{"id":627,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:19","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=627"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:19","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:19","slug":"31-brahman-purusha-ishwara-maya-prakriti-shakti-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/18-the-life-divine-volume-18\/31-brahman-purusha-ishwara-maya-prakriti-shakti-vol-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","title":{"rendered":"-31_Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara \u00e2\u20ac\u201d Maya, Prakriti, Shakti.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\nC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font>
\nII <\/font> <\/b>\n\t\t<\/p>\n


\nBrahman, Purusha, Ishwara \u2014 Maya, Prakriti, Shakti <\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

                        
\nIt is there in beings indivisible and as if divided.
\n                                                                                       
\n          Gita.<\/i>1<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

                 
\nBrahman, the Truth, the Knowledge, the Infinite.<\/font>
\n
\n                                                                       
\nTaittiriya Upanishad.2<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

                       
\nKnow Purusha and Prakriti to be both eternal without beginning.
\n
                                                                                                                               
\nGita.3<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

                       
\nOne must know Maya as Prakriti and the Master of Maya as the
\n                       
\ngreat Lord of all.
\n
                                                                                           
\nSwetaswatara Upanishad.
\n4<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

                       
\nIt is the might of the Godhead in the world that turns the wheel
\n                       
\nof Brahman. Him one must know, the supreme Lord of all lords,
\n                       
\nthe supreme Godhead above all godheads. Supreme too is his
\n
                       
\nShakti and manifold the natural working of her knowledge and
\n                       
\nher force. One Godhead, occult in all beings, the inner Self of
\n                       
\nall beings, the all-pervading, absolute without qualities, the
\n                       
\noverseer of all actions, the witness, the knower.
\n
                                                                                           
\nSwetaswatara Upanishad.
\n5<\/sup><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

    
\nT<\/font><\/b>here<\/font><\/span>
\nis then a supreme Reality eternal, absolute and infinite. Because it is absolute
\nand infinite, it is in its essence indeterminable. It is indefinable and
\ninconceivable by finite and defining Mind; it is ineffable by a mind-created
\nspeech; it is describable neither by our negations, neti neti,<\/i>\u2014 for we
\ncannot limit it by saying it is not this, it is not that, \u2014 nor by our
\naffirmations, for we cannot fix it by saying it is this, it is that, iti iti<\/i>.
\nAnd yet, though in this way unknowable to us, it is not altogether and in every
\nway unknowable; it is self-evident to itself and, although inexpressible, yet
\nself-evident to a knowledge by identity of which the spiritual being in us must
\nbe capable; for that spiritual being is in its essence and its original and
\nintimate reality not other than this Supreme Existence. But although thus
\nindeterminable to Mind, because of its\n<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

          
\n1<\/sup> XIII. 17.    2<\/sup>
\nII. 1.    3<\/sup> XIII.  20.    4<\/sup>
\nIV. 10.    5<\/sup> VI. 1, 7, 8, 11.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\n

absoluteness and
\ninfinity, we discover that this Supreme and Eternal Infinite determines itself
\nto our consciousness in the universe by real and fundamental truths of its being
\nwhich are beyond the universe and in it and are the very foundation of its
\nexistence. These truths present themselves to our conceptual cognition as the
\nfundamental aspects in which we see and experience the omnipresent Reality. In
\nthemselves they are seized directly, not by intellectual understanding but by a
\nspiritual intuition, a spiritual experience in the very substance of our
\nconsciousness; but they can also be caught at in conception by a large and
\nplastic idea and can be expressed in some sort by a plastic speech which does
\nnot insist too much on rigid definition or limit the wideness and subtlety of
\nthe idea. In order to express this experience or this idea with any nearness a
\nlanguage has to be created which is at once intuitively metaphysical and
\nrevealingly poetic, admitting significant and living images as the vehicle of a
\nclose, suggestive and vivid indication,\u2014a language such as we find hammered out
\ninto a subtle and pregnant massiveness in the Veda and the Upanishads. In the
\nordinary tongue of metaphysical thought we have to be content with a distant
\nindication, an approximation by abstractions, which may still be of some service
\nto our intellect, for it is this kind of speech which suits our method of
\nlogical and rational understanding; but if it is to be of real service, the
\nintellect must consent to pass out of the bounds of a finite logic and accustom
\nitself to the logic of the Infinite. On this condition alone, by this way of
\nseeing and thinking, it ceases to be paradoxical or futile to speak of the
\nineffable: but if we insist on applying a finite logic to the Infinite, the
\nomnipresent Reality will escape us and we shall grasp instead an abstract
\nshadow, a dead form petrified into speech or a hard incisive graph which speaks
\nof the Reality but does not express it. Our way of knowing must be appropriate
\nto that which is to be known; otherwise we achieve only a distant speculation, a
\nfigure of knowledge and not veritable knowledge. <\/p>\n

\n        The supreme Truth-aspect which thus
\nmanifests itself to us is an eternal and infinite and absolute self-existence,
\nself-awareness, self-delight of being; this founds all things and secretly
\nsupports and pervades all things. This Self-existence reveals\n<\/p>\n

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\nitself again in three terms of its essential nature,\u2014Self, Conscious Being or
\nSpirit, and God or the Divine Being. The Indian terms are more
\nsatisfactory,\u2014Brahman the Reality is Atman, Purusha, Ishwara; for these terms
\ngrew from a root of Intuition and, while they have a comprehensive preciseness,
\nare capable of a plastic application which avoids both vagueness in the use and
\nthe rigid snare of a too limiting intellectual concept. The Supreme Brahman is
\nthat which in Western metaphysics is called the Absolute: but Brahman is at the
\nsame time the omnipresent Reality in which all that is relative exists as its
\nforms or its movements; this is an Absolute which takes all relativities in its
\nembrace. The Upanishads affirm that all this is the Brahman; Mind is Brahman,
\nLife is Brahman, Matter is Brahman; addressing Vayu, the Lord of Air, of Life,
\nit is said \u201cO Vayu, thou art manifest Brahman\u201d; and, pointing to man and beast
\nand bird and insect, each separately is identified with the One,\u2014\u201cO Brahman,
\nthou art this old man and boy and girl, this bird, this insect.\u201d Brahman is the
\nConsciousness that knows itself in all that exists; Brahman is the Force that
\nsustains the power of God and Titan and Demon, the Force that acts in man and
\nanimal and the forms and energies of Nature; Brahman is the Ananda, the secret
\nBliss of existence which is the ether of our being and without which none could
\nbreathe or live. Brahman is the inner Soul in all; it has taken a form in
\ncorrespondence with each created form which it inhabits. The Lord of Beings is
\nthat which is conscious in the conscious being, but he is also the Conscious in
\ninconscient things, the One who is master and in control of the many that are
\npassive in the hands of Force-Nature. He is the Timeless and Time; he is Space
\nand all that is in Space; he is Causality and the cause and the effect: He is
\nthe thinker and his thought, the warrior and his courage, the gambler and his
\ndice-throw. All realities and all aspects and all semblances are the Brahman;
\nBrahman is the Absolute, the transcendent and incommunicable, the Supracosmic
\nExistence that sustains the cosmos, the Cosmic Self that upholds all beings, but
\nIt is too the self of each individual: the soul or psychic entity is an eternal
\nportion of the Ishwara; it is his supreme Nature or Consciousness-Force that has
\nbecome the living being in a world\n<\/p>\n

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of
\nliving beings. The Brahman alone is, and because of It all are, for all are the
\nBrahman; this Reality is the reality of everything that we see in Self and
\nNature. Brahman, the Ishwara, is all this by his Yoga-Maya, by the power of his
\nConsciousness-Force put out in self-manifestation: he is the Conscious Being,
\nSoul, Spirit, Purusha, and it is by his Nature, the force of his conscious
\nself-existence that he is all things; he is the Ishwara, the omniscient and
\nomnipotent All-ruler, and it is by his Shakti, his conscious Power, that he
\nmanifests himself in Time and governs the universe. These and similar statements
\ntaken together are all-comprehensive: it is possible for the mind to cut and
\nselect, to build a closed system and explain away all that does not fit within
\nit; but it is on the complete and many-sided statement that we must take our
\nstand if we have to acquire an integral knowledge. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tAn absolute, eternal and infinite Self-existence, Self-awareness,
\n\t\tSelf-delight of being that secretly supports and pervades the universe
\n\t\teven while it is also beyond it, is, then, the first truth of spiritual
\n\t\texperience. But this truth of being has at once an impersonal and a
\n\t\tpersonal aspect; it is not only Existence, it is the one Being absolute,
\n\t\teternal and infinite. As there are three fundamental aspects in which we
\n\t\tmeet this Reality,\u2014Self, Conscious Being or Spirit and God, the Divine
\n\t\tBeing, or to use the Indian terms, the absolute and omnipresent Reality,
\n\t\tBrahman, manifest to us as Atman, Purusha, Ishwara,\u2014so too its power of
\n\t\tConsciousness appears to us in three aspects: it is the self-force of
\n\t\tthat consciousness conceptively creative of all things, Maya; it is
\n\t\tPrakriti, Nature or Force made dynamically executive, working out all
\n\t\tthings under the witnessing eye of the Conscious Being, the Self or
\n\t\tSpirit; it is the conscious Power of the Divine Being, Shakti, which is
\n\t\tboth conceptively creative and dynamically executive of all the divine
\n\t\tworkings. These three aspects and their powers base and comprise the
\n\t\twhole of existence and all Nature and, taken together as a single whole,
\n\t\tthey reconcile the apparent disparateness and incompatibility of the
\n\t\tsupracosmic Transcendence, the cosmic universality and the
\n\t\tseparativeness of our individual existence; the Absolute, cosmic Nature
\n\t\tand ourselves are linked in oneness by this triune\n<\/p>\n

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\naspect of the one Reality. For taken by itself the existence of the Absolute,
\nthe Supreme Brahman, would be a contradiction of the relative universe and our
\nown real existence would be incompatible with its sole incommunicable Reality.
\nBut the Brahman is at the same time omnipresent in all relativities; it is the
\nAbsolute independent of all relatives, the Absolute basing all relatives, the
\nAbsolute governing, pervading, constituting all relatives; there is nothing that
\nis not the omnipresent Reality. In observing the triple aspect and the triple
\npower we come to see how this is possible. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tIf we look at this picture of the Self-Existence and its works as a
\n\t\tunitary unlimited whole of vision, it stands together and imposes itself
\n\t\tby its convincing totality: but to the analysis of the logical intellect
\n\t\tit offers an abundance of difficulties, such as all attempts to erect a
\n\t\tlogical system out of a perception of an illimitable Existence must
\n\t\tnecessarily create; for any such endeavour must either effect
\n\t\tconsistency by an arbitrary sectioning of the complex truth of things or
\n\t\telse by its comprehensiveness become logically untenable. For we see
\n\t\tthat the Indeterminable determines itself as infinite and finite, the
\n\t\tImmutable admits a constant mutability and endless differences, the One
\n\t\tbecomes an innumerable multitude, the Impersonal creates or supports
\n\t\tpersonality, is itself a Person; the Self has a nature and is yet other
\n\t\tthan its nature; Being turns into becoming and yet it is always itself
\n\t\tand other than its becomings; the Universal individualises itself and
\n\t\tthe Individual universalises himself; Brahman is at once void of
\n\t\tqualities and capable of infinite qualities, the Lord and Doer of works,
\n\t\tyet a non-doer and a silent witness of the workings of Nature. If we
\n\t\tlook carefully at these workings of Nature, once we put aside the veil
\n\t\tof familiarity and our unthinking acquiescence in the process of things
\n\t\tas natural because so they always happen, we discover that all she does
\n\t\tin whole or in parts is a miracle, an act of some incomprehensible
\n\t\tmagic. The being of the Self-existence and the world that has appeared
\n\t\tin it are, each of them and both together, a suprarational mystery.
\n\t\tThere seems to us to be a reason in things because the processes of the
\n\t\tphysical finite are consistent to our view and their law determinable,
\n\t\tbut this reason in things, when\n<\/p>\n

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\n

\nclosely examined, seems to stumble at every moment against the irrational or
\ninfrarational and the suprarational: the consistency, the determinability of
\nprocess seems to lessen rather than increase as we pass from matter to life and
\nfrom life to mentality; if the finite consents to some extent to look as if it
\nwere rational, the infinitesimal refuses to be bound by the same laws and the
\ninfinite is unseizable. As for the action of the universe and its significance,
\nit escapes us altogether; if Self, God or Spirit there be, his dealings with the
\nworld and us are incomprehensible, offer no clue that we can follow. God and
\nNature and even ourselves move in a mysterious way which is only partially and
\nat points intelligible, but as a whole escapes our comprehension. All the works
\nof Maya look like the production of a suprarational magical Power which arranges
\nthings according to its wisdom or its phantasy, but a wisdom which is not ours
\nand a phantasy which baffles our imagination. The Spirit that manifests things
\nor manifests itself in them so obscurely, looks to our reason like a Magician
\nand his power or Maya a creative magic: but magic can create illusions or it can
\ncreate astounding realities, and we find it difficult to decide which of these
\nsuprarational processes faces us in this universe. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tBut, in fact, the cause of this impression must necessarily be sought
\n\t\tnot in anything illusory or fantastic in the Supreme or the universal
\n\t\tSelf-existence, but in our own inability to seize the supreme clue to
\n\t\tits manifold existence or discover the secret plan and pattern of its
\n\t\taction. The Self-existent is the Infinite and its way of being and of
\n\t\taction must be the way of the Infinite, but our consciousness is
\n\t\tlimited, our reason built upon things finite: it is irrational to
\n\t\tsuppose that a finite consciousness and reason can be a measure of the
\n\t\tInfinite; this smallness cannot judge that Immensity; this poverty bound
\n\t\tto a limited use of its scanty means cannot conceive the opulent
\n\t\tmanagement of those riches; an ignorant half-knowledge cannot follow the
\n\t\tmotions of an All-Knowledge. Our reasoning is based upon our experience
\n\t\tof the finite operations of physical Nature, on an incomplete
\n\t\tobservation and uncertain understanding of something that acts within
\n\t\tlimits; it has organised on that basis certain conceptions which it
\n\t\tseeks to make general and universal, and\n<\/p>\n

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\nwhatever contradicts or departs from these conceptions it regards as irrational,
\nfalse or inexplicable. But there are different orders of the reality and the
\nconceptions, measures, standards suitable to one need not be applicable to
\nanother order. Our physical being is built first upon an aggregate of
\ninfinitesimals, electrons, atoms, molecules, cells; but the law of action of
\nthese infinitesimals does not explain all the physical workings even of the
\nhuman body, much less can they cover all the law and process of action of man’s
\nsupraphysical parts, his life movements and mind movements and soul movements.
\nIn the body finites have been formed with their own habits, properties,
\ncharacteristic ways of action; the body itself is a finite which is not a mere
\naggregate of these smaller finites which it uses as parts, organs, constituent
\ninstruments of its operations; it has developed a being and has a general law
\nwhich surpasses its dependence upon these elements or constituents. The life and
\nmind again are supraphysical finites with a different and more subtle mode of
\noperation of their own, and no dependence on the physical parts for
\ninstrumentation can annul their intrinsic character; there is something more and
\nother in our vital and mental being and vital and mental forces than the
\nfunctioning of a physical body. But, again, each finite is in its reality or has
\nbehind it an Infinite which has built and supports and directs the finite it has
\nmade as its self-figure; so that even the being and law and process of the
\nfinite cannot be totally understood without a knowledge of that which is occult
\nwithin or behind it: our finite knowledge, conceptions, standards may be valid
\nwithin their limits, but they are incomplete and relative. A law founded upon an
\nobservation of what is divided in Space and Time cannot be confidently applied
\nto the being and action of the Indivisible; not only it cannot be applied to the
\nspaceless and timeless Infinite, but it cannot be applied even to a Time
\nInfinite or a Space Infinite. A law and process binding for our superficial
\nbeing need not be binding on what is occult within us. Again, our intellect,
\nfounding itself on reason, finds it difficult to deal with what is infrarational;
\nlife is infrarational and we find that our intellectual reason applying itself
\nto life is constantly forcing upon it a control, a measure, an artificial
\nprocrustean rule that either succeeds in killing or\n<\/p>\n

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\npetrifying life or constrains it into rigid forms and conventions that lame and
\nimprison its capacity or ends by a bungle, a revolt of life, a decay or
\ndisruption of the systems and superstructures built upon it by our intelligence.
\nAn instinct, an intuition is needed which the intellect has not at its command
\nand does not always listen to when it comes in of itself to help the mental
\nworking. But still more difficult must it be for our reason to understand and
\ndeal with the suprarational; the suprarational is the realm of the spirit, and
\nin the largeness, subtlety, profundity, complexity of its movement the reason is
\nlost; here intuition and inner experience alone are the guide, or, if there is
\nany other, it is that of which intuition is only a sharp edge, an intense
\nprojected ray,\u2014the final enlightenment must come from the suprarational
\nTruth-Consciousness, from a supramental vision and knowledge. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tBut the being and action of the Infinite must not be therefore regarded
\n\t\tas if it were a magic void of all reason; there is, on the contrary, a
\n\t\tgreater reason in all the operations of the Infinite, but it is not a
\n\t\tmental or intellectual, it is a spiritual and supramental reason: there
\n\t\tis a logic in it, because there are relations and connections infallibly
\n\t\tseen and executed; what is magic to our finite reason is the logic of
\n\t\tthe Infinite. It is a greater reason, a greater logic because it is more
\n\t\tvast, subtle, complex in its operations: it comprehends all the data
\n\t\twhich our observation fails to seize, it deduces from them results which
\n\t\tneither our deduction nor induction can anticipate, because our
\n\t\tconclusions and inferences have a meagre foundation and are fallible and
\n\t\tbrittle. If we observe a happening, we judge and explain it from the
\n\t\tresult and from a glimpse of its most external constituents,
\n\t\tcircumstances or causes; but each happening is the outcome of a complex
\n\t\tnexus of forces which we do not and cannot observe, because all forces
\n\t\tare to us invisible,\u2014but they are not invisible to the spiritual vision
\n\t\tof the Infinite: some of them are actualities working to produce or
\n\t\toccasion a new actuality, some are possibles that are near to the
\n\t\tpre-existent actuals and in a way included in their aggregate; but there
\n\t\tcan intervene always new possibilities that suddenly become dynamic
\n\t\tpotentials and add themselves to the nexus, and behind all are
\n\t\timperatives or an\n<\/p>\n

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\nimperative which these possibilities are labouring to actualise. Moreover, out
\nof the same nexus of forces different results are possible; what will come out
\nof them is determined by a sanction which was no doubt waiting and ready all the
\ntime but seems to come in rapidly to intervene and alter everything, a decisive
\ndivine imperative. All this our reason cannot grasp because it is the instrument
\nof an ignorance with a very limited vision and a small stock of accumulated and
\nnot always very certain or reliable knowledge and because too it has no means of
\ndirect awareness; for this is the difference between intuition and intellect,
\nthat intuition is born of a direct awareness while intellect is an indirect
\naction of a knowledge which constructs itself with difficulty out of the unknown
\nfrom signs and indications and gathered data. But what is not evident to our
\nreason and senses, is self-evident to the Infinite Consciousness, and, if there
\nis a Will of the Infinite, it must be a Will that acts in this full knowledge
\nand is the perfect spontaneous result of a total self-evidence. It is neither a
\nhampered evolutionary Force bound by what it has evolved nor an imaginative Will
\nacting in the void upon a free caprice; it is the truth of the Infinite
\naffirming itself in the determinations of the finite. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tIt is evident that such a Consciousness and Will need not act in harmony
\n\t\twith the conclusions of our limited reason or according to a procedure
\n\t\tfamiliar to it and approved of by our constructed notions or in
\n\t\tsubjection to an ethical reason working for a limited and fragmentary
\n\t\tgood; it might and does admit things deemed by our reason irrational and
\n\t\tunethical because that was necessary for the final and total Good and
\n\t\tfor the working out of a cosmic purpose. What seems to us irrational or
\n\t\treprehensible in relation to a partial set of facts, motives, desiderata
\n\t\tmight be perfectly rational and approvable in relation to a much vaster
\n\t\tmotive and totality of data and desiderata. Reason with its partial
\n\t\tvision sets up constructed conclusions which it strives to turn into
\n\t\tgeneral rules of knowledge and action and it compels into its rule by
\n\t\tsome mental device or gets rid of what does not suit with it: an
\n\t\tinfinite Consciousness would have no such rules, it would have instead
\n\t\tlarge intrinsic truths governing automatically conclusion and result,
\n\t\tbut adapting them differently\n<\/p>\n

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\nand spontaneously to a different total of circumstances, so that by this
\npliability and free adaptation it might seem to the narrower faculty to have no
\nstandards whatever. In the same way, we cannot judge of the principle and
\ndynamic operation of infinite being by the standards of finite existence,\u2014what
\nmight be impossible for the one would be normal and self-evidently natural
\nstates and motives for the greater freer Reality. It is this that makes the
\ndifference between our fragmentary mind consciousness constructing integers out
\nof its fractions and an essential and total consciousness, vision and knowledge.
\nIt is not indeed possible, so long as we are compelled to use reason as our main
\nsupport, for it to abdicate altogether in favour of an undeveloped or half-organised
\nintuition; but it is imperative on us in a consideration of the Infinite and its
\nbeing and action to enforce on our reason an utmost plasticity and open it to an
\nawareness of the larger states and possibilities of that which we are striving
\nto consider. It will not do to apply our limited and limiting conclusions to
\nThat which is illimitable. If we concentrate only on one aspect and treat it as
\nthe whole, we illustrate the story of the blind men and the elephant; each of
\nthe blind inquirers touched a different part and concluded that the whole animal
\nwas some object resembling the part of which he had had the touch. An experience
\nof some one aspect of the Infinite is valid in itself; but we cannot generalise
\nfrom it that the Infinite is that alone, nor would it be safe to view the rest
\nof the Infinite in the terms of that aspect and exclude all other viewpoints of
\nspiritual experience. The Infinite is at once an essentiality, a boundless
\ntotality and a multitude; all these have to be known in order to know truly the
\nInfinite. To see the parts alone and the totality not at all or only as a sum of
\nthe parts is a knowledge, but also at the same time an ignorance; to see the
\ntotality alone and ignore the parts is also a knowledge and at the same time an
\nignorance, for a part may be greater than the whole because it belongs to the
\ntranscendence; to see the essence alone because it takes us back straight
\ntowards the transcendence and negate the totality and the parts is a penultimate
\nknowledge, but here too there is a capital ignorance. A whole knowledge must be
\nthere and the reason must become plastic enough to look\n<\/p>\n

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at
\nall sides, all aspects and seek through them for that in which they are one. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tThus too, if we see only the aspect of Self, we may concentrate on its
\n\t\tstatic silence and miss the dynamic truth of the Infinite; if we see
\n\t\tonly the Ishwara, we may seize the dynamic truth but miss the eternal
\n\t\tstatus and the infinite silence, become aware of only dynamic being,
\n\t\tdynamic consciousness, dynamic delight of being, but miss the pure
\n\t\texistence, pure consciousness, pure bliss of being. If we concentrate on
\n\t\tPurusha-Prakriti alone, we may see only the dichotomy of Soul and
\n\t\tNature, Spirit and Matter, and miss their unity. In considering the
\n\t\taction of the Infinite we have to avoid the error of the disciple who
\n\t\tthought of himself as the Brahman, refused to obey the warning of the
\n\t\telephant-driver to budge from the narrow path and was taken up by the
\n\t\telephant’s trunk and removed out of the way; \u201cYou are no doubt the
\n\t\tBrahman,\u201d said the master to his bewildered disciple, \u201cbut why did you
\n\t\tnot obey the driver Brahman and get out of the path of the elephant
\n\t\tBrahman?\u201d We must not commit the mistake of emphasising one side of the
\n\t\tTruth and concluding from it or acting upon it to the exclusion of all
\n\t\tother sides and aspects of the Infinite. The realisation \u201cI am That\u201d is
\n\t\ttrue, but we cannot safely proceed on it unless we realise also that all
\n\t\tis That; our self-existence is a fact, but we must also be aware of
\n\t\tother selves, of the same Self in other beings and of That which exceeds
\n\t\tboth own-self and other-self. The Infinite is one in a multiplicity and
\n\t\tits action is only seizable by a supreme Reason which regards all and
\n\t\tacts as a one-awareness that observes itself in difference and respects
\n\t\tits own differences, so that each thing and each being has its form of
\n\t\tessential being and its form of dynamic nature, svar\\=upa, svadharma,
\n\t\tand all are respected in the total working. The knowledge and action of
\n\t\tthe Infinite is one in an unbound variability: it would be from the
\n\t\tpoint of view of the infinite Truth equally an error to insist either on
\n\t\ta sameness of action in all circumstances or on a diversity of action
\n\t\twithout any unifying truth and harmony behind the diversity. In our own
\n\t\tprinciple of conduct, if we sought to act in this greater Truth, it
\n\t\twould be equally an error to insist on our self alone or to insist on
\n\t\tother selves alone; it is the Self of all on which we have to found\n<\/p>\n

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a
\nunity of action and a total, infinitely plastic yet harmonious diversity of
\naction; for that is the nature of the working of the Infinite. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tIf we look from this viewpoint of a larger more plastic reason, taking
\n\t\taccount of the logic of the Infinite, at the difficulties which meet our
\n\t\tintelligence when it tries to conceive the absolute and omnipresent
\n\t\tReality, we shall see that the whole difficulty is verbal and conceptual
\n\t\tand not real. Our intelligence looks at its concept of the Absolute and
\n\t\tsees that it must be indeterminable and at the same time it sees a world
\n\t\tof determinations which emanates from the Absolute and exists in it,\u2014for
\n\t\tit can emanate from nowhere else and can exist nowhere else; it is
\n\t\tfurther baffled by the affirmation, also hardly disputable on the
\n\t\tpremisses, that all these determinates are nothing else than this very
\n\t\tindeterminable Absolute. But the contradiction disappears when we
\n\t\tunderstand that the indeterminability is not in its true sense negative,
\n\t\tnot an imposition of incapacity on the Infinite, but positive, a freedom
\n\t\twithin itself from limitation by its own determinations and necessarily
\n\t\ta freedom from all external determination by anything not itself, since
\n\t\tthere is no real possibility of such a not-self coming into existence.
\n\t\tThe Infinite is illimitably free, free to determine itself infinitely,
\n\t\tfree from all restraining effect of its own creations. In fact the
\n\t\tInfinite does not create, it manifests what is in itself, in its own
\n\t\tessence of reality; it is itself that essence of all reality and all
\n\t\trealities are powers of that one Reality. The Absolute neither creates
\n\t\tnor is created,\u2014in the current sense of making or being made; we can
\n\t\tspeak of creation only in the sense of the Being becoming in form and
\n\t\tmovement what it already is in substance and status. Yet we have to
\n\t\temphasise its indeterminability in that special and positive sense, not
\n\t\tas a negation but as an indispensable condition of its free infinite
\n\t\tself-determination, because without that the Reality would be a fixed
\n\t\teternal determinate or else an indeterminate fixed and bound to a sum of
\n\t\tpossibilities of determination inherent within it. Its freedom from all
\n\t\tlimitation, from any binding by its own creation cannot be itself turned
\n\t\tinto a limitation, an absolute incapacity, a denial of all freedom of
\n\t\tself-determination; it is this that would be a contradiction, it would
\n\t\tbe an attempt to define\n<\/p>\n

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\nand limit by negation the infinite and illimitable. Into the central fact of the
\ntwo sides of the nature of the Absolute, the essential and the self-creative or
\ndynamic, no real contradiction enters; it is only a pure infinite essence that
\ncan formulate itself in infinite ways. One statement is complementary to the
\nother, there is no mutual cancellation, no incompatibility; it is only the dual
\nstatement of a single inescapable fact by human reason in human language.<\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tThe same conciliation occurs everywhere, when we look with a straight
\n\t\tand accurate look on the truth of the Reality. In our experience of it
\n\t\twe become aware of an Infinite essentially free from all limitation by
\n\t\tqualities, properties, features; on the other hand, we are aware of an
\n\t\tInfinite teeming with innumerable qualities, properties, features. Here
\n\t\tagain the statement of illimitable freedom is positive, not negative; it
\n\t\tdoes not negate what we see, but on the contrary provides the
\n\t\tindispensable condition for it, it makes possible a free and infinite
\n\t\tself-expression in quality and feature. A quality is the character of a
\n\t\tpower of conscious being; or we may say that the consciousness of being
\n\t\texpressing what is in it makes the power it brings out recognisable by a
\n\t\tnative stamp on it which we call quality or character. Courage as a
\n\t\tquality is such a power of being, it is a certain character of my
\n\t\tconsciousness expressing a formulated force of my being, bringing out or
\n\t\tcreating a definite kind of force of my nature in action. So too the
\n\t\tpower of a drug to cure is its property, a special force of being native
\n\t\tto the herb or mineral from which it is produced, and this speciality is
\n\t\tdetermined by the Real-Idea concealed in the involved consciousness
\n\t\twhich dwells in the plant or mineral; the idea brings out in it what was
\n\t\tthere at the root of its manifestation and has now come out thus
\n\t\tempowered as the force of its being. All qualities, properties, features
\n\t\tare such powers of conscious being thus put forth from itself by the
\n\t\tAbsolute; It has everything within It, It has the free power to put all
\n\t\tforth 1<\/font><\/sup>; yet we cannot define the
\n\t\tAbsolute as a quality of courage or a power of healing, we cannot even
\n\t\tsay that these are a characteristic feature of the Absolute, nor can we
\n\t\tmake up a <\/p>\n


\n1<\/sup>The word for creation in Sanskrit means a loosing or putting forth of
\nwhat is in the being.<\/font><\/p>\n


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\nsum of qualities and say \u201cthat is the Absolute\u201d. But neither can we speak of the
\nAbsolute as a pure blank incapable of manifesting these things; on the contrary,
\nall capacity is there, the powers of all qualities and characters are there
\ninherent within it. The mind is in a difficulty because it has to say, \u201cThe
\nAbsolute or Infinite is none of these things, these things are not the Absolute
\nor Infinite\u201d and at the same time it has to say, \u201cThe Absolute is all these
\nthings, they are not something else than That, for That is the sole existence
\nand the all-existence.\u201d Here it is evident that it is an undue finiteness of
\nthought conception and verbal expression which creates the difficulty, but there
\nis in reality none; for it would be evidently absurd to say that the Absolute is
\ncourage or curing-power, or to say that courage and curing-power are the
\nAbsolute, but it would be equally absurd to deny the capacity of the Absolute to
\nput forth courage or curing-power as self-expressions in its manifestation. When
\nthe logic of the finite fails us, we have to see with a direct and unbound
\nvision what is behind in the logic of the Infinite. We can then realise that the
\nInfinite is infinite in quality, feature, power, but that no sum of qualities,
\nfeatures, powers can describe the Infinite.<\/p>\n

\n    We see that the Absolute, the Self, the Divine, the Spirit,
\nthe Being is One; the Transcendental is one, the Cosmic is one: but we see also
\nthat beings are many and each has a self, a spirit, a like yet different nature.
\nAnd since the spirit and essence of things is one, we are obliged to admit that
\nall these many must be that One, and it follows that the One is or has become
\nmany; but how can the limited or relative be the Absolute and how can man or
\nbeast or bird be the Divine Being? But in erecting this apparent contradiction
\nthe mind makes a double error. It is thinking in the terms of the mathematical
\nfinite unit which is sole in limitation, the one which is less than two and can
\nbecome two only by division and fragmentation or by addition and multiplication;
\nbut this is an infinite Oneness, it is the essential and infinite Oneness which
\ncan contain the hundred and the thousand and the million and billion and
\ntrillion. Whatever astronomic or more than astronomic figures you heap and
\nmultiply, they cannot overpass or exceed that Oneness; for, in the language of
\nthe Upanishad, it moves not, yet is always far in front when you would\n<\/p>\n

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\npursue and seize it. It can be said of it that it would not be the infinite
\nOneness if it were not capable of an infinite multiplicity; but that does not
\nmean that the One is plural or can be limited or described as the sum of the
\nMany: on the contrary, it can be the infinite Many because it exceeds all
\nlimitation or description by multiplicity and exceeds at the same time all
\nlimitation by finite conceptual oneness. Pluralism is an error because, though
\nthere is the spiritual plurality, the many souls are dependent and
\ninterdependent existences; their sum also is not the One nor is it the cosmic
\ntotality; they depend on the One and exist by its Oneness: yet the plurality is
\nnot unreal, it is the One Soul that dwells as the individual in these many souls
\nand they are eternal in the One and by the one Eternal. This is difficult for
\nthe mental reason which makes an opposition between the Infinite and the finite
\nand associates finiteness with plurality and infinity with oneness; but in the
\nlogic of the Infinite there is no such opposition and the eternity of the Many
\nin the One is a thing that is perfectly natural and possible.<\/p>\n

\n    Again, we see that there is an infinite pure status and
\nimmobile silence of the Spirit; we see too that there is a boundless movement of
\nthe Spirit, a power, a dynamic spiritual all-containing self-extension of the
\nInfinite. Our conceptions foist upon this perception, in itself valid and
\naccurate, an opposition between the silence and status and the dynamis and
\nmovement, but to the reason and the logic of the Infinite there can be no such
\nopposition. A solely silent and static Infinite, an Infinite without an infinite
\npower and dynamis and energy is inadmissible except as the perception of an
\naspect; a powerless Absolute, an impotent Spirit is unthinkable: an infinite
\nenergy must be the dynamis of the Infinite, an all-power must be the potency of
\nthe Absolute, an illimitable force must be the force of the Spirit. But the
\nsilence, the status are the basis of the movement, an eternal immobility is the
\nnecessary condition, field, essence even, of the infinite mobility, a stable
\nbeing is the condition and foundation of the vast action of the Force of being.
\nIt is when we arrive at something of this silence, stability, immobility that we
\ncan base on it a force and energy which in our superficial restless state would
\nbe inconceivable. The opposition we make is mental and\n<\/p>\n

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\nconceptual; in reality, the silence of the Spirit and the dynamis of the Spirit
\nare complementary truths and inseparable. The immutable silent Spirit may hold
\nits infinite energy silent and immobile within it, for it is not bound by its
\nown forces, is not their subject or instrument, but it does possess them, does
\nrelease them, is capable of an eternal and infinite action, does not weary or
\nneed to stop, and yet all the time its silent immobility inherent in its action
\nand movement is not for a moment shaken or disturbed or altered by its action
\nand movement; the witness silence of the Spirit is there in the very grain of
\nall the voices and workings of Nature. These things may be difficult for us to
\nunderstand because our own surface finite capacity in either direction is
\nlimited and our conceptions are based on our limitations; but it should be easy
\nto see that these relative and finite conceptions do not apply to the Absolute
\nand Infinite. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tOur conception of the Infinite is formlessness, but everywhere we see
\n\t\tform and forms surrounding us and it can be and is affirmed of the
\n\t\tDivine Being that he is at once Form and the Formless. For here too the
\n\t\tapparent contradiction does not correspond to a real opposition; the
\n\t\tFormless is not a negation of the power of formation, but the condition
\n\t\tfor the Infinite’s free formation: for otherwise there would be a single
\n\t\tForm or only a fixity or sum of possible forms in a finite universe. The
\n\t\tformlessness is the character of the spiritual essence, the
\n\t\tspirit-substance of the Reality; all finite realities are powers, forms,
\n\t\tself-shapings of that substance: the Divine is formless and nameless,
\n\t\tbut by that very reason capable of manifesting all possible names and
\n\t\tshapes of being. Forms are manifestations, not arbitrary inventions out
\n\t\tof nothing; for line and colour, mass and design which are the
\n\t\tessentials of form carry always in them a significance, are, it might be
\n\t\tsaid, secret values and significances of an unseen reality made visible;
\n\t\tit is for that reason that figure, line, hue, mass, composition can
\n\t\tembody what would be otherwise unseen, can convey what would be
\n\t\totherwise occult to the sense. Form may be said to be the innate body,
\n\t\tthe inevitable self-revelation of the formless, and this is true not
\n\t\tonly of external shapes, but of the unseen formations of mind and life
\n\t\twhich we seize only by our thought and those sensible forms of which
\n\t\tonly<\/p>\n

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\nthe subtle grasp of the inner consciousness can become aware. Name in its deeper
\nsense is not the word by which we describe the object, but the total of power,
\nquality, character of the reality which a form of things embodies and which we
\ntry to sum up by a designating sound, a knowable name, Nomen. Nomen<\/i> in
\nthis sense, we might say, is
\nNumen<\/i>; the secret Names of the Gods are their power, quality, character
\nof being caught up by the consciousness and made conceivable. The Infinite is
\nnameless, but in that namelessness all possible names, Numens of the gods, the
\nnames and forms of all realities, are already envisaged and prefigured, because
\nthey are there latent and inherent in the All-Existence. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tIt becomes clear from these considerations that the co-existence of the
\n\t\tInfinite and the finite, which is the very nature of universal being, is
\n\t\tnot a juxtaposition or mutual inclusion of two opposites, but as natural
\n\t\tand inevitable as the relation of the principle of Light and Fire with
\n\t\tthe suns. The finite is a frontal aspect and a self-determination of the
\n\t\tInfinite; no finite can exist in itself and by itself, it exists by the
\n\t\tInfinite and because it is of one essence with the Infinite. For by the
\n\t\tInfinite we do not mean solely an illimitable self-extension in Space
\n\t\tand Time, but something that is also spaceless and timeless, a
\n\t\tself-existent Indefinable and Illimitable which can express itself in
\n\t\tthe infinitesimal as well as in the vast, in a second of time, in a
\n\t\tpoint of space, in a passing circumstance. The finite is looked upon as
\n\t\ta division of the Indivisible, but there is no such thing: for this
\n\t\tdivision is only apparent; there is a demarcation, but no real
\n\t\tseparation is possible. When we see with the inner vision and sense and
\n\t\tnot with the physical eye a tree or other object, what we become aware
\n\t\tof is an infinite one Reality constituting the tree or object, pervading
\n\t\tits every atom and molecule, forming them out of itself, building the
\n\t\twhole nature, process of becoming, operation of indwelling energy; all
\n\t\tof these are itself, are this infinite, this Reality: we see it
\n\t\textending indivisibly and uniting all objects so that none is really
\n\t\tseparate from it or quite separate from other objects. \u201cIt stands,\u201d says
\n\t\tthe Gita, \u201cundivided in beings and yet as if divided.\u201d Thus each object
\n\t\tis that Infinite and one in essential being with all other objects that\n<\/p>\n

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\n

\nare also forms and names, \u2014 powers, numens, \u2014 of the Infinite. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tThis incoercible unity in all divisions and diversities is the
\n\t\tmathematics of the Infinite, indicated in a verse of the Upanishads, \u2014
\n\t\t\u201cThis is the complete and That is the complete; subtract the complete
\n\t\tfrom the complete, the complete is the remainder.\u201d For so too it may be
\n\t\tsaid of the infinite self-multiplication of the Reality that all things
\n\t\tare that self-multiplication; the One becomes Many, but all these Many
\n\t\tare That which was already and is always itself and in becoming the Many
\n\t\tremains the One. There is no division of the One by the appearance of
\n\t\tthe finite, for it is the one Infinite that appears to us as the many
\n\t\tfinite: the creation adds nothing to the Infinite; it remains after
\n\t\tcreation what it was before. The Infinite is not a sum of things, it is
\n\t\tThat which is all things and more. If this logic of the Infinite
\n\t\tcontradicts the conceptions of our finite reason, it is because it
\n\t\texceeds it and does not base itself on the data of the limited
\n\t\tphenomenon, but embraces the Reality and sees the truth of all phenomena
\n\t\tin the truth of the Reality; it does not see them as separate beings,
\n\t\tmovements, names, forms, things; for that they cannot be, since they
\n\t\tcould be that only if they were phenomena in the Void, things without a
\n\t\tcommon basis or essence, fundamentally unconnected, connected only by
\n\t\tcoexistence and pragmatic relation, not realities which exist by their
\n\t\troot of unity and, so far as they can be considered independent, are
\n\t\tsecured in their independence of outer or inner figure and movement only
\n\t\tby their perpetual dependence on their parent Infinite, their secret
\n\t\tidentity with the one Identical. The Identical is their root, their
\n\t\tcause of form, the one power of their varying powers, their constituting
\n\t\tsubstance. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tThe Identical to our notions is the Immutable; it is ever the same
\n\t\tthrough eternity, for if it is or becomes subject to mutation or if it
\n\t\tadmits of differences, it ceases to be identical; but what we see
\n\t\teverywhere is an infinitely variable fundamental oneness which seems the
\n\t\tvery principle of Nature. The basic Force is one, but it manifests from
\n\t\titself innumerable forces; the basic substance is one, but it develops
\n\t\tmany different substances and millions of unlike objects; mind is one
\n\t\tbut differentiates itself into many mental states, mind-formations,
\n\t\tthoughts,\n<\/p>\n

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\nperceptions differing from each other and entering into harmony or into
\nconflict; life is one, but the forms of life are unlike and innumerable;
\nhumanity is one in nature, but there are different race types and every
\nindividual man is himself and in some way unlike others; Nature insists on
\ntracing lines of difference on the leaves of one tree; she drives
\ndifferentiation so far that it has been found that the lines on one man’s thumb
\nare different from the lines of every other man’s thumb so that he can be
\nidentified by that differentiation alone, \u2014 yet fundamentally all men are alike
\nand there is no essential difference. Oneness or sameness is everywhere,
\ndifferentiation is everywhere; the indwelling Reality has built the universe on
\nthe principle of the development of one seed into a million different fashions.
\nBut this again is the logic of the Infinite; because the essence of the Reality
\nis immutably the same, it can assume securely these innumerable differences of
\nform and character and movement, for even if they were multiplied a trillionfold,
\nthat would not affect the underlying immutability of the eternal Identical.
\nBecause the Self and Spirit in things and beings is one everywhere, therefore
\nNature can afford this luxury of infinite differentiation: if there were not
\nthis secure basis which brings it about that nothing changes yet all changes,
\nall her workings and creations would in this play collapse into disintegration
\nand chaos; there would be nothing to hold her disparate movements and creations
\ntogether. The immutability of the Identical does not consist in a monotone of
\nchangeless sameness incapable of variation; it consists in an unchangeableness
\nof being which is capable of endless formation of being, but which no
\ndifferentiation can destroy or impair or minimise. The Self becomes insect and
\nbird and beast and man, but it is always the same Self through these mutations
\nbecause it is the One who manifests himself infinitely in endless diversity. Our
\nsurface reason is prone to conclude that the diversity may be unreal, an
\nappearance only, but if we look a little deeper we shall see that a real
\ndiversity brings out the real Unity, shows it as it were in its utmost capacity,
\nreveals all that it can be and is in itself, delivers from its whiteness of hue
\nthe many tones of colour that are fused together there; Oneness finds itself
\ninfinitely in what seems to us to be a falling<\/p>\n

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\naway from its oneness, but is really an inexhaustible diverse display of unity.
\nThis is the miracle, the Maya of the universe, yet perfectly logical, natural
\nand a matter of course to the self-vision and self-experience of the Infinite.  <\/p>\n

\n     For the Maya of Brahman is at once the magic and the
\nlogic of an infinitely variable Oneness; if, indeed, there were only a rigid
\nmonotone of limited oneness and sameness, there would be no place for reason and
\nlogic, for logic consists in the right perception of relations: the highest work
\nof reason is to find the one substance, the one law, the cementing latent
\nreality connecting and unifying the many, the different, the discordant and
\ndisparate. All universal existence moves between these two terms, a
\ndiversification of the One, a unification of the many and diverse, and that must
\nbe because the One and the Many are fundamental aspects of the Infinite. For
\nwhat the divine Self-knowledge and All-knowledge brings out in its manifestation
\nmust be a truth of its being and the play of that truth is its Lila.<\/p>\n

\n     This, then, is the logic of the way of universal being
\nof Brahman and the basic working of the reason, the infinite intelligence of
\nMaya. As with the being of Brahman, so with its consciousness, Maya: it is not
\nbound to a finite restriction of itself or to one state or law of its action; it
\ncan be many things simultaneously, have many co-ordinated movements which to the
\nfinite reason may seem contradictory; it is one but innumerably manifold,
\ninfinitely plastic, inexhaustibly adaptable. Maya is the supreme and universal
\nconsciousness and force of the Eternal and Infinite and, being by its very
\nnature unbound and illimitable, it can put forth many states of consciousness at
\na time, many dispositions of its Force, without ceasing to be the same
\nconsciousness-force for ever. It is at once transcendental, universal and
\nindividual; it is the supreme supracosmic Being that is aware of itself as
\nAll-Being, as the Cosmic Self, as the Consciousness-Force of cosmic Nature, and
\nat the same time experiences itself as the individual being and consciousness in
\nall existences. The individual consciousness can see itself as limited and
\nseparate, but can also put off its limitations and know itself as universal and
\nagain as transcendent of the universe; this is because there is in all these
\nstates or positions or underlying them\n<\/p>\n

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\n

\nthe same triune consciousness in a triple status. There is then no difficulty in
\nthe One thus seeing or experiencing itself triply, whether from above in the
\nTranscendent Existence or from between in the Cosmic Self or from below in the
\nindividual conscious being. All that is necessary for this to be accepted as
\nnatural and logical is to admit that there can be different real statuses of
\nconsciousness of the One Being, and that cannot be impossible for an Existence
\nwhich is free and infinite and cannot be tied to a single condition; a free
\npower of self-variation must be natural to a consciousness that is infinite. If
\nthe possibility of a manifold status of consciousness is admitted, no limit can
\nbe put to the ways of its variation of status, provided the One is aware of
\nitself simultaneously in all of them; for the One and Infinite must be thus
\nuniversally conscious. The only difficulty, which a further consideration may
\nsolve, is to understand the connections between a status of limited or
\nconstructed consciousness like ours, a status of ignorance, and the infinite
\nself-knowledge and all-knowledge. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\t A second possibility of the Infinite Consciousness that must be
\n\t\tadmitted is its power of self-limitation or secondary self-formation
\n\t\tinto a subordinate movement within the integral illimitable
\n\t\tconsciousness and knowledge; for that is a necessary consequence of the
\n\t\tpower of self-determination of the Infinite. Each self-determination of
\n\t\tthe self-being must have its own awareness of its self-truth and its
\n\t\tself-nature; or, if we prefer so to put it, the Being in that
\n\t\tdetermination must be so self-aware. Spiritual individuality means that
\n\t\teach individual self or spirit is a centre of self-vision and
\n\t\tall-vision; the circumference, \u2014 the boundless circumference, as we may
\n\t\tsay, \u2014 of this vision may be the same for all, but the centre may be
\n\t\tdifferent, \u2014 not located as in a spatial point in a spatial circle, but
\n\t\ta psychological centre related with others through a co-existence of the
\n\t\tdiversely conscious Many in the universal being. Each being in a world
\n\t\twill see the same world, but see it from its own self-being according to
\n\t\tits own way of self-nature: for each will manifest its own truth of the
\n\t\tInfinite, its own way of self-determination and of meeting the cosmic
\n\t\tdeterminations; its vision by the law of unity in variety will no doubt
\n\t\tbe\n<\/p>\n

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\n

\nfundamentally the same as that of others, but it will still develop its own
\ndifferentiation, \u2014 as we see all human beings conscious in the one human way of
\nthe same cosmic things, yet always with an individual difference. This
\nself-limitation would be, not fundamental, but an individual specialisation of a
\ncommon universality or totality; the spiritual individual would act from his own
\ncentre of the one Truth and according to his self-nature, but on a common basis
\nand not with any blindness to other-self and other-nature. It would be
\nconsciousness limiting its action with full knowledge, not a movement of
\nignorance. But apart from this individualising self-limitation, there must also
\nbe in the consciousness of the Infinite a power of cosmic limitation; it must be
\nable to limit its action so as to base a given world or universe and to keep it
\nin its own order, harmony, self-building: for the creation of a universe
\nnecessitates a special determination of the Infinite Consciousness to preside
\nover that world and a holding back of all that is not needed for that movement.
\nIn the same way the putting forth of an independent action of some power like
\nMind, Life or Matter must have as its support a similar principle of
\nself-limitation. It cannot be said that such a movement must be impossible for
\nthe Infinite, because it is illimitable; on the contrary, this must be one of
\nits many powers, for its powers too are illimitable: but this also, like other
\nself-determinations, other finite buildings, would not be a separation or a real
\ndivision, for all the Infinite Consciousness would be around and behind it and
\nsupporting it and the special movement itself would be intrinsically aware not
\nonly of itself, but, in essence, of all that was behind it. This would be so,
\ninevitably, in the integral consciousness of the Infinite: but we can suppose
\nalso that an intrinsic though not an active awareness of this kind, demarcating
\nitself, yet indivisible, might be there too in the total self-consciousness of
\nthe movement of the Finite. This much cosmic or individual conscious
\nself-limitation would evidently be possible to the Infinite and can be accepted
\nby a larger reason as one of its spiritual possibilities; but so far, on this
\nbasis, any division or ignorant separation or binding and blinding limitation
\nsuch as is apparent in our own consciousness would be unaccountable.\n<\/p>\n

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\nBut a third power or possibility of the Infinite Consciousness can be admitted,
\nits power of self-absorption, of plunging into itself, into a state in which
\nself-awareness exists but not as knowledge and not as all-knowledge; the all
\nwould then be involved in pure self-awareness, and knowledge and the inner
\nconsciousness itself would be lost in pure being. This is, luminously, the state
\nwhich we call the Superconscience in an absolute sense, \u2014although most of what
\nwe call superconscient is in reality not that but only a higher conscient,
\nsomething that is conscious to itself and only superconscious to our own limited
\nlevel of awareness. This self-absorption, this trance of infinity is again, no
\nlonger luminously but darkly, the state which we call the Inconscient; for the
\nbeing of the Infinite is there though by its appearance of inconscience it seems
\nto us rather to be an infinite non-being: a self-oblivious intrinsic
\nconsciousness and force are there in that apparent non-being, for by the energy
\nof the Inconscient an ordered world is created; it is created in a trance of
\nself-absorption, the force acting automatically and with an apparent blindness
\nas in a trance, but still with the inevitability and power of truth of the
\nInfinite. If we take a step further and admit that a special or a restricted and
\npartial action of self-absorption is possible to the Infinite, an action not
\nalways of its infinity concentrated limitlessly in itself, but confined to a
\nspecial status or to an individual or cosmic self-determination, we have then
\nthe explanation of the concentrated condition or status by which it becomes
\naware separately of one aspect of its being. There can then be a fundamental
\ndouble status such as that of the Nirguna standing back from the Saguna and
\nabsorbed in its own purity and immobility, while the rest is held back behind a
\nveil and not admitted within that special status. In the same way we could
\naccount for the status of consciousness aware of one field of being or one
\nmovement of it, while the awareness of all the rest would be held behind and
\nveiled or, as it were, cut off by a waking trance of dynamic concentration from
\nthe specialised or limited awareness occupied only with its own field or
\nmovement. The totality of the infinite consciousness would be there, not
\nabolished, recoverable, but not evidently active, active only by implication, by
\ninherence or by the instrumentality of
\n <\/p>\n

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\nthe limited awareness, not in its own manifest power and presence. It will be
\nevident that all these three powers can be accepted as possible to the dynamics
\nof the Infinite Consciousness, and it is by considering the many ways in which
\nthey can work that we may get a clue to the operations of Maya.<\/p>\n

\n    This throws light incidentally on the opposition made by our
\nminds between pure consciousness, pure existence, pure bliss and the abundant
\nactivity, the manifold application, the endless vicissitudes of being,
\nconsciousness and delight of being that take place in the universe. In the state
\nof pure consciousness and pure being we are aware of that only, simple,
\nimmutable, self-existent, without form or object, and we feel that to be alone
\ntrue and real. In the other or dynamic state we feel its dynamism to be
\nperfectly true and natural and are even capable of thinking that no such
\nexperience as that of pure consciousness is possible. Yet it is now evident that
\nto the Infinite Consciousness both the static and the dynamic are possible;
\nthese are two of its statuses and both can be present simultaneously in the
\nuniversal awareness, the one witnessing the other and supporting it or not
\nlooking at it and yet automatically supporting it; or the silence and status may
\nbe there penetrating the activity or throwing it up like an ocean immobile below
\nthrowing up a mobility of waves on its surface. This is also the reason why it
\nis possible for us in certain conditions of our being to be aware of several
\ndifferent states of consciousness at the same time. There is a state of being
\nexperienced in Yoga in which we become a double consciousness, one on the
\nsurface, small, active, ignorant, swayed by thoughts and feelings, grief and joy
\nand all kinds of reactions, the other within calm, vast, equal, observing the
\nsurface being with an immovable detachment or indulgence or, it may be, acting
\nupon its agitation to quiet, enlarge, transform it. So too we can rise to a
\nconsciousness above and observe the various parts of our being, inner and outer,
\nmental, vital and physical and the subconscient below all, and act upon one or
\nother or the whole from that higher status. It is possible also to go down from
\nthat height or from any height into any of these lower states and take its
\nlimited light or its obscurity as our place of working while the rest that we
\nare is either temporarily put\n<\/p>\n

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\naway or put behind or else kept as a field of reference from which we can get
\nsupport, sanction or light and influence or as a status into which we can ascend
\nor recede and from it observe the inferior movements. Or we can plunge into
\ntrance, get within ourselves and be conscious there while all outward things are
\nexcluded; or we can go beyond even this inner awareness and lose ourselves in
\nsome deeper other consciousness or some high superconscience. There is also a
\npervading equal consciousness into which we can enter and see all ourselves with
\none enveloping glance or omnipresent awareness one and indivisible. All this
\nwhich looks strange and abnormal or may seem fantastic to the surface reason
\nacquainted only with our normal status of limited ignorance and its movements
\ndivided from our inner higher and total reality, becomes easily intelligible and
\nadmissible in the light of the larger reason and logic of the Infinite or by the
\nadmission of the greater illimitable powers of the Self, the Spirit in us which
\nis of one essence with the Infinite. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\t Brahman the Reality is the self-existent Absolute and Maya is the
\n\t\tConsciousness and Force of this self-existence; but with regard to the
\n\t\tuniverse Brahman appears as the Self of all existence, Atman, the cosmic
\n\t\tSelf, but also as the Supreme Self transcendent of its own cosmicity and
\n\t\tat the same time individual-universal in each being; Maya can then be
\n\t\tseen as the self-power, Atma-Shakti, of the Atman. It is true that when
\n\t\twe first become aware of this aspect, it is usually in a silence of the
\n\t\twhole being or at the least in a silence within which draws back or
\n\t\tstands away from the surface action; this Self is then felt as a status
\n\t\tin silence, an immobile immutable being, self-existent, pervading the
\n\t\twhole universe, omnipresent in all, but not dynamic or active, aloof
\n\t\tfrom the ever mobile energy of Maya. In the same way we can become aware
\n\t\tof it as the Purusha, separate from Prakriti, the Conscious Being
\n\t\tstanding back from the activities of Nature. But this is an exclusive
\n\t\tconcentration which limits itself to a spiritual status and puts away
\n\t\tfrom it all activity in order to realise the freedom of Brahman the
\n\t\tself-existent Reality from all limitation by its own action and
\n\t\tmanifestation: it is an essential realisation, but not the total
\n\t\trealisation. For we can see that the Conscious-Power, the Shakti that
\n\t\tacts and\n<\/p>\n

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\ncreates, is not other than the Maya or all-knowledge of Brahman; it is the Power
\nof the Self; Prakriti is the working of the Purusha, Conscious Being active by
\nits own Nature: the duality then of Soul and World-Energy, silent Self and the
\ncreative Power of the Spirit, is not really something dual and separate, it is
\nbiune. As we cannot separate Fire and the power of Fire, it has been said, so we
\ncannot separate the Divine Reality and its Consciousness-Force, Chit-Shakti.
\nThis first realisation of Self as something intensely silent and purely static
\nis not the whole truth of it, there can also be a realisation of Self in its
\npower, Self as the condition of world-activity and world-existence. However, the
\nSelf is a fundamental aspect of Brahman, but with a certain stress on its
\nimpersonality; therefore the Power of the Self has the appearance of a Force
\nthat acts automatically with the Self sustaining it, witness and support and
\noriginator and enjoyer of its activities but not involved in them for a moment.
\nAs soon as we become aware of the Self, we are conscious of it as eternal,
\nunborn, unembodied, uninvolved in its workings: it can be felt within the form
\nof being, but also as enveloping it, as above it, surveying its embodiment from
\nabove, adhyaksa<\/i>; it is omnipresent, the same in everything, infinite and
\npure and intangible for ever. This Self can be experienced as the Self of the
\nindividual, the Self of the thinker, doer, enjoyer, but even so it always has
\nthis greater character; its individuality is at the same time a vast
\nuniversality or very readily passes into that, and the next step to that is a
\nsheer transcendence or a complete and ineffable passing into the Absolute. The
\nSelf is that aspect of the Brahman in which it is intimately felt as at once
\nindividual, cosmic, transcendent of the universe. The realisation of the Self is
\nthe straight and swift way towards individual liberation, a static universality,
\na Nature-transcendence. At the same time there is a realisation of Self in which
\nit is felt not only sustaining and pervading and enveloping all things, but
\nconstituting everything and identified in a free identity with all its becomings
\nin Nature. Even so, freedom and impersonality are always the character of the
\nSelf. There is no appearance of subjection to the workings of its own Power in
\nthe universe, such as the apparent subjection of the Purusha to Prakriti. To
\nrealise the Self is to realise the eternal freedom of the Spirit.\n<\/p>\n

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\nThe Conscious Being, Purusha, is the Self as originator, witness, support and
\nlord and enjoyer of the forms and works of Nature. As the aspect of Self is in
\nits essential character transcendental even when involved and identified with
\nits universal and individual becomings, so the Purusha aspect is
\ncharacteristically universal-individual and intimately connected with Nature
\neven when separated from her. For this conscious Spirit while retaining its
\nimpersonality and eternity, its universality, puts on at the same time a more
\npersonal aspect;1<\/sup><\/font>  it is the
\nimpersonal-personal being in Nature from whom it is not altogether detached, for
\nit is always coupled with her: Nature acts for the Purusha and by its sanction,
\nfor its will and pleasure; the Conscious Being imparts its consciousness to the
\nEnergy we call Nature, receives in that consciousness her workings as in a
\nmirror, accepts the forms which she, the executive cosmic Force, creates and
\nimposes on it, gives or withdraws its sanction from her movements. The
\nexperience of Purusha-Prakriti, the Spirit or Conscious Being in its relations
\nto Nature, is of immense pragmatic importance; for on these relations the whole
\nplay of the consciousness depends in the embodied being. If the Purusha in us is
\npassive and allows Nature to act, accepting all she imposes on him, giving a
\nconstant automatic sanction, then the soul in mind, life, body, the mental,
\nvital, physical being in us, becomes subject to our nature, ruled by its
\nformation, driven by its activities; that is the normal state of our ignorance.
\nIf the Purusha in us becomes aware of itself as the Witness and stands back from
\nNature, that is the first step to the soul’s freedom; for it becomes detached,
\nand it is possible then to know Nature and her processes and in all
\nindependence, since we are no longer involved in her works, to accept or not to
\naccept, to make the sanction no longer automatic but free and effective; we can
\nchoose what she shall do or not do in us, or we can stand back altogether from
\nher works and withdraw easily into the Self’s spiritual silence, or we can
\nreject her present formations and rise to a spiritual level of existence and
\nfrom there re-create our\n<\/p>\n


\n1<\/sup> The Sankhya philosophy stresses this personal aspect, makes the Purusha
\nmany, plural, and assigns universality to Nature; in this view each soul is an
\nindependent existence although all souls experience a common universal Nature.
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

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\nexistence. The Purusha can cease to be subject, anisa<\/i>, and become lord of
\nits nature,
\nIsvara<\/i>. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tIn the philosophy of the Sankhyas we find developed most thoroughly the
\n\t\tmetaphysical idea of Purusha-Prakriti. These two are eternally separate
\n\t\tentities, but in relation to each other. Prakriti is Nature-power, an
\n\t\texecutive Power, it is Energy apart from Consciousness; for
\n\t\tConsciousness belongs to the Purusha, Prakriti without Purusha is inert,
\n\t\tmechanical, inconscient. Prakriti develops as its formal self and basis
\n\t\tof action primal Matter and in it manifests life and sense and mind and
\n\t\tintelligence; but intelligence too, since it is part of Nature and its
\n\t\tproduct in primal Matter, is also inert, mechanical, inconscient, \u2014 a
\n\t\tconception which sheds a certain light on the order and perfectly
\n\t\trelated workings of the Inconscient in the material universe: it is the
\n\t\tlight of the soul, the Spirit, that is imparted to the mechanical
\n\t\tworkings of sense-mind and intelligence, they become conscious by its
\n\t\tconsciousness, even as they become active only by the assent of the
\n\t\tspirit. The Purusha becomes free by drawing back from Prakriti; it
\n\t\tbecomes master of her by refusing to be involved in Matter. Nature acts
\n\t\tby three principles, modes or qualities of its stuff and its action,
\n\t\twhich in us become the fundamental modes of our psychological and
\n\t\tphysical substance and its workings, the principle of inertia, the
\n\t\tprinciple of kinesis and the principle of balance, light and harmony:
\n\t\twhen these are in unequal motion, her action takes place; when they fall
\n\t\tinto equilibrium she passes into quiescence. Purusha, conscious being,
\n\t\tis plural, not one and single, while Nature is one: it would seem to
\n\t\tfollow that whatever principle of oneness we find in existence belongs
\n\t\tto Nature, but each soul is independent and unique, sole to itself and
\n\t\tseparate whether in its enjoyment of Nature or its liberation from
\n\t\tNature. All these positions of the Sankhya we find to be perfectly valid
\n\t\tin experience when we come into direct inner contact with the realities
\n\t\tof individual soul and universal Nature; but they are pragmatic truths
\n\t\tand we are not bound to accept them as the whole or the fundamental
\n\t\ttruth either of self or of Nature. Prakriti presents itself as an
\n\t\tinconscient Energy in the material world, but, as the scale of
\n\t\tconsciousness rises, she reveals herself more and more as a conscious
\n\t\tforce and we\n<\/p>\n

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\nperceive that even her inconscience concealed a secret consciousness; so too
\nconscious being is many in its individual souls, but in its self we can
\nexperience it as one in all and one in its own essential existence. Moreover,
\nthe experience of soul and Nature as dual is true, but the experience of their
\nunity has also its validity. If Nature or Energy is able to impose its forms and
\nworkings on Being, it can only be because it is Nature or Energy of Being and so
\nthe Being can accept them as its own; if the Being can become lord of Nature, it
\nmust be because it is its own Nature which it has passively watched doing its
\nwork, but can control and master; even in its passivity its consent is necessary
\nto the action of Prakriti and this relation shows sufficiently that the two are
\nnot alien to each other. The duality is a position taken up, a double status
\naccepted for the operations of the self-manifestation of the being; but there is
\nno eternal and fundamental separateness and dualism of Being and its
\nConsciousness-Force, of the Soul and Nature. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\t  It is the Reality, the Self, that takes the position of the Conscious
\n\t\tBeing regarding and accepting or ruling the works of its own Nature. An
\n\t\tapparent duality is created in order that there may be a free action of
\n\t\tNature working itself out with the support of the Spirit and again a
\n\t\tfree and masterful action of the Spirit controlling and working out
\n\t\tNature. This duality is also necessary that the Spirit may be at any
\n\t\ttime at liberty to draw back from any formation of its Nature and
\n\t\tdissolve all formation or accept or enforce a new or a higher formation.
\n\t\tThese are very evident possibilities of the Spirit in its dealings with
\n\t\tits own Force and they can be observed and verified in our own
\n\t\texperience; they are logical results of the powers of the Infinite
\n\t\tConsciousness, powers which we have seen to be native to its infinity.
\n\t\tThe Purusha aspect and the Prakriti aspect go always together and
\n\t\twhatever status Nature or Consciousness-Force in action assumes,
\n\t\tmanifests or develops, there is a corresponding status of the Spirit. In
\n\t\tits supreme status the Spirit is the supreme Conscious Being,
\n\t\tPurushottama, and the Consciousness-Force is his supreme Nature,
\n\t\tPara-Prakriti. In each status of the gradations of Nature, the Spirit
\n\t\ttakes a poise of its being proper to that gradation; in Mind-Nature it
\n\t\tbecomes the mental being,\n<\/p>\n

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in
\nLife-Nature it becomes the vital being, in nature of Matter it becomes the
\nphysical being, in Supermind it becomes the Being of Knowledge; in the supreme
\nspiritual status it becomes the Being of Bliss and pure Existence. In us, in the
\nembodied individual, it stands behind all as the psychic Entity, the inner Self
\nsupporting the other formulations of our consciousness and spiritual existence.
\nThe Purusha, individual in us, is cosmic in the cosmos, transcendent in the
\ntranscendence: the identity with the Self is apparent, but it is the Self in its
\npure impersonal-personal status of a Spirit in things and beings, \u2014 impersonal
\nbecause undifferentiated by personal quality, personal because it presides over
\nthe individualisations of self in each individual, \u2014 which deals with the works
\nof its Consciousness-Force, its executive force of self-nature, in whatever
\npoise is necessary for that purpose.<\/p>\n

    
\n\t\tBut it is evident that whatever the posture taken or relation formed in
\n\t\tany individual nodus of Purusha-Prakriti, the Being is in a fundamental
\n\t\tcosmic relation lord or ruler of its nature: for even when it allows
\n\t\tNature to have its own way with it, its consent is necessary to support
\n\t\ther workings. This comes out in its fullest revelation in the third
\n\t\taspect of the Reality, the Divine Being who is the master and creator of
\n\t\tthe universe. Here the supreme Person, the Being in its transcendental
\n\t\tand cosmic consciousness and force, comes to the front, omnipotent,
\n\t\tomniscient, the controller of all energies, the Conscious in all that is
\n\t\tconscient or inconscient, the Inhabitant of all souls and minds and
\n\t\thearts and bodies, the Ruler or Overruler of all works, the Enjoyer of
\n\t\tall delight, the Creator who has built all things in his own being, the
\n\t\tAll-Person of whom all beings are personalities, the Power from whom are
\n\t\tall powers, the Self, the Spirit in all, by his being the Father of all
\n\t\tthat is, in his Consciousness-Force the Divine Mother, the Friend of all
\n\t\tcreatures, the All-blissful and All-beautiful of whom beauty and joy are
\n\t\tthe revelation, the All-Beloved and All-Lover. In a certain sense, so
\n\t\tseen and understood, this becomes the most comprehensive of the aspects
\n\t\tof the Reality, since here all are united in a single formulation; for
\n\t\tthe Ishwara is supracosmic as well as intracosmic; He is that which
\n\t\texceeds and inhabits and supports all individuality; He is\n<\/p>\n

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\nthe supreme and universal Brahman, the Absolute, the supreme Self, the supreme
\nPurusha.
\n1<\/font><\/sup> But, very clearly, this is not the personal
\nGod of popular religions, a being limited by his qualities, individual and
\nseparate from all others; for all such personal gods are only limited
\nrepresentations or names and divine personalities of the one Ishwara. Neither is
\nthis the Saguna Brahman active and possessed of qualities, for that is only one
\nside of the being of the Ishwara; the Nirguna immobile and without qualities is
\nanother aspect of His existence. Ishwara is Brahman the Reality, Self, Spirit,
\nrevealed as possessor, enjoyer of his own self-existence, creator of the
\nuniverse and one with it, Pantheos, and yet superior to it, the Eternal, the
\nInfinite, the Ineffable, the Divine Transcendence. <\/p>\n

     
\n\t\tThe sharp opposition made between personality and impersonality by our
\n\t\tmental way of thinking is a creation of the mind based on the
\n\t\tappearances of the material world; for here in terrestrial existence the
\n\t\tInconscient from which everything takes its origin appears as something
\n\t\tentirely impersonal; Nature, the inconscient Energy, is entirely
\n\t\timpersonal in her manifest essence and dealings; all Forces wear this
\n\t\tmask of impersonality, all qualities and powers, Love and Delight and
\n\t\tConsciousness itself, have this aspect. Personality makes its apparition
\n\t\tas a creation of consciousness in an impersonal world; it is a
\n\t\tlimitation by a restricted formation of powers, qualities, habitual
\n\t\tforces of the nature-action, an imprisonment in a limited circle of
\n\t\tself-experience which we have to transcend,\u2014to lose personality is
\n\t\tnecessary if we are to gain universality, still more necessary if we are
\n\t\tto rise into the Transcendence. But what we thus call personality is
\n\t\tonly a formation of superficial consciousness; behind it is the Person
\n\t\twho takes on various personalities, who can have at the same time many
\n\t\tpersonalities but is himself one, real, eternal. If we look at things
\n\t\tfrom a larger point of view, we might say that what is impersonal is
\n\t\tonly a power of the Person: existence itself has no meaning without an
\n\t\tExistent, consciousness has no standing-place if there is none who is
\n\t\tconscious, delight is useless and invalid without an enjoyer, love can
\n\t\thave no foundation or fulfilment if there is no lover, all-power must be
\n\t\totiose if\n<\/p>\n

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\nthere is not an Almighty. For what we mean by Person is conscious being; even if
\nthis emerges here as a term or product of the Inconscient, it is not that in
\nreality: for it is the Inconscient itself that is a term of the secret
\nConsciousness; what emerges is greater than that in which it emerges, as Mind is
\ngreater than Matter, Soul than Mind; Spirit, most secret of all, the supreme
\nemergence, the last revelation, is the greatest of all, and Spirit is the
\nPurusha, the All-Person, the omnipresent Conscious Being. It is the mind’s
\nignorance of this true Person in us, its confusion of person with our experience
\nof ego and limited personality, the misleading phenomenon of the emergence of
\nlimited consciousness and personality in an inconscient existence that have made
\nus create an opposition between these two aspects of the Reality, but in truth
\nthere is no opposition. An eternal infinite self-existence is the supreme
\nreality, but the supreme transcendent eternal Being, Self and Spirit, \u2014 an
\ninfinite Person, we may say, because his being is the essence and source of all
\npersonality, \u2014 is the reality and meaning of self-existence: so too the cosmic
\nSelf, Spirit, Being, Person is the reality and meaning of cosmic existence; the
\nsame Self, Spirit, Being or Person manifesting its multiplicity is the reality
\nand meaning of individual existence. <\/p>\n

  
\n\t\tIf we admit the Divine Being, the supreme Person and All-Person as the
\n\t\tIshwara, a difficulty arises in understanding his rule or government of
\n\t\tworld-existence, because we immediately transfer to him our mental
\n\t\tconception of a human ruler; we picture him as acting by the mind and
\n\t\tmental will in an omnipotent arbitrary fashion upon a world on which he
\n\t\timposes his mental conceptions as laws, and we conceive of his will as a
\n\t\tfree caprice of his personality. But there is no need for the Divine
\n\t\tBeing to act by an arbitrary will or idea as an omnipotent yet ignorant
\n\t\thuman being, \u2014 if such an omnipotence were possible, \u2014 might do: for he
\n\t\tis not limited by mind; he has an all-consciousness in which he is aware
\n\t\tof the truth of all things and aware of his own all-wisdom working them
\n\t\tout according to the truth that is in them, their significance, their
\n\t\tpossibility or necessity, the imperative selfness of their nature. The
\n\t\tDivine is free and not bound by laws of any making, but still he acts by
\n\t\tlaws\n<\/p>\n

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\n

\nand processes because they are the expression of the truth of things, \u2014 not
\ntheir mechanical, mathematical or other outward truth alone, but the spiritual
\nreality of what they are, what they have become and have yet to become, what
\nthey have it within themselves to realise. He is himself present in the working,
\nbut he also exceeds and can overrule it; for on one side Nature works according
\nto her limited complex of formulas and is informed and supported in their
\nexecution by the Divine Presence, but on the other side there is an overseeing,
\na higher working and determination, even an intervention, free but not
\narbitrary, often appearing to us magical and miraculous because it proceeds and
\nacts upon Nature from a divine Supernature: Nature here is a limited expression
\nof that Supernature and open to intervention or mutation by its light, its
\nforce, its influence. The mechanical, mathematical, automatic law of things is a
\nfact, but within it there is a spiritual law of consciousness at work which
\ngives to the mechanical steps of Nature’s forces an inner turn and value, a
\nsignificant rightness and a secretly conscious necessity, and above it there is
\na spiritual freedom that knows and acts in the supreme and universal truth of
\nthe Spirit. Our view of the divine government of the world or of the secret of
\nits action is either incurably anthropomorphic or else incurably mechanical;
\nboth the anthropomorphism and mechanism have their elements of truth, but they
\nare only a side, an aspect, and the real truth is that the world is governed by
\nthe One in all and over all who is infinite in his consciousness and it is
\naccording to the law and logic of an infinite consciousness that we ought to
\nunderstand the significance and building and movement of the universe. <\/p>\n

    
\n\t\tIf we regard this aspect of the one Reality and put it in close
\n\t\tconnection with the other aspects, we can get a complete view of the
\n\t\trelation between the eternal Self-Existence and the dynamics of the
\n\t\tConsciousness-Force by which it manifests the universe. If we place
\n\t\tourselves in a silent Self-existence immobile, static, inactive, it will
\n\t\tappear that a conceptive Consciousness-Force, Maya, able to effectuate
\n\t\tall its conceptions, a dynamic consort of the Self of silence, is doing
\n\t\teverything; it takes its stand on the fixed unmoving eternal status and
\n\t\tcasts the spiritual substance of being into all manner of forms and
\n\t\tmovements to\n<\/p>\n

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\nwhich its passivity consents or in which it takes its impartial pleasure, its
\nimmobile delight of creative and mobile existence. Whether this be a real or an
\nillusory existence, that must be its substance and significance. Consciousness
\nis at play with Being, Force of Nature does what it wills with Existence and
\nmakes it the stuff of her creations, but secretly the consent of the Being must
\nbe there at every step to make this possible. There is an evident truth in this
\nperception of things; it is what we see happening everywhere in us and around
\nus; it is a truth of the universe and must answer to a fundamental truth-aspect
\nof the Absolute. But when we step back from the outer dynamic appearances of
\nthings, not into a witness Silence, but into an inner dynamic participating
\nexperience of the Spirit, we find that this Consciousness-Force, Maya, Shakti,
\nis itself the power of the Being, the Self-Existent, the Ishwara. The Being is
\nlord of her and of all things, we see him doing everything in his own
\nsovereignty as the creator and ruler of his own manifestation; or, if he stands
\nback and allows freedom of action to the forces of Nature and her creatures, his
\nsovereignty is still innate in the permission, at every step his tacit sanction,
\n\u201cLet it be so\u201d, tathastu<\/i>, is there implicit; for otherwise nothing could
\nbe done or happen. Being and its Consciousness-Force, Spirit and Nature cannot
\nbe fundamentally dual: what Nature does, is really done by the Spirit. This too
\nis a truth that becomes evident when we go behind the veil and feel the presence
\nof a living Reality which is everything and determines everything, is the
\nAll-powerful and the All-ruler; this too is a fundamental truth-aspect of the
\nAbsolute. <\/p>\n

    
\n\t\tAgain, if we remain absorbed in the Silence, the creative Consciousness
\n\t\tand her works disappear into the Silence; Nature and the creation for us
\n\t\tcease to exist or be real. On the other hand, if we look exclusively at
\n\t\tthe Being in its aspect of the sole-existent Person and Ruler, the Power
\n\t\tor Shakti by which he does all things disappears into his uniqueness or
\n\t\tbecomes an attribute of His cosmic personality; the absolute monarchy of
\n\t\tthe one Being becomes our perception of the universe. Both these
\n\t\texperiences create many difficulties for the mind due to its
\n\t\tnon-perception of the reality of the Self-Power whether in\n<\/p>\n

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\nquiescence or in action, or to a too exclusively negative experience of the
\nSelf, or to the too anthropomorphic character our conceptions attach to the
\nSupreme Being as Ruler. It is evident that we are looking at an Infinite of
\nwhich the Self-Power is capable of many movements, all of them valid. If we look
\nagain more largely and take account of both the impersonal and the personal
\ntruth of things as one truth, if in that light, the light of personality in
\nimpersonality, we see the biune aspect of Self and Self-Power, then in the
\nPerson Aspect a dual Person emerges, Ishwara-Shakti, the Divine Self and Creator
\nand the Divine Mother and Creatrix of the universe; there becomes apparent to us
\nthe mystery of the masculine and feminine cosmic Principles whose play and
\ninteraction are necessary for all creation. In the superconscient truth of the
\nSelf-Existence these two are fused and implied in each other, one and
\nindistinguishable, but in the spiritual-pragmatic truth of the dynamism of the
\nuniverse, they emerge and become active; the Divine Mother-Energy as the
\nuniversal creatrix, Maya, Para-Prakriti, Chit-Shakti, manifests the cosmic Self
\nand Ishwara and her own self-power as a dual principle; it is through her that
\nthe Being, the Self, the Ishwara, acts and he does nothing except by her; though
\nhis Will is implicit in her, it is she who works out all as the supreme
\nConsciousness-Force who holds all souls and beings within her and as executive
\nNature; all exists and acts according to Nature, all is the Consciousness-Force
\nmanifesting and playing with the Being in millions of forms and movements into
\nwhich she casts his existence. If we draw back from her workings, then all can
\nfall into quiescence and we can enter into the silence, because she consents to
\ncease from her dynamic activity; but it is in her quiescence and silence that we
\nare quiescent and cease. If we would affirm our independence of Nature, she
\nreveals to us the supreme and omnipresent power of the Ishwara and ourselves as
\nbeings of his being, but that power is herself and we are that in her
\nsupernature. If we would realise a higher formation or status of being, then it
\nis still through her, through the Divine Shakti, the Consciousness-Force of the
\nSpirit that it has to be done; our surrender must be to the Divine Being through
\nthe Divine Mother: for it is towards or into the supreme Nature\n<\/p>\n

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\nthat our ascension has to take place and it can only be done by the supramental
\nShakti taking up our mentality and transforming it into her supramentality. Thus
\nwe see that there is no contradiction or incompatibility between these three
\naspects of Existence, or between them in their eternal status and the three
\nmodes of its Dynamis working in the universe. One Being, one Reality as Self
\nbases, supports, informs, as Purusha or Conscious Being experiences, as Ishwara
\nwills, governs and possesses its world of manifestation created and kept in
\nmotion and action by its own Consciousness-Force or Self-Power, \u2014 Maya, Prakriti,
\nShakti. <\/p>\n

    
\n\t\tA certain difficulty arises for our mind in reconciling these different
\n\t\tfaces or fronts of the One Self and Spirit, because we are obliged to
\n\t\tuse abstract conceptions and defining words and ideas for something that
\n\t\tis not abstract, something that is spiritually living and intensely
\n\t\treal. Our abstractions get fixed into differentiating concepts with
\n\t\tsharp lines between them: but the Reality is not of that nature; its
\n\t\taspects are many but shade off into each other. Its truth could only be
\n\t\trendered by ideas and images metaphysical and yet living and concrete,
\n\t\t\u2014images which might be taken by the pure Reason as figures and symbols
\n\t\tbut are more than that and mean more to the intuitive vision and
\n\t\tfeeling, for they are realities of a dynamic spiritual experience. The
\n\t\timpersonal truth of things can be rendered into the abstract formulas of
\n\t\tthe pure reason, but there is another side of truth which belongs to the
\n\t\tspiritual or mystic vision and without that inner vision of realities
\n\t\tthe abstract formulation of them is insufficiently alive, incomplete.
\n\t\tThe mystery of things is the true truth of things; the intellectual
\n\t\tpresentation is only truth in representation, in abstract symbols, as if
\n\t\tin a cubist art of thought-speech, in geometric figure. It is necessary
\n\t\tin a philosophic inquiry to confine oneself mostly to this intellectual
\n\t\tpresentation, but it is as well to remember that this is only the
\n\t\tabstraction of the Truth and to seize it completely or express it
\n\t\tcompletely there is needed a concrete experience and a more living and
\n\t\tfull-bodied language. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tHere it becomes opportune to see how in this aspect of the Reality we
\n\t\tmust regard the relation we have discovered between the One and the
\n\t\tMany; this amounts to a determination of the\n<\/p>\n

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true
\nconnection between the individual and the Divine Being, between the Soul and the
\nIshwara. In the normal theistic conception the Many are created by God; made by
\nhim as a potter might make a vessel, they are dependent on him as are creatures
\non their creator. But in this larger view of the Ishwara the Many are themselves
\nthe Divine One in their inmost reality, individual selves of the supreme and
\nuniversal Self-Existence, eternal as he is eternal but eternal in his being: our
\nmaterial existence is indeed a creation of Nature, but the soul is an immortal
\nportion of the Divinity and behind it is the Divine Self in the natural
\ncreature. Still the One is the fundamental Truth of existence, the Many exist by
\nthe One and there is therefore an entire dependence of the manifested being on
\nthe Ishwara. This dependence is concealed by the separative ignorance of the ego
\nwhich strives to exist in its own right, although at every step it is evidently
\ndependent on the cosmic Power that created it, moved by it, a part of its cosmic
\nbeing and action; this effort of the ego is clearly a misprision, an erroneous
\nreflection of the truth of the self-existence that is within us. It is true that
\nthere is something in us, not in the ego but in the self and inmost being, that
\nsurpasses cosmic Nature and belongs to the Transcendence. But this too finds
\nitself independent of Nature only by dependence on a higher Reality; it is
\nthrough self-giving or surrender of soul and nature to the Divine Being that we
\ncan attain to our highest self and supreme Reality, for it is the Divine Being
\nwho is that highest self and that supreme Reality, and we are self-existent and
\neternal only in his eternity and by his self-existence. This dependence is not
\ncontradictory of the Identity, but is itself the door to the realisation of the
\nIdentity,\u2014so that here again we meet that phenomenon of duality expressing
\nunity, proceeding from unity and opening back into unity, which is the constant
\nsecret and fundamental operation of the universe. It is this truth of the
\nconsciousness of the Infinite that creates the possibility of all relations
\nbetween the Many and the One, among which the realisation of oneness by the
\nmind, the presence of oneness in the heart, the existence of oneness in all the
\nmembers is a highest peak, and yet it does not annul but confirms all the other
\npersonal relations and gives them their fullness, their complete delight,\n<\/p>\n

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\ntheir entire significance. This too is the magic, but also the logic of the
\nInfinite. <\/p>\n

     
\n\t\tOne problem still remains to be solved, and it can be solved on the same
\n\t\tbasis; it is the problem of the opposition between the Non-Manifest and
\n\t\tthe manifestation. For it might be said that all that has been advanced
\n\t\thitherto may be true of the manifestation, but the manifestation is a
\n\t\treality of an inferior order, a partial movement derived from the
\n\t\tNon-Manifest Reality and, when we enter into that which is supremely
\n\t\tReal, these truths of the universe cease to have any validity. The
\n\t\tNon-Manifest is the timeless, the utterly eternal, an irreducible
\n\t\tabsolute self-existence to which the manifestation and its limitations
\n\t\tcan give no clue or only a clue that by its insufficiency is illusory
\n\t\tand deceptive. This raises the problem of the relation of Time to the
\n\t\ttimeless Spirit; for we have supposed on the contrary that what is in
\n\t\tunmanifestation in the Timeless Eternal is manifested in Time-Eternity.
\n\t\tIf that is so, if the temporal is an expression of the Eternal, then
\n\t\thowever different the conditions, however partial the expression, yet
\n\t\twhat is fundamental in the Time-expression must be in some way
\n\t\tpre-existent in the Transcendence and drawn from the timeless Reality.
\n\t\tFor if not, these fundamentals must come into it direct from an Absolute
\n\t\twhich is other than Time or Timelessness, and the Timeless Spirit must
\n\t\tbe a supreme spiritual negation, an indeterminable basing the Absolute’s
\n\t\tfreedom from limitation by what is formulated in Time,\u2014it must be the
\n\t\tnegative to the Time positive, in the same relation to it as the Nirguna
\n\t\tto the Saguna. But, in fact, what we mean by the Timeless is a spiritual
\n\t\tstatus of existence not subject to the time movement or to the
\n\t\tsuccessive or the relative time-experience of a past, present and
\n\t\tfuture. The timeless Spirit is not necessarily a blank; it may hold all
\n\t\tin itself, but in essence, without reference to time or form or relation
\n\t\tor circumstance, perhaps in an eternal unity. Eternity is the common
\n\t\tterm between Time and the Timeless Spirit. What is in the Timeless
\n\t\tunmanifested, implied, essential, appears in Time in movement, or at
\n\t\tleast in design and relation, in result and circumstance. These two then
\n\t\tare the same Eternity or the same Eternal in a double status; they are a
\n\t\ttwofold status of being and consciousness, one an eternity\n<\/p>\n

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of
\nimmobile status, the other an eternity of motion in status. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tThe original status is that of the Reality timeless and spaceless; Space
\n\t\tand Time would be the same Reality self-extended to contain the
\n\t\tdeployment of what was within it. The difference would be, as in all the
\n\t\tother oppositions, the Spirit looking at itself in essence and principle
\n\t\tof being and the same Spirit looking at itself in the dynamism of its
\n\t\tessence and principle. Space and Time are our names for this
\n\t\tself-extension of the one Reality. We are apt to see Space as a static
\n\t\textension in which all things stand or move together in a fixed order;
\n\t\twe see Time as a mobile extension which is measured by movement and
\n\t\tevent: Space then would be Brahman in self-extended status; Time would
\n\t\tbe Brahman in self-extended movement. But this may be only a first view
\n\t\tand inaccurate: Space may be really a constant mobile, the constancy and
\n\t\tthe persistent time-relation of things in it creating the sense of
\n\t\tstability of Space, the mobility creating the sense of time-movement in
\n\t\tstable Space. Or, again, Space would be Brahman extended for the holding
\n\t\ttogether of forms and objects; Time would be Brahman self-extended for
\n\t\tthe deployment of the movement of self-power carrying forms and objects;
\n\t\tthe two would then be a dual aspect of one and the same self-extension
\n\t\tof the cosmic Eternal. <\/p>\n

     
\n\t\tA purely physical Space might be regarded as in itself a property of
\n\t\tMatter; but Matter is a creation of Energy in movement. Space therefore
\n\t\tin the material world could be either a fundamental self-extension of
\n\t\tmaterial Energy or its self-formed existence-field, its representation
\n\t\tof the Inconscient Infinity in which it is acting, a figure in which it
\n\t\taccommodates the formulas and movements of its own action and
\n\t\tself-creation. Time would be itself the course of that movement or else
\n\t\tan impression created by it, an impression of something that presents
\n\t\titself to us as regularly successive in its appearance,\u2014a division or a
\n\t\tcontinuum upholding the continuity of movement and yet marking off its
\n\t\tsuccessions,\u2014because the movement itself is regularly successive. Or
\n\t\telse Time could be a dimension of Space necessary for the complete
\n\t\taction of the Energy, but not understood by us as such because it is
\n\t\tseen by our conscious subjectivity as something itself subjective, felt
\n\t\tby our mind,\n<\/p>\n

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\nnot perceived by our senses, and therefore not recognised as a dimension of
\nspace which has to us the appearance of a sense-created or sense-perceived
\nobjective extension. <\/p>\n

    
\n\t\tIn any case, if Spirit is the fundamental reality, Time and Space must
\n\t\teither be conceptive conditions under which the Spirit sees its own
\n\t\tmovement of energy or else they must be fundamental conditions of the
\n\t\tSpirit itself which assume a different appearance or status according to
\n\t\tthe status of consciousness in which they manifest. In other words there
\n\t\tis a different Time and Space for each status of our consciousness and
\n\t\teven different movements of Time and Space within each status; but all
\n\t\twould be renderings of a fundamental spiritual reality of Time-Space. In
\n\t\tfact, when we go behind physical space, we become aware of an extension
\n\t\ton which all this movement is based and this extension is spiritual and
\n\t\tnot material; it is Self or Spirit containing all action of its own
\n\t\tEnergy. This origin or basic reality of Space begins to become apparent
\n\t\twhen we draw back from the physical: for then we become aware of a
\n\t\tsubjective Space-extension in which mind itself lives and moves and
\n\t\twhich is other than physical Space-Time, and yet there is an
\n\t\tinterpenetration; for our mind can move in its own space in such a way
\n\t\tas to effectuate a movement also in space of Matter or act upon
\n\t\tsomething distant in space of Matter. In a still deeper condition of
\n\t\tconsciousness we are aware of a pure spiritual Space; in this awareness
\n\t\tTime may no longer seem to exist, because all movement ceases, or, if
\n\t\tthere is a movement or happening, it can take place independent of any
\n\t\tobservable Time sequence. <\/p>\n

    
\n\t\tIf we go behind Time by a similar inward motion, drawing back from the
\n\t\tphysical and seeing it without being involved in it, we discover that
\n\t\tTime observation and Time movement are relative, but Time itself is real
\n\t\tand eternal. Time observation depends not only on the measures used, but
\n\t\ton the consciousness and the position of the observer: moreover, each
\n\t\tstate of consciousness has a different Time relation; Time in Mind
\n\t\tconsciousness and Mind Space has not the same sense and measure of its
\n\t\tmovements as in physical Space; it moves there quickly or slowly
\n\t\taccording to the state of the consciousness. Each state of consciousness
\n\t\thas its own Time and yet there can be relations of\n<\/p>\n

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\n

\nTime between them; and when we go behind the physical surface, we find several
\ndifferent Time statuses and Time movements co-existent in the same
\nconsciousness. This is evident in dream Time where a long sequence of happenings
\ncan occur in a period which corresponds to a second or a few seconds of physical
\nTime. There is then a certain relation between different Time statuses but no
\nascertainable correspondence of measure. It would seem as if Time had no
\nobjective reality, but depends on whatever conditions may be established by
\naction of consciousness in its relation to status and motion of being: Time
\nwould seem to be purely subjective. But, in fact, Space also would appear by the
\nmutual relation of Mind-Space and Matter-Space to be subjective; in other words,
\nboth are the original spiritual extension, but it is rendered by mind in its
\npurity into a subjective mind-field and by sense-mind into an objective field of
\nsense-perception. Subjectivity and objectivity are only two sides of one
\nconsciousness, and the cardinal fact is that any given Time or Space or any
\ngiven Time-Space as a whole is a status of being in which there is a movement of
\nthe consciousness and force of the being, a movement that creates or manifests
\nevents and happenings; it is the relation of the consciousness that sees and the
\nforce that formulates the happenings, a relation inherent in the status, which
\ndetermines the sense of Time and creates our awareness of Time-movement,
\nTime-relation, Time-measure. In its fundamental truth the original status of
\nTime behind all its variations is nothing else than the eternity of the Eternal,
\njust as the fundamental truth of Space, the original sense of its reality, is
\nthe infinity of the Infinite. <\/p>\n

     
\n\t\tThe Being can have three different states of its consciousness with
\n\t\tregard to its own eternity. The first is that in which there is the
\n\t\timmobile status of the Self in its essential existence, self-absorbed or
\n\t\tself-conscious, but in either case without development of consciousness
\n\t\tin movement or happening; this is what we distinguish as its timeless
\n\t\teternity. The second is its whole-consciousness of the successive
\n\t\trelations of all things belonging to a destined or an actually
\n\t\tproceeding manifestation, in which what we call past, present and future
\n\t\tstand together as if in a map or settled design or very much as an
\n\t\tartist or painter or\n<\/p>\n

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\narchitect might hold all the detail of his work viewed as a whole, intended or
\nreviewed in his mind or arranged in a plan for execution; this is the stable
\nstatus or simultaneous integrality of Time. This seeing of Time is not at all
\npart of our normal awareness of events as they happen, though our view of the
\npast, because it is already known and can be regarded in the whole, may put on
\nsomething of this character; but we know that this consciousness exists because
\nit is possible in an exceptional state to enter into it and see things from the
\nview-point of this simultaneity of Time-vision. The third status is that of a
\nprocessive movement of Consciousness-Force and its successive working out of
\nwhat has been seen by it in the static vision of the Eternal; this is the Time
\nmovement. But it is in one and the same Eternity that this triple status exists
\nand the movement takes place; there are not really two eternities, one an
\neternity of status, another an eternity of movement, but there are different
\nstatuses or positions taken by Consciousness with regard to the one Eternity.
\nFor it can see the whole Time development from outside or from above the
\nmovement; it can take a stable position within the movement and see the before
\nand the after in a fixed, determined or destined succession; or it can take
\ninstead a mobile position in the movement, itself move with it from moment to
\nmoment and see all that has happened receding back into the past and all that
\nhas to happen coming towards it from the future; or else it may concentrate on
\nthe moment it occupies and see nothing but what is in that moment and
\nimmediately around or behind it. All these positions can be taken by the being
\nof the Infinite in a simultaneous vision or experience. It can see Time from
\nabove and inside Time, exceeding it and not within it; it can see the Timeless
\ndevelop the Time-movement without ceasing to be timeless, it can embrace the
\nwhole movement in a static and a dynamic vision and put out at the same time
\nsomething of itself into the moment-vision. This simultaneity may seem to the
\nfinite consciousness tied to the moment-vision a magic of the Infinite, a magic
\nof Maya; to its own way of perception which needs to limit, to envisage one
\nstatus only at a time in order to harmonise, it would give a sense of confused
\nand inconsistent unreality. But to an infinite consciousness such an\n<\/p>\n

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\nintegral simultaneity of vision and experience would be perfectly logical and
\nconsistent; all could be elements of a whole-vision capable of being closely
\nrelated together in a harmonious arrangement, a multiplicity of view bringing
\nout the unity of the thing seen, a diverse presentation of concomitant aspects
\nof the One Reality. <\/p>\n

   
\n\t\tIf there can be this simultaneous multiplicity of self-presentation of
\n\t\tone Reality, we see that there is no impossibility in the co-existence
\n\t\tof a Timeless Eternal and a Time Eternity. It would be the same Eternity
\n\t\tviewed by a dual self-awareness and there could be no opposition between
\n\t\tthem; it would be a correlation of two powers of the self-awareness of
\n\t\tthe infinite and eternal Reality,\u2014a power of status and
\n\t\tnon-manifestation, a power of self-effecting action and movement and
\n\t\tmanifestation. Their simultaneity, however contradictory and difficult
\n\t\tto reconcile it might seem to our finite surface seeing, would be
\n\t\tintrinsic and normal to the Maya or eternal self-knowledge and
\n\t\tall-knowledge of Brahman, the eternal and infinite knowledge and
\n\t\twisdom-power of the Ishwara, the consciousness-force of the
\n\t\tself-existent Sachchidananda. <\/p>\n

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CHAPTER II Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara \u2014 Maya, Prakriti, Shakti                            It is there in beings indivisible and as if divided.                                                                                                   Gita.1                  …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-18-the-life-divine-volume-18","wpcat-13-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627","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=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}