{"id":1418,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:40","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1418"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:40","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:40","slug":"37-the-vision-of-the-world-spirit-the-double-aspect-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13\/37-the-vision-of-the-world-spirit-the-double-aspect-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","title":{"rendered":"-37_The Vision of the World-Spirit – The Double Aspect.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\n
\nELEVEN<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n


\n <\/font><\/b>The Vision of the World-Spirit*<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/font>The Double Aspect<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 
\nE<\/font><\/span><\/b>VEN<\/font> while the effects of the terrible aspect of this vision
\nare still upon him, the first words uttered by Arjuna after the Godhead has
\nspoken are eloquent of a greater uplifting and reassuring reality behind this
\nface of death and this destruction. \u201cRightly and in good place,\u201d he cries, \u201cO
\nKrishna, does the world rejoice and take pleasure in thy name, the Rakshasas
\nare fleeing from thee in terror to all the quarters and the companies of the
\nSiddhas bow down before thee in adoration. How should they not do thee homage,
\nO great Spirit? For thou art the original Creator and Doer of works and greater
\neven than creative Brahma. O thou Infinite, O thou Lord of the gods, O thou abode
\nof the universe, thou art the Immutable and thou art what is and is not and
\nthou art that which is the Supreme. Thou art the ancient Soul and the first and
\noriginal Godhead and the supreme resting-place of this All; thou art the knower
\nand that which is to be known and the highest status; O infinite in form, by
\nthee was extended the universe. Thou art Yama and Vayu and Agni and Soma and
\nVaruna and Prajapati, father of creatures, and the great-grandsire. Salutation
\nto thee a thousand times over and again and yet again salutation, in front and
\nbehind and from every side, for thou art each and all that is. Infinite in
\nmight and immeasurable in strength of action thou pervadest all and art every
\none.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

But this supreme
\nuniversal Being has lived here before him with the human face, in the mortal
\nbody, the divine Man, the embodied Godhead, the Avatar, and till now he has not
\nknown him. He has seen the humanity only and has treated the Divine as a mere
\nhuman creature. He has not pierced through the<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*Gita, XI. 35-55.<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nPage 374<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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earthly mask to the Godhead of
\nwhich the humanity was a vessel and a symbol, and he prays now for that
\nGodhead’s forgiveness of his unseeing carelessness and his negligent ignorance.
\n\u201cFor whatsoever I have spoken to thee in rash vehemence, thinking of thee only
\nas my human friend and companion, `O Krishna, O Yadava, O comrade,’ not knowing
\nthis thy greatness, in negligent error or in love, and for whatsoever
\ndisrespect was shown by me to thee in jest, on the couch and the seat and in the
\nbanquet, alone or in thy presence, I pray forgiveness from thee the
\nimmeasurable. Thou art the father of all this world of the moving and unmoving;
\nthou art one to be worshipped and the most solemn object of veneration. None is
\nequal to thee, how then another greater in all the three worlds, O incomparable
\nin might? Therefore I bow down before thee and prostrate my body and I demand
\ngrace of thee the adorable Lord. As a father to his son, as a friend to his
\nfriend and comrade, as one dear with him he loves, so shouldst thou, O Godhead,
\nbear with me. I have seen what never was seen before and I rejoice, but my mind
\nis troubled with fear. O Godhead, show me that other form of thine. I would see
\nthee even as before crowned and with thy mace and discus. Assume thy four-armed
\nshape, O thousand-armed, O Form universal.\u201d <\/p>\n

From the first
\nwords there comes the suggestion that the hidden truth behind these terrifying
\nforms is a reassuring, a heartening and delightful truth. There is something
\nthat makes the heart of the world to rejoice and take pleasure in the name and
\nnearness of the Divine. It is the profound sense of that which makes us see in
\nthe dark face of Kali the face of the Mother and to perceive even in the midst
\nof destruction the protecting arms of the Friend of creatures, in the midst of evil
\nthe presence of a pure unalterable Benignity and in the midst of death the
\nMaster of Immortality. From the terror of the King of the divine action the
\nRakshasas, the fierce giant powers of darkness, flee destroyed, defeated and
\noverpowered. But the Siddhas, but the complete and perfect who know and sing
\nthe names of the Immortal and live in the truth of his being, bow down before
\nevery form of Him and know what every form enshrines and signifies. Nothing has
\nreal need to fear except that <\/p>\n

\nPage 375<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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which is to be destroyed, the
\nevil, the ignorance, the veilers in Night, the Rakshasa powers. All the
\nmovement and action of Rudra the Terrible is towards perfection and divine
\nlight and completeness. <\/p>\n

For this Spirit,
\nthis Divine is only in outward form the Destroyer, Time who undoes all these
\nfinite forms: but in himself he is the Infinite, the Master of the cosmic
\nGodheads, in whom the world and all its action are securely seated. He is the original
\nand ever originating Creator, one greater than that figure of creative Power
\ncalled Brahma which he shows to us in the form of things as one aspect of his
\ntrinity, creation chequered by a balance of preservation and destruction. The
\nreal divine creation is eternal; it is the Infinite manifested sempiternally in
\nfinite things, the Spirit who conceals and reveals himself for ever in his
\ninnumerable infinity of souls and in the wonder of their actions and in the
\nbeauty of their forms. He is the eternal Immutable; he is the dual appearance
\nof the Is and Is-not, of the manifest and the never manifested, of things that
\nwere and seem to be no more, are and appear doomed to perish, shall be and
\nshall pass. But what he is beyond all these is That, the Supreme, who holds all
\nthings mutable in the single eternity of a Time to which all is ever present.
\nHe possesses his immutable self in a timeless eternity of which Time and
\ncreation are an ever extending figure. <\/p>\n

This is the
\nTruth of him in which all is reconciled; a harmony of simultaneous and
\ninterdependent truths start from and amount to the one that is real. It is the
\ntruth of a supreme Soul of whose supreme nature the world is a derivation and
\nan inferior figure of that Infinite; of the Ancient of Days who for ever
\npresides over the long evolutions of Time; of the original Godhead of whom Gods
\nand men and all living creatures are the children, the powers, the souls,
\nspiritually justified in their being by his truth of existence; of the Knower
\nwho develops in man the knowledge of himself and world and God; of the one
\nObject of all knowing who reveals himself to man’s heart and mind and soul, so
\nthat every new opening form of our knowledge is a partial unfolding of him, up
\nto the highest by which he is intimately, profoundly and integrally seen and
\ndiscovered. This is the <\/p>\n

\nPage 376<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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high supreme Stability who
\noriginates and supports and receives to himself all that are in the universe.
\nBy him in his own existence the world is extended, by his omnipotent power, by
\nhis miraculous self-conception and energy and Ananda of never-ending creation.
\nAll is an infinity of his material and spiritual forms. He is all the many gods
\nfrom the least to the greatest; he is the father of creatures and all are his
\nchildren and his people. He is the origin of Brahma, the father to the first
\nfather of the divine creators of these different races of living things. On
\nthis truth there is a constant insistence. Again it is repeated that he is the
\nAll, he is each and every one, sarvah<\/i>.
\nHe is the infinite Universal and he is each individual and everything that is,
\nthe one Force and Being in every one of us, the infinite Energy that throws
\nitself out in these multitudes, the immeasurable Will and mighty Power of
\nmotion and action that forms out of itself all the courses of Time and all the
\nhappenings of the spirit in Nature. <\/p>\n

And
\nfrom that insistence the thought naturally turns to the presence of this one
\ngreat Godhead in man. There the soul of the seer of the vision is impressed by
\nthree successive suggestions. First, it is borne in upon him that in the body
\nof this son of Man who moved beside him as a transient creature upon earth and
\nsat by his side and lay with him on the same couch and ate with him in the
\nbanquet and was the object of jest and careless word, actor in war and council
\nand common things, in this figure of mortal man was all the time something
\ngreat, concealed, of tremendous significance, a Godhead, an Avatar, a universal
\nPower, a One Reality, a supreme Transcendence. To this occult divinity in which
\nall the significance of man and his long race is wrapped and from which all
\nworld-existence receives its inner meaning of ineffable greatness, he had been blind.
\nNow only he sees the universal Spirit in the individual frame, the Divine
\nembodied in humanity, the transcendent Inhabitant of this symbol of Nature. He
\nhas seen now only this tremendous, infinite, immeasurable Reality of all these apparent
\nthings, this boundless universal Form which so exceeds every individual form and
\nyet of whom each individual thing is a house for his dwelling. For that great
\nReality is equal and infinite and the same in the individual and in <\/p>\n

\nPage 377<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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the universe. And at first his
\nblindness, his treatment of this Divine as the mere outward man, his seeing of
\nonly the mental and physical relation seems to him a sin against the Mightiness
\nthat was there. For the being whom he called Krishna,
\nYadava, comrade, was this immeasurable Greatness, this incomparable Might, this
\nSpirit one in all of whom all are the creations. That and not the veiling
\noutward humanity, avajānanti mānusīm
\ntanumāśritam<\/i>, was what he should have seen with awe and with
\nsubmission and veneration. <\/p>\n

But the second
\nsuggestion is that what was figured in the human manifestation and the human
\nrelation is also a reality which accompanies and mitigates for our mind the
\ntremendous character of the universal vision. The transcendence and cosmic
\naspect have to be seen, for without that seeing the limitations of humanity
\ncannot be exceeded. In that unifying oneness all has to be included. But by
\nitself that would set too great a gulf between the transcendent spirit and this
\nsoul bound and circumscribed in an inferior Nature. The infinite presence in
\nits unmitigated splendour would be too overwhelming for the separate littleness
\nof the limited, individual and natural man. A link is needed by which he can
\nsee this universal Godhead in his own individual and natural being, close to
\nhim, not only omnipotently there to govern all he is by universal and immeasurable
\nPower, but humanly figured to support and raise him to unity by an intimate
\nindividual relation. The adoration by which the finite creature bows down
\nbefore the Infinite, receives all its sweetness and draws near to a closest
\ntruth of companionship and oneness when it deepens into the more intimate
\nadoration which lives in the sense of the fatherhood of God, the friendhood of
\nGod, the attracting love between the Divine Spirit and our human soul and
\nnature. For the Divine inhabits the human soul and body; he draws around him
\nand wears like a robe the human mind and figure. He assumes the human relations
\nwhich the soul affects in the mortal body and they find in God their own
\nfullest sense and greatest realisation. This is the Vaishnava bhakti of which
\nthe seed is here in the Gita’s words, but which received afterwards a more
\ndeep, ecstatic and significant extension. <\/p>\n

And from this
\nsecond suggestion a third immediately arises. <\/p>\n

\nPage 378<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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The form of the transcendent and
\nuniversal Being is to the strength of the liberated spirit a thing mighty,
\nencouraging and fortifying, a source of power, an equalising, sublimating, all-justifying
\nvision; but to the normal man it is overwhelming, appalling, incommunicable.
\nThe truth that reassures, even when known, is grasped with difficulty behind
\nthe formidable and mighty aspect of all-destructive Time and an incalculable Will
\nand a vast immeasurable inextricable working. But there is too the gracious
\nmediating form of divine Narayana, the God who is so close to man and in man,
\nthe Charioteer of the battle and the journey, with his four arms of helpful
\npower, a humanised symbol of Godhead, not this million-armed universality. It
\nis this mediating aspect which man must have for his support constantly before
\nhim. For it is this figure of Narayana which symbolises the truth that
\nreassures. It makes close, visible, living, seizable the vast spiritual joy in
\nwhich for the inner spirit and life of man the universal workings behind all
\ntheir stupendous circling, retrogression, progression sovereignly culminate,
\ntheir marvellous and auspicious upshot. To this humanised embodied soul their
\nend becomes here a union, a closeness, a constant companionship of man and God,
\nman living in the world for God, God dwelling in man and turning to his own
\ndivine ends in him the enigmatic world-process. And beyond the end is a yet
\nmore wonderful oneness and inliving in the last transfigurations of the
\nEternal. <\/p>\n

The Godhead in
\nanswer to Arjuna’s prayer reassumes his own normal Narayana image, svakam rūpam<\/i>, the desired form of
\ngrace and love and sweetness and beauty. But first he declares the incalculable
\nsignificance of the other mighty Image which he is about to veil. \u201cThis that
\nthou now seest,\u201d he tells him, \u201cis My supreme shape, My form of luminous energy,
\nthe universal, the original which none but thou amongst men has yet seen. I
\nhave shown it by My self-Yoga. For it is an image of My very Self and Spirit,
\nit is the very Supreme self-figured in cosmic existence and the soul in perfect
\nYoga with Me sees it without any trembling of the nervous parts or any
\nbewilderment and confusion of the mind, because he descries not only what is
\nterrible and overwhelming in its appearance, but also its high and reassuring <\/p>\n

\nPage 379<\/span><\/p>\n

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significance. And thou also
\nshouldst so envisage it without fear, without confusion of mind, without any
\nsinking of the members; but since the lower nature in thee is not yet prepared to
\nlook upon it with that high strength and tranquillity, I will reassume again
\nfor thee My Narayana figure in which the human mind sees isolated and toned to
\nits humanity the calm, helpfulness and delight of a friendly Godhead. The
\ngreater Form\u201d \u2013 and this is repeated again after it has disappeared \u2013 \u201cis only
\nfor the rare highest souls. The gods themselves ever desire to look upon it. It
\ncannot be won by Veda or austerities or gifts or sacrifice; it can be seen,
\nknown, entered into only by that bhakti which regards, adores and loves Me
\nalone in all things.\u201d <\/p>\n

But what then is
\nthe uniqueness of this Form by which it is lifted so far beyond cognizance that
\nall the ordinary endeavour of human knowledge and even the inmost austerity of
\nits spiritual effort are insufficient, unaided, to reach the vision? It is this
\nthat man can know by other means this or that exclusive aspect of the one
\nexistence, its individual, cosmic or world-excluding figures, but not this
\ngreatest reconciling Oneness of all the aspects of the Divinity in which at one
\nand the same time and in one and the same vision all is manifested, all is
\nexceeded and all is consummated. For here transcendent, universal and
\nindividual Godhead, Spirit and Nature, Infinite and finite, space and time and
\ntimelessness, Being and Becoming, all that we can strive to think and know of
\nthe Godhead, whether of the absolute or the manifested existence, are wonderfully
\nrevealed in an ineffable oneness. This vision can be reached only by the
\nabsolute adoration, the love, the intimate unity that crowns at their summit
\nthe fullness of works and knowledge. To know, to see, to enter into it, to be
\none with this supreme form of the Supreme becomes then possible, and it is that
\nend which the Gita proposes for its Yoga. There is a supreme consciousness
\nthrough which it is possible to enter into the glory of the Transcendent and
\ncontain in him the immutable Self and all mutable Becoming, \u2013 it is possible to
\nbe one with all, yet above all, to exceed world and yet embrace the whole
\nnature at once of the cosmic and the supracosmic Godhead. This is difficult
\nindeed for limited man imprisoned in his mind and body: but, says the Godhead,
\n\u201cbe a <\/p>\n

\nPage 380<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

doer of my works, accept me as
\nthe supreme being and object, become my bhakta, be free from attachment and without
\nenmity to all existences; for such a man comes to me.\u201d In other words
\nsuperiority to the lower nature, unity with all creatures, oneness with the
\ncosmic Godhead and the Transcendence, oneness of will with the Divine in works,
\nabsolute love for the One and for God in all, \u2013 this is the way to that
\nabsolute spiritual self-exceeding and that unimaginable transformation.<\/p>\n

 Page 381<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ELEVEN  The Vision of the World-Spirit*  The Double Aspect     EVEN while the effects of the terrible aspect of this vision are still upon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","wpcat-31-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}