Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 3

THE universe is a manifestation, that is to say, the unfolding of infinite possibilities. The unfolding has not stopped, it is continuing and will continue, throwing out or bringing into physical expression all that lies behind and latent. The universe may be considered as a sphere or a globe, a totality or assemblage containing everything that exists here and is being manifested. Beyond and outside, as it were, this circle of creation lies the transcendent, the Supreme Divine, in his own status. The transcendent means the unmanifest. It does not mean, however, the void; for it contains all that is to be manifested, each and everything in its potentiality, its essence, in a seed form. All is there as a latent possibility, a fundamental truth of being – all is there not simply as a general idea, but in every detail, though as it were on a microscopic scale, something like the chromosomes in life plasm. The transcendent is beyond time and space. Manifestation or creation begins with the formulation of time and space, the frame in which what lay latent is gradually brought out and displayed. The transcendent is consciousness absorbed in itself, identified with itself; manifestation is consciousness waking and looking at itself as its object (La prise de conscience objective de soi).

Now, one can be seated or fixed exclusively in the status of the unmanifest; to such a one the infinite and eternal is an everpresent reality, there is nothing like past or future, every-thing is. One knows and is in the presence of a fixed actuality; whatever happened, whatever will happen-as it seems to us- all are there realised on the same plane and at the same moment (although the terms plane and moment do not quite apply there). It is the world or status of the absolutely determined. Free choice or indeterminacy, the unexpected and the unforeseen have no place here.

Page 304

On the contrary, the sphere of manifestation is precisely the field of the sudden and the incalculable, that is to say, of free will. Things appear here that were not before, forces come into play that were not expected or even imagined. They all move along lines that shift and change continually. This is the status of becoming – sambhuti, as designated by the Upanishad and described by the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, in the words, panta reei, everything flows on. Here, often a certain disposition that seems quite stable or predictable is upset all of a sudden by the irruption of a new and novel factor from somewhere else.

But in between the two, on the borderland, as it were, there is a poise of consciousness which combines both in an integral perception, it is a single movement of both being and becoming. It is the Supermind. It is the point where what is or exists in the unmanifest just becomes in the manifest, the pure truth or reality above at standstill stirs and begins to come out or disengage itself through a play of possibles. It is like a cinema film that is rolled up and kept in a spool till it is put on the projector and rolled out gradually upon the screen of life and in life-size' presentation.

The transcendent then is an integral reality, for it contains all and the whole, but it is of fixed dimension – avyaya, it neither increases, nor decreases: it is the Stable, the Stagnant – sthanuracaloyam. The cosmos, on the other hand, is not only moving and changing, but also ever increasing or expanding. For new possibles are becoming reals here and adding to the sum of its factors. Out of the transcendent, the unmanifest, are constantly shooting down potentials and becoming dynamic in the universe making it richer and ever richer.

Furthermore, this expansion is not merely accretion but a growth, that is to say, it is directed and has a sense and purpose and end in view. In fact all the possibles that find play, the elements that enter here below are necessary inasmuch as they contribute to the meaning of the Play, to the working out of the denouement. We can take again the analogy of the cinema film and say that the unrolling film is interesting because it has a continuous and developing story to tell, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Likewise, the manifestation too tells a connected story – it is not a drivel, but has a

Page 305

goal; it is a process elaborated by a final cause. Even like an individual being it is an organism, ever growing and bringing out its latent possibilities, moving towards a high fruition of its aspiration and destiny.

In this sense manifestation is a more complete – and more and more complete – reality than the non-manifest Supreme. The non-manifest, the transcendent is an integral reality, the manifestation a complete reality, since it adds to it its own reality, the actuality of concrete expression.

Page 306