Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

This Great Earth, Our Mother

MAN'S soul is man's inalienable possession. And also it is his exclusive possession. He is the only created being that has a soul. It is, strange to say, an earthly gift and belongs to no other creature either in this world or other worlds and levels of existence. This earth is a miraculous object: it has qualities solely its own. A fundamental quality is that it grows: it is not static, it evolves, that is to say, changes in quality; it sprouts, germinates, brings forth objects and qualities that seem foreign, anomalous to its apparent and external nature. New modes of existence that were not there before appear as though from nowhere. Dead and dark soil or mud brings forth green shoots and that will grow in course of time into spreading branches and leaves, culminating in a beatiful panoply of foliage and fruit.

The soul grows out of the earth's soil, yet it is not a production or creation of earth. It is earth's gift, as I have said, but it is a gift to earth from somewhere up in heaven. However, it is inextricably woven into the very texture of earth and material existence. It is a spark of consciousness imbedded in an unconscious inert mass, the secret nucleus, as it were, behind the material sheath; from behind it enlivens, moves, directs, even illumines the apparently dead earth-element leading it towards a radiant destiny.

This growing embodied consciousness is, as I have said, earth's possession alone – growing, evolving, unfolding ever new dimensions of existence: it is not found elsewhere in the material universe. The rest of the universe is a play of the very original, mere material elements – the cosmic and other invisible rays that are in vogue nowadays with their multiple ranges have been acting in the same way since the beginning

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of the material creation till today. There is not another earth in this universe, materially because there is no water or water vapour elsewhere: water is life, the sap of life, the creative element. We know now the nature of moon-dust, – it is dry as dust, arid and brittle. Indeed the other heavenly bodies seem to possess nothing of the kind of earthly atmosphere.

All other beings or creatures within the frame of this material heaven do not breathe air; all other heavens lack precisely this earth-atomsphere: and they do not grow or change. Take for instance the legendary beings of the subtle worlds – fairies, elfs, spirits, gnomes, goblins – all are types, definite species, they do not change, alter their character or nature: they remain themselves, true to themselves throughout from beginning to end, they come up to us today with the same features that they had to the eyes of the men of prehistoric ages. Even the gods belong to the same category of immutability: they are each an eternal reality, an unchangeable norm, an ideal petrified so to say. They are not inconstant and fickle and ever-changing as mortals are. Asuras also have the same character. All these typal beings have to be broken before they can be moulded into another pattern. If any of them wishes to change or evolve into something else he has to come down on earth, enter into a human mould or take birth as a human being.

(2)

The soul, however, is not the self. We spoke of the material universe as something dead, unconscious and inconscient, but in reality there is a basic consciousness behind, upholding, maintining all and everything. That is the Self, Sachchidananda, Brahman. It is the static consciousness beyond time and space but standing behind as a support. This here moves but That does not move – grow or evolve. That is fixed, stagnant. The soul comes out – out of That in the ultimate analysis – in the process of the creation, the material creation and evolution.

The ultimate particles of matter, all behave uniformly, there is practically no individual variation. It is all a common general universal movement. The individuation begins with the living cells. Each living form starts with moving and reacting in its

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own characteristic manner and style. The one transcendent Consciousness, Sachchidananda, that is behind all seems here on the life plane to gather to a point or points, becomes diversified and concentrated at many centres. This concentration effectuates a deepening into so many whirlpools, as it were, and instead of a lateral and horizontal movement, a mere expansiveness, Nature starts as though a vertical movement. The process continues: a light, a fire enters into the earthly material creation which grows and throws out units gradually with a more and more specialised character. Earth is no longer an element merely general or universal in character, there begins a particularisation and individualisation. The first step towards individualisation is what may be termed individuation. With life upon earth, with the appearance of a living organism there entered into it the rudimentary psychic element or entity: as it grows it achieves first of all, as I have said, an individuation, an elementary individual form, as in the lower animals, and then in the higher animals it arrives at individualisation. With the emergence of conscious will, self-observation and self-direction in man, the mere psychic element or entity becomes an individuality, a psychic being, the person, the soul, and finally, a full-grown self-fulfilled person or personality becomes a deity, the soul becomes the Divine.

Such is the story of the evolution in the inner core of things. Along with this inner growth there is or there is to be a growth in the outer material level also. The growth of the psychic being or the soul radiates its influence into the mind and life and body forming its outer instrument for expression. These too must partake of the luminous nature of the soul, be intimate and identified with it for the integral fulfilment.

(3)

The Veda draws a graphic picture of the eternal stability, the sameness, almost the oppressive monotony of the material universe through millions and millions of aeons of its existence. The eternal recurrence without beginning and without end of the rising and setting of the sun and the stars, the inviolable law of Varuna, suffers no break or change. But when we look near

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at home, turn from our father the Heaven to our mother Earth and look a little more closely, a different picture emerges here: for here is the arena of the Vedic progressive sacrifice.¹

The earth is well-known for its force of gravitation, the force that pulls things downward and at best allows a horizontal trajectory, that is the apparent movement. But it also has another, a contrary movement, the anti-gravity force, the force of levitation and ascension. Earth, clay, never had a warm reception at the hands of spiritual persons or even of ordinary people who lay the whole blame upon this poor element for all the misfortunes of life here below-precisely because of the earth's gravitating pull. The earth is considered as the very nursery of sin; the consciousness of sin however began with the advent of man upon earth. The creation was governed at the beginning and for long by an eternal unchangeable law, and man came in as an intervention, a breach of the law; He came with the knowledge and force of division and distinction, that between the right and the wrong. He brought in him the will independent of the eternal law – to discover a law of his own. That has been called transgression; in the popular style, that is sin. Apart from the obloquy that the term sin carries with it, it is at bottom, however, the sense of ambiguity, the sense of choice, the sense of liberty. Man has been given this sense so that he may find out that the customary, the habitual, the millennial is not the only rhythm or line of movement but that he may look beyond and find other lines which open the way to progress, which are not bound to mere reiteration. A new sense of direction is behind the spirit of independence that appears as transgression or sin – it is this which the human consciousness aims at in the movement. It is an opportunity to move away and upward, to fresh dimensions of consciousness and being.

Progress takes place through a process of dialectics, that is to say, by way of choice between two opposites. The established harmony and uniformity becomes rigid and unalterable, has

¹ The rishi speaks of the young mother holding her child tight in her womb and not offering it to the father. * She does so as long as she is the inconscient Matter but as she grows conscious she starts making.

* The young Mother bears the boy pressed down in her secret being and gives him not to the Father. (V.1.2. Sri Aurobindo's translation.) The offering and the child grows more and more conscious with the consciousness of the Father: and it makes the Mother also, in her turn, grow more and more conscious.

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to be broken in order to start a move towards another harmony richer and higher, and this is done in the human consciousness by the growth of a free will in the individual that disobeys the established law. That is the great Disobedience of which Milton speaks so thunderingly in his famous epic poem and which is at the very centre of the Christian religion. It means a Fall: the sense of separation itself is a fall – a separate egoism standing out against all and everyone, including God Himself. But this has been necessary to replace the blind obedience of an automaton by the willing and happy collaboration of a free being. That is the psychic with its free choice. The choice lies, as the Upanishad says, between 'sreyas' and 'preyas'; the deliberate choice of the 'sreyas' by the psychic being at every step is the great dialectic movement of evolution through which the consciousness moves forward and upward towards the supreme reality. The initial separation, disobedience or sin is the price that the individual human being has to pay in order to move towards its final destiny, the freedom and the integrality of its supreme divine fulfilment. Egoism, the fount and origin of sin, is the mask, the camouflage over the visage of God, the Individual.

(4)

I have spoken of the sprouting virtue in the earth-element; the same has developed in man, the earth's child, to unforeseen dimensions. Earth's upward drive towards a greater harmony is in reality the working of the Godhead "Agni", the self-conscious energy that is secreted in the heart of all earthly existence. The Vedas say, the earth is the own home of Agni. Agni is an earthly Godhead, even as Indra is a godhead of the heavens. We spoke of water being the characteristic element imbedded, inextricably mixed with the earth. Water gives the necessary condition or element for the sprouting movement; but Agni is the agent, the initiating executive force, it is the concentrated energy of consciousness: in man it is the individualised spiritual element, therefore Agni is said to be the leader of the progressive sacrifice, adhvara yajña, the journey of ascent and evolution towards the final destiny.

The Earth gives her material body, her substance for the

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incarnation and establishment of the supreme state of the Transcendent – the Self or Sachchidananda – here below. And for the manifestation and expression through life and the senses she offers her secret conscious-force, the light-energy to incorporate the supreme Chit-tapas; but the Ananda of the Supreme she realises in a strange and piquant way. The delight that earth offers or embodies is of a special nature. It is the delight of taste.

Tasting, drinking, eating are properties said to be fundamental to the body, and they are no less applicable in the case of the soul. The Gods are memorable eaters and drinkers and a whole family of Rishis has been called Atris, that is to say, 'eaters'. It is said that these physical properites are only metaphorical or symbolical; when used in respect of the spiritual principles and realities they are used as mere tokens or indices because of the deficiencies of language, language being built out of material symbols. It is not quite so, for, as I have said, earth itself is not a mere symbol but a special concentration of Sat and it includes also concentrated Chit and Ananda.

The soul that is imbedded in earth or wedded to it acquires and enjoys these gifts of the earth and carries them forward and offers to the Supreme. The soul is the efflorescence of the earth and in that way it adds a new quality of fulfilment to the fulfilment of the Supreme, the Sachchidananda.

Annam means both Matter and food. Matter is the earthly food for the Spirit Supreme who has become it, losing Himself in it and regains it consciously and enjoys it in and through His earthly delegate the human soul.

Thus to recapitulate, the transcendent Spirit came down from above and stood behind the creation – stood behind for long. And then it advanced towards the front here upon earth: life appeared, the inorganic material particles became organised cells with the first incidence of an incipient consciousness and will. With its growth and the appearance of mind there grew the psychic element, the beginning of the individual, in the higher animal for example. And the psychic element with the growth of consciousness and will and individuality in man, developed into the psychic being which moves on towards the Divine impersonation on the earth. This is Earth's divine fulfilment in and through her earthly son, man. She clothes

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herself more and more with the developing psychic consciousness of man meeting the Divine Consciousness – finally incorporating in herself and as herself her lord, the Supreme Divine and in her individual formations his parts and portions to make the whole a divine Play.

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