The Winds of Wonder

Apropos of Two Vast Negations — 6

God found in Nature, Nature fulfilled in God

“God found in Nature, Nature fulfilled in God.” [[7.22] Rare is such a realisation, absolutely unique only to Yogi Aswapati. And he has this almost at the very beginning of his spiritual quest and mission. This was preceded by two dynamic realisations in which is revealed the “overt Divine”, the splendid stamp being at once on both soul and body. What had come for him as an individual is on the way to be collective and universal:

A static Oneness and dynamic Power

Descend in him, the integral Godhead’s seals;

His soul and body take that splendid stamp. ||5.26||

A stat|+ic One|+ness and| dy+nam|+ic Pow+er|

De+scend| in him,| the in|+te+gral God|+head’s seals;|

His soul| and bod|+y take| that splen|+did stamp.| 5.26

There is the least doubt that this is categorically autobiographical, Sri Aurobindo disclosing the experiences he had in 1908, of Silent Mind with Lele in the first week of January, in Baroda, after the Surat Congress a week before, and the second within months of this in Alipore Jail of the all-pervasive Vasudeva in the dynamics of existence. These have become the foundation for his mission as the supreme Incarnate, with the stamp of Godhead on them. It is only then, with these two siddhis, of the Passive and Active Brahman, that God would find himself in Nature and Nature fulfil herself in God. Nowhere the question of the Refusal of the Ascetic and the Denial of the Materialist would then arise. The integral life starts taking shape with that.

Already in him was seen that task of Power:

Life made its home on the high tops of self;

His soul, mind, heart became a single sun;

Only life’s lower reaches remained dim. ||7.23||

No wonder, the “eagles of Omniscience” would now stoop down and bring their knowledge in shaping the events and workings of life. A wisdom-cry from rapt transcendences would be heard and flashes of occult revealing Light flash.

An inspired Knowledge sat enthroned within

Whose seconds illumined more than reason’s years:

An ictus of revealing lustre fell

As if a pointing accent upon Truth,

And like a sky-flare showing all the ground

A swift intuitive discernment shone. ||7.28||

In that discernment all dualities and dichotomies disappeared, the Refusals and the Denials.

His being lay down in bright immobile peace

And bathed in wells of pure spiritual light;

It wandered in wide fields of wisdom-self

Lit by the rays of an everlasting sun. ||8.41||

Even his body’s subtle self within

Could raise the earthly parts towards higher things

And feel on it the breath of heavenlier air. ||8.42||

Already it journeyed towards divinity:

Upbuoyed upon winged winds of rapid joy,

Upheld to a Light it could not always hold,

It left mind’s distance from the Truth supreme

And lost life’s incapacity for bliss. ||8.43||

A wide God-knowledge poured down from above, a new world-knowledge from within. Lonely his days and splendid like the sun’s. For Sri Aurobindo this could be easily before 1912.