Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

The human being is composed of three beings, his person is made of three persons – it is a trinity, a triptych as it were. The first is the external person whom we recognise by his name and form. It is indeed the physical body in and through which nature and character express themselves or try to express themselves as best they can. For the body, the material body is both an expression and a limitation, the body is not capable of expressing all that is behind it against which it acts as a dam with a few sluices to let something of the inner content flow out. This inner content means the vital world with its desires and impulses and various dynamisms and behind it there is also the mind, the mind with its own activities, its thoughts, ideas, imaginations; those two seek expression through the body taking the help of the senses. All this forms the outer personality of man – its sign and symbol is the material body.

Behind this physical person figured in physical body there is the subtle person and it expresses itself in a subtle body. The subtle body, because it is subtle, does not mean that it is formless. This too has a form which has not the rigidity of the material body, is not bound like the physical body in a contour of fixed unchangeable unchanging lineament. The form, supple and flexible, changes in shape and colour – like a mass of cloud according to the nature of its movements and activities and yet maintains its identity and is recognisable as a distinct person from others. Here the movements are free and almost unchecked and one can go far in the direction of the bad and the wrong as also towards the good and the beneficent. It is difficult for this person to make the choice. In the physical body such a choice is made by the mental will, in the

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subtle body the mental will if it remains intact is one among many forces of equal strength.

But the saving grace lies in the third person which is the Divine Person, man's true person and real identity. This is composed of true consciousness, true force, and the supreme truth of being, the delight and immortality. This is as we call it man's psychic being or soul.

This being made of light and power and delight is not a formless entity but a real being, a person and possesses a name and body, a Divine name and a Divine body recognisable in the same way as a physical body is recognised.

Now this Divine person is in us normally behind the veil almost inoperative acting or influencing only indirectly and can be and has to be brought forward and put in charge of the other personalities, over the head of the subtle body and the physical body. Then that true person will be the ruler and guide and control and choose and inspire the movements of the subtle personality and allow only the right and proper activities to pass through and express themselves in the physical body. In this way gradually the three persons will be integrated and unified in a single homogeneous perfect personality embodying and expressing only the Divine Truth.

We know the Divine himself has three such bodies or a triple status of his one existence. First, he is prajna, the being or consciousness that contains the fundamental or typal realities that form the very basis of creation. It is the nucleus or the seed enclosing all the starting points as in a tight knot, all future elaborations. These elaborations are made by the second status or person of the Trinity; it has the beautiful name Hiranyagarbha, the golden womb. Here are laid out all possiblities, all probabilities even, endless and infinite lines of development and progression of the forces of existence. Every possible thing is being brought forth and allowed to try its fate. Out of these multifarious possibilities only some are chosen to appear as physical or material realities. This choice is made by the third person of the Trinity, Virat. Each and every possibility in the Hiranyagarbha may have the chance to appear on the material plane but that means perhaps time and a particular creation, for evidently there are many creations or cycles of creations of different types, one following another after a

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pralaya as the ancients conceived the process.

The triple person, it may be noted, is psychologically co-related to the three well-known Upanishadic states of consciousness – one, sushupti (perfect sleep), two swapna (dream) and three, jagrat (wakefulness).

The triple human person, it is evident, exists as a movement parallel to the triple Divine person: it is an application of the latter to a special set of conditions, in a particular frame of reference. The human triplicity in other words is a specialisation of the Divine Triplicity.

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