{"id":2249,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:22","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2249"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:22","slug":"35-the-vision-of-the-world-spirit-the-double-aspect-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\/35-the-vision-of-the-world-spirit-the-double-aspect-vol-19-essays-on-the-gita","title":{"rendered":"-35_The Vision of the World-Spirit The Double Aspect.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n The Vision of the World-Spirit <\/font>1<\/font><\/sup>
\n\t<\/font><\/b>
\n\t\t\t<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n  <\/p>\n

\n
\n E<\/font>VEN WHILE<\/b> the effects of the terrible aspect of this vision are still upon him, the first words uttered by Arjuna after the Godhead has spoken are eloquent of a greater
\nuplifting and reassuring reality behind this face of death and this destruction. “Rightly and in good place,” he cries, “O Krishna,
\ndoes the world rejoice and take pleasure in thy name, the Rakshasas are fleeing from thee in terror to all the quarters and the
\ncompanies of the Siddhas bow down before thee in adoration. How should they not do thee homage, O great Spirit? For thou
\nart the original Creator and Doer of works and greater even than creative Brahma. O thou Infinite, O thou Lord of the gods, O
\nthou abode of the universe, thou art the Immutable and thou art what is and is not and thou art that which is the Supreme. Thou
\nart the ancient Soul and the first and original Godhead and the supreme resting-place of this All; thou art the knower and that
\nwhich is to be known and the highest status; O infinite in form, by thee was extended the universe. Thou art Yama and Vayu and
\nAgni and Soma and Varuna and Prajapati, father of creatures, and the great-grandsire. Salutation to thee a thousand times over
\nand again and yet again salutation, in front and behind and from every side, for thou art each and all that is. Infinite in might and
\nimmeasurable in strength of action thou pervadest all and art every one.”
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut this supreme universal Being has lived here before him with the human face, in the mortal body, the divine Man, the
\nembodied Godhead, the Avatar, and till now he has not known him. He has seen the humanity only and has treated the Divine as
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\n1 Gita, XI. 35-55.
\n\t\t\t<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 388<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

a mere human creature. He has not pierced through the earthly
\nmask to the Godhead of which the humanity was a vessel and a symbol, and he prays now for that Godhead’s forgiveness
\nof his unseeing carelessness and his negligent ignorance. “For whatsoever I have spoken to thee in rash vehemence, thinking
\nof thee only as my human friend and companion, `O Krishna, O Yadava, O comrade,’ not knowing this thy greatness, in negligent error or in love, and for whatsoever disrespect 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 immeasurable. Thou art the father of all this world of the
\nmoving and unmoving; thou art one to be worshipped and the most solemn object of veneration. None is equal to thee, how
\nthen another greater in all the three worlds, O incomparable in might? Therefore I bow down before thee and prostrate my
\nbody and I demand grace of thee the adorable Lord. As a father to his son, as a friend to his friend and comrade, as one dear
\nwith him he loves, so shouldst thou, O Godhead, bear 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 thee even as before crowned and with thy mace
\nand discus. Assume thy four-armed shape, O thousand-armed, O Form universal.”
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nFrom the first words there comes the suggestion that the hidden truth behind these terrifying forms is a reassuring, a
\nheartening and delightful truth. There is something that makes the heart of the world to rejoice and take pleasure in the name
\nand nearness of the Divine. It is the profound sense of that which makes us see in the dark face of Kali the face of the Mother and to
\nperceive even in the midst of destruction the protecting arms of the Friend of creatures, in the midst of evil the presence of a pure
\nunalterable Benignity and in the midst of death the Master of Immortality. From the terror of the King of the divine action the
\nRakshasas, the fierce giant powers of darkness, flee destroyed, defeated and overpowered. But the Siddhas, but the complete
\nand perfect who know and sing the names of the Immortal and live in the truth of his being, bow down before every form of
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 389<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

Him and know what every form enshrines and signifies. Nothing has real need to fear except that which is to be destroyed, the
\nevil, the ignorance, the veilers in Night, the Rakshasa powers. All the movement and action of Rudra the Terrible is towards
\nperfection and divine light and completeness. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nFor this Spirit, this Divine is only in outward form the Destroyer, Time who undoes all these finite forms: but in himself he is the Infinite, the Master of the cosmic Godheads, in whom the
\nworld and all its action are securely seated. He is the original and ever originating Creator, one greater than that figure of creative
\nPower called Brahma which he shows to us in the form of things as one aspect of his trinity, creation chequered by a balance of
\npreservation and destruction. The real divine creation is eternal; it is the Infinite manifested sempiternally in finite things, the
\nSpirit who conceals and reveals himself for ever in his innumerable infinity of souls and in the wonder of their actions and in
\nthe beauty of their forms. He is the eternal Immutable; he is the dual appearance of the Is and Is-not, of the manifest and the
\nnever manifested, of things that were and seem to be no more, are and appear doomed to perish, shall be and shall pass. But
\nwhat he is beyond all these is That, the Supreme, who holds all things mutable in the single eternity of a Time to which all is ever
\npresent. He possesses his immutable self in a timeless eternity of which Time and creation are an ever extending figure.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThis is the Truth of him in which all is reconciled; a harmony of simultaneous and interdependent truths start from and
\namount to the one that is real. It is the truth of a supreme Soul of whose supreme nature the world is a derivation and an
\ninferior figure of that Infinite; of the Ancient of Days who for ever presides over the long evolutions of Time; of the original
\nGodhead of whom Gods and men and all living creatures are the children, the powers, the souls, spiritually justified in their being
\nby his truth of existence; of the Knower who develops in man the knowledge of himself and world and God; of the one Object
\nof all knowing who reveals himself to man’s heart and mind and soul, so that every new opening form of our knowledge
\nis a partial unfolding of him, up to the highest by which he is  
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 390<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nintimately, profoundly and integrally seen and discovered. This is the high supreme Stability who originates and supports and
\nreceives to himself all that are in the universe. By 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. All is an infinity of his material and spiritual
\nforms. He is all the many gods from the least to the greatest; he is the father of creatures and all are his children and his people.
\nHe is the origin of Brahma, the father to the first father of the divine creators of these different races of living things. On this
\ntruth there is a constant insistence. Again it is repeated that he is the All, he is each and every one,
\nsarvah<\/i>. He is the infinite <\/p>\n

Universal and he is each individual and everything that is, the
\none Force and Being in every one of us, the infinite Energy that throws itself out in these multitudes, the immeasurable Will and
\nmighty Power of motion and action that forms out of itself all the courses of Time and all the happenings of the spirit in Nature.
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAnd from that insistence the thought naturally turns to the presence of this one great Godhead in man. There the soul of the
\nseer of the vision is impressed by three successive suggestions. First, it is borne in upon him that in the body of this son of Man
\nwho moved beside him as a transient creature upon earth and sat by his side and lay with him on the same couch and ate with him
\nin the banquet and was the object of jest and careless word, actor in war and council and common things, in this figure of mortal
\nman was all the time something great, concealed, of tremendous significance, a Godhead, an Avatar, a universal Power, a One Reality, a supreme Transcendence. To this occult divinity in which all the significance of man and his long race is wrapped and from
\nwhich all world-existence receives its inner meaning of ineffable greatness, he had been blind. Now only he sees the universal
\nSpirit in the individual frame, the Divine embodied in humanity, the transcendent Inhabitant of this symbol of Nature. He has
\nseen now only this tremendous, infinite, immeasurable Reality of all these apparent things, this boundless universal Form which so
\nexceeds every individual form and yet of whom each individual thing is a house for his dwelling. For that great Reality is equal
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 391<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

and infinite and the same in the individual and in the universe. And at first his blindness, his treatment of this Divine as the
\nmere outward man, his seeing of only the mental and physical relation seems to him a sin against the Mightiness that was
\nthere. For the being whom he called Krishna, Yadava, comrade, was this immeasurable Greatness, this
\nincomparable Might, this
\nSpirit one in all of whom all are the creations. That and not the <\/p>\n

veiling outward humanity, avajānan mānusīm tanum āśritam<\/i>, was what he should have seen with awe and with submission
\nand veneration. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut the second suggestion is that what was figured in the
\nhuman manifestation and the human relation is also a reality which accompanies
\nand mitigates for our mind the tremendous character of the universal vision. The
\ntranscendence and cosmic aspect have to be seen, for without that seeing the
\nlimitations of humanity cannot be exceeded. In that unifying oneness all has to
\nbe included. But by itself that would set too great a gulf between the
\ntranscendent spirit and this soul bound and circumscribed in an inferior Nature.
\nThe infinite presence in its unmitigated splendour would be too overwhelming for
\nthe separate littleness of the limited, individual and natural man. A link is
\nneeded by which he can see this universal Godhead in his own individual and
\nnatural being, close to him, not only omnipotently there to govern all he is by
\nuniversal and immeasurable Power, but humanly figured to support and raise him
\nto unity by an intimate individual relation. The adoration by which the finite
\ncreature bows down before the Infinite, receives all its sweetness and draws
\nnear to a closest truth of companionship and oneness when it deepens into the
\nmore intimate adoration which lives in the sense of the fatherhood of God, the
\nfriendhood of God, the attracting love between the Divine Spirit and our human
\nsoul and nature. For the Divine inhabits the human soul and body; he draws
\naround him and wears like a robe the human mind and figure. He assumes the human
\nrelations which the soul affects in the mortal body and they find in God their
\nown fullest sense and greatest realisation. This is the Vaishnava bhakti of which the seed is here in the Gita’s words, but which received afterwards
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 392<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\na more deep, ecstatic and significant extension. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nAnd from this second suggestion a third immediately arises.
\nThe form of the transcendent and universal Being is to the strength of the liberated spirit a thing mighty, encouraging and
\nfortifying, a source of power, an equalising, sublimating, al- justifying vision; but to the normal man it is overwhelming,
\nappalling, incommunicable. The truth that reassures, even when known, is grasped with difficulty behind the formidable and
\nmighty aspect of all-destructive Time and an incalculable Will and a vast immeasurable inextricable working. But there is too
\nthe gracious mediating form of divine Narayana, the God who is so close to man and in man, the Charioteer of the battle and
\nthe journey, with his four arms of helpful power, a humanised symbol of Godhead, not this million-armed universality. It is
\nthis mediating aspect which man must have for his support constantly before him. For it is this figure of Narayana which
\nsymbolises the truth that reassures. It makes close, visible, living, seizable the vast spiritual joy in which for the inner spirit and
\nlife of man the universal workings behind all their stupendous circling, retrogression, progression sovereignly culminate, their
\nmarvellous and auspicious upshot. To this humanised embodied soul their end becomes here a union, a closeness, a constant
\ncompanionship of man and God, man living in the world for God, God dwelling in man and turning to his own divine ends
\nin him the enigmatic world-process. And beyond the end is a yet more wonderful oneness and inliving in the last transfigurations
\nof the Eternal. <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nThe Godhead in answer to Arjuna’s prayer reassumes his <\/p>\n

own normal Narayana image, svakam rūpam<\/i>, the desired form
\nof grace and love and sweetness and beauty. But first he declares the incalculable significance of the other mighty Image which he
\nis about to veil. “This that thou now seest,” he tells him, “is my supreme shape, my form of luminous energy, the universal, the
\noriginal which none but thou amongst men has yet seen. I have shown it by my self-Yoga. For it is an image of my very Self and
\nSpirit, it is the very Supreme self-figured in cosmic existence and the soul in perfect Yoga with me sees it without any trembling
\n   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 393<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\n

of the nervous parts or any bewilderment and confusion of the mind, because he descries not only what is terrible and overwhelming in its appearance, but also its high and reassuring significance. And thou also shouldst so envīśāge
\nit without fear, without confusion of mind, without any sinking of the members;
\nbut since the lower nature in thee is not yet prepared to look upon it with that
\nhigh strength and tranquillity, I will reassume again for thee my Narayana
\nfigure in which the human mind sees isolated and toned to its humanity the calm,
\nhelpfulness and delight of a friendly Godhead. The greater Form" \u2014 and this is
\nrepeated again after it has disappeared \u2014 “is only for the rare highest souls. The gods themselves ever desire to look upon
\nit. It cannot be won by Veda or austerities or gifts or sacrifice; it can be seen, known, entered into only by that bhakti which
\nregards, adores and loves Me alone in all things.” <\/span> <\/p>\n

\nBut what then is the uniqueness of this Form by which it
\nis lifted so far beyond cognizance that all the ordinary endeavour of human knowledge and even the inmost austerity of its
\nspiritual effort are insufficient, unaided, to reach the vision? It is this that man can know by other means this or that exclusive
\naspect of the one existence, its individual, cosmic or world-excluding figures, but not this greatest reconciling Oneness of
\nall the aspects of the Divinity in which at one and the same time and in one and the same vision all is manifested, all is exceeded
\nand all is consummated. For here transcendent, universal and individual Godhead, Spirit and Nature, Infinite and finite, space
\nand time and timelessness, Being and Becoming, all that we can strive to think and know of the Godhead, whether of the
\nabsolute or the manifested existence, are wonderfully revealed in an ineffable oneness. This vision can be reached only by the absolute adoration, the love, the intimate unity that crowns at their summit the fullness of works and knowledge. To know, to see,
\nto enter into it, to be one with this supreme form of the Supreme becomes then possible, and it is that end which the Gita proposes
\nfor its Yoga. There is a supreme consciousness through which it is possible to enter into the glory of the Transcendent and
\ncontain in him the immutable Self and all mutable Becoming, \u2014   <\/span> <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 394<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

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

\nit is possible to be one with all, yet above all, to exceed world and yet embrace the whole nature at once of the cosmic and the
\nsupracosmic Godhead. This is difficult indeed for limited man imprisoned in his mind and body: but, says the Godhead, “be a
\ndoer of my works, accept me as the supreme being and object, become my bhakta, be free from attachment and without enmity
\nto all existences; for such a man comes to me.” In other words superiority to the lower nature, unity with all creatures, oneness
\nwith the cosmic Godhead and the Transcendence, oneness of will with the Divine in works, absolute love for the One and for God
\nin all, \u2014 this is the way to that absolute spiritual self-exceeding and that unimaginable transformation.
\n  
\n\t\t\t<\/span> <\/p>\n

\n  <\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tPage – 395<\/font><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

XI   The Vision of the World-Spirit 1 The Double Aspect   EVEN WHILE the effects of the terrible aspect of this vision are still…<\/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-2249","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\/2249","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=2249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}