{"id":2243,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:20","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2243"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:20","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:20","slug":"27-the-supreme-divine-vol-19-essays-on-the-gita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/19-essays-on-the-gita\/27-the-supreme-divine-vol-19-essays-on-the-gita","title":{"rendered":"-27_The Supreme Divine.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tIII <\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tThe Supreme Divine <\/font>1<\/font><\/sup>
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\tA<\/font>LREADY<\/b> what has been said in the seventh
\n\t\t\tchapter provides us with the starting-point of our new and fuller
\n\t\t\tposition and fixes it with sufficient precision. Substantially it
\n\t\t\tcomes to this that we are to move inwardly towards a greater
\n\t\t\tconsciousness and a supreme existence, not by a total exclusion of
\n\t\t\tour cosmic nature, but by a higher, a spiritual fulfilment of all
\n\t\t\tthat we now essentially are. Only there is to be a change from our
\n\t\t\tmortal imperfection to a divine perfection of being. The first idea
\n\t\t\ton which this possibility is founded, is the conception of the
\n\t\t\tindividual soul in man as in its eternal essence and its original
\n\t\t\tpower a ray of the supreme Soul and Godhead, here a veiled
\n\t\t\tmanifestation of him, a being of his being, a consciousness of his
\n\t\t\tconsciousness, a nature of his nature, but in the obscurity of this
\n\t\t\tmental and physical existence self-forgetful of its source, its
\n\t\t\treality, its true character. The second idea is that of the double
\n\t\t\tnature of the Soul in manifestation, \u2014 the original nature in which
\n\t\t\tit is one with its own true spiritual being, and the derived in
\n\t\t\twhich it is subject to the confusions of egoism and ignorance. The
\n\t\t\tlatter has to be cast away and the spiritual has to be inwardly
\n\t\t\trecovered, fulfilled, made dynamic and active. Through an inner
\n\t\t\tself-fulfilment, the opening of a new status, our birth into a new
\n\t\t\tpower, we return to the nature of the Spirit and re-become a portion
\n\t\t\tof the Godhead from whom we have descended into this mortal figure
\n\t\t\tof being. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThere is here at once a departure from the general contemporary mind of Indian
\nthought, a less negating attitude, a greater affirmation. In place of its
\nobsessing idea of a self-annulment of Nature we get the glimpse of an ampler
\nsolution, the principle of a self-fulfilment in divine Nature. There is, even,
\nat least <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n1 Gita, VII. 29-30, VIII.  
\n290<\/i> <\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 290<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

a foreshadowing of the later developments of the religions of Bhakti. Our first
\nexperience of what is beyond our normal status, concealed behind the egoistic
\nbeing in which we live, is still for the Gita the calm of a vast impersonal
\nimmutable self in whose equality and oneness we lose our petty egoistic
\npersonality and cast off in its tranquil purity all our narrow motives of desire
\nand passion. But our second completer vision reveals to us a living Infinite, a
\ndivine immeasurable Being from whom all that we are proceeds and to which all
\nthat we are belongs, self and nature, world and spirit. When we are one with him
\nin self and spirit, we do not lose ourselves, but rather recover our true selves
\nin him poised in the supremacy of this Infinite. And this is done at one and the
\nsame time by three simultaneous movements, \u2014 an integral self-finding through
\nworks founded in his and our spiritual nature, an integral self-becoming through
\nknowledge of the Divine Being in whom all exists and who is all, and \u2014 most
\nsovereign and decisive movement of all \u2014 an integral self-giving through love and
\ndevotion of our whole being to this All and this Supreme, attracted to the
\nMaster of our works, to the Inhabitant of our hearts, to the continent of all
\nour conscious existence. To him who is the source of all that we are, we give
\nall that we are. Our persistent consecration turns into knowledge of him all our
\nknowing and into light of his power all our action. The passion of love in our
\nself-giving carries us up to him and opens the mystery of his deepest heart of
\nbeing. Love completes the triple cord of the sacrifice, perfects the triune key
\nof the
\n highest secret, uttamam rahasyam<\/i>.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAn integral knowledge in our self-giving is the first condition of its effective
\nforce. And therefore we have first of all to know this Purusha in all the powers
\nand principles of his divine existence, tattvatah<\/i>, in the whole harmony
\nof it, in its eternal essence <\/p>\n

and living process. But to the ancient thought all the value of
\n 
\n <\/i> this knowledge, tattvaj\u00f1āna<\/i>, lay in its power for release out
\nof our mortal birth into the immortality of a supreme existence. The Gita
\ntherefore proceeds next to show how this liberation too in the highest degree is
\na final outcome of its own movement of spiritual self-fulfilment. The knowledge
\nof the Purushottama,  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 290<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nit says in effect, is the perfect knowledge of the Brahman. Those
\nwho have resort to Me as their refuge, mām
\nāś<\/font>ritya<\/i>, their divine light,
\ntheir deliverer, receiver and harbourer of their souls, those who turn to Me in
\ntheir spiritual effort towards release from age and death, from the mortal being
\nand its limitations, says Krishna, come to know that Brahman and all the
\nintegrality of the spiritual nature and the entirety of Karma. And because they
\nknow Me and know at the same time the material and the divine nature of being
\nand the truth of the Master of sacrifice, they keep knowledge of Me also in the
\ncritical moment of their departure from physical existence and have at that
\nmoment their whole consciousness in union with Me. Therefore they attain to Me.
\nNo longer bound to the mortal existence, they reach the very highest status of
\nthe Divine quite as effectively as those who lose their separate personality in
\nthe impersonal and immutable Brahman. Thus the Gita closes this important and
\ndecisive seventh chapter. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nHere we have certain expressions which give us in their brief sum the chief
\nessential truths of the manifestation of the supreme Divine in the cosmos. All
\nthe originative and effective aspects of it are there, all that concerns the
\nsoul in its return to integral self-knowledge. First there is that Brahman,
\ntad brahma<\/i>; <\/p>\n

adhyātma<\/i>, second, the principle of the self in Nature;
\nadhibhūta<\/i>
\nand adhidaiva <\/i>next, the objective phenomenon and subjective phenomenon of being;
\nadhiyaj\u00f1a  <\/i>last, the secret of the cosmic
\nprinciple of works and sacrifice. I, the Purushottama (mām<\/i>
\nviduh<\/i>),
\nsays in effect Krishna, I who am above all these things, <\/p>\n

must yet be sought and known through all together and by means of their
\nrelations, \u2014 that is the only complete way for the human consciousness which is
\nseeking its path back towards Me. But these terms in themselves are not at first
\nquite clear or at least they are open to different interpretations, they have to
\nbe made precise in their connotation, and Arjuna the disciple at once asks for
\ntheir elucidation. Krishna answers very briefly, \u2014 nowhere does the Gita linger
\nvery long upon any purely metaphysical explanation; it gives only so much and in
\nsuch a way as will make their truth just seizable for the soul to proceed on to  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 291<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

experience. By that Brahman, a phrase which in the Upanishads is more than once
\nused for the self-existent as opposed to the phenomenal being, the Gita intends,
\nit appears, the immutable self-existence which is the highest self-expression of
\nthe Divine and on whose unalterable eternity all the rest, all that moves and
\n˙<\/i> <\/p>\n

evolves, is founded, aksaram paramam<\/i>. By adhyātma <\/i>it
\nmeans <\/p>\n

svabhāva<\/i>, the spiritual way and law of being of the soul in the supreme
\nNature. Karma, it says, is the name given to the creative impulse and energy,
\nvisargah<\/i>, which looses out things from this <\/p>\n

first essential self-becoming, this Swabhava, and effects, creates, works out
\nunder its influence the cosmic becoming of existences <\/p>\n

in Prakriti. By adhibhūta <\/i>is to be understood all the result of <\/p>\n

mutable becoming, ksaro bhāvah<\/i>. By adhidaiva
\n<\/i>is intended the <\/p>\n

Purusha, the soul in Nature, the subjective being who observes and
\nenjoys as the object of his consciousness all that is this mutable becoming of
\nhis essential existence worked out here by
\n Karma in Nature. By adhiyaj\u00f1a <\/i>, the Lord of works and sacrifice,
\nI mean, says Krishna, myself, the Divine, the Godhead, the Purushottama here
\nsecret in the body of all these embodied existences. All that is, therefore,
\nfalls within this formula. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe Gita immediately proceeds from this brief statement to work out the idea of
\nthe final release by knowledge which it has suggested in the last verse of the
\npreceding chapter. It will return indeed upon its thought hereafter to give such
\nulterior light as is needed for action and inner realisation, and we may wait
\ntill then for a fuller knowledge of all that these terms indicate. But before we
\nproceed farther, it is necessary to bring out as much of the connection between
\nthese things as we are justified in understanding from this passage itself and
\nfrom what has gone before. For here is indicated the Gita’s idea of the process
\nof the cosmos. First there is the Brahman, the highest immutable self-existent
\nbeing which all existences are behind <\/p>\n

the play of cosmic Nature in time and space and causality, deśa-kā<\/font>la-nimitta<\/i>. For by that self-existence alone time and space and
\ncausality are able to exist, and without that unchanging support omnipresent,
\nyet indivisible they could not proceed to their divisions and results and
\nmeasures. But of itself the immutable  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 292<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nBrahman does nothing, causes nothing, determines nothing; it is impartial,
\nequal, all-supporting, but does not select or originate. What then originates,
\nwhat determines, what gives the divine impulsion of the Supreme? what is it that
\ngoverns Karma and actively unrolls the cosmic becoming in Time out of the
\neternal being? It is Nature as Swabhava. The Supreme, the Godhead, the
\nPurushottama is there and supports on his eternal immutability the action of his
\nhigher spiritual Shakti. He displays the divine <\/p>\n

Being, Consciousness, Will or Power, yayedam dhā<\/font>ryate jagat<\/i>: that is the
\nPara Prakriti. The self-awareness of the Spirit in this supreme Nature perceives
\nin the light of self-knowledge the dynamic idea, the authentic truth of whatever
\nhe separates in his own being and expresses it in the Swabhava, the spiritual
\nnature of the Jiva. The inherent truth and principle of the self of each Jiva,
\nthat which works itself out in manifestation, the essential divine nature in all
\nwhich remains constant behind all conversions, perversions, reversions, that is
\nthe Swabhava. All that is in the Swabhava is loosed out into cosmic Nature for
\nher to do what she can with it under the inner eye of the Purushottama. Out of the constant svabhāva<\/i>, out of the essential nature and
\nself-principle of being of each becoming, she creates the varied mutations by
\nwhich she strives to express it, unrolls all her changes in name and form, in
\ntime and space and those successions of condition developed one out of the other
\nin time and space which we call causality,
\nnimitta<\/i>.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAll this bringing out and continual change from state to state is Karma, is
\naction of Nature, is the energy of Prakriti, the worker, the goddess of
\nprocesses. It is first a loosing forth <\/p>\n

of the svabhāva <\/i>into its creative action, visargah<\/i>. The creation <\/p>\n

is of existences in the becoming, bhū<\/font>ta-karah<\/i>, and of all that <\/p>\n

they subjectively or otherwise become, bhāva-karah<\/i>. All taken <\/p>\n

together, it is a constant birth of things in Time, udbhava<\/i>, of which the
\ncreative energy of Karma is the principle. All this mutable becoming emerges by
\na combination of the powers and <\/p>\n

energies of Nature, adhibhūta<\/i>, which constitutes the world and is the
\nobject of the soul’s consciousness. In it all the soul is the enjoying and
\nobserving Deity in Nature; the divine powers of   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 293<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

mind and will and sense, all the powers of its conscious being by which it
\nreflects this working of Prakriti are its godheads,
\nadhidaiva<\/i>. This soul in Nature is therefore the ksara purusa<\/i>, it <\/p>\n

is the mutable soul, the eternal activity of the Godhead: the same soul
\nin the Brahman drawn back from her is the aksara purusa<\/i>, <\/p>\n

the immutable self, the eternal silence of the Godhead. But in the form
\nand body of the mutable being inhabits the supreme Godhead. Possessing at once
\nthe calm of the immutable existence and the enjoyment of the mutable action
\nthere dwells in man the Purushottama. He is not only remote from us in some
\nsupreme status beyond, but he is here too in the body of every being, in the
\nheart of man and in Nature. There he receives the works of Nature as a sacrifice
\nand awaits the conscious self-giving of the human soul: but always even in the
\nhuman creature’s ignorance and egoism he is the Lord of his swabhava and the
\nMaster of all his works, who presides over the law of Prakriti and Karma. From
\nhim the soul came forth into the play of Nature’s mutations; to him the soul
\nreturns through immutable self-existence <\/p>\n

to the highest status of the Divine, param dhā<\/font>ma<\/i>.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nMan, born into the world, revolves between world and world in the action of
\nPrakriti and Karma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him
\nthinks, contemplates and acts, that always he becomes. All that he had been,
\ndetermined his present birth; and all that he is, thinks, does in this life up
\nto the moment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond
\nand in lives yet to be. If birth is a becoming, death also is a becoming, not by
\nany means a cessation. The body is <\/p>\n

abandoned, but the soul goes on its way, tyaktvā<\/font> kalevaram<\/i>. Much then
\ndepends on what he is at the critical moment of his departure. For whatever form
\nof becoming his consciousness is fixed on at the time of death and has been full
\nof that always in his mind and thought before death, to that form he must
\nattain, since the Prakriti by Karma works out the soul’s thoughts and energies
\nand that is in real fact her whole business. Therefore, if the soul in the human
\nbeing desires to attain to the status of the Purushottama, there are two
\nnecessities, two conditions which must be satisfied before that can be possible.
\nHe must have  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 294<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nmoulded towards that ideal his whole inner life in his earthly living; and he
\nmust be faithful to his aspiration and will in his departing. "Whoever leaves
\nhis body and departs" says Krishna <\/p>\n

"remembering me at his time of end, comes to my bhāva<\/i>," that of the
\nPurushottama, my status of being. He is united with the original being of the
\nDivine and that is the ultimate becoming <\/p>\n

of the soul, paro bhāvah<\/i>, the last result of Karma in its return upon
\nitself and towards its source. The soul which has followed the play of cosmic
\nevolution that veils here its essential spiritual <\/p>\n

nature, its original form of becoming, svabhāva<\/i>, and has passed through
\nall these other ways of becoming of its consciousness <\/p>\n

which are only its phenomena, tam tam bhāvam<\/i>, returns to that
\nessential nature and, finding through this return its true self and spirit,
\ncomes to the original status of being which is from the <\/p>\n

point of view of the return a highest becoming, mad-bhāvam<\/i>. In a
\ncertain sense we may say that it becomes God, since it unites itself with nature
\nof the Divine in a last transformation of its own phenomenal nature and
\nexistence. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe Gita here lays a great stress on the thought and state of mind at the time
\nof death, a stress which will with difficulty be understood if we do not
\nrecognise what may be called the self-creative power of the consciousness. What
\nthe thought, the inner <\/p>\n

regard, the faith, śraddhā<\/i>, settles itself upon with a complete
\nand definite insistence, into that our inner being tends to change. This
\ntendency becomes a decisive force when we go to those higher spiritual and
\nself-evolved experiences which are less dependent on external things than is our
\nordinary psychology, enslaved as that is to outward Nature. There we can see
\nourselves steadily becoming that on which we keep our minds fixed and to which
\nwe constantly aspire. Therefore there any lapse of the thought, any infidelity
\nof the memory means always a retardation of the change or some fall in its
\nprocess and a going back towards what we were before, \u2014 at least so long as we
\nhave not substantially and irrevocably fixed our new becoming. When we have done
\nthat, when we have made it normal to our experience, the memory of it remains
\nself-existently because that now is the natural form of our consciousness. In
\nthe critical moment of passing   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 295<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

from the mortal plane of living, the importance of our then state of
\nconsciousness becomes evident. But it is not a deathbed remembrance at variance
\nwith or insufficiently prepared by the whole tenor of our life and our past
\nsubjectivity that can have this saving power. The thought of the Gita here is
\nnot on a par with the indulgences and facilities of popular religion; it has
\nnothing in common with the crude fancies that make the absolution and last
\nunction of the priest, an edifying "Christian" death after an unedifying profane
\nlife or the precaution or accident of a death in sacred Benares or holy Ganges a
\nsufficient machinery of salvation. The divine subjective becoming on which the
\nmind has to be fixed firmly in the moment of the physical death, yam<\/i>
\nsmaran bhāvam tyajati ante kalevaram<\/i>, must have been one into which the
\nsoul was at each moment growing inwardly during <\/p>\n

the physical life, sadā tad-bhāva-bhāvitah<\/i>. "Therefore," says
\nthe <\/p>\n

divine Teacher, "at all times remember me and fight; for if thy mind
\nand thy understanding are always fixed on and given up to Me, mayi
\narpita-mano-buddhih<\/i>, to Me thou shalt surely come. <\/p>\n

For it is by thinking always of him with a consciousness united with
\nhim in an undeviating Yoga of constant practice that one comes to the divine and
\nsupreme Purusha."
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nWe arrive here at the first description of this supreme Purusha, \u2014 the Godhead
\nwho is even more and greater than the Immutable and to whom the Gita gives
\nsubsequently the name of Purushottama. He too in his timeless eternity is
\nimmutable and far beyond all this manifestation and here in Time there dawn on
\nus only faint glimpses of his being conveyed through many varied symbols and
\ndisguises, avyakto aksarah<\/i>. Still he is <\/p>\n

not merely a featureless or indiscernible existence, anirdesyam<\/i>; or he is
\nindiscernible only because he is subtler than the last subtlety of which the
\nmind is aware and because the form of the <\/p>\n

Divine is beyond our thought, anor anīyāmsam acintya-rū<\/font>pam<\/i>. <\/p>\n

This supreme Soul and Self is the Seer, the Ancient of Days and in his
\neternal self-vision and wisdom the Master and Ruler of all existence who sets in
\ntheir place in his being all things that are, <\/p>\n

kavim purānam anuśāsitāram sarvasya dhātāram<\/i>. This supreme Soul is the
\nimmutable self-existent Brahman of whom the Veda 
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 296<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nknowers speak, and this is that into which the doers of askesis enter when they
\nhave passed beyond the affections of the mind of mortality and for the desire of
\nwhich they practise the control of the bodily passions.2<\/font><\/sup> That eternal reality is
\nthe highest step, place, foothold of being (padam<\/i>); therefore is it the
\nsupreme goal of the soul’s movement in Time, itself no movement but a status <\/p>\n

original, sempiternal and supreme, param sthānam ādyam<\/i>.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe Gita describes the last state of the mind of the Yogin in which he passes
\nfrom life through death to this supreme divine existence. A motionless mind, a
\nsoul armed with the strength of Yoga, a union with God in bhakti, \u2014 the union by
\nlove is not here superseded by the featureless unification through knowledge, it
\nremains to the end a part of the supreme force of the Yoga, \u2014 and the life-force
\nentirely drawn up and set between the brows in the seat of mystic vision. All
\nthe doors of the sense are closed, the mind is shut in into the heart, the
\nlife-force taken up out of its diffused movement into the head, the intelligence
\nconcentrated in the utterance of the sacred syllable OM and its conceptive
\nthought in the remembrance of the supreme <\/p>\n

Godhead, mām anusmaran<\/i>. That is the established Yogic way of
\ngoing, a last offering up of the whole being to the Eternal, the Transcendent.
\nBut still that is only a process; the essential condition is the constant
\nundeviating memory of the Divine in <\/p>\n

life, even in action and battle \u2014 mām anusmara yudhya ca <\/i>\u2014 and the
\nturning of the whole act of living into an uninterrupted Yoga, nitya-yoga<\/i>.
\nWhoever does that, finds Me easy to attain, says the Godhead; he is the great
\nsoul who reaches the supreme perfection. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe condition to which the soul arrives when it thus departs from life is
\nsupracosmic. The highest heavens of the cosmic plan are subject to a return to
\nrebirth; but there is no rebirth imposed on the soul that departs to the
\nPurushottama. Therefore whatever fruit can be had from the aspiration of
\nknowledge to the indefinable Brahman, is acquired also by this other and
\ncomprehensive aspiration through knowledge, works and love to the
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n2 The language here is taken bodily from the Upanishads.  
\n<\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 297<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

self-existent Godhead who is the Master of works and the Friend of mankind and
\nof all beings. To know him so and so to seek him does not bind to rebirth or to
\nthe chain of Karma; the soul can satisfy its desire to escape permanently from
\nthe transient and painful condition of our mortal being. And the Gita here, in
\norder to make more precise to the mind this circling round of births and the
\nescape from it, adopts the ancient theory of the cosmic cycles which became a
\nfixed part of Indian cosmological notions. There is an eternal cycle of
\nalternating periods of cosmic manifestation and non-manifestation, each period
\ncalled respectively a day and a night of the creator Brahma, each of equal
\nlength in Time, the long aeon of his working which endures for a thousand ages,
\nthe long aeon of his sleep of another thousand silent ages. At the coming of the
\nDay all manifestations are born into being out of the unmanifest, at the coming
\nof the Night all vanish or are dissolved into it. Thus all these existences
\nalternate helplessly in the cycle of becoming and non-becoming; they come
\n    <\/i>
\n into the becoming again and again, bhū<\/font>tvā<\/font>
\nbhūtvā<\/i>, and they go
\nback constantly into the unmanifest. But this unmanifest is not the original
\ndivinity of the Being; there is another status of his <\/p>\n

existence, bhāvo ‘nyo<\/i>, a supracosmic unmanifest beyond this
\ncosmic non-manifestation, which is eternally self-seated, is not an opposite of
\nthis cosmic status of manifestation but far above and unlike it, changeless,
\neternal, not forced to perish with the perishing of all these existences. "He is
\ncalled the unmanifest immutable, him they speak of as the supreme soul and
\nstatus, and those who attain to him return not; that is my supreme place of <\/p>\n

being, paramam dhāma<\/i>." For the soul attaining to it has escaped out of
\nthe cycle of cosmic manifestation and non-manifestation.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nWhether we entertain or we dismiss this cosmological notion, \u2014 which depends on
\nthe value we are inclined to assign to the knowledge of "the knowers of day and
\nnight," \u2014 the important thing is the turn the Gita gives to it. One might easily
\nimagine that this eternally unmanifested Being whose status seems to have
\nnothing to do with the manifestation or the non-manifestation, must be the ever
\nundefined and indefinable Absolute, and the proper way to reach him is to get
\nrid of all  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 298<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nthat we have become in the manifestation, not to carry up to it our whole inner
\nconsciousness in a combined concentration of the mind’s knowledge, the heart’s
\nlove, the Yogic will, the vital life-force. Especially, bhakti seems
\ninapplicable to the Absolute <\/p>\n

who is void of every relation, avyavahārya<\/i>. "But" insists the
\nGita, \u2014 although this condition is supracosmic and although it is eternally
\nunmanifest, \u2014 still "that supreme Purusha has to be won by a bhakti which turns
\nto him alone in whom all beings exist and by whom all this world has been
\nextended in space." In other words, the supreme Purusha is not an entirely
\nrelationless Absolute aloof from our illusions, but he is the Seer, Creator
\n\u00b4   <\/i>
\nand Ruler of the worlds, kavim anuśāsitāram<\/i>, dhātāram<\/i>, and it is
\nby knowing and by loving Him as the One and the All, <\/p>\n

vā<\/font>sudevah<\/font> sarvam iti<\/i>, that we ought by a union with him of <\/p>\n

our whole conscious being in all things, all energies, all actions to
\nseek the supreme consummation, the perfect perfection, the absolute release.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThen there comes a more curious thought which the Gita has adopted from the
\nmystics of the early Vedanta. It gives the different times at which the Yogin
\nhas to leave his body according as he wills to seek rebirth or to avoid it. Fire
\nand light and smoke or mist, the day and the night, the bright fortnight of the
\nlunar month and the dark, the northern solstice and the southern, these are the
\nopposites. By the first in each pair the knowers of the Brahman go to the
\nBrahman; but by the second the Yogin reaches the "lunar light" and returns
\nsubsequently to human birth. These are the bright and the dark paths, called the
\npath of the gods and the path of the fathers in the Upanishads, and the Yogin
\nwho knows them is not misled into any error. Whatever psycho-physical fact or
\nelse symbolism there may be behind this notion,3<\/font><\/sup> \u2014 it comes down from the age of
\nthe mystics who saw in every physical thing an effective symbol of the
\npsychological
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n3 Yogic experience shows in fact that there is a real psycho-physical truth, not
\nindeed absolute in its application, behind this idea, viz., that in the inner
\nstruggle between the powers of the Light and the powers of the Darkness, the
\nformer tend to have a natural prevalence in the bright periods of the day or the
\nyear, the latter in the dark periods, and this balance may last until the
\nfundamental victory is won.  
\n<\/font> <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 299<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

and who traced everywhere an interaction and a sort of identity of the outward
\nwith the inward, light and knowledge, the fiery principle and the spiritual
\nenergy, \u2014 we need observe only the turn by which the Gita closes the passage:
\n"Therefore at all times be in Yoga." <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nFor that is after all the essential, to make the whole being one with the
\nDivine, so entirely and in all ways one as to be naturally and constantly fixed
\nin union, and thus to make all living, not only thought and meditation, but
\naction, labour, battle, a remembering of God. "Remember me and fight," means not
\nto lose the ever-present thought of the Eternal for one single moment in the
\nclash of the temporal which normally absorbs our minds, and that seems
\nsufficiently difficult, almost impossible. It is entirely possible indeed only
\nif the other conditions are satisfied. If we have become in our consciousness
\none self with all, one self which is always to our thought the Divine, and even
\nour eyes and our other senses see and sense the Divine Being everywhere so that
\nit is impossible for us at any time at all to feel or think of anything as that
\nmerely which the unenlightened sense perceives, but only as the Godhead at once
\nconcealed and manifested in that form, and if our will is one in consciousness
\nwith a supreme will and every act of will, of mind, of body is felt to come from
\nit, to be its movement, instinct with it or identical, then what the Gita
\ndemands can be integrally done. The remembrance of the Divine Being becomes no
\nlonger an intermittent act of the mind, but the natural condition of our
\nactivities and in a way the very substance of the consciousness. The Jiva has
\nbecome possessed of its right and natural, its spiritual relation to the
\nPurushottama and all our life is a Yoga, an accomplished and yet an eternally
\nself-accomplishing oneness.  
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 300<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

III   The Supreme Divine 1   ALREADY what has been said in the seventh chapter provides us with the starting-point of our new and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-19-essays-on-the-gita","wpcat-47-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243","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=2243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}