plan

Two are the ends of the mysterious plan.

Though there is but One Reality, it manifests Itself in a multi-layered, multi-dimensional way. Thus there comes into existence a hierarchy of different levels within the One Infinite Consciousness. Thus there also comes into existence the two poles of the one Reality, – a bright extreme full of luminous Force and a dark state of Ignorance, obscurity and unconsciousness.

The Spirit’s bare and absolute potencies

In the wide signless ether of the Self,
In the unchanging Silence white and nude,
Aloof, resplendent like gold dazzling suns
Veiled by the ray no mortal eye can bear,
The Spirit’s bare and absolute potencies
Burn in the solitude of the thoughts of God.
These are the original Gods, each an Absolute in His/Her own right, who are privy to the ‘Real Idea’ that has gone into creation. Each of them represents and is an extension of one or the other aspect hidden in the Supreme. Each can lead us to the Supreme, each guides creation in his own way in the upward journey of creation. Far beyond the thinking mind, these Gods, which are powers of the One Spirit, dwell in the original Silence. They dwell on the borders of the Supermind and the Overmind where the Golden Supramental Light burns in all its Splendour. They are surrounded by the dazzle of the Supramenal Light as it enters the Overmind, a dazzle that can easily be mistaken for the One Supreme Light.

A rapture and a radiance and a hush

A rapture and a radiance and a hush,
Delivered from the approach of wounded hearts,
Denied to the Idea that looks at grief,
Remote from the Force that cries out in its pain,
In his inalienable bliss they live.
Great and mighty and blissful, they dwell in their own Splendour far beyond the struggle of earthly life and the grief and wounds that man endures in our journey. Therefore they cannot be moved by pity or tears of humanity since they know it not. Theirs is a domain beyond sorrow and grief. They live in the Bliss of the Divine.

Repose on the eternal Will

Immaculate in self-knowledge and self-power,
Calm they repose on the eternal Will.
A purity of knowledge and a purity of Force is their being; their action is a flawless expression of the Divine Will in whose calm they dwell. They are moved to act only by the Divine Impulsion and nothing else.

   

Only his law they count and him obey

Only his law they count and him obey;
They have no goal to reach, no aim to serve.
That is to say, they are typal and not evolutionary beings. They are stationed in their high realm from where they act and influence the earthly life in accordance with the Divine Law. They are the guardians to the doors of the Sun and act in perfect obedience to the Divine Law of which they are the keepers and knowers.

Keepers of the immutable decree

Implacable in their timeless purity,
All barter or bribe of worship they refuse;
Unmoved by cry of revolt and ignorant prayer
They reckon not our virtue and our sin;
They bend not to the voices that implore,
They hold no traffic with error and its reign;
They are guardians of the silence of the Truth,
They are keepers of the immutable decree.
The law of Truth is the only thing that counts for these great Gods. They do not bend to human caprices for if they were to do so they would defeat their very purpose. Their action does not depend upon our human ideas of virtue and vice. Neither our wishful thinking nor cry of revolt can move them. They are not moved by appeasement and the worship that is done only to seek favours. What counts for them is only the fiat of the Divine.

A deep surrender

A deep surrender is their source of might,
A still identity their way to know,
Motionless is their action like a sleep.
These Gods are powers and aspects of the One Divine and always act in a state of conscious union with the Lord. That is why their action takes place in perfect stillness that comes from the Lord. The source of their knowledge and strength is the state of surrender to the One Absolute in which they live.

Deathless and Immobile

At peace, regarding the trouble beneath the stars, Deathless, watching the works of Death and Chance, Immobile, seeing the millenniums pass,
Untouched while the long map of Fate unrolls,

They look on our struggle with impartial eyes,
And yet without them cosmos could not be.
The Gods are immortal beings who watch over the lower hemisphere where Death and Fate weighs upon the struggling soul of man. Calm and tranquil, impartial and wise they regard the evolutionary march of mankind without being affected in the least. Yet their knowledge and power is woven into the very fabric of creation. Without their support and intervention as universal Powers the creation itself would enter into chaos.

Station of inviolable might

Impervious to desire and doom and hope, (p 58 begins) Their station of inviolable might
Moveless upholds the world’s enormous task,
Its ignorance is by their knowledge lit,

Its yearning lasts by their indifference.

    

Stationed in the safety of the Supramental Rays, they remain untouched by the sting of desire or the hopes and despairs of our death afflicted humanity. Even as a Sun, unmoving, lights up the universe from its heights so too these Deities and Powers help the world grow towards the Light and yearn for Truth. Their very presence draws creation towards the heights by a secret pull.

Their aloofness drives man

As the height draws the low ever to climb,
As the breadths draw the small to adventure vast,
Their aloofness drives man to surpass himself.
That is to say they act without acting, they move without moving. Aloof in their glory they draw creation upwards even as a sun draws the tree and the flower towards its Light and brings all things to life by its touch or even reabsorbs them into cycles of creation by its blaze.

A shrine for the Omniscient and the Omnipotent

Our passion heaves to wed the Eternal’s calm,
Our dwarf-search mind to meet the Omniscient’s light,
Our helpless hearts to enshrine the Omnipotent’s force.
In a series of beautiful images Sri Aurobindo reveals to us the action of these Great Gods who act without actually assuming the human form. Our heart and mind and life secretly searches for that high god-like state from where we have fallen and towards which we are moving by a secret affinity and pull. Through this process of a constant upwards endeavor inspired by the secret workings and presence of the Gods, man will one day enshrine the Omniscient and the Omnipotent in this house of flesh.

The Wisdom and Strength that knows the steps of Time

Acquiescing in the wisdom that made hell
And the harsh utility of death and tears,
Acquiescing in the gradual steps of Time,
Careless they seem of the grief that stings the world’s heart, Careless of the pain that rends its body and life;

Above joy and sorrow is that grandeur’s walk:
They have no portion in the good that dies,
Mute, pure, they share not in the evil done;
Else might their strength be marred and could not save.
Though they share the Omnipotent’s Force they are not moved by human pity and grief. Their power is one with the Omniscient Wisdom that has gone forth into creation and has allowed these paradoxical aspects of life and permitted the presence of suffering and pain, joy and sorrow, good and evil. Beyond earthly joys and sorrows, beyond earthly hopes and despairs, beyond our ideas of good and evil these Masters and Overlords of creation stand. Thus alone they could Guide and Help, otherwise their action loaded by Ignorance will only lead to more and more confusion in the world.

The truth in God’s extremes

Alive to the truth that dwells in God’s extremes, Awake to a motion of all-seeing Force,
The slow outcome of the long ambiguous years And the unexpected good from woeful deeds, The immortal sees not as we vainly see.

These high Gods are conscious of the ways of workings of the Supreme Lord, who uses all things, including evil and pain, to help us grow towards the heights and carve us into the figure of divinity we are destined to become. We share not that vast and all-encompassing vision, hence

  

we do not understand their action.
But the All-seeing Divine Force uses everything for our good, even those things that give us momentary suffering and pain.

The law and natural line of things

He looks on hidden aspects and screened powers,
He knows the law and natural line of things.
The Gods are not automatons repeating the same action in the same way with everyone. They do not act according to human notions since they know the occult forces that operate behind life and are aware of the true Law and the natural line of evolution of each being.

No haste to untie the cosmic knot

Undriven by a brief life’s will to act,
Unharassed by the spur of pity and fear,
He makes no haste to untie the cosmic knot
Or the world’s torn jarring heart to reconcile.
We as human beings lead a harassed life. We feel there is so much to do and the life span given to us is so less. Therefore we live in fear and haste but the Gods live in large spaces of Time and act without impatience and with perfect knowledge of the eventual outcome. They act in keeping with the Law of our evolution and the need of the moment for our growth.

The Eternal’s hour

In Time he waits for the Eternal’s hour.

They are aware that there is a time and a right season for everything. They wait for God’s Will to move them and fulfill His divine Intention in creation.

Closing Remarks

This is the action of the Gods whose sole purpose is to oversee and help our evolution towards a godlike state from where we fell. Man in his ignorance thinks that these divine powers are there to satisfy the ignorant demands of his egoistic life but in reality the gods do not act according to these human notions. Theirs is a Wisdom that passes beyond our ideas of good and evil, our notions of virtue and vice. The Divine Law of Truth is their concern and not the human understanding of these subtle and profound truths.

The Great Promise and the Hope pp 58-59

Opening remarks

The great and luminous gods may be seated high and distant from our earth and unconcerned with our pain but there is here, always with us, a secret aid from the Divine who dwells within man. It is due to this aid that man can hope and dare and progress despite all the difficulties and challenges on the way. It is the great promise of the Future and the logic of creation that since the Divine has become this creation, the creation will one day become divine.

A spiritual secret aid

Yet a spiritual secret aid is there;
While a tardy Evolution’s coils wind on
And Nature hews her way through adamant A divine intervention thrones above.

     

We are not left alone to our own limited resources. The Divine intervenes in our individual and collective life leading us in the evolutionary march through all the trials and challenges of our earthly life.

An outstretched hand

Alive in a dead rotating universe (p 59 begins) We whirl not here upon a casual globe Abandoned to a task beyond our force;
Even through the tangled anarchy called Fate And through the bitterness of death and fall

An outstretched Hand is felt upon our lives.

Indeed He is closer than we can even understand by our limited vision that sees the complex play of Fate and Death but not the saving Hand of Grace that is always there to Help and to Succour. Creation is not an accident. Behind the seeming anomalies of life there is the touch of Grace helping the soul to progress through all the bitterness and struggle and fall. Through this journey that spans through many lives, this Hand of Grace carries us through it all.

The unslackening grasp

It is near us in unnumbered bodies and births; In its unslackening grasp it keeps for us safe The one inevitable supreme result
No will can take away and no doom change, The crown of conscious Immortality,

The godhead promised to our struggling souls
When first man’s heart dared death and suffered life.

In fact the Hand of God always there; it never leaves us. All else fades away with transition from one life to another but this wonderful Divine Presence comes only nearer and nearer. It labours incessantly through many lives to make us fully conscious of who we truly are. It is there with us since our soul entered the tremendous adventure of Time and Space with His eternal Promise that all else may fail but He shall never abandon us and lead us to the foreseen Divine Victory.

Everything leads us towards the Divine

One who has shaped this world is ever its lord:
Our errors are his steps upon the way;
He works through the fierce vicissitudes of our lives,
He works through the hard breath of battle and toil,
He works through our sins and sorrows and our tears,
His knowledge overrules our nescience;
Whatever the appearance we must bear,
Whatever our strong ills and present fate,
When nothing we can see but drift and bale,
A mighty Guidance leads us still through all.
The Creator is one with His creation and dwells within it as the secret Lord and Master. Whatever be the outer conditions of life; whatever our inner and outer state; whatever difficulties we may be besieged with, even through what we call as evil and sin, the Divine Guidance and Help are always there with us. Even when the appearances are dark and terrible, even when we cannot perceive it due to our Ignorance and Unconsciousness, He is there with us, holding us close, carrying us through the dark and dangerous passage. This is the secret truth we must never forget.

  

God’s Bliss and Oneness

After we have served this great divided world
God’s bliss and oneness are our inborn right.
We must never lose faith. We must go through this great battle of life with the Spirit of Service to the One. Then regardless of our present and immediate predicament, Gods bliss and oneness awaits us as the crown of fulfillment at the end of the journey. It is our birthright since in our deepest essence we are a portion of the Divine, one with His Bliss and Truth and Peace and Light.

Anniversary of our birth sublime

A date is fixed in the calendar of the Unknown,
An anniversary of the Birth sublime:
Our soul shall justify its chequered walk,
All will come near that now is naught or far.
The sublime Birth is the moment our soul, conscious of its task, plunged into the adventure of consciousness, accepting a limited form and name, assuming a finite body and dared to live in a world subject to ignorance and death. Its path and curve of destiny as well as its hour of fulfillment has already been foreseen and decided. It is bound to draw closer and closer through a progressive unfolding in Time.

Calm and distant Mights

These calm and distant Mights shall act at last.

A time finally comes with the passage of our long evolutionary journey when man discovers his own godhead. Then is he a god among gods and these now distant and mighty Godheads become his playmates, act in his thoughts and will, move in his impulses and actions, manifesting through the human vessel.

Closing remarks

The Divine Grace is always with us through all the difficulties, struggle and pain that we encounter in our long evolutionary journey. It is there even when appearances and dark and we do not see it. This wonderful Divine Presence shining at the core of all things is our supreme Hope. Surely It will lead man one day out of his present state of suffering and evil and sin and crown him with the godhead he deserves, the godhead promised to him at the very start of his journey. This is the truth we must always hold within through all the long and difficult journey and the dark passages of life.

The Divine Shakti Hidden behind Nature pp 59-60

Opening remarks

The One Existence is arranged in a way that on one side of the pole there are the gods, luminous and brilliant, whereas on the other side are the dark powers that perpetuate the reign of Ignorance upon Earth. Our present nature harbours these forces of Ignorance and yet hidden in its heart is the All-knowing, All-powerful Conscious Force, the Divine Shakti.

The ever-wise compassionate Brilliances

Immovably ready for their destined task, The ever-wise compassionate Brilliances Await the sound of the Incarnate’s voice
To leap and bridge the chasms of Ignorance And heal the hollow yearning gulfs of Life

    

And fill the abyss that is the universe.

These are the gods dwelling on one pole of Existence, embodying a luminous wisdom and compassion. Ever ready to help the evolutionary journey, they leap into creation at the call and command of the Divine. These powers accompany the Divine when He incarnates upon Earth to assist Him in His work upon Earth.

The dark end of things

Here meanwhile at the Spirit’s opposite pole
In the mystery of the deeps that God has built
For his abode below the Thinker’s sight,
In this compromise of a stark absolute Truth
With the Light that dwells near the dark end of things, In this tragi-comedy of divine disguise,

This long far seeking for joy ever near,
In the grandiose dream of which the world is made,
In this gold dome on a black dragon base,
The conscious Force that acts in Nature’s breast,
A dark-robed labourer in the cosmic scheme
Carrying clay images of unborn gods,
Executrix of the inevitable Idea
Hampered, enveloped by the hoops of Fate,
Patient trustee of slow eternal Time,
Absolves from hour to hour her secret charge.
Meanwhile here upon Earth, our present state is a state of Ignorance. The One Reality is here too but It is covered with obscurity and appears fragmented. Even in this darkness He sits and works veiled by the Ignorance. However, due to the secret Divine Presence there is here a yearning for Light and Peace and Bliss. Hidden in the heart of creation, covered by a limiting and limited Nature, is the Conscious Divine Force that still inspires and acts from behind, pushing all things towards some diviner height. This secret Divine Presence is the corrective in Nature against all errors and deviations and distortions of the Real Idea, that is ever trying to express itself through the complex web of forces and the play of Time. Besieged and hampered by the Unconsciousness and Darkness, all that it can create here are fragile forms and images and not the Deity Itself.

All she foresees in masked imperative depths

All she foresees in masked imperative depths;
The dumb intention of the unconscious gulfs Answers to a will that sees upon the heights,
And the evolving Word’s first syllable
Ponderous, brute-sensed, contains its luminous close, Privy to a summit victory’s vast descent

And the portent of the soul’s immense uprise.

Yet all is written in the Book of God. The Divine Force, laboring in the heart of creation, is All- knowing and All–powerful. Its steps are inevitable even though they are concealed from our ignorant sight. The Infinite Divine Shakti, fully conscious of our divine destiny, works towards the unfolding of this luminous Future decreed with the first stir of creation. The Divine Victory and the Soul’s ascension are already decided, and Nature and Time are bound to eventually fulfill this divine Intention, hidden in the heart of all things.

Closing Remarks

The Divine Shakti concealed in all things is the Source of all hope. However much our present

(p 60 begins)

 

ignorant nature may fumble and falter, She will lead creation eventually to its inevitable Divine Goal.

The One Who Has Become the Many pp 60- 61

Opening remarks

Though creation appears to our senses as a number of separate objects hung in Space and connected through the play of Time, behind all its variations and multiplicity, there is the One. It is the One Reality that has become the Many. This is the great secret we are here to discover.
The sole transcendent One
All here where each thing seems its lonely self
Are figures of the sole transcendent One:
Only by him they are, his breath is their life;
An unseen Presence moulds the oblivious clay.
We live in a state of division, our normal habitual experience of life is to see each other as well as each object as separate and disconnected with everything else. But the greater truth that is hidden behind this multiplicity is the truth of oneness. This is so because all has emerged from the One, is held in the One and retains always a secret Unity with the One. Not only has everything held emerged from the One and is held together by the One, it is driven and moulded into forms and names and qualities by the Force of the One. Yet the One transcends all the units, each of which tries to reproduce something of that Infinite Reality hidden in everything. Our mind in ignorance sees the One Reality through a broken and distorted mirror and hence is unable to know this Oneness behind everything.

A playmate in the mighty Mother’s game

A playmate in the mighty Mother’s game,
One came upon the dubious whirling globe
To hide from her pursuit in force and form.
It is a beautiful image of the Divine Presence hidden in forms and the flow of forces. By so doing He spurs Nature to seek Him and thereby aspire and progress. This is the game of games, the lila, being played. The Lord of Nature hidden from her sight behind her works, so that she makes effort to find Him and through this gradual and progressive finding build the figure of eternal Perfection here in the play of Time.

A secret spirit in the Inconscient sleep

A secret spirit in the Inconscient’s sleep,
A shapeless Energy, a voiceless Word,
He was here before the elements could emerge,
Before there was light of mind or life could breathe.
What we call as Inconscient is not a blank void but a state of Unconsciousness assumed by the Mighty Energy for Her Work. The spirit is hidden there, asleep as it were, in this densest darkness.

The two, Soul and Nature, are playing this game from the very beginning of creation, even before the elements and forms they weave came into play.

Accomplice of her cosmic huge pretence

Accomplice of her cosmic huge pretence,

   

His semblances he turns to real shapes (p 61 begins)
And makes the symbol equal with the truth:
He gives to his timeless thoughts a form in Time.
The cosmic pretence is the immense play of differentiation that makes it appear, to a superficial vision, the sense of separateness. But deep within each element and separate seeming unit, He is there, hidden in each and every fold of creation. Each object becomes thereby something of what He conceives within Himself. Thus each name and form which is but a symbol becomes real in itself because the Divine dwells within it and brings out through the finite object some aspect or quality of His infinity.

He is the substance, he the self of things

He is the substance, he the self of things;
She has forged from him her works of skill and might:
She wraps him in the magic of her moods
And makes of his myriad truths her countless dreams.
All Nature tries to capture and reproduce in the limits of a finite form and name this hidden Truth of the Divine. The substance itself is nothing but an extension, a self-concentration of His Existence. Since the Divine is One and Infinite, Nature too enters into countless variety of her works and her moods.

The Master of being has come down to her

The Master of being has come down to her,
An immortal child born in the fugitive years.
The Lord accepts and assumes all the ‘fanciful’ moods of Nature, consents to the play and its conditions. Though Himself eternal and immortal, He assumes finite shapes that are born and perish in time.

His ceaseless births

In objects wrought, in the persons she conceives,
Dreaming she chases her idea of him,
And catches here a look and there a gest:
Ever he repeats in them his ceaseless births.
Each form is a distorted or clear reflection of something of the Divine. Though being imperfect they are subject to mutation, change, birth and death, the immortal Divine Presence accepts to inhabit each one of them for the joy of the play.

He is himself the dreamer and the dream

He is the Maker and the world he made,
He is the vision and he is the Seer;
He is himself the actor and the act,
He is himself the knower and the known,
He is himself the dreamer and the dream.
The world exists because of Him. It is the Divine Self who has become all these separate seeming objects in Space and Time. The world-play is real since it is the Divine who is the Player and the Play itself. The world is an objectivisation of the Lord Himself. It exists by the Divine and has no separate reality of its own. Therefore the world is real since the Divine is Real. If we call it a dream then it is a dream of the Lord Himself.

Closing remarks

Thus Sri Aurobindo reveals to us the essential unity of the Creator and His Creation even though

   

He transcends it. It is the play of Nature with Her Lord that creates the sense of distinction and differentiation but deep within it is One Substance, One Being, One Consciousness, One Reality.

The Play of Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature (1-2) pp 61-63

Part 1. Anisa: The soul forgetting itself in matter

Opening Remarks
The Soul and Nature are two poises of One Truth. Prakriti, quiescent, withdraws herself into the heart of the Purusha; the Purusha expresses itself through Prakriti. Indeed Prakriti is the power of the Purusha. She builds for the soul the instruments needed for their play and gives the experiences necessary for the growth and fullness of the evolving soul in creation. This evolving soul is a portion of the Jivatma sent down into the bounds of Time and Space for the replicating the truth of Iswara and Shakti here, in the conditions of matter and earthly life. But for that both must first accept the limiting conditions. This is the first poise of the soul in nature, a state of utter bondage to ignorance, a state of subjection and slavery to nature, anisa.
A part is seen, we take it for the whole
A phenomenon stands out significant
Against dim backgrounds of eternity;
We accept its face and pass by all it means;
A part is seen, we take it for the whole.
All our present knowledge and understanding is based on appearances. Not only do we take these appearances for the true reality but also forget that these appearances themselves are changing. We see a very small slice on the surface for a brief moment in Time and miss out the vast inner landscape and the complex play of forces that are working within. It is therefore, at best a partial and limited knowledge and at worst, a crass ignorance wearing the illusion of knowing.

He moves there as the Soul, as Nature she.

Thus have they made their play with us for roles:
Author and actor with himself as scene,
He moves there as the Soul, as Nature she.
This world is not the result of a mechanical force of nature creating objects out of Nothing and moving them randomly. Nor is the sense of self within us a figment of imagination in an ambiguous play of Chance. In truth it is the Lord and His Shakti who have become this play. It is the Lord who has become the finite individual Soul, even as it is the Divine Shakti that has become this inferior and limited Nature.

The dense veil of Ignorance

Here on the earth where we must fill our parts,
We know not how shall run the drama’s course; (p 62 begins)
Our uttered sentences veil in their thought.
Each of us has a part to fulfill, a role to play, a role decided by the Lord. However, due to the dense veil of Ignorance that hangs around our soul, we know not our role or the course that the earthly drama will take towards the eventual fulfillment of our destiny.

Only a darkened little we can feel

Her mighty plan she holds back from our sight:

   

She has concealed her glory and her bliss
And disguised the Love and Wisdom in her heart;
Of all the marvel and beauty that are hers,
Only a darkened little we can feel.
Darkness and Ignorance are the self-disguise of the Divine Shakti. It is this deliberate self- limitation and self-concealment that is the secret cause of this lower Nature with its attendant darkness and unconsciousness. If we could pierce through this veil we would become conscious and privy of the wonders of the Spirit that are hidden behind the veil. We shall then discover the very Source and fount of all the love and wisdom and bliss and beauty that we struggle to seek outside but hardly find.

A diminished godhead

He too wears a diminished godhead here;
He has forsaken his omnipotence,
His calm he has foregone and infinity.
Just as the Divine Shakti limits Herself and becomes an ignorant lower Nature, so too the Lord, the Ishwara, becomes a soul struggling in Ignorance forgetful of its essential divinity, forgetful of his limitless Power and Wisdom.

He has forgotten himself

He knows her only, he has forgotten himself;
To her he abandons all to make her great.
Identified completely with this inferior nature, the soul, the individual psychic being completely forgets itself and its divinity. Through this complete self-forgetfulness, the soul seeks to be able to redeem nature too one day. It accepts bondage out of its free-will so that nature too can be uplifted one day to her truth and share the liberty and glory of the Spirit.

He hopes to find himself anew

He hopes in her to find himself anew,
Incarnate, wedding his infinity’s peace
To her creative passion’s ecstasy.
This plunge into Ignorance was necessary to bring out endless possibilities and richness of the play as an ignorant nature struggles and strives to discover the Lord who is hidden within her. At the same time, through this process of self-forgetfulness the soul rediscovers its own full potential through the creative process of Nature. The bliss of oneness becomes the bliss of a myriad, many-sided One.

Closing remarks
In this first stage of the soul’s infancy, nature is more like a womb for the soul to develop unconsciously. It knows not itself and knows not nature but simply moves to whatever experience nature takes it through as a slave tied to its master. It has no separate will of its own and simply follows nature’s moods and fancies thinking them to be himself and his will. It is a state of total self-forgetfulness for the soul.

Part 2. Sakshi: The soul involved in the Mind as Witness and student of Nature

Opening Remarks
Then comes the second stage of our soul-growth, when the individual soul is able to separate itself and stand apart from nature. Thence it becomes the witness of her scene, still without being

    

able to master her, but one who observes her scene, studies her ways and yet remains tied to her. Yet the soul begins to become conscious of something other than nature and nature too begins to develop new modes and activities proper to the growing light of the Soul. He becomes the mental witness, the sakshi.

The Witness of her scene

Although possessor of the earth and heavens,
He leaves to her the cosmic management
And watches all, the Witness of her scene.
Though the secret Lord of Nature, who can claim the earth and heavens for its sport, yet the soul becomes a passive witness indifferently consenting to nature’s inferior play. He accepts to move in the limits and boundaries set up by nature while she manages his vast estate.

A supernumerary on her stage

A supernumerary on her stage,
He speaks no words or hides behind the wings.
Time and Space are the stage and the play is enacted by Nature at his behest. And yet he is just a Witness who watches the play without any active participation in it.

The mental purusha studies the ways of Nature

He takes birth in her world, waits on her will, Divines her enigmatic gesture’s sense,
The fluctuating chance turns of her mood, Works out her meanings she seems not to know And serves her secret purpose in long Time.

As the Witness, the soul follows the course of nature to understand her ways and the deeper sense behind her many moods. It is the light of the witness self falling upon nature that makes her conscious and seek consciously what she is thus far seeking unconsciously.

Nature begins to reveal the hidden godhead within her

As one too great for him he worships her; He adores her as his regent of desire,
He yields to her as the mover of his will,
He burns the incense of his nights and days Offering his life, a splendour of sacrifice.

A student and pupil of Nature, as her lover and worshipper, as one who is the giver of boons and the power fulfilling our heart’s desires, The Soul begins to discover the touch divine in Nature. He sees in nature not just some unconscious energy but a conscious power that moves all things and therefore naturally draws the soul in a new relationship with her. The unconscious slave and the bonded labourer tied to nature now becomes her lover and worshipper.

The soul discovers the sense of the divine through nature

A rapt solicitor for her love and grace,
His bliss in her to him is his whole world:
He grows through her in all his being’s powers;
He reads by her God’s hidden aim in things.
The growing soul begins to feel the divinity hidden behind the play of nature. It comes in contact with the bliss of God through her. It begins to find ways and means to propitiate her and thereby harness her powers and energies for his use. Thus the soul grows and begins to discover a hidden meaning through the moods and movements of nature.

   

The soul delights in nature

Or, a courtier in her countless retinue,
Content to be with her and feel her near
He makes the most of the little that she gives (p 63 begins)
And all she does drapes with his own delight.
Knowing itself a part of nature, the soul involved in the mind of man feels his own delight in her and through her.

The growing harmony between the soul and nature

A glance can make his whole day wonderful,
A word from her lips with happiness wings the hours.
Slowly a new harmony begins to develop between the soul and nature and life is filled with wonder and joy.

The instrument of the soul

He leans on her for all he does and is:
He builds on her largesses his proud fortunate days
And trails his peacock-plumaged joy of life
And suns in the glory of her passing smile.
The soul in mind depends upon nature to express itself and it is through her that it begins to climb to its own greater heights and deeper possibilities and, as it thus ascends, a happier face of nature dawns upon his days.

All is their play

In a thousand ways he serves her royal needs;
He makes the hours pivot around her will,
Makes all reflect her whims; all is their play:
This whole wide world is only he and she.
The growing light of intelligence falling upon the fields and movements of Nature begin to glorify her and raise her to kingly heights. The soul entering into all the various mood of Nature touches them with its beauty and glory. Intrinsically tied to her the two together build this universe.

Closing Remarks
Thus the soul slowly learns to separate itself from nature as it ascends to the mind. It becomes the mental purusha so to say.

The Play of Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature (3) pp 63-65

Part 3. Anumanta: The indifferent sanctioner of her works

Opening remarks

All creation is a play or a dance of Prakriti with Purusha as the sole witness, inspirer and enjoyer. But this relation between Soul and Nature can take different poises from the lowest possible relation of enslavement of the soul by Prakriti to the highest poise of Freedom and Mastery of Nature by the Soul within. As our being evolves, as we grow in soul-power and soul- consciousness, the relation too begins to change and evolve. Slowly the soul begins to discover itself and realizes itself to be the master and lord of nature, Isa.

    

The knot that holds al things together

This is the knot that ties together the stars:
The Two who are one are the secret of all power,
The Two who are one are the might and right in things.
All creation is the play of Soul and Nature. It is the difference of stress between the two that leads to different degrees in the evolutionary manifestation. The Soul is like the Light that shows the path for Prakriti must take, it is the Idea that Nature tries to replicate by her forces. Without the Soul Nature would have no aim, serve no purpose. Without Nature, the Soul would remain unexpressed, lost in its trance or dreams without being able to give them form and shape.

The silent support and the works of nature

His soul, silent, supports the world and her,
His acts are her commandment’s registers.
The soul is the true Self in us that silently supports the movements of Nature. It is Nature that executes the secret will of the Purusha, the Divine Self in us. The experiences through which Nature takes us are determined by a secret need in the soul.

Shiva and Shakti

Happy, inert, he lies beneath her feet:
His breast he offers for her cosmic dance
Of which our lives are the quivering theatre, And none could bear but for his strength within, Yet none would leave because of his delight.

In a significant image that reminds one of Shiva lying below the feet of Kali in her warrior- dancing mood, Sri Aurobindo reveals to us the true nature of this relationship. The dance of Nature that creates Time and change takes place on the stable and immutable Eternal. It is because of the Presence of the Eternal within us that we can bear the mighty dance that moves our lives driven by a Force whose purpose we cannot fathom. Also it is the Presence of the Eternal that makes this otherwise dangerous play so delightful. It is the Divine Peace and Strength and Delight in us that upholds and sustains the cosmic drama.

The passive mirror

His works, his thoughts have been devised by her, His being is a mirror vast of hers:
Active, inspired by her he speaks and moves;
His deeds obey her heart’s unspoken demands: Passive, he bears the impacts of the world

As if her touches shaping his soul and life:
His journey through the days is her sun-march;
He runs upon her roads; hers is his course.
Nature is the Worker and without her power the Soul remains passive and inert. Driven by her force, he reflects her moods and messages passively.

A witness and student

A witness and student of her joy and dole,
A partner in her evil and her good,
He has consented to her passionate ways,
He is driven by her sweet and dreadful force.

    

Even as a witness and student, the soul involved in the mind is still not free and is more like a

master who passively and indifferently signs and sanctions all that nature asks him to do. There is only a partnership of two equals but no real mastery since still it is nature that moves him as her puppet.
The sanctioning name

His sanctioning name initials all her works;
His silence is his signature to her deeds;
In the execution of her drama’s scheme,
In her fancies of the moment and its mood,
In the march of this obvious ordinary world Where all is deep and strange to the eyes that see And Nature’s common forms are marvel-wefts, She through his witness sight and motion of might Unrolls the material of her cosmic Act,

Her happenings that exalt and smite the soul,
Her force that moves, her powers that save and slay,
Her Word that in the silence speaks to our hearts,
Her silence that transcends the summit Word,
Her heights and depths to which our spirit moves,
Her events that weave the texture of our lives
And all by which we find or lose ourselves,
Things sweet and bitter, magnificent and mean,
Things terrible and beautiful and divine.
The movements of Nature take place on a grand cosmic scale. They are the result of a complex interplay of forces. What we see on the surface as events and circumstances in merely the surface result. What she conceals in her depths, her heights, her abysses is much more than what appears to us. Yet through all this and the varied, many toned experiences she moves the soul towards her own greatness and heights that are also his. The soul involved in mind accepts and sanctions the leading giving the semblance of a free will but nevertheless this too is an illusion created by nature for evolutionary purposes.

Her subtle and mighty laws

Her empire in the cosmos she has built,
He is governed by her subtle and mighty laws.
Passing beyond the material domain, nature begins to reveal her deeper secrets hidden in subtler domains that now begin to move the soul giving it a greater power and vaster field for action.

A babe upon her knees

His consciousness is a babe upon her knees,
His being a field of her vast experiment,
Her endless space is the playground of his thoughts;
She binds to knowledge of the shapes of Time
And the creative error of limiting mind
And chance that wears the rigid face of fate
And her sport of death and pain and Nescience,
His changed and struggling immortality.
As a mother trains her child, Nature too thus trains the soul in the great cosmic field she has built with all its laws and processes of the material and other subtler world. The complex play of Fate, what we call as error and what we call as knowledge are both used as a means for our growth. All things, even death and pain and Nescience become her sport to spur the soul and compel the mind to think and strive against the most challenging circumstances.

  

A subtle atom in a mass

His soul is a subtle atom in a mass,
His substance a material for her works.
Thus does the mind of man conceives of the soul, as a part of nature, as something subtle, a kind of energy that flows into the fields of nature creating various shapes and personalities and names and forms.

His spirit survives amid the death of things

His spirit survives amid the death of things,
He climbs to eternity through being’s gaps,
He is carried by her from Night to deathless Light.

Though the appearances of Nature incessantly change and forms built by her are subject to mutation and death, the Spirit survives and is the immortal element in all things. Through this process of change, we grow out of Night towards deathless Light. It is of this that we begin to become conscious through the process of evolution.

This grand surrender

This grand surrender is his free-will’s gift,
His pure transcendent force submits to hers.
The soul is not compelled by anything to bind itself to Nature. It does so out of its own free will. The soul, in its origin, belongs to the transcendent regions. Yet it submits itself to Nature and her play.

The mystery of cosmic ignorance

In the mystery of her cosmic ignorance,
In the insoluble riddle of her play,
A creature made of perishable stuff,
In the pattern she has set for him he moves,
He thinks with her thoughts, with her trouble his bosom heaves; He seems the thing that she would have him seem,

He is whatever her artist will can make.

But there is a deep wisdom working in her heart and this subjection of the soul to nature is not without a purpose. Wherever Nature pulls the soul, it follows; whatever scene she creates for him that he willingly accepts; whatever she choose to make him, whatever road she set him to move on there he follows.

To freedom and mastery

Although she drives him on her fancy’s roads,
At play with him as with her child or slave,
To freedom and the Eternal’s mastery
And immortality’s stand above the world,
She moves her seeming puppet of an hour.
Yet all her random play and all the scenes arranged by her, all the fancies of Nature’s mood and her dealings with the soul as with a babe or a slave are meant to prepare the soul for freedom and mastery and the immortality found on her vastest and most luminous peaks above the world- play.

Closing remarks

This is the real purpose, the game of games going on behind the scenes. It is the journey of the soul through and in the coverings of nature towards self-discovery and mastery. It is a slow and

    

deliberate process even though it seems random and beset with error and chance. Yet its real purpose is to bring out the full divine potential of the soul as a tree is brought out of the seed.

The Play of Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature (4) pp 65-66

Part 4. The Master and Lord of Nature, Isa

Opening remarks

The game being played between Soul and Nature starts with the utter self-forgetfulness and slavery of the Soul to Nature but ends in Mastery through discovery of our true and highest Self. Indeed just as the soul surrenders itself to nature in freedom, She too gradually and eventually leads the soul towards self-mastery. All the experiences that Nature arranges for the soul, – things terrible and beautiful and dangerous and divine, are really a schooling and a training for the Soul to grow to its full potential and recover its lost divinity.
To reign she spurs him
Even in his mortal session in body’s house,
An aimless traveller between birth and death,
Ephemeral dreaming of immortality,
To reign she spurs him. He takes up her powers;
He has harnessed her to the yoke of her own law.
Even though the journey seems purposeless without an issue and all our ideals and hopes and aspirations appear as mere dreams and imaginations denied by a limiting Nature, in reality Nature takes us through all this towards self-mastery. She teases us and challenges us, but eventually yields her powers before the growing soul. Thus man progressively grows towards a mastery over nature, using her powers by studying her laws and processes.

Ascension of soul through the mind of man

His face of human thought puts on a crown.

This mastery over the forces of Nature starts with man awakening as a mental being, the thinker. By the power of thought, man ascends towards the throne prepared for him by Nature.

For him she was made

Held in her leash, bound to her veiled caprice,
He studies her ways if so he may prevail
Even for an hour and she work out his will;
He makes of her his moment passion’s serf:
To obey she feigns, she follows her creature’s lead:
For him she was made, lives only for his use.
Momentarily Nature seems to yield and acts in subservience to man’s mind. Though mind itself is part of Nature, she makes it appear that he is a free being whom Nature is bound to obey if he can study her ways. Through all this Nature slowly prepares the Purusha, the inmost Soul to grow and become a master of Nature.

She rules him still

But conquering her, then is he most her slave; He is her dependent, all his means are hers; Nothing without her he can, she rules him still.

    

Even when the Soul takes its station in the mind of man and seems to compel the forces of Nature to obey his will, yet Nature remains the worker who builds the instruments and executes the will of the Purusha. Without her, the Purusha can do nothing.

At last he wakes to a memory of Self

At last he wakes to a memory of Self:
He sees within the face of deity,
The Godhead breaks out through the human mould:
Her highest heights she unmasks and is his mate.
It is only when the Soul ascends beyond the Mind and discovers his own highest self, the Divine Self of which he is a portion, that Nature too unveils her highest powers and becomes his mate, the Shakti that is hidden above and behind all the movements of Prakriti. It is then that the Soul’s schooling through Nature is complete and the Godhead within it as a seed emerges fully in the earthly play.

A plaything in her game

Till then he is a plaything in her game;
Her seeming regent, yet her fancy’s toy,
A living robot moved by her energy’s springs,
He acts as in the movements of a dream,
An automaton stepping in the grooves of Fate,
He stumbles on driven by her whip of Force:
His thought labours, a bullock in Time’s fields;
His will he thinks his own, is shaped in her forge.
Until then there is no real freedom. Until we discover our highest self we remain a plaything and a toy, a slave and an automaton driven by the forces of Nature. Until then, even our thoughts which we think are free, are yet driven by her to furrow the fields of Time. Until then even our so-called ‘free will’ is not really free but a manufactured impulse and impulsion of Nature.

His chosen partner in a titan game

Obedient to World-Nature’s dumb control, Driven by his own formidable Power,
His chosen partner in a titan game,
Her will he has made the master of his fate,
Her whim the dispenser of his pleasure and pain; He has sold himself into her regal power

For any blow or boon that she may choose:
Even in what is suffering to our sense,
He feels the sweetness of her mastering touch,
In all experience meets her blissful hands;
On his heart he bears the happiness of her tread
And the surprise of her arrival’s joy
In each event and every moment’s chance.
This obedience of Purusha to the Prakriti starts the World-Play. She is a partner in our growth and her own. But to catch the thread of this real play we need to go within and discover the hidden soul, the divine element within us. The soul holds this deep wisdom within itself and hence has accepted the conditions of the play, surrendering itself to Nature who prepares it through all kinds of experiences for its divine efflorescence. While the ego-self, itself a creation of Nature suffers and rejoices, experiences pleasure and pain, the Soul within grows and feels delight in this great adventure of the world-game. To the soul, each experience, each event, each

  

moment are occasions and excuses for coming in contact with Nature and feel the bliss at her touch.

An endless birth in endless Time

All she can do is marvellous in his sight: He revels in her, a swimmer in her sea,
A tireless amateur of her world-delight, He rejoices in her every thought and act And gives consent to all that she can wish; Whatever she desires he wills to be:

The Spirit, the innumerable One,
He has left behind his lone eternity,
He is an endless birth in endless Time,
Her finite’s multitude in an infinite Space.
The soul is an apprentice being trained by Nature for receiving the fullness of delight. It knows this secret truth and therefore consents to all that Nature does and seeks to build in him. It is for this manifold delight in a multi-hued creation that the One Spirit became many. It is for this delight of the play that the One Spirit entered the vast adventure of Space and Time, accepted a limited name and form called birth and chose to become a finite soul in an infinite creation.

Closing remarks

Thus Sri Aurobindo reveals to us not only the unity behind Soul and Nature but the real purpose behind this play. The One assumes two poises for the sake of the world-play whose sole purpose is to multiply the Delight of Being in a manifold way. Just as the Soul is a finite portion of the Infinite Divine Being, Nature too is a limited power of the Infinite Divine Shakti. Here they appear as opposing each other but on in the Divine peaks, to the vision of Divine Wisdom, they are One. It is towards this that both soul and Nature work together and grow. Nature herself is pushing the soul to ascend to these divine heights now concealed from us but she has all eternity at her disposal making the process rather long and painful. We can hasten this growth through conscious participation. Until then, until both can discover their own highest truth, man will continue to experience some kind of self-limitation, error and its consequent suffering and pain.

The Master of Existence Dwells Within Us pp. 66-67

Opening remarks

This is one of profoundest discoveries given to man, to discover the Divine Presence within Him and by this discovery transform his life.
The Divine playing with Nature
The master of existence lurks in us

And plays at hide-and-seek with his own Force;
In Nature’s instrument loiters secret God.
The Divine Presence is hidden in each atom of existence. He is there not merely as a static Presence but also as a dynamic Power that animates all things. He is hidden behind the workings of Nature which is nothing else but His own Force. But Nature is not always conscious of His Presence and therefore yearns for Her secret Lord. It is this yearning for the Lord hidden within her and seeking and finding Him in countless ways which constitutes the play of creation.

   

The Immanent lives in man

The Immanent lives in man as in his house;
He has made the universe his pastime’s field,
A vast gymnasium of his works of might.
He who sports with the regions and shines in the Splendour of the galaxies and stars; He who is hidden in the atom and the tiniest particle of creation through which He weaves out this stupendous universes even as He transcends it, dwells in Man as the Lord and Master of our being.

The vast, the Infinite accepts to be limited and small

All-knowing he accepts our darkened state, Divine, wears shapes of animal or man; Eternal, he assents to Fate and Time, Immortal, dallies with mortality.

This creation is nothing but a self-limitation of the Divine. It is the Divine who has become man and bird and beast, consenting to the play of Time. It is the Divine who has entered the field of Ignorance and Death.

He becomes the All, He is the All

The All-Conscious ventured into Ignorance,
The All-Blissful bore to be insensible. (page 67 begins)

It is He, the All-knowing and All-Powerful who has become a limited consciousness. It is He, the All-Blissful who has entered into the experience of pleasure, pain and indifference.
He enters into creation
Incarnate in a world of strife and pain,

He puts on joy and sorrow like a robe
And drinks experience like a strengthening wine.
The Divine enters this world of strife and pain, taking upon Himself its joy and sorrow and each of these experience offered to Him by Nature leads to a greater and greater unfolding of His divinity in creation, in terms and conditions arranged by Nature for the Divine play.

He dwells in each and every element of creation

He whose transcendence rules the pregnant Vasts,
Prescient now dwells in our subliminal depths,
A luminous individual Power, alone.
In the depths of creation, the Divine dwells as the All-knowing Power of the Transcendent.

The Divine brings out His Shakti for creation

The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone
Has called out of the Silence his mute Force
Where she lay in the featureless and formless hush
Guarding from Time by her immobile sleep
The ineffable puissance of his solitude.
It is His Force that has gone into creation. It is He, the Absolute, the Perfect the Alone, who has become Two, – Self and Nature, God and World by bringing out His own Force, Shakti from that state of Silence where she was lying beyond creation, beyond manifestation, beyond Time and Space. In the Supreme, the Divine and His Shakti are One, there is only One Reality. His Shakti is asleep within in the Silence of the Infinite. But at His Command for creation She wakes up and emerges out of Him. In fact She is the Knowledge-Will of the One charged with the mandate to create.

    

Space is himself and Time is only he

The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone
Has entered with his silence into space:
He has fashioned these countless persons of one self;
He has built a million figures of his power;
He lives in all, who lived in his Vast alone;
Space is himself and Time is only he.
The Divine Being as the Iswara does not just watch the play of creation but follows in the wake of His Shakti. He enters into whatever the Divine Shakti creates. Multiplying Himself endlessly, He becomes many persons and beings even as She, the One infinite Shakti, becomes many powers and forces that govern the universe. Space is only the One Divine Existence extending Itself and Time is the One Divine Shakti setting all His countless beings into motion.

Our secret self has assumed our mask of imperfection

The Absolute, the Perfect, the Immune,
One who is in us as our secret self,
Our mask of imperfection has assumed,
He has made this tenement of flesh his own, His image in the human measure cast

That to his divine measure we might rise;
Then in a figure of divinity
The Maker shall recast us and impose
A plan of godhead on the mortal’s mould
Lifting our finite minds to his infinite,
Touching the moment with eternity.
Though He has entered into creation limiting Himself to a name and a form, consenting to the play of Time; though, being Perfect He wears the mask of imperfection, He remains Immune and thus constantly uplifts and transfigures Nature by His Divine Touch. His Presence within each element of creation is the promise and hope of a greater and greater Perfection that must emerge through the process of evolution in Time. This evolutionary manifestation of the Divine through countless names and forms is the very secret of creation. It is also the goal of creation since what has gone within it that must emerge eventually. Since the Divine has become all this manifold creation, creation must become Divine, each element of it bringing out something, some element, some power, some aspect of the Divine, creating a figure of divinity. But most of all it is in man that He seeks to bring out the latent Perfection inherent in creation. Man is the bridge through which the Divine rediscovers Himself in terms of creation and in conditions of Matter.

His human portion, we must grow divine

This transfiguration is earth’s due to heaven:
A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:
His nature we must put on as he put ours;
We are sons of God and must be even as he:
His human portion, we must grow divine.
Man is the Divine limiting Himself and God is Man’s own highest Self. The coming together of the two, God and Man, of the Divine Supernature hidden in our depths and the lower Nature that is our present endowment, is to uplift and transmute human nature into its divine status, man into Godhead, the human into the Divine.

The key to the paradox of life

Our life is a paradox with God for key.

  

Until this transformation takes place, human life will remain imperfect, beset with riddles, struggling on its road in the fields of Death. But with God and His transforming Touch, all can become beautiful and wonderful, as life should be, is meant to be, and must one day become.

Closing Remarks

Thus we see the essential unity of the Lord and His Shakti as well as of the Creator and His Creation. This is the fundamental basis of transformation. Since the Divine has become this creation, therefore this creation must also become divine.

The Journey of Life pp. 68-69

Opening remarks

The great journey of life is the Purusha sailing through the fields of his experiences created by Nature. It is through this journey that he grows into his full stature. The purpose of this journey may not be known to us outwardly in the initial start but our soul always knows the true purpose. The Promise of the Lord

This was his compact with his mighty mate, For love of her and joined to her for ever To follow the course of Time’s eternity, Amid magic dramas of her sudden moods And the surprises of her masked Idea

And the vicissitudes of her vast caprice.

The Lord of Nature has promised her that He would never abandon her. It is thus that He puts in her heart and core something of His Presence, a soul whose growing pressure and presence compels Nature too to grow. On the other hand Nature helps the soul to grow by giving it the needed experiences. Thus the two are tied together for the evolution and manifestation of divinity upon earth in terms and conditions of material life. Together they weave the dance of creation.

Two goals that are one, – Spirit and Matter.

Two seem his goals, yet ever are they one
And gaze at each other over bourneless Time;
Spirit and Matter are their end and source.
Man is the meeting point of Spirit and Matter. Though these two seem separate and distinct in their deepest essence they are one and must discover each through the other. Spirit is the secret origin of Matter and Matter is the condition for the manifestation of the Spirit.

The soul is an explorer and an adventurer

A seeker of hidden meanings in life’s forms, Of the great Mother’s wide uncharted will And the rude enigma of her terrestrial ways He is the explorer and the mariner

On a secret inner ocean without bourne: He is the adventurer and cosmologist
Of a magic earth’s obscure geography.

This endless, unceasing ever changing creation is the ocean expanse of the world Mother where there are set beautiful and dangerous creatures and isles to test and lure and strengthen the soul of man. Our soul is the adventurer and mariner who is exploring this fathomless ocean and in the process discovers hidden meanings and the deep wisdom that guides the worlds in enigmatic

    

ways. Yet there is a deep wisdom in this journey. It is through this voyage that the soul rises to its fullness even as a seed grows into a tree.
The endless travel from one horizon to another
In her material order’s fixed design

Where all seems sure and, even when changed, the same, Even though the end is left for ever unknown
And ever unstable is life’s shifting flow,
His paths are found for him by silent fate;

As stations in the ages’ weltering flood
Firm lands appear that tempt and stay awhile,
Then new horizons lure the mind’s advance.
This wide material world set the stage where forms are fixed and the route charted through ever shifting scenes and ever flowing waters that seems the same and give a sense of familiarity and certainty. Yet the winds of Fate keep us on the destined path and new experience come to tease and tempt and eventually to help us advance. Even when we do not know the route and the goal, yet our paths are found for us through the process and agency of Time.

No end point or fixed term for this journey

There comes no close to the finite’s boundlessness, There is no last certitude in which thought can pause And no terminus to the soul’s experience.

Yet there is always something to discover, something yet to know since it is a journey of the Infinite. Even after the Supramental transformation there will be still something more to discover and build and manifest of the Divine Consciousness here.
An endless progression
A limit, a farness never wholly reached,
An unattained perfection calls to him
From distant boundaries in the Unseen:
A long beginning only has been made.
As we move, the horizons and the limits imposed by sight recede. Each achievement becomes a spur for yet unattained things; each end becomes a new beginning. The Divine Perfection is not a fixed quality but an ever evolving manifestation of the Infinite. However, with the Supramental transformation this evolution will no more be painful nor through bondage to Ignorance. It will be based on freedom and delight, from Freedom to greater Freedom, from Joy to greater Joy will be the new formula.

Closing remarks

Sri Aurobindo gives us here the broad outline of this journey that the soul undertakes impelled by the currents and waves of nature.

The Sailor on the Flow of Time pp. 69-71

Opening remarks

Sri Aurobindo in a sublime mix of modern image with ancient Vedic symbol compares the human soul to a sailor who sails through many lives and in the course of this journey discovers itself and the world. The world experiences are not just a means for the soul to discover itself but also a means for its self-fulfillment in the conditions of material existence.

    

A voyager upon eternity’s sea

This is the sailor on the flow of Time,
This is World-Matter’s slow discoverer,
Who, launched into this small corporeal birth,
Has learned his craft in tiny bays of self,
But dares at last unplumbed infinitudes,
A voyager upon eternity’s seas.
Man’s soul is the sailor on the ocean of Nature. His body is the ship on which he travels. Each life is a stage, a port or a station through which the voyager passes until he is ready to dare new routes and uncharted domains.

The world-adventure’s crude initial start

In his world-adventure’s crude initial start
Behold him ignorant of his godhead’s force,
Timid initiate of its vast design.
In the beginning the soul is just a little spark and our human consciousness rather crude, closer to the animal kind from which humanity slowly emerges. We know not the powers that lie within us or the great goal of our journey.

An expert captain of a fragile craft

An expert captain of a fragile craft,
A trafficker in small impermanent wares,
At first he hugs the shore and shuns the breadths,
Dares not to affront the far-off perilous main.
Though the soul potentially has all the knowledge and power ‘it needs’ to undertake this vast and perilous adventure, the human body breaks down too soon and cannot carry us through all the fields of the soul’s vast and grand adventure. The first few human lives as they emerge from the animal state are spent in merely testing and sounding the physical world and the immediate environment. The subtler and higher worlds appear too remote and distant, perilous and frightful to be explored.

Content with an unchanging course

He in a petty coastal traffic plies,
His pay doled out from port to neighbour port,
Content with his safe round’s unchanging course,
He hazards not the new and the unseen.
The true life of man is the psychic life. But in the beginning the psychic element is very small and buried in a mass of obscure movements of vital-physical Nature. There are hardly a few psychic moments that are carried on further to other lives. In this initial stage of our human evolution, man is hardly aware of anything beyond this material world. He is the physical man so to say, the tamasic humanity, content and comfortable dealing with the laws of things as they concern him immediately to serve his immediate practical needs. This little and obscure understanding of his environment he believes to be fixed laws of nature. He does not dare to challenge or change them. Though, in fact, what he calls as fixed laws are simply patterns and habits.

The sound of larger seas

But now he hears the sound of larger seas.

But slowly, out of the physical man concerned mainly with his immediate physical environment, the vital man begins to evolve. His center of action is in the vital whose very nature is expansion and exploration. Therefore he begins to explore larger fields for his growth and self-experience.

   

The unvisited shores

A widening world calls him to distant scenes
And journeyings in a larger vision’s arc
And peoples unknown and still unvisited shores.
The vital man ventures beyond his immediate physical environment to distant lands driven by the intrinsic urge of life to grow and expand. He becomes the explorer and the adventurer. Thus is born, out of the physical man, the vital, kinetic and dynamic humanity driven by the second mode of nature, the rajasic prakriti.

Entering the larger world-commerce

On a commissioned keel his merchant hull
Serves the world’s commerce in the riches of Time
Severing the foam of a great land-locked sea
To reach unknown harbour lights in distant climes
And open markets for life’s opulent arts,
Rich bales, carved statuettes, hued canvases,
And jewelled toys brought for an infant’s play
And perishable products of hard toil
And transient splendours won and lost by the days.
The dynamic man driven by rajas is an entrepreneur. He marks the next stage of the soul’s evolution. Large production and circulation of riches that lure and attract us is his work. He awakens man to opulence and beauty and splendour that material richness can provide. Even though whatever he amasses are transient riches that are won and lost by the days, yet he too is needed as a stage in the soul’s upward evolution.

Travels to unfamiliar coasts

Or passing through a gate of pillar-rocks, Venturing not yet to cross oceans unnamed And journey into a dream of distances
He travels close to unfamiliar coasts

And finds new haven in storm-troubled isles,
Or, guided by a sure compass in his thought,
He plunges through a bright haze that hides the stars,
Steering on the trade-routes of Ignorance.
The adventurer soul travels further as it evolves. It becomes a conqueror and a thinker. The Khatriya and the Brahmin evolve out of the Vaisya. The former ventures into new lands and civilizations unknown; the latter uses his thought to guide him through the haze and mist of Ignorance that surrounds our human life.

Undiscovered coasts

His prow pushes towards undiscovered shores, He chances on unimagined continents:
A seeker of the islands of the Blest,
He leaves the last lands, crosses the ultimate seas, He turns to eternal things his symbol quest;

Life changes for him its time-constructed scenes,
Its images veiling infinity.
The explorer and the adventurer evolves into a seeker. He is now ready for the ultimate adventure that man has ever undertaken, – the journey within himself. He seeks for a principle of Truth, a law of life, an ideal state that exists somewhere but is not yet found on earth. He is the

   

sage who tries to find a deeper meaning in life, an inner sense in outer design and appearances of Nature.

Beyond the limits of earth

Earth’s borders recede and the terrestrial air
Hangs round him no longer its translucent veil.
Slowly the limits of our humanity begin to recede and new horizons of knowledge and wisdom open before the evolving soul of man.

The plunge into eternity

He has crossed the limit of mortal thought and hope, He has reached the world’s end and stares beyond; The eyes of mortal body plunge their gaze
Into Eyes that look upon eternity.

With this a whole line of evolution of the natural man comes to a close. But this close is in fact a new beginning. Going beyond humanity man must discover the superhumanity of tomorrow that man is destined to become. He must now explore inner domains and spiritual states and discover the powers that lie beyond the limits of his embodied mind. The resident of a transient, perishable body now becomes a candidate for eternity.

Closing remarks

This is the first stage of human evolution. Though we believe that all human beings are the same, but an intrinsic inner hierarchy exists created by layers of evolution within man as his soul ascends to higher and higher possibilities. It is true that physiologically or biologically so to say, our fundamental body structures is built upon the same plan; it is also true that deep within our soul is same in essence, a portion of the Divine spark, but there is a whole range of evolution possible within the same human body. As our soul evolves towards its own possibilities, our humanity also evolves towards a greater and greater degree of self-expression.

The Soul’s Journey and the Great Purpose Hidden in Creation pp. 71-73

Opening remarks

The journey of the soul does not stop with its explorations of the physical, vital and mental worlds and their powers. It must go further and discover the spiritual and Supramental world beyond the mind and recreate his life.
Discovering a greater world

A greater world Time’s traveller must explore.

Our material-vital-mental existence is not all we are. Beyond our hopes and dreams, beyond our desires and passions, beyond our thoughts and conceptions, a greater world, a vaster, more luminous consciousness awaits our search and discovery.

A new vision of himself and things

At last he hears a chanting on the heights
And the far speaks and the unknown grows near:
He crosses the boundaries of the unseen
And passes over the edge of mortal sight
To a new vision of himself and things.
The evolution of man, the mental being into a greater spiritual and supramental being is inevitable in the very logic of creation. It would mean a vast inner change in human

     

consciousness, in the way we presently perceive and understand ourselves and the world. With this change man shall become conscious of much that is hidden to his sight and much that appears distant, far or even non-existent will disclose its secret Reality.

An unfinished world

He is a spirit in an unfinished world
That knows him not and cannot know itself:
The surface symbol of his goalless quest
Takes deeper meanings to his inner view;
His is a search of darkness for the light,
Of mortal life for immortality.
Sri Aurobindo reveals to us that ‘Man is a transitional being.’ The world is moving towards a greater perfection that will come as man ascends towards his higher destiny. With the opening of our doors to the higher consciousness we discover that man’s evolution is not yet over. Because of the ignorance that hangs around us we do not understand the real purpose of creation and the deeper sense of life’s journey which is a constant seeking for Light and Truth and Bliss and Immortality.

The earthly vessel and the moonlit night

In the vessel of an earthly embodiment
Over the narrow rails of limiting sense
He looks out on the magic waves of Time
Where mind like a moon illumines the world’s dark.
The soul of man progresses in the human body dimly lit by the earthly mind and limited and hedged by the senses to which we hold as props to help us. Such is our present predicament while we still labour in the Ignorance.

A dim mysterious shore

There is limned ever retreating from the eyes,
As if in a tenuous misty dream-light drawn,
The outline of a dim mysterious shore.
Even so he perceives or vaguely sees distant domains of consciousness, a far off spiritual light, a deeper mystery he cannot grasp that await his discovery.

The ship and the compass

A sailor on the Inconscient’s fathomless sea,
He voyages through a starry world of thought
On Matter’s deck to a spiritual sun.
Even though the journey starts in the dark inconscient with matter as a base, even though its present compass is the mind-born thought, yet its destination is the Superconscient sun that blazes endlessly even when we cannot see it, or simply dream of it in the sleep of our Ignorance.

The goal is fixed

Across the noise and multitudinous cry,
Across the rapt unknowable silences,
Through a strange mid-world under supernal skies,
Beyond earth’s longitudes and latitudes,
His goal is fixed outside all present maps.
Indeed man is destined to go beyond our present mental evolution and embody greater and higher ranges of consciousness now hidden or only vaguely experienced. Right now our consciousness is engaged only with exploring material existence but in the course of evolution we

    

will explore other worlds and subtler domains until we reach that Source of all worlds, the Supermind. This is the New Power that had not manifested upon earth until 1956. But since it’s manifestation a new dimension has already been added to the soul’s ascension.

The great Mother’s Mission

But none learns whither through the unknown he sails
Or what secret mission the great Mother gave.
Surrounded by Ignorance and Unconsciousness we know not our Origin, the Path given to us to traverse and the Goal towards which we are moving. But behind our Ignorance and stumblings, there stands the luminous Will of the Divine Mother impelling our journey towards the great Goal.

Her sealed orders carried in our breast

In the hidden strength of her omnipotent Will,
Driven by her breath across life’s tossing deep,
Through the thunder’s roar and through the windless hush,
Through fog and mist where nothing more is seen,
He carries her sealed orders in his breast.
The Divine Will is hidden in the depths of our heart. It leads our journey of life through everything. Even in our Ignorance we are impelled by the Divine Shakti towards a pre- determined Future that is known only to our soul.

A new mind and body in the city of God

Late will he know, opening the mystic script, Whether to a blank port in the Unseen
He goes or, armed with her fiat, to discover A new mind and body in the city of God

And enshrine the Immortal in his glory’s house
And make the finite one with Infinity.
A time must come, does come when we become conscious of the Divine will and the Great purpose that is unfolding through many lives. This Great Purpose contained in the Original impulsion to creation is not a return to some blank, featureless Nirvana but a greater manifestation of the Divine. Indeed if the Lord wanted nirvana there would have never been any creation at all. Only nirvana would have been there. But the Will that has gone into creation is the Fiat of the Supreme and It labours towards divinization of life and mind and body. This creation is not an unfortunate accident but a means for the Immortal and the Infinite to manifest in a material body and a finite consciousness.

The great Adventure

Across the salt waste of the endless years
Her ocean winds impel his errant boat,
The cosmic waters plashing as he goes,
A rumour around him and danger and a call.
This journey of the individual soul from a state of Ignorance to a state of Truth-Knowledge takes place across the cosmic field through many lives. It is the great adventure, a real adventure whose end and goal are certain but the unfolding is through many experiences, pleasant and painful, dangerous and delightful. But the call is there upon the soul of man which pushes him ever more and more towards the heights and the breadths.

The Divine Force hidden in creation

Always he follows in her force’s wake.

   

The Divine Force is hidden in creation. It is there even behind the workings of seemingly inconscient Nature as the Power that keeps things in order and impels them to evolve. It is there in creation as the Evolutionary Energy that moves the soul towards greater things.

The ceaseless march

He sails through life and death and other life,
He travels on through waking and through sleep.
This journey of the human soul goes on through a number of lives. It does not end with death. The soul returns to complete its unfinished evolutionary journey. Even in our sleep, even in our unconsciousness this journey goes on.

The mystic voyage and the mighty traveller

A power is on him from her occult force
That ties him to his own creation’s fate,
And never can the mighty Traveller rest
And never can the mystic voyage cease
Till the nescient dusk is lifted from man’s soul
And the morns of God have overtaken his night.
God and World are linked together in a common tie. The connecting link of this mystic bond is the soul that brings in greater and greater possibilities for the manifestation. The soul of man is the mighty traveller that knows not rest until the task is done for which creation has emerged. This task is the end of the night of Ignorance in which nature is plunged and along with it the end of darkness and error and suffering and death. This is the purpose of this mystic voyage undertaken by the soul and until it is fulfilled, the journey cannot cease.

He and she are one

As long as Nature lasts, he too is there,
For this is sure that he and she are one;
Even when he sleeps, he keeps her on his breast:
Whoever leaves her, he will not depart
To repose without her in the Unknowable.
Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature, are one. The soul can withdraw Nature into itself. But it is not allowed to escape from her into the Unknowable. Such is not the Will of the Divine in creation. It is only through a selfish and misguided mysticism that one is trapped into the grand illusion of an escape from nature and creation into some kind of nirvana or self-extinction in the Infinite. Even when we have withdrawn from the surface nature, a deeper and truer soul-nature awaits our discovery.

Her play is real

There is a truth to know, a work to do;
Her play is real; a Mystery he fulfils:
There is a plan in the Mother’s deep world-whim,
A purpose in her vast and random game.
This world is not an illusion nor a random accident that has come about by some freak chance or a random will. There is a divine Purpose in creation, a divine Purpose in this game of hide – and – seek played by the Soul and Nature, a divine Purpose in this seemingly random game. Through all this play a work is done in us and in the world. Through this long journey through a large and complex field we grow and the world grows towards Truth and Light and Freedom and Bliss.

World is meant to manifest the Divine

This ever she meant since the first dawn of life,

    

This constant will she covered with her sport,
To evoke a Person in the impersonal Void,
With the Truth-Light strike earth’s massive roots of trance,
Wake a dumb self in the inconscient depths
And raise a lost Power from its python sleep
That the eyes of the Timeless might look out from Time
And the world manifest the unveiled Divine.
The Divine is hidden in the depths of creation. He is there in cover of Night hidden in the disguise of Ignorance and Inconscient. He is there in our very heart as our core and base, our secret Support and the moving Force. The great purpose hidden behind the world-play, working itself out in countless way is to shape the individual soul and help it grow into the fullness of the Divine. This is what we are in our depths but we have forgotten it due to the surrounding Ignorance. But the Divine Mother is there to Help us and Guide us, even strike with Her Force if need be to mould our soul and nature into the divinity hidden within it. All the blows of life and the crisis we meet are meant to awaken this Power hidden in our own depths. It is also a secret working of the Divine Will and this work will go on until man is fully awake to the divinity hidden in his own depths and the world manifests the Divine concealed behind its present state of ignorance.

Godhead’s seed

For this he left his white infinity
And laid on the spirit the burden of the flesh,
That Godhead’s seed might flower in mindless Space.
The individual soul is the Godhead’s seed that has entered the fields of Time and Space. Its full efflorescence is the purpose and drift of its journey. For in this little spark is hidden all the divine possibilities of creation. It is by the full blossoming of individual souls and the World-soul that the dream Divine can fully express itself in creation. It is for this Purpose that the One became the Many and entered into the play of Time and Space bearing the burden of Matter as the condition for its manifestation.

Closing remarks for the passage

Thus ends this marvelous passage describing the grand culmination of the soul’s journey. This close is not nirvana or extinction in the Divine but a divine perfection of life and a divine fulfillment of the creation itself.
Closing remarks for the Canto

This Canto primarily describes the experiences of Aswapati during his ascension from towards higher planes of consciousness. This ascension brings a heightening and widening of the individual consciousness until the individual widens into the universal and the finite consciousness shares the freedom and bliss of the Infinite. As this ascension takes place new possibilities of knowledge and powers begin to emerge. This journey of ascension is not without its dangers. It is an adventure in the true sense of the word. However through all its experiences the human soul continues to grow towards its highest destiny, which is not nirvana, but a progressive transformation and divinization of the human consciousness.