The Winds of Wonder

Three Poises of the Non-Manifest Supreme, the Avyakta

In The Life Divine Sri Aurobindo speaks of the three poises of the Non-Manifest Supreme, the Avyakta, the first Nothingness of Savitri. In the Philosophy of the Upanishads he writes about Parabrahman in the course of evolving phenomena as follows: “The first condition is called avyakta, the state previous to manifestation, in which all things are involved, but in which nothing is expressed or imaged, the state of ideality, undifferentiated but pregnant of differentiation…” Beyond them all, beyond Parabrahman is the utter Unknowable about which it is pointless to speak. But what is profitable to speak of is the Infinite of the Chhandogya Upanishad. Sanatkumar tells Narad that, which is Infinite is the plenum and is alone Happiness, tatsukham. The Rishi calls it Bhuma. The concept of Bhuma is something very rich indeed. In the pure Infinite all aspects such as Existence, Consciousness, Bliss, Knowledge, Power, everything are kind of frozen entities, they do not grow, expand, gather richness, the static Brahman. But that is what Bhuma does, brings in the dynamism of growth. The root meaning of the word is “to grow”; its feminine is Bhumi, who upholds growth. And this Bhumi is our Earth, where alone growth is possible, growth by the process of evolution. That makes earth a “significant centre” of the universe, upholding the spiritual geo-centricity. No wonder, our central being got attracted by it and opted for the adventure of the Unknown. It wanted to grow and hence it came here. In Savitri Narad explains the mystery of pain and suffering and the choice made by the soul to plunge into the evolutionary process. It was “out of curiosity” that it took the plunge seeing another joy in creation. The triple poise of the Supreme in the language of the Gita is described, I believe, in terms of Kshara-Akshara-Uttama Purushsa. In the metaphysical description these are the triple aspects of the single indivisible Reality as Transcendental-Universal-Individual. The two quotations from The Life Divine (pp. 660-62) and Savitri (pp. 454-56) are as follows:

“The Being is one, but this oneness is infinite and contains in itself an infinite plurality or multiplicity of itself: the One is the All; it is not only an essential Existence, but an All-Existence. The infinite multiplicity of the One and the eternal unity of the Many are the two realities or aspects of one reality on which the manifestation is founded. By reason of this fundamental verity of the manifestation the Being presents itself to our cosmic experience in three poises,—the supracosmic Existence, the cosmic Spirit and the individual Self in the Many. But the multiplicity permits of a phenomenal division of consciousness, an effectual Ignorance in which the Many, the individuals, cease to become aware of the eternal self-existent Oneness and are oblivious of the oneness of the cosmic Self in which and by which they live, move and have their being. But, by force of the secret Unity, the soul in becoming is urged by its own unseen reality and by the occult pressure of evolutionary Nature to come out of this state of Ignorance and recover eventually the knowledge of the one Divine Being and its oneness with it and at the same time to recover its spiritual unity with all individual beings and the whole universe. It has to become aware not only of itself in the universe but of the universe in itself and of the Being of cosmos as its greater self; the individual has to universalise himself and in the same movement to become aware of his supracosmic transcendence. This triple aspect of the reality must be included in the total truth of the soul and of the cosmic manifestation, and this necessity must determine the ultimate trend of the process of evolutionary Nature. All views of existence that stop short of the Transcendence and ignore it must be incomplete accounts of the truth of being. The pantheistic view of the identity of the Divine and the Universe is a truth, for all this that is is the Brahman: but it stops short of the whole truth when it misses and omits the supracosmic Reality. On the other side, every view that affirms the cosmos only and dismisses the individual as a by-product of the cosmic Energy, errs by laying too much emphasis on one apparent factual aspect of the world-action; it is true only of the natural individual and is not even the whole truth of that: for the natural individual, the nature-being, is indeed a product of the universal Energy, but is at the same time a nature-personality of the soul, an expressive formation of the inner being and person, and this soul is not a perishable cell or a dissoluble portion of the cosmic Spirit, but has its original immortal reality in the Transcendence. It is a fact that the cosmic Being expresses itself through the individual being, but also it is a truth that the Transcendental Reality expresses itself through both the individual existence and the Cosmos; the soul is an eternal portion of the Supreme and not a fraction of Nature. But equally any view that sees the universe as existent only in the individual consciousness must very evidently be a fragmentary truth: it is justified by a perception of the universality of the spiritual individual and his power of embracing the whole universe in his consciousness; but neither the cosmos nor the individual consciousness is the fundamental truth of existence; for both depend upon and exist by the transcendental Divine Being. This Divine Being, Sachchidananda, is at once impersonal and personal: it is an Existence and the origin and foundation of all truths, forces, powers, existences, but it is also the one transcendent Conscious Being and the All-Person of whom all conscious beings are the selves and personalities; for He is their highest Self and the universal indwelling Presence. It is a necessity for the soul in the universe,—and therefore the inner trend of the evolutionary Energy and its ultimate intention,—to know and to grow into this truth of itself, to become one with the Divine Being, to raise its nature to the Divine Nature, its existence into the Divine Existence, its consciousness into the Divine Consciousness, its delight of being into the divine Delight of Being, and to receive all this into its becoming, to make the becoming an expression of that highest Truth, to be possessed inwardly of the Divine Self and Master of its existence and to be at the same time wholly possessed by Him and moved by His Divine Energy and live and act in a complete self-giving and surrender. On this side the dualistic and theistic views of existence which affirm the eternal real existence of God and the Soul and the eternal real existence and cosmic action of the Divine Energy, express also a truth of the integral existence; but their formulation falls short of the whole truth if it denies the essential unity of God and Soul or their capacity for utter oneness or ignores what underlies the supreme experience of the merger of the soul in the Divine Unity through love, through union of consciousness, through fusion of existence in existence.”

“O mortal who complainst of death and fate,

Accuse none of the harms thyself hast called;

This troubled world thou hast chosen for thy home,

Thou art thyself the author of thy pain.

Once in the immortal boundlessness of Self,

In a vast of Truth and Consciousness and Light

The soul looked out from its felicity.

It felt the Spirit’s interminable bliss,

It knew itself deathless, timeless, spaceless, one,

It saw the Eternal, lived in the Infinite.

Then, curious of a shadow thrown by Truth,

It strained towards some otherness of self,

It was drawn to an unknown Face peering through night.

It sensed a negative infinity,

A void supernal whose immense excess

Imitating God and everlasting Time

Offered a ground for Nature’s adverse birth

And Matter’s rigid hard unconsciousness

Harbouring the brilliance of a transient soul

That lights up birth and death and ignorant life.

A Mind arose that stared at Nothingness

Till figures formed of what could never be;

It housed the contrary of all that is.

A Nought appeared as Being’s huge sealed cause,

Its dumb support in a blank infinite,

In whose abysm spirit must disappear:

A darkened Nature lived and held the seed

Of Spirit hidden and feigning not to be.

Eternal Consciousness became a freak

Of an unsouled almighty Inconscient

And, breathed no more as spirit’s native air,

Bliss was an incident of a mortal hour,

A stranger in the insentient universe.

As one drawn by the grandeur of the Void

The soul attracted leaned to the Abyss:

It longed for the adventure of Ignorance

And the marvel and surprise of the Unknown

And the endless possibility that lurked

In the womb of Chaos and in Nothing’s gulf

Or looked from the unfathomed eyes of Chance.

It tired of its unchanging happiness,

It turned away from immortality:

It was drawn to hazard’s call and danger’s charm,

It yearned to the pathos of grief, the drama of pain,

Perdition’s peril, the wounded bare escape,

The music of ruin and its glamour and crash,

The savour of pity and the gamble of love

And passion and the ambiguous face of Fate.

A world of hard endeavour and difficult toil,

And battle on extinction’s perilous verge,

A clash of forces, a vast incertitude,

The joy of creation out of Nothingness,

Strange meetings on the roads of Ignorance

And the companionship of half-known souls

Or the solitary greatness and lonely force

Of a separate being conquering its world,

Called it from its too safe eternity.

A huge descent began, a giant fall:

For what the spirit sees, creates a truth

And what the soul imagines is made a world.

A Thought that leaped from the Timeless can become,

Indicator of cosmic consequence

And the itinerary of the gods,

A cyclic movement in eternal Time.

Thus came, born from a blind tremendous choice,

This great perplexed and discontented world,

This haunt of Ignorance, this home of Pain:

There are pitched desire’s tents, grief’s headquarters.

A vast disguise conceals the Eternal’s bliss.”