Book Two. The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
Canto I Canto II Canto III Canto IV
Canto V
Canto VI Canto VII Canto VIII
Canto IX
Canto X Canto XI Canto XII
Canto XIII Canto XIV
Canto XV
Book Two
The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds
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Book Two: Canto 4 The Kingdoms of the Little Life
The hunger of the life-force is added to the hunger of the earth and there is a great unrest which expresses itself as a ceaseless craving in men. With the advent of life all repose is gone. Man is seized with desire, with passion for what he has not. Otherwise he could have stayed content like plants and animals. And because he is unhappy thus, he aspires, he seeks and progresses. He explores life without, turns to explore it within; he builds up mind and self in his being and grows into a master of the Nature of whom he was a prisoner before. When Life enters Matter she exerts pressure and compels the unconscious Force in matter emerge. There is a general awakening and sensation comes to be. In the absence of thought, instinct guides the movement. Life brings the compulsion to move and to grow and spreads herself slowly searching to realise her innate bliss which she has lost here. Aswapathy follows the course taken by Life and traces her obscure start on earth where she is close to Death and the Night of Nescience. She uses death for her own survival. Here is the nadir of her fall. Here where life starts her career in matter, Aswapathy finds there is no solid ground to stand upon, no meaningful movement either. All is tentative. Forms are a-making and when they are shaped, there is impact between form and forth resulting in the outbreak of sense and instinct. Forces clash and there is a general struggle for survival. Sensations, feelings, appear and disappear. All seems to be a vain agitation. But Aswapathy sees a purpose behind this seeming uselessness, a work being done in spite of all the apparent aimlessness. A Force has been released from the dense sleep of Matter into the domain of life; there is a slow emergence of consciousness from under the veil of nescience. All moves under the irresistible urge for change, for the manifestation of what is concealed. He traces the course of this incessant movement to its source where he becomes aware of the presence of a Creative Power which seeks to manifest the Spirit in Matter, the Soul in the body through the intermediacy of life. Behind this Power is the play of God's Delight in Creation, in manifestation. This basic Delight is at the root of all the movements of the body, the life-force and the mind towards joy and bliss. Whether by aggregation or by devouring, life seeks to multiply its delight. Aswapathy watches here the first attempts of the will-to-delight to effectuate itself and the handicaps imposed on it by the very obscure nature of Matter in which it has to function. However, through these persistent efforts with all the clampings of the nether force on it, the imprisoned consciousness emerges a little by little, gathers itself and begins to look upward to the Light above. When the creative Spirit plunged at the culmination of its devolution into a Nescience all would have been lost but for the special descent of the Supreme Being of Sat-Chit-Ananda into that negative Void, a descent which resulted in a striking charge of Being into Void, of Conscious-Force into Nescience, of Delight into Pain. This contradiction forms the basis of life in this creation. Thus starts the slow aeonic game of hide and seek between the hidden Soul and obscure Nature. Across the successive stages of evolution it continues till in the mind the struggling Energy of Nature emerges into the wider fields of Consciousness to meet the Being face to face. Aswapathy regards a mighty Spirit concealed in Nature; he feels the response of Matter to the breath of the soul, sees the slow birth of a great Force and follows its course of growth. Now, after the weak, tentative beginnings of life in the domain of Matter, Aswapathy sees the more definitive play of waking life. Life takes strange forms in which thinking sense begins to function. A sensational order of life-creation comes into existence in the forms of the insect, the small and the bigger animals, the python, the dragon, the mastodon and the mammal; small human beings also appear. In man, Nature arrives at a high point in her evolutionary labour; a new stage in the growth of Consciousness begins with Nature becoming self-aware in man. In the animal creation around man, however, the play of consciousness is perceived in the reactions of creatures to impacts from outside. Their life is driven by some need. The little mind that is there looks upon the environment as hostile; it is primarily a sense-mind which cannot think on its own. Even in men, at this stage, the sense-mentality governs. They live from moment to moment drawing as much joy from Nature as possible. The pleasures of the body are all that matter to them. Thought and reflection are not yet. They are solely occupied with guarding themselves in a hostile world dominated by Death. Theirs is a small physical life built upon limited association for self-interest and, for the rest, unlimited slaughter and plunder. Communities clash and war with each other. Through this wrestle of life with All-Life grow the faculties of the concealed consciousness. Instinct, memory, adaptive skill, form themselves on the way to self-discovery. At this stage, however, the evolving life has not yet developed the mind proper. What functions is the life-mentality, mind involved in life. Search for the joy of existence, labour to build suitable embodiments for this rapture of sense, is predominant. Next, Aswapathy sees a third order of life-creation. The mind proper is under formation as a result of pressure from the Mind-plane. Thought begins to enlighten act. At first the mind-power works engulfed in the flow of embodied life. There is no overt thinking. Sensations, feelings, sub-conscious willings and desires abound. Gradually a seeing Power gathers their confused movements around one luminous point of awareness and forces the life-current to flow into form and shape, fashions the life-mind in creatures. Life assures herself by building walls of safety against the siege of death. Knowledge begins to move in the field of Nescience, and the soul takes a definite existence in form. A restricted intelligence begins to act. A reason functions in the mould of a habitual Nature ruled by Ignorance. Thought moves within the narrow grooves of the segmented life. Its range and vision, however, are restricted to parts and aspects which it mistakes for the whole. The mind is still slave to the body. Out of these small, obscure beginnings mind grows into a gleam of clarity though enclosed in a mass of Ignorance. Led by this slender thinking power, life continues her monotonous play tied to her ground, running her common rounds. The nature and scope of her play in her own world does not change as it does in the earth-world. For her own world is set to type, fixed in its mould, not governed by the law of evolution and change.
A
quivering trepidant uncertain world Where Life first touches the formations of Matter that are founded on Inconscience, there is a quiver, a weak, uncertain throb of the outermost ends of the consciousness that is involved in them. Life undergoes an eclipse by the Nescience that characterises the inert Matter, Matter stirs into the rudiments of life. Even in its very obscurity Matter begins to vibrate and the seeking for release of the imprisoned force of consciousness becomes articulate. What is a meeting resulting in diminution and overcoming by obscurity for Life, becomes the first hesitant birth into life for Matter.
There
was a writhing of half-conscious force From its spell of tranced sleep, the force of the involved consciousness awakes. But it is hardly conscious; it is a part of the pervading Ignorance goaded by some instinct—instinct being the form taken here by the action of the concealed consciousness. This semi-conscious force moves helplessly, struggles to find its bearings, to secure a hold on all that is around it. It strives to become more and more self-aware and all-aware.
Inheritor
of poverty and loss, This half-conscious force is instinct with vague, fleeting memories of its pre-involution past when its innate consciousness and power had not yet suffered the culminating negation in the downward plunge of the Spirit. But now it is burdened with severe limitations inescapable in the conditions of its birth in the general Inconscience. However, the impelling urge for release from within drives it to articulate, to spread itself into a movement that seeks to join earth-matter more and more fully with the descending Life. This half-conscious force struggles to rise from its base of obscurity and the pain of limitation, of which it becomes aware as it gets sentient, to the native, blissful heights of Life from which Life precipitated itself in its descent into inert earth-matter.
A
world that ever seeks for something missed, This world of diminished and deformed Life is naturally in the throes of discontent. It has, due to the assumption by inert and obscure Matter, lost most of the power and bliss native to Life. Material earth cannot assimilate and hold the gifts of Life in sufficient measure and the Life-world close to it suffers from this lack due to the interpenetration that is incessant between the two. This want and constant striving for the missed joy in the lower planes of Life close to material earth is communicated to the world below with the result that there can be no settled peace, no contentment there.
It
has joined its hunger to the hunger of earth, This restless urge of Life for a fuller joy and power in this world of the lower formations of Life affects the nature of embodied life on earth. The natural hunger of the emerging, half-conscious force in material evolution for more growth, more sentience and more joy of effectuation is augmented by this longing from the Life-plane immediately above the physical earth. Life on earth throws itself in constant craving for what it has not. The need of the evolving being appears endless. A maimed life-force has created a big want in the evolutionary progression of the spirit on earth.
An
Influence entered mortal night and day, With the entry of Life in the material earth, a new situation comes to develop. The inert mass is thrown into agitation. A kind of mechanical throb of life starts in the centre of things; feeling awakes in the movement of the senses providing in the process a link between the sleep of Matter below and the consciousness of Mind above. This nervous feeling fills the gulf between the mind and the body. And on this scene enters also the restless urge of Life for growth, for expansion, disturbing for ever the immobility of the material creation. This Life-force is not conscious like the Mind, it is an automatic operation.
A
Power beyond earth’s scope has touched the earth; It is because of the advent and presence of this Life-Power on earth that the original statuesque poise of creation has been upset and a vibrant movement imparted to its nature. Man is not allowed to stay content, confined to his position like the plant creation or to live free, unaffected by pain and care like the animal one. He is possessed by the life-impulse to expand himself, to go forth and acquire what he has not, to gain and possess the greater and more satisfying riches of the Spirit of which he has some glimpses.
The
Might that came upon the earth to bless The Divine Consciousness-Force came down from its transcendent summits, in the form of Life, to uplift, to vivify and to redeem the earth lost in its trance of inconscience. But having awakened Matter, the Force has not departed. It has stayed to impart its energism and direction to the awakened earth-spirit. It has chosen to live and struggle with the emerging spirit, helping it, sustaining it with its innate truth of light and power from within. That is why evolution, progress, is possible in spite of all the tremendous obstruction in this creation dominated by Ignorance, constantly pulled back by the hold of the Inconscience.
The
infant laugh that rang through time is hushed: The outbreak of Life brought with it a leaping joy on the desert of this inert material creation. But it was soon overcome by the thick pall of Inconscience and Insentience original to Matter. Joy dwindled and gave place to sorrow, sorrow at the loss and lack of what makes for fullness of life. But this sorrow it is that goads man to act, to strive to achieve fullness. His destiny grows out of the labour imposed by the necessity of overcoming this gnawing sorrow. Pain and sorrow are spurs to progress.
The
animal’s thoughtless joy is left behind, Unlike the animal who has practically no thought of pain and sorrow, either in recollection or in anticipation, but is always occupied with the joy of life of the moment, man is burdened with care and anxiety. The memory of past pain, the possibility of future suffering haunt him and make his present struggle for existence doubly heavy. From the unthinking satisfaction of the animal he has moved to perpetual discontent with himself and the life around and, as a being endowed with will and thought, he is ever active to eliminate the causes of that discontent. In the process he progresses, he increases in stature, he becomes conscious of what is beyond him, of what is behind the appearance of life and seeks to relate himself to that greater Reality, grow into it and thus break out of his bonds.
Insatiate
seeker, he has all to learn: Man is possessed with an unending desire to know, to get what he has not. His thought and his will ever strive towards this increasing possession and indeed there is much in the universe inner and outer—for him to so acquire. What he has so far experienced and made natural to himself is only the skim of life whose depths still remain to be plumbed. He is aware of only the surface levels of his own existence; as he grows, he awakes to the profounder ranges of his being behind the veil of outer nature and turns in their direction in order to know and possess them in his consciousness.
He
becomes a mind, he becomes a spirit and self; In this striving for self-awareness and more and more all-awareness, the unconscious or semi-conscious faculty of man develops into a full-fledged mind. Man becomes a mental being. He grows aware of the presence of the soul in himself, an individual spirit that is not involved in the workings of the outer ignorant nature, and discovers his identity with it. And one with this indwelling spirit, embodied in howsoever transient a form, man grows into lordship over Nature. He is no more merely its creature, but begins to assume mastery over her operations.
In
him Matter wakes from its long obscure trance, It is in man first that evolving Matter arrives at the stage of self-awareness. In the lower stages of development through the plant and the animal belts, the state is one of sensation, of tentative feeling, of rudimentary formations of the vital mentality. Material Nature fully wakes up from its spell of sleep and obscurity in man. And as he develops more and more his mental consciousness, the next step in the ladder of evolution draws near. The Spirit prepares to manifest and the earth feels the advent near.
An
eyeless Power that sees no more its aim, In her downward course to earth from her own native plane above, Life undergoes an inevitable diminution of the stuff of her consciousness. It is as a blind Power not overtly aware of its objective, as an intensely seeking and active energy of an impelling Will, that it enters into and activates the inert frame of Matter. As a result of this entry, a latent Force, the Force of involved Life, is released into movement and pressurised to react and respond. What was insentient is forced to awake and vibrate in sense activity, in seeking and in feeling.
In
the enormous labour of the Void The Force of Life that is so awakened from her sleep in the involutive trance of Matter sets up a stir all over the vast and barren spread of the universe. Her unconscious and semi-conscious impulses move into activity upsetting the prevailing order of slumber and inertia. The Force strives for fuller emergence and freedom of movement.
Alive
with her yearning woke the inert cell, This awakened Forcc of Life fills the form in which she is held with her impulsions and aspiration to grow, to emerge. Every part of the body is propelled into this movement. The manifest constituent unit of the cell is awakened from its swoon; the centre, the heart is set aflame with the intensity of the urge and the urgency of the call. The spell of immobility is broken and the activity of the slowly emerging consciousness-force spreads out. She seeks, she aspires, she works, she struggles without cease.
A
groping consciousness in a voiceless world, This Force is not, at this stage, conscious; she does not possess the knowledge of the course she is to take. The mind has not yet appeared with its thought-faculty to perceive, to cognise, to plan. The Force is led by some kind of awareness that works tentatively, by a reactive sense that functions mechanically without intelligence. She can only feel and hold but not know anything in the vast field that stretches before her.
Obeying
the push of unborn things towards birth There is in all things an incessant urge, an evolutionary nisus that pushes out what is held captive within and makes manifestation possible. The involved Life-Force in the sleep of insentience is thus pressured out of material form. In her profound depths there is a consciousness that is awake and knows, but is not overtly active; she is not activated by the thinking intelligence, her innate strength is still in potency. She is seized with an urgent need to know for only so can she become aware and function purposefully.
The
chain that bound her she made her instrument; She does not know, she cannot move freely. She is confined and pressed down in many ways by the nescience of her base. But she uses the very elements of this nescience for her growth. Knowledge is not there, but what is there as instinct is pressed into service; instinct turns out to be but an automatic operation of a concealed intelligence without the intervention of thinking and reasoning. It contains the emerging truth in spontaneous action. Guided by this instinct and upbuoyed by the evolutionary impulsion that presses from below, the Life-Force grows and expands.
Inflicting
on the body desire and hope, With the action of the Life-Force in the material form, a many-sided movement ensues. The rudiments of consciousness are stirred into gathering force and the base of the inconscience of Matter is exerted upon by a growing consciousness. The dull obscurity of Matter is pressed into an awakening, into a want and a call by the embodied Life for what she has not but what she remembers as once her own: light, power, bliss. A restless search and striving for a change of her extant state by Life takes momentum, though her direction is not yet certain.
Adorer
of a joy without a name, The Life-Force seeks for the Joy ineffable. But she is enclosed in the limited, unlit edifice of the material form and though she derives a little delight from the indwelling spirit at the core, she yields in the process to the many obscure and stunted elements of material nature. Life is obliged to propitiate the little gods of Matter for establishing and organising herself in the material field.
But
vain unending is the sacrifice, This sacrifice on the part of Life to the little gods of the material kingdom, however, is endless and not fruitful. Life may attempt to change the pattern of the constitution of material form but she fails to evoke a seconding response from Matter.
A
burden of transient gains weighs down her steps In her evolutionary movement ahead, Life is weighed down by the ballast of Matter. Nothing she achieves is permanent; everything formulated by her in the material field has to accept the gravity of Matter. But she is obliged by the nisus in her to advance and she does it relentlessly, tirelessly from stage to stage in the development of sense, of awareness, of the faculty of thinking on the road of evolution. The further she goes, the more she is spurred by the necessity to advance, to grow if she is to survive and organise herself effectively. The inner need becomes more and more urgent as she develops in consciousness and this urgency ensures her development. The deeper the need, the surer the effort to meet it and the larger the progress achieved.
Matter
dissatisfies, she turns to Mind; Life finds herself handicapped in every direction by the very nature of the Matter in which she has cast herself. The insentience and inertia of Matter checkmate her movements. Life then turns away from Matter and goes on to form grades of self-awareness that develop into Mind. And as she thus emerges into more conscious formulations of herself, she establishes her domain on earth. Thereafter she turns to annex to her empire the kingdom of the Mind above her.
Insensible,
breaking the work she has done Life labours, activates, forms and shapes forces in the universe. But her work is not allowed to stand permanently by the evolutionary Nature who has her own large aims and processes. No light from the Spirit above has yet illumined the Life-force and altered the nature of her workings, nor has any heartening bliss succoured her distress.
Only
a glimmer sometimes splits mind’s sky Though this state of fallen and diminished Life is not yet redeemed by any transforming Light from the Spirit above, there are occasional outbreaks of luminous rays on the horizon of the labouring consciousness. These interventions, however brief, testify to the workings of a higher—and apparently complex—intelligence that makes of opposite conditions a means and a way to brighter results. Darkness is turned into a sure passage to light, difficult circumstances a mint of some higher and newer conditions in the making.
In
Nescience began her mighty task, The original conditions of the field of Life here on earth are those of a total lack of consciousness. Slowly, as a result of her labours, Nescience yields to the awaking of an infant and partial consciousness, a state of Ignorance which is but a passage to a fuller Knowledge, to an ampler Consciousness that is to be found. In this condition of Ignorance, Life is midway in her search for Knowledge and strives to reach it in this direction or that. But the goal is not yet.
Ascending
slowly with unconscious steps, This is the state of Life in her first beginnings in the material world. She is still an infant in her formation and only partially self-aware, unsure of her steps in her slow movement upwards from the soil of Matter. Far away from her native glories, she is like a deserted and forlorn child. From the conditions of obscurity, struggle and pain in which she is, she makes her way through dense, unclear passages feeling out for states of light, power and joy.
In
this slow ascension he must follow her pace
For
so only could he know the obscure cause Aswapathy must needs follow the course traced by the Life-Force from her very obscure beginnings if he is to know the precise cause that brings all difficulty and obstruction in the smooth evolution of the Spirit from the base of Matter and the free emergence of the soul bounded within. He has to be patient and tread every step that this Force has taken in order to himself experience the nature of the difficulty with a view to eventually finding the solution therefore.
Along
swift paths of fall through dangerous gates Aswapathy traces the line of the descent of Life into the densities of Matter in order to follow closely its developments. He finds himself precipitated into domains of obscurity where Life meets Matter, Matter wakes into Life. There is no mind yet. The awareness that comes to be is partial. It takes the form of instincts, unthought spontaneous actions of a concealed consciousness which presses to articulate and organise itself in living Matter. Instinct is the first form taken by the emergent consciousness in embodied Life.
Life
here was intimate with Death and Night In this obscure realm Life comes face to face with her contraries. She is confronted by the darkness of Nescience and the threat of cessation, Death. Life has to compromise herself and gain a respite by adopting the consuming process of self-spending which assures continued existence only until the supporting frame breaks down under the effort. Life becomes inseparably associated with Death and continually haunted by the darkness of failure of consciousness.
Accepting
subconscience, in dumb darkness’ reign At the lowest levels Life falls under the spell of subconsciousness. She dwells in conditions of mute darkness, within a belt of thick obscurity. The hope and call for light and bliss, active on her higher levels of formulation, dies down. Life assumes a mechanical operation.
There
far away from Truth and luminous thought Here in these lower regions Aswapathy espies the culminating stage of the deformation of Life where she has moved away the farthest from her shining origins in the Consciousness of the manifesting Spirit and got fixed to a sense of separate existence leading to severe self-limitation, deformation, strife and suffering. Life loses the truth of unity and is obliged to start a career on the basis of divisive confinement and helpless sub-conscience.
An
unhappy face of falsity made true, The entire appearance of Life in these nether realms is contradictory to its real nature on its own plane. Features of darkness, sub-conscience, limitation and weakness totally deform her visage; she looks what intrinsically she is not. She is obliged to put on a nature that does not respond to beauty and light in the Creation and then, forgetful of her true being, she proudly displays her brutalised state of insensitivity and cruelty.
An
authentic image recognised and signed The appearance of Life, her nature, her action are all changed in this condition of her fall, so much changed that, forgetful of her rightful dominion, she even glories in the wretchedness of her state. Her high strength is unbelievably diminished and almost prone; unsatisfied desires clamour. With severe limitations on all sides there appears a blank incomprehension in her look. Life is impoverished and bare.
Here
first she crawled out from her cabin of mud It is here that Life, lying involved in the inconscient Matter, first breaks away as a result of the pressure of the Life-Power descending from the Life plane above. She is heavily weighted down with the characteristics of her base viz. density, inertness, limitation and an obscurity unrelieved by any light. She has to outgrow them in the course of her evolution back into her own true nature.
There
neared no touch redeeming from above: When Life first begins slowly to emerge from its long imprisonment in the dumb and inconscient Matter, she has more the nature of Matter than her own. The power, the impetuosity, the joy and the glory that are hers on her own plane of existence above are virtually absent here. Instead, Life carries the handicaps of her material form. Her vision is ever downwards, she is constantly pulled back and her career is precarious; she struggles to keep herself from extinction. She has yet to acquire her characteristic movement of expansion and affirmation. A more effective infusion of the power and light of Life from the original Life plane is needed.
A
wide unquiet mist of seeking space, Its prayer denied, it fumbled after thought. Everything in this region is vague, obscure, indefinite. There is a general movement towards formulation but nothing is steady, nothing so firm that it could be designated as such. There is a rudiment of consciousness seeking to cast itself into a form and centre but it is unable to fix itself. It inclines merely to flow and shape itself into some form of thinking.
As
yet not powered to think, hardly to live, But the elements of life that have just awakened, the rudiments of consciousness that have just emerged into inchoate activity, are yet to develop to the level of consistency and continuation needed to make thought or embodied life possible. What is now seen is a quick-changing, unstable, undeveloped world where things appear and disappear as if by magic.
On
dim confines where Life and Matter meet There life was born but died before it could live. In this region of the first meeting of Life and Matter, things are naturally obscure and mixed. Life is not completely of its own nature for it is entangled in and almost overcome by the density and nescience of Matter; Matter is not fully Matter alone because the element of Life has entered into it and some levels have become living Matter. It looks as if life is and is not; it is overcome by the shadow of death soon after it comes into existence. Nothing is certain; before things are properly begun they are ended and new elements come into being. All is in a flux in a general obscurity.
There
was no solid ground, no constant drift;
Himself
was dim to himself, half-felt, obscure, There is no fixity about anything, the material order having been disturbed by the advent of life. The mind is not yet. What rules is a Will that is inherent in things. Aswapathy finds that in this field of obscurity he cannot have a full feeling of himself, his ownpersonality. He feels he is in the throes of an Emptiness that is trying to somehow exist. A picture of vagueness, obscurity and struggle.
In
strange domains where all was living sense In this domain the mind is not established and organised. It is the senses that are alive and active. There is as yet no developed soul as such; what is there is an entity in shaping, which seeks and looks for snatches of little joys. The rays of the unformed mind glow weakly here and there and their brief reflections are mistaken for a guiding light by the innumerable energies that strive to acquire distinct shape and form for embodiment—for only so can they attain and preserve individuality.
This
blindfold force could place no thinking step; The force at work has no waking intelligence of the mind to guide her. She moves as if blind. She seeks some light with which to see and work her way, but all that she has is a surrounding darkness, shadows of inconscience and unconsciousness and she follows where she is led by the elements of this darkness.
An
inconscient Power groped towards consciousness, This is the realm below where inconscience struggles to emerge into consciousness. Awareness comes slowly and by degrees. When one material form comes into contact with another material form there is an awakening of vague sensations (due to the presence of the life element). These sensations, as they multiply reveal themselves to be movements of an instinct from a deeper region behind the veil. It is not mental thought but a natural instinct of right response that awakes within. This instinct is not articulate in the manner of thought but nevertheless it is effective.
Perception
answered Nature’s waking blows But Nature is not content with these instinctive responses. She wants to bring out more and more of awareness in the forms and to do this she deliberately delivers strong blows on them. These evoke a deeper response in the form of perception—not thought out, but a spontaneous awareness. This perception, too, however, is not yet constant, not an established way of response. It comes all of a sudden, more or less mechanically, a brief involuntary awakening.
And
rude unchastened impulses jostling ran It is a world of unregulated movement of impulses. They are not informed by any overt intelligence. They are as if blind. Each rushes as it tends, regardless of others; there is in consequence a general friction, a perpetual clash. This feature seems to stamp itself on the whole movement.
The
need to exist, the instinct to survive In this world of clash and disorder the sole preoccupation of each is but to survive. There is no firm maintaining will yet. Whatever element of will is operative affirms itself from moment to moment and strives to exist in its embodiment amidst the hostile environment. Besides, each living form looks for nourishment from outside; it seeks to support itself on another.
The
gusts of Nature were the only law, In this domain there is no ruling law except the violent movements of Nature. There is a perpetual combat of forces which leaves little of consequence. What is constant and patent is a mechanical, sub-conscient and inconscient hold and drive of forces, the awakening of brief sense-movements, instinctive reactions and feelings which pass no sooner than they appear. All is in a sub-mental, mechanical, blinded motion.
It
was a vain unnecessary world Nothing seemed worth the labour to become. All told this world, where Life meets Matter, presents a picture of vain effort. All that comes of the transient will to affirm itself on this shifting soil is friction, suffering and a general tension. What little seems to be achieved is hardly worth the ceaseless effort that has made it possible. The meaning of the whole movement is yet to reveal itself. It is not patent on the surface.
But judged not so his spirit’s wakened eye.
As
shines a solitary witness star But this appearance does not deceive Aswapathy's sight. His awakened eye pierces through it and perceives that there is a definite purpose underlying the apparently meaningless movement. Aswapathy is fully aware of his mission. He awaits a significant revelation of the glory of God and though the world in which he now finds himself is so strange, so aimless in appearance, he sights God's purpose in the workings presented before his eye.
Even
in that aimlessness a work was done Aswapathy comes to see that even through all these meanderings, anarchic clashes and friction, something definite is being achieved. All is potent with a wondrous will, and a deliberate change from one order of existence to another, higher, is being effected. Where all was still, inert and dead, a ceaseless movement has commenced. This change, he perceives, is the beginning of a mighty change leading towards the Divine.
The
first writhings of the cosmic serpent Force From its involution in immobile Matter, the Conscious-Force, lying asleep as it were, has awakened and by a slow and difficult movement shot up into the domain of life. The potential held in the womb of material Nature emerges into the open and breathes the fresh air of life, life which has pressured from above the emergence from below.
It
could not cast off yet Night’s stiffening sleep The Conscious-Force that has emerged out of the containing trance of Matter is, however, still under partial grip of the torpor and inertia natural to Matter; it has not yet touched the level of the Mind and put on its nature; neither has it yet awakened to the truth of the soul; nor has it yet grown to its full stature so as to receive in full the radiations of the Spirit.
As
yet were only seen foulness and force, It is only the element of force that is patent at this stage along with its refuse in the process of being cast off. The consciousness is still inchoate on the surface; it is striving under the veil to emerge into the open light through the passage of the plentiful and expanding activity of the gross senses. It articulates itself and builds its instrumentation through the operation of its lustful and dominating senses.
Beneath
the body’s crust of thickened self Below the hard crust of dense Matter, in the obscurity of the sub-conscient, there is a slow but persistent movement gathering force, communicating itself in all directions, pressing for a change from the original state of nescience and immobility of Matter into an order of life-movement and consciousness. It is the stir of the soul, the spirit that is manifesting out of the lowest soil of Matter.
A
heavenly process donned this grey disguise, All this movement of an apparently mechanical Force really conceals a planned operation of an Intelligence under the mask of Ignorance. The struggle to live, to become aware, in an environment of death and nescience looks hopeless, vain. But it is really a process of working out an imperative necessity in the inconscient Matter; the glory of God, the Divine Consciousness concealed in the womb of Matter presses incessantly for release from its imprisonment, into the domain of Matter. The Divine Consciousness is already there embedded in Matter and that is why it seeks to be delivered to manifest itself in the world of Matter.
His
sight, spiritual in embodying orbs, Aswapathy's spiritual sight is able to get through this dull glitter of the whole scene and perceive and follow the process and direction of the Movement that activates insensate Matter, whips up desire, creates in the will a longing and need to extend and grasp. All these lines of the Movement constitute, so to say, the wheels of evolutionary progress from the dumb beginnings in Matter to the emergence of the conscious mind and will in Man.
This
too he tracked along its hidden stream Aswapathy not merely sights the workings of the Movement but scrutinises to discover from where it originates. He traces the Movement across the dim spaces of its path and arrives at its source which is indeed miraculous. It is miraculous because out of that apparently nescient Void springs all that takes shape in the Manifestation under way.
A
mystic Presence none can probe nor rule, At the root of all this play of light and darkness on the soil of earthly life which is characterised by the dualities of joy and pain and other contradictories, there is the Spirit that cannot be plumbed much less regulated. It is this Spirit that goads the whole Movement and works out its intention through a myriad processes. It vivifies Matter with its own breath and forces the physical body to tune itself to transmit the vibrations of the soul. It links up the material frame of the body to the consciousness of the embodied Spirit by means of the nerve which is the channel of the life-force. The nerve-channels—physical and subtle—form the connecting link between the physical body and the consciousness embodied in the mind.
It
summons the spirit’s sleeping memories Due to the pressure of the embodied Spirit, all the impressions and memories of events, thoughts, feelings which have taken place and sunk into the depths below the conscious layers of the being, rise up pell-mell when the awareness is dull and weak. They are not fully articulate nor are they conscious. They are mechanical. They rush up in the form of confused feelings and desires, stay for a while and then sink down again with the passing of the torpor. They are not real desires or conscious feelings but appearances assumed by the subconscient movements rising up during moments of fading or suspension of awareness and going down when those conditions are no more. The pressure of the conscious Spirit within throws them up again and again so as to expose them to the light of the overt consciousness for elimination.
Impure,
degraded though her motions are, truth behind the misleading exterior. This truth deriving from the Spirit is what really keeps the movement going, impels it ultimately towards the intended direction despite all meanderings and wrong steps. It goes on working and urging from behind the veil, gathering force for its emergence when conditions are ready for it. Even in the most unenlightened parts there is deep within this flame of truth, the truth-will, and that is their real raison-d'être.
A
touch of God’s rapture in creation’s acts, All creation has come into being on the wave of a surge of Bliss from the Supreme. Every form, every movement is a projection of this creative Bliss which, however, may not be apparent on the surface of life. But it is there at the root of all, as much behind the phenomenon of death as behind birth. It may not be articulate but an indelible memory of this origin in Bliss is there stamped on some layer or other of each existence. Even when the senses are not awake in the earth-creation to take cognisance of this delight, there is still a Beauty which is really a reflection, a self-projection in form, of the Bliss of the Creator. Bliss rendering itself into form is Beauty.
That
rapture’s smile is secret everywhere; This Delight of the Creator is present everywhere though it may not readily lend itself to be sensed directly as such. It is there behind the surface-veil, in the invigorating breath of the wind, in the life-giving essence of the tree. It sparkles in the colourful blossoming of flowers and leaves—it is present throughout the plant creation. Creative Delight projects itself in the form of entrancing beauty, nourishing creation as its life-essence. As the Upanishad puts it, who indeed could live if there were not this Bliss within?
When
life broke through its half-drowse in the plant In the plant-stage of evolution life pulsates and vibrates in sensation and feeling, but she has not yet arrived at the level of articulation nor of movement. There is still the spell of the half-outgrown sleep of Matter's trance. But when life crosses into the animal belt of its evolution, she organises herself and functions in wide-awake measured rhythms of the heartbeats.
It
forced the unconscious tissues to awake As life develops and courses through the evolving bodies of the animal and man, the cells and tissues of the material organism are awakened from their unconscious state and delivered into a state of conscious sensation. They seek for joyous sensations, respond with pleasurable vibrations, participate in the inevitable reactions of suffering and delight.
Imperative,
voiceless, ill-understood, Life is loaded with a self-effectuating will, but not informed with an articulate thought. That is why she forces her way but is unable to make her intention evident. She derives indeed from the Bliss aspect of the Satchidananda but the diminution and deformation undergone in the course of its devolution have resulted in a great gulf between the Consciousness at its origin and at its field of operation in the heart of Matter. In this state, to evoke the delight of existence, life goes on putting pressure upon the centre of the heart, the seat of feelings and emotions, and on the awakened nerves which react to impacts and carry the sensations throughout the body.
Its
sharp self-seeking tears our consciousness; It is this urge of the life-force for self-effectuation, for self-aggrandisement, that exerts pressure on the consciousness forcing it to go out through the doors of the senses, seize enjoyment—and in the process, as its reaction, suffer pain—and form an enlarging field of experience and exploitation for itself. The desire that is thus built up darts at objects and exerts itself for drawing enjoyment, unaware of the fact that the true and lasting source of joy is within the being itself, in the delight of the soul at the core.
All
Nature’s longing drive none can resist, And in fact the true cause of this seeking for delight in Nature is not in external objects as it appears to the mentality in ignorance. There is a self-existent bliss, boundless in itself, at the core of each being and consciousness and it is the impulsion of this bliss to realise itself in life coursing through the body and the sharpened senses that drives nature irresistibly to seek out the delight.
It
turns in us to finite loves and lusts, The urge of self-delight in the soul renders itself variously at the various levels of the being. Though infinite in itself, this delight turns into finite channels for its effectuation. It takes in nature the form of the desire to possess, to love, to enjoy, to enlarge the field of possession, to aggrandise, to fight and will for exploitation, to increase by adding to itself more and more from outside, to heighten enjoyment by a reverse process of being enjoyed. In a word, it suffuses every feeling, every movement of life.
Here
was its early brief attempt to be, This will-to-delight finds its first overt expression with the birth of life in matter. With each breath of life the will affirms itself but the life is soon extinguished and with it the attempt of the delight to exist and expand. And so is it destined to be as long as life, which is its instrument and its field, is under the shadow of Ignorance which is a product and a projection of the basic Inconscience at the roots. This fact of Ignorance entails a mortal disability on the life-force and therefore on the will-to-delight which seeks to effectuate itself through life.
Inflicting
still its habit on the cells This original failure of the will-to-be, of the will-to-delight to overcome the hold of decay and death has become ingrained as a habit and it pursues as an evil shadow all subsequent developments of the effort of life to affirm and organise herself. Even if the hold is loosened in the more developed evolutes of life, it is there firm on the constituting cells of the body that the life inhabits and the cells give way, betraying life.
Although
on earth are firm established lives, With all these adverse conditions, however, with allthe settled laws of growth, decay and death operat Mg on earth, of fixed habits of nature in the midst of all the flux of life, the will-to-live, to seize, to enjoy, to keep, persists. All life-movement is a surge of that incessant will to affirm itself.
This was the first cry of the awaking world. It clings around us still and clamps the god.
Even
when reason is born and soul takes form, This life-impulse to affirm and aggrandise itself, this desire to possess and enjoy, is the motive force that propels the world-movement from the very beginning. It has been at once the activating motor as also the tether which holds back the evolving being from a wider and a loftier flight. For even with the advent of thought and reason in the mind, even with the effective articulation of the spirit, the old, primitive urge of life-desire continues and forms the mainspring of life's activities.
This too was needed that breath and living might be.
The
spirit in a finite ignorant world Then slowly it gathers mass, looks up at Light. This impulse, however, has fulfilled a purpose in Nature. It has provided the needed incentive and goad for the effort of the spirit to free its consciousness imprisoned in inconscient Matter. It is only as more and more of this consciousness is released in life, however precariously, however insignificantly, that the life-force can effectuate itself more and yet more. The will in life draws out the concealed consciousness for only so could it be more and more effective. As the movement of this emergence of the consciousness gathers momentum at its thousand points of action, the consciousness takes shape and body and turns its direction upward to the Light above, aspires for it.
This
Nature lives tied to her origin, Under this law an ignorant world was made. Nature at this stage of evolution of life in Matter is heavily under the clutches of the Nescience at the material base. The weight of Inconscience constantly pulls downwards. Even the instincts that guide nature's movements come up from regions that are unconscious. They are not conscious perceptions. Life-movement is very close to the insentience of dense Matter and is in constant danger of being overpowered by it. This world of ignorance has indeed come to be in the shadow of Nescience, its movement always subject to the weight and pull of the Inconscience below.
In
the enigma of the darkened Vasts, When in the course of its devolution the manifesting Spirit arrived at the nadir of its downward plunge and lost itself in its exclusive concentration, all became a Void. There was only darkness, a vast negation, a veritable Night. And so it would have remained but for the purposive descent of the Conscious Being of Satchidananda into this dark Void, sacrificing itself in its threefold nature of Truth-existence, Consciousness Force and Bliss which underwent a change into its opposite in the conditions of the fall. Because of this entry and presence of the Conscious Being—however masked—it has been possible for light to emerge out of darkness, consciousness out of nescience.
Invoking
in world-time the timeless truth, It is the self-sacrifice of the Divine Purusha that makes the redemption of this creation from the depths of Nescience possible. Because the timeless Truth of the eternal has chosen to embody itself in time, because the Bliss of the Supreme has put on the nature of sorrow, because Consciousness has undergone the change into nescience, and the irresistible Force of that consciousness turned into a struggling movement, the Creation even under these contrary conditions can be saved. The Truth and its Powers can unveil themselves in this Creation because they have chosen to dwell there in its womb waiting for this hour.
A
contradiction founds the base of life: This Creation starts its career on a base of contradiction. For the creative Sat-Chit-Ananda is confronted at the end of its downward plunge with a totally opposite formation of itself. Sat, the Truth-Existence, has disappeared into a negative vacancy, a Void; Chit, Consciousness, has become Nescience, absence of Consciousness; Shakti, Force of Consciousness, is changed into a mechanical, unconscious Energy; and Bliss has undergone a virtual transformation into pain. It is from this soil of opposites that the Creation blossoms; its nature is consequently riddled with contraries.
In
a mysterious dispensation’s law And yet, even in this configuration of contraries there is a seeing Wisdom, prajna, at work. What has taken place is in the working out of a possibility seen in the self-vision and sanctioned by the truth-will of the Supreme. It is the slow unrolling of a process leading towards a pre-figured end.
A
blindfold search and wrestle and fumbling clasp As Life builds itself in the material world, there starts a game of hide-and-seek between the Soul which is yet hidden and Nature which reveals herself only partly. It is a game played in the half-light of a slow, emerging consciousness, a play of tentative graspings and escapes. Even with the advent of the mind, the game continues, perhaps even more vigorously: Soul and Nature—the inseparable Two, born with the Creation—play to find and possess each other through all phases of attraction and repulsion, hope and fear.
At
last the struggling Energy can emerge With the progressive enlargement of the reign of mind and the growth of self-aware consciousness, the fugitive nature of the play between Soul and Nature changes its character. Nature-Energy comes out of her hiding behind the veil of unconsciousness and meets her playmate in larger areas of life, under a fuller light of the self-organising Consciousness. Soul and Nature recognise each other and begin to collaborate.
Even
in these formless coilings he could feel
In
Nature he saw the mighty Spirit concealed, In the first movements that take place, even before the appearance of forms, Aswapathy feels here—where Life meets Matter the response of Matter to the first stirrings of the soul concealed within; he sees behind the apparent struggling Nature a great Spirit at work; he witnesses the slow and hesitant emergence of a Force that is of great power; he follows the enigmatic course of the uncertain steps of the evolving Godhead—enigmatic because the Godhead is conscient, knows its way and goal and yet is tentative in its steps—and he catches distantly the rhythms of a Harmony in shaping.
Then
came a fierier breath of waking life, This scene of the first beginnings of life in Matter is followed by another where life is more pronounced, more forceful, more conscious. The sense that was inchoate and mechanical before becomes more conscious. New creations follow. They are strange, they are and they are not. Forms begin to take shape but before they are able to do so fully, they are gone.
A
life was there that hoped not to survive: Life is uncertain of itself yet. Creatures that are born disappear soon. Things take place in the Movement but without any obvious significance. Activity is impelled by the mechanical force of an unconscious will that is itself subject to something else, not free.
A
seeking Power found out its road to form, The Consciousness-Force that is emergent in the form of Life finds ways and means to build forms for its embodiment. These forms are designed to express and signify particular poises of the coursing Life. They are also shaped to house the movements of love, joy and pain.
An
insect hedonism fluttered and crawled Life takes queer shapes in her attempt to establish and organise her reign in Matter. She takes the light and frail form of the insect which expresses its happiness in its fluttering and tremulous movements and its brief bursts of joy in a sunlit Nature. She takes form in fierce animals like the dragon and enjoys stronger raptures and joys. She rolls in agony through the form of the python and assumes lowly forms that crawl in the bog and mire and lick the rays of the sun as they fall on their slimy environment.
Huge
armoured strengths shook the frail quaking ground, Life goes on to assume huge forms, massive in strength, but puny in brain, like the mastodon. She evolves even the human form though tiny in size at first. These humans are primitive in their development, they let their own life-movement—short-ranged as it is—drift where it will but impose their life-will on the rest of the earth. And this they are able to do because they possess brains more developed than those of other creatures, however physically huge and strong they may be.
In
a dwarf model of humanity Man, though so pigmy-like in appearance at this stage, represents a high culmination of the effort of evolutionary Nature which has taken a long and difficult route with amazing variations in her techniques of formation, adaptation, alteration—starting from minute forms and erupting into giant bodies, varying from ungainly shapes to beautiful ones, with only a half-conscious instrumental Force. Nature has climbed up the ladder of evolution, repeatedly experimenting to attain a balance between the form and the soul inhabiting it, and has arrived at a stage when a kind of intelligence, a conscious mind—however small in its range—has been formed and begins to govern the life-movement. In man she has emerged from the belt of semi-consciousness into that of consciousness. A new order of evolutionary progression begins with man's advent.
Around
him in the moment-beats of Time Around man in whom the mental intelligence has just begun to organise itself is an environment that is still governed by the animal spirit. Activity goes on, self-propelled as it were, and all is geared to it. The mind is not yet evolved enough to assume control. What the heart obeys in its movements is some factor whose promptings are unseen, hidden behind a veil and inarticulate in terms of thought or speech.
The
Force that works by the light of Ignorance, This animal world is run by the Force of evolving Nature acting in a pervading Ignorance. The various creatures that people this Creation show their element of consciousness mostly by their reactions to impacts from outside. If they show any awareness of something within themselves, it is to the goad of hunger, of want, to which they respond and go into answering action.
A
body that knew not its own soul within, The body of the animal is not at all aware that there is a soul dwelling within itself. To the creature the body itself constitutes its self, it lives with its desires and passions, its joys and griefs. The little mind it has looks upon the world around it as something different and alien, something hostile, to itself. Its senses react with vibrations of shock to contacts from outside and these vibrations project themselves in its mentality as its thoughts. There is no real thinking as yet; what takes place in the mind is a reflex of the sensations.
It
captured not the spirit in the form, This mind stops with the appearance of the forms it meets with; it does not grasp what is in them. It does not perceive the power behind an act; it thinks the act is all. Nor does it dwell upon the possible motive in movements that go on in the world. It does not strive at all to know the meaning of life. It is content to live without trying to understand the purpose of it all.
Beings
were there who wore a human form; Even men at this stage are animals in all but in form. Excepting in their form which is human, in everything else they are like the other creatures of the animal world. Their life is filled with the passion of the general movement; they are not at all self-aware and it does not occur to them to know who they are or why they live. Their one object of exertion III life is to draw as much enjoyment as can be derived from the objects and movements of Nature. The body is all that matters and their whole life is occupied with meeting its demands for satisfaction; they do not look beyond it. They are satisfied with the normal routine of living in the physical body—breathing, feeling, sensing, acting. They are completely identified with the body which is but the outer form of the indwelling soul. This type of human is the physical man.
The
veiled spectator watching from their depths The being within, the soul, however, is not asleep. It is awake watching as if from behind a veil all that goes on, and it is this very regard of the witness soul that keeps the movement going. The perceiving consciousness is not yet turned on itself, it is watching the flow of the movement outward. That is why the course of life flows thereward. Nor does it seek to know as yet the real Source and Impeller of this life-movement. The attention is fastened on the developing action of the life-drama and on the ground of the being on which it takes place. Life is the drama, the embodiment is the stage, the soul within is the spectator.
There
was no brooding stress of deeper sense, The capacity to cogitate and reflect is not yet. The mind does not seek to understand Nature; it just registers what passes before it. By habit of experience it knows what impacts from Nature are pleasurable and what are painful; accordingly it cherishes and looks for the former, fears and shrinks from the latter.
It
pondered not on the magic of her laws, The mind does not yet exert itself to explore the processes of the workings of Nature. It has no compelling wish or desire to understand the operations of Truth concealed behind the surface appearances of things and grow in its knowledge. It only registers impacts, reacts to them and whatever experiences are received through the senses, it preserves in the form of a living memory.
It
hunted and it fled and sniffed the winds, This mentality is content with little pleasures and wallows in the creature comforts easily secured in Nature. If it exerts itself it does so only superficially, and whatever contacts it makes with the world, it utilises to satisfy its external senses with sensational joys and pleasures.
These
felt life’s quiver in the outward touch,
To
guard their form of self from Nature’s harm These beings, the physical human types, feel the throb of life in their contacts with the world; but they cannot sense or perceive the presence of the spirit, the touch of the soul in these contacts. Their first concern is to safeguard their bodies—forms of their concealed selves—from harm from these contacts and next to derive whatever enjoyment they can from them. To survive and to enjoy is their sole preoccupation.
The
narrow horizon of their days was filled To these men every movement, every contact, every happening matters only in so far as it helps or hurts their own petty selves. Everything is measured from this narrow and self-centred standpoint. Nothing is considered from its intrinsic value-point. Each thing has its own significance and, in the right perspective and for the right living, each must be considered and evaluated in that light, not from the effect it has on one's little ego-based interests. Otherwise values change from person to person and even in the case of the same person from time to time and, in this way, a wholly false and perverted way of life comes to be which misses the central truth of things.
Isolated,
cramped in the vast unknown, Setting themselves against the rest of the universe of which they know practically nothing, these little men seek ways and means to guard themselves from the environment which takes on for them a threatening hue. In this setting everything seems hostile to their own interests and life, and men feel themselves exposed to a perpetual invasion by an enemy-Nature. For their own living they forage into the camp of the enemy-world and the latter in turn takes its toll from them. Instead of a mutual give-and-take for common advantage there is an exploitation by force. Men are caught in this vicious circle to the end of their lives; they cannot conceive that it is possible to break out of this vicious circle of hostility and meet the world on a new basis of harmony.
Obeying
the World-Power’s hints and firm taboos The World-Nature is inexhaustible in her riches but she is niggardly in yielding her treasures without exacting the price of dedicated effort to win them. These men who will not go beyond their limited needs of physical well-being do not question Nature's hegemony, do not venture to plunder her vast estates but are content to live on what little they can draw without much effort. Without proper exploitation of Nature's resources, there is no further progress; things stagnate.
There
was no conscious code and no life-plan: These men have not yet reached the stage of mental development which makes it possible and imperative for them to discover the true laws of life and the ways of applying them. They have not evolved any code of living based on a conscious perception of an underlying truth or truths. Those that think, think in a habitual pattern based upon set experience, and that lays the norm, the law of the society.
Ignorant
of soul save as a wraith within, These men are not at all conscious of the presence of a soul within their bodies; they have at most a sense of some vague entity. They are not free to choose or to decide the course of their lives. They feel helplessly tied to the wheel of birth and death. Their sensations and feelings run in a dull routine. The master impulse that drives their life is desire, desire for creature wants, for the satisfaction of the lower passions of the body and the vital. All movements turn around this desire and its brood.
In
walls of stone fenced round they worked and warred, Enclosed in their walls of ego and narrow interests, these beings live their lives working for themselves, fighting with others. Even when they work in association and seem to effect a pattern of common benefit, it is really for their own selfish purpose, albeit for an extended selfishness. Or they maltreat creatures weaker or lower than themselves in the scale of life, subject them to pain and even kill them, but they feel no compunction. They are so self-absorbed that nothing seems wrong to them if only it serves their purpose.
Ardent
from the sack of happy peaceful homes They attack those of their own kind who are living peacefully, conquer them, exploit them and their resources, make slaves of them. Or they subject their victims to pain and torture and derive sadistic delight from their sufferings. They imagine themselves to be as powerful and irresistible as the titans and the gods and glory in their strength and power.
An
animal in the instinctive herd Each man of this kind is like every other and together they form a common herd as of animals—with a common bond of desire; they are governed by the automatic instinct of group interest. In serving the group, however, each hopes to serve himself. All are driven by the force of life with the whip of desire and are compelled to act to gain the necessities that are common to all.
Those
like himself, by blood or custom kin, Man in this stage of physical manhood dominated by naked ego may not be hostile to those who are drawn into his life by ties of blood or association; he may even make them a part of his life. They are, however, secondary, meant to subserve his interests. They are allowed to benefit from him but only as dependents serving his pleasure. Even when he gives, it is in return for this acceptance of his lordship.
A
master of his life’s environment, In promoting association with others, in gathering under his own protection men who are disorganised and in search of protective leadership, the man who leads is actuated by the ego-motive of forging a front against a hostile world and conquering its domains. Or, it may be, he feels weak and powerless in the uncaring environment and seeks to set up a human wall to guard his little self. Or again, he feels desolate in his lone existence and seeks companionship to fill his empty life.
In
others than his kind he sensed a foe, If man associates himself with those who have some affinity with him and builds up aggregates to exploit the world for their common benefit, he looks askance at other aggregates that are not in tune with his own ambitions. He shrinks from them, is afraid of them as of an alien hostile agent and looks upon them as his enemies—potential or active—and tries to exterminate them.
Or
he lived as lives the solitary brute; Or, he isolates himself from all. He regards all outside himself as his enemy and lives in perpetual fear, alone, preparing for the onslaught should it ever come. He does not enter the fray by associating himself with a group but keeps to himself, always alert and watchful.
Absorbed
in the present act, the fleeting days, At this stage of development, man lives very much on the surface and in the present. He is caught up in the rapid flow of events in time and is unable to look ahead, beyond the concerns of the moment. Idealism is unknown to his severely practical intelligence. He cannot think in terms of changing the basic conditions of life in this world from those of ignorance and suffering to those of knowledge and joy. Nor is he sensitive to the deeper movements of the soul within himself.
The
gladness that the fugitive moment gave, Such a man is satisfied with what little life yields to him in his brief experiences. The fleeting joys of activity, the sense of power and the satisfaction of the longings of the physical body—that he is able to obtain in association with or in combat against his fellowmen—keep him content. The masqueradings of his selfish desires as love, the mirth and even the sorrows of such a life add spice and colour to his existence.
In
war and clasp these life-wants joined the All-Life, This is how the several jets of the one Life, separated from each other, come together again—either in conflict or in association. Their pressing wants do not allow them to be by themselves. Each is obliged to have recourse to others, and in the contact experiences pleasure or pain. All the while they are not aware of the fact that they are one in their common Self and not really separate, divided entities.
Arming
its creatures with delight and hope The whole movement here is actually the struggle of Nescience (basic to Matter) in its state of semi-awakening to grow into a fuller awareness. The living creatures are endowed with the delight of life and, in spite of all the hostility of the environment, with hope for the affirmation and the enlargement of that delight. Through these impulsions these creatures are goaded to come into contact with others and in the process Nescience tries to become aware of the world though it can be an awareness only of the externals of things.
Instinct
was formed; in memory’s crowded sleep As a result of this effort towards fuller awareness by the half-awakened Nescience, the faculty of spontaneous perception of truth (without having to arrive at it by thought) gets formed. All that is experienced is stored in its impressions in the deep vault of memory. The faculty of sense develops and some of the sensations even take on the form of semi-thoughts in their mentalisation. Through them all, the consciousness emerging from under the veil seeks to grasp the truth of things, and whatever it is able to lay its hands upon is deposited in its subconscient layers to be drawn upon when needed.
So
must the dim being grow in light and force It is thus that the evolving being in Nature grows from his obscure beginnings in Nescience into the progressive gradations of Consciousness, partaking more and more of its light and force till he is able to perceive and aspire for God, to feel the oneness of life and self in the universe and strike out on a career of conscious development towards the fulfilment of his destiny. All happenings and circumstances in life help him in this endeavour. Failures pinpoint his shortcomings and the need to correct them; falls force him to equip himself more adequately and thus progress; the hostile environment forces him to develop and hold his strength in harness; suffering throws him back from externalities into his deeper recesses and he becomes aware of his soul; desire goads him to expand himself for self-aggrandisement and conquest, and in the process his consciousness grows wider and wider embracing, as it does, the enlarging horizons towards which he is pushing.
Half-way she stopped and found her faith no more.
Still
nothing was achieved but to begin, At this stage, the building and forming Force of the emerging consciousness under the veil of semiNescience seems to lose its path. It feels that after all the labour, and at the end of all the exertion, what has been achieved is but little; only a beginning has been made. What looks like growings of awareness are really flashes of ignorance; the mind proper is not yet, it is life that has begun to think mechanically, the layer of mind is just forming in life; the feeling that is awakened is not an action of the soul within, but of the senses. The little that has been achieved is the speeding up of the growth and organisation of life and a kind of joy in life, a quickening of enjoyment by the senses is all that has come to be.
All
was an impetus of half-conscious Force, What is going on at this stage of the evolution of life is a general movement propelled by the Force of a partly-awakened consciousness that is emerging. The little of the spirit that is delivered out of the womb of Nescience is covered under the gathering flow of pulsating life-streams. An inchoate self tries to fix itself on the forms that have come to be; it is trying to embody itself in those forms.
Behind
all moved seeking for vessels to hold Behind this appearance of crude and half-done things, however, there is a movement of deeper import. The Delight of the manifesting Godhead is in search for receptacles to contain it. In the absence of adequate living vessels to hold it, the Bliss is spilt on the unpurified soil of physical matter. What little is poured and held throws the infant soul and mind in the body out of balance, intoxicates them. It needs a more developed body, mind and soul to contain the Bliss coursing in this Creation and give it a firm base for action.
Dim,
uncast yet into spiritual form, There is, motivating all movements, a desire, not yet articulate but dumbly active for the enjoyment of the bliss of life. This desire is in fact a crude form of the Will for manifestation of the still concealed godhead. That will is at the core of every movement, of every form in creation. Its first form in life is one of desire, but as the evolution develops it changes into a higher form, the form of spiritual aspiration and impulsion to realise and manifest the Bliss of the divine Truth in Creation.
A third creation now revealed its face. A mould of body’s early mind was made. A glint of light kindled the obscure World-Force; After the first order where Life meets Matter and the second where Life enters into a bolder and more articulate phase, Aswapathy now comes to see the third order of life-creation. A first and distinct formation of the mind proper is visible. The great Force, which has been active so far mechanically and virtually in the darkness of ignorance, is now enlightened by a ray of light from the plane of mind above. Life begins to be informed by mind.
It
dowered a driven world with the seeing Idea The world is no more driven by a brute and mechanical Force. The Idea which sees the truth of the movement and the direction enters the scene. Action gets more purposive and forceful with the infusion of this Thought-power. All that goes on in the world-movement comes to be observed by an infant thinking being. A new element of thinking mind has been added.
A
difficult evolution from below The struggle of the half-awakened Nescience in Matter to emerge into full awareness could never have succeeded but for the help received from the higher planes of the Mind. A pressure from the Mind-world above acts ceaselessly upon the earth-consciousness and enables the mind-principle hidden in the womb of earth to emerge into the open. It is again this helping action from above that makes it possible for the creative Intelligence to guide things from within even before the self-awareness of mind comes to be.
At
first he saw a dim obscure mind-power
A
current thin, it streamed in life’s vast flow This release of the mind-principle into overt action from below is gradual. The power of this emerging mind is at first obscure and vaguely perceptible amidst the densities of Matter and the engulfing turbidities of life. It is like a thin current constantly exposed to the driving and submerging flow of the waters of life. But it survives and slowly formulates itself into fleeting sensations and palpable feelings. Formation into thinking activity comes much later.
In
the deep midst of an unconscious world The slender current of the early mind runs through the mass of unconsciousness covering the material earth, through the surface movements of agitation thrown up by the upsurge of consciousness and forces its way across the narrow channels open to it. It gathers plentiful experience on its move and assimilates it.
It
flowed emerging into upper light This mind issues from a source that is not patent on the surface; it is born from the veiled depths of the being and grows into dimensions of higher light, reaching out to heights that are beyond its present knowing. From obscurity to light, from the known to the unknown is the ascent of the mind.
There
was no thinking self, aim there was none: At this stage of development, the thinking faculty is not yet evolved. There is, consequently, no conscious aim before the life-movement with the first mind at its apex. There is an all-round pressure for advance, there is a constant seeking for one knows not what.
Only
to the unstable surface rose What is evident on the fluidic surface of the movement is a medley of sensations, sharp dartings of desire, intensities of passion and emotions of the hour, inconsequential interchanges between bodies, muffled longings of heart for heart, faint glowings of perception on the mental horizons without formative thinking, sudden upsurges of will from the subconscious layers of the being and the irresistible demands of hunger from embodied life.
All
was dim sparkle on a foaming top: All in all it is a whirling movement of a Force with an unstable, unsubstantial self at the centre. The movement is totally unconscious. On the quick-changing surfaces of this flood of life there is the glimmer of an infant mind. The life-force in flood is not conscious. The being around which it throws itself in enlarging movement is not yet quite formed, not yet steady. The mind that is just born sparkles but faintly.
Then
came the pressure of a seeing Power Slowly, under the pressure of the leading Intelligence, the diverse movements of life are drawn together around one point that has emerged, luminous and central. This bright point, a far projection of the soul, is a formation representing the one Light of Consciousness at the core of all these varied movements of life.
It
lit the impulse of the half-sentient flood, This emerging centre of the light-point of Consciousness casts its glow on the general movement of life which itself is not yet fully sentient. By its own fixations it gives an appearance of stability to all the movements in flux which centre around it. But that is only a seeming, for life is ever on the move, always at flow.
That strange observing Power imposed its sight.
It
forced on flux a limit and a shape, This creative Intelligence proceeds to place the whole life-movement in the setting of its perspective. The free mobility of the general flux is subjected to control; it is led to flow into meaningful channels; a direction and a shape are given. The unbounded flowings of life-force, imaging the formless nature of the manifesting Spirit, are drawn into purposeful boundaries.
It
fashioned the life-mind of bird and beast, This directing Intelligence builds up the mind in developing grades in the life-formation, first in the form of mentalised reactions to impacts and situations in minor forms of life like the reptile and fish, then an encasement in more evolved forms like those of the bird and the beast, and then, formation in the early crude thinking activity in man. With the thought faculty the mind proper comes into being.
A
finite movement of the Infinite This action of bounding in form the boundless flow of life represents a self-limiting movement of the Infinite Spirit in terms of the finite. Not only in the demarcation of life, but in the self-figuration of the Spirit as the soul in each form, each separate from others, is the outcome of this finitising movement. Where there was utter Nescience there awakes and moves an awareness growing into knowledge, a knowledge that relates to and fortifies the sense of separation in the being. This is a half-knowledge on its way to a fuller knowledge that will reveal the oneness of all, overriding all division.
Its
right to be immortal it reserved, The soul is immortal by its own right but this truth is not made explicit in its embodiment. It is continually exposed, in this world, to the threat of death and the form it occupies serves as a protective wall against this attack. And even in such an uncertain state, the individual existence in time is maintained in relation with the eternal Spirit.
A thinking entity appeared in Space.
A
little ordered world broke into view With the organisation of the mind in man, the character of the world-movement undergoes a change. In place of a chaotic flux of life there emerges an order however limited—and a stability of form. This very fixity acts as a restraining factor on the freedom of the being, but it provides a material base indispensable for action and effective movement in this world.
An
instrument-personality was born, The inner soul puts forward a personality as its instrument to gain experience, to grow in evolution, to manifest. This instrument acts through its nature, a complex of body-life-mind. Its mental intelligence, being narrow, is at first very restricted in its range. It depends and acts on the basis of the physical senses which take note only of objects that are visible in the material way. The pursuit of what is not physically perceptible, but what nevertheless exists, is not within its purview. It does not take cognisance of, much less participate in, the soul's experience of the Infinite Existence behind the veil.
A
reflex reason, Nature-habit’s glass The reasoning faculty, such as it is here, functions more as a medium reflecting the habitual operations of Nature than as a power that thinks and arrives at knowledge on its own. Consequently in its effort to know life, its movement and purpose, it is weighed down and coloured by the ignorance predominating in this Nature. So it takes life as a brief ignorant venture that arrives ultimately at nothing definitive, a transient affair, determined and governed by fate, hoping to benefit by some chance of the moment.
A
little joy and knowledge satisfied Everything about this being is small. In its division from the rest of the universe, it represents a small severed segment of the whole existence; its life is a stretch of small duration against the endlessness of Time; it does not occupy its environment but attaches itself to its periphery; enclosed in its own small movements of mind, life and body it is content with what little joy and bits of knowledge life yields to it
A
thought was there that planned, a will that strove, Whatever little of thought-power and will the being has, they are exercised for the gaining of small objectives: their range is always small. There is exertion, indeed, but the energies that are poured out are out of proportion to the fleeting results that are achieved.
It
knew itself a creature of the mud; Having arisen from obscure matter, with a body that is constituted of that dense substance, this being is very much conscious of its materiality. It lives within the laws of matter as if they were natural to itself and does not seek to go beyond them. Its vision is outward; it looks only through the doors of the physical senses which are "turned outwards". Its look is always below drawn, as it were, by the downward pull of matter. It is only as one moves away from the clamps of physical life that one becomes conscious of the much that is within and above oneself and turns thereto.
A
backward scholar on logic’s rickety bench This little being with its little mind struggling with its inadequate instrument of logic, informed and led by the malgrasping senses, takes parts or aspects for the whole, appearances for reality. It grasps inadequately, even wrongly, the diverse phenomena in the universe. It sees nothing more in the rising and setting of the daily sun than a phenomenon of physical light. It mistakes the skies of changing hue and shining stars for some high paradise of the Gods.
There
was a voice of busy interchange, There is here quite a bustle of movement, but all activity, physical and mental, is of a small, inconsequential type. Life soon spends itself. And the mind that appears as the summit evolute of Nature's labour is really the servant of the body; it is always engrossed in the movements of physical existence, anticipating and helping to fulfil its needs. It has no independent life of its own.
And
tiny egos took the world as means The small ego of each one seeks to draw upon and use the world to satisfy its own crude wants and desires of the flesh and vitality, however temporary these satisfactions may be. Life rises and falls in a fixed course, for its passage is always terminated by death. It looks as if this is a characteristic feature of creation,—as if all movements have to come to a stop, as if all roads must end in death.
As
if for this the soul had coveted birth Is this the true character of the world in which the soul has sought to take birth? Is it only to end its career in a blind alley that it has adventured thus? Is it not rather that the world it has chosen in which to embody itself is a land of wonder, a self-propelling and self-enlarging field providing vast opportunities for experience and endless growth?
This
creature passionate only to survive, Such is the creature of body-life-mind at this stage. Its one aim is somehow to live, to survive all the attacks and hostilities from the environment. Its life-energies are geared to this one aim, its mental energies are always busy in their small self-regarding rounds; both life and mind are occupied with the needs and demands of the physical body. This being grows by what it feeds upon; its life increases by the death of another. It takes into itself what it can seize from the world, but of its own it will not give to others.
Only
it hoped for greatness in its den The ambitions of this small creature that is man are correspondingly small and local. He seeks for expansion just for himself and for his associates; his interests and the field of his exertions are limited. He is more or less like the animal which does not venture outside the rounds of its pasture.
It
knew not the Immortal in its house, Such a man lives only on the surface of his being and therefore is not aware of anything more than his superficial transient self. He does not know that deep within himself there is a self that is immortal, the soul. Consequently he thinks and acts only for the life of the surface person; he does not perceive any other cause to which his life is to be harnessed, a cause larger than his present narrow existence or deeper than his external nature-formation. He has no soul-life.
In
limits only it was powerful; He wields powers but only in small areas within the reach of his limited being. His mind seizes upon such truths as can be put to use for the betterment of a life which is turned outward. The knowledge he seeks for and gains is not for the enlargement of his mental horizon nor for the development of his consciousness but for serving the needs of his physical life; it is always related to the concerns of the body. The body is the master and the mind its slave.
Absorbed
in the little works of its prison-house His is a petty life always moving in the same grooves mechanically, satisfying the same desires and pursuing the same objectives of creature comforts. He is helplessly led to do the rounds again and again by the habit of physical nature but imagines himself to be the master of his life-domain. In truth, however, he is only its slave.
Although
for action, not for wisdom made, His thought-faculty only serves for furthering the self-regarding activity of his physical life, not for acquiring knowledge or gaining wisdom. All the same, this thought-power represents the highest development in his evolution; it is the top of his lowly life. This mind sees only the surfaces of things in the world as reflected by the senses and does not perceive what is behind them.
Out
of a slow confused embroiled self-search Out of these primitive beginnings of helpless serfdom to the physical body, these confused entanglements in the whorls of life-desire, the mind grows slowly in awareness, awareness of its own self and of what is outside it. Obscure and mixed impressions yield to clearer grasps, vagueness to precision. It becomes a ray of search-light in a pervading mass of dense ignorance.
In
this bound thinking’s narrow leadership Thus does life enact here a monotonous play. She is led by a small earthy mind that thinks in narrow grooves. Her field is limited and though her designed themes may be many and varying, the whole movement is repetitive and tiring.
There
were no vast perspectives of the spirit, This life-movement is confined within its narrow boundaries. The vaster horizons proper to the Spirit are not yet. Her familiar pleasures and joys run in the same common rounds. Sudden and new intensities of delight are not for her, neither a happy release into movements of larger and brighter ranges.
This
petty state resembled our human days This order of life with its bounded smallness on every side, seen by Aswapathy on its own plane, is like a state of human life functioning under severe limitations. But human life is capable of change, of transforming progress and enlargement; not so the life-movement in the life-world. This world is set to a fixed type; the same action goes on for all time. Change is possible only on earth which is the appointed field for evolution. Worlds on planes other than that of Earth are typal worlds—unchanging, fixed in their formula of existence.
Existence
bridge-like spanned the inconscient gulfs, What Aswapathy sees is an existence spreading over the deep gulfs of inconscience, dimly visible formation arising out of a state of formlessness, extending from the lower void of Nescience to the upper void of the Spirit. At both the ends of the formed existence is the Void—the dark one below and the bright one above.
A
little light in a great darkness born, Around all floated still the nescient haze. Life here, on this plane, is a slender flame of light that is born and holds itself in a mass of darkness, death and nescience. She is not conscious, not aware of her origin or the direction of her course. There is still the obscuring mist of nescience all around.
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