Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2

The Birth of Maya

THE Divine is All-Light, All-Bliss, All-Power - in himself, in his essence and true being, always and for ever.

But, somewhere, in a part of universal being the Divine chose to forget the Divine, a veil was allowed to interpose in front of the All-Light, the All-Bliss, the All-Power:

A mixture became possible, the dualities were born.

Ignorance entered into Knowledge, Pain invaded Delight, Weakness stole into Strength.

For a new and extraordinary manifestation this movement was permitted, for the fullness of experience, for an immense contradiction turning to a luminous reconciliation and harmony.

The Eternal negated his eternity, the Divine became the undivine.

Out of the inconscient Consciousness had to arise, Light out of darkness, Bliss out of suffering, Power out of inertia, - for the Divine is still the only reality, even in the appearances that are its opposite.

That which is undivine had to become an instrument of divinity, inconscient Matter to embody the Supreme.

For when the One Divine descended into the multiplicity of manifestation, when he cast out of himself an infinitely varied and graded existence, the undivine too became a possibility-an aspect, an appearance the farthest away from his original and highest status.

All possibilities are manifested in the Infinite and this line of descent too had to be followed to its uttermost, the entire range of its possibility to be exhausted, negated in its own realisation and brought back to the nature and substance of its Source.

Page 366

The beginning of creation is self-objectivisation.

The Divine put himself away from himself - "went abroad" - that he might contemplate himself, that he might establish a system of infinite relations with himself.

Manifestation - Lila - is the working out of this complex of self-objectivisation.

In the processus of this self-objectivisation the possibility of a movement of denial of self became in appearance inevitable - denial of self showed itself as the extreme limit, the final term .of self-objectivisation.

The Divine permitted to himself self-annihilation that he might pass through it to the completest self-realisation.

***

In the Spirit there is only Light.

But the Shadow was allowed here below - for it was the vehicle in which the spiritual Light had to be embodied, to be ;made real in Matter and by Matter and as Matter.

Where there is the utmost Denial, there was to arise the very perfection of the Affirmation of the Divine.

Page 367