The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10

V

God's Debt

Here is a line from Savitri:

"And paying here God's debt to earth and man."

What is this debt that God owes to earth and man? We understand the debt that man and earth owe to God, their creator. But how is God indebted to his creation? Besides we learn that God pays his debt through his representative, his protagonist upon earth, the aspiring human being.

First let us understand the mystery of God's debt toman. We know, in ordinary life a subordinate has a duty towards his superior, the lesser owes a debt to the greater. That is easily understood. Likewise the superior also has a duty to his subordinate, the greater has his duty to the smaller. The child owes a debt to his parents; no less is the debt that the parents owe to the child. The parent not only bring forth the child, but they have to bring him up, nourish, foster, educate and settle him in life. We know also, as the scriptures tell us, that there is a debt man owes to the gods. The paying of the debt is described in the institution of the sacrifice (yajña). It is through his sacrifice that man achieves what he has to achieve upon earth. It is the giving—of what one is and what one has —to the gods—the sacrifice mounts carrying the offering

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to the gods. But the sacrifice is not a mere one-sided movement, the sacrifice brings from the gods gifts for the man— material prosperity and spiritual fulfilment. Man increases himself in this way, but thereby increases the gods also. The offering that man brings in his sacrifice—all his possessions—his earthly possessions, but chiefly his possessions of the inner world, the wealth of his spirit, the virtues of his consciousness—all go to the gods and increase them, that is to say, they become more manifest and more powerful upon earth and in earthly existence and in the service of man.

The sacrifice going up to the gods as offered by man means the sadhana, the inner discipline that he follows by which he lifts up his being with its mental and vital and physical formulations to their higher and higher potencies upon earth. The dedication of the normal powers and faculties to the gods means purification and release from the bondages of ignorance and egoism. This serves to make the gods living to us, bring them near to our terrestrial life, to our normal consciousness. This is what is meant by increasing the gods—man's duty or debt to the gods. In answer there is a corresponding gesture from the gods, with their immortalising reality they dwell in us and fill our being with their godlike qualities, their light, their energy, their delight, their very immortality. Man increases the gods and the gods increase man and by their mutual increasing they attain the supreme increment, the Divine status, so says the Gita.

Now, we go beyond the gods, to the very origin, God

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himself, the Supreme. What is the debt that God, the Supreme, the Divine, owes to us human beings? We owe to God everything, our life, our very existence, our soul and substance given to us by him, then how is he indebted to us? What kind of debt he has incurred which he has to pay to his creature, the human being. Primarily because he is the Divine Father, he has to take charge of his own creation, see to its growth and fruition and fulfilment. Indeed that is the role of the Divine in us (and above us and around us): that is his work, the Divine Work. Since he has put us out of his consciousness (for a special experience of growth and development), it is also his work (and duty) to bring us back to him: after a process of self-separation a process of self-integration. Man, so long as he is a separate consciousness has to dedicate, lift up and unify this separative conscious being to the whole being and consciousness. This is how he discharges his debt to the Divine, and the answering grace of the Divine is the clearing of the debt which He owes to His creatures.

What has been said of man is equally applicable to earth. The destiny of man is the destiny of earth as also the destiny of earth is the destiny of man. For man is an earthly creature, is born out of earth and he grows with the growth of the earth; equally the earth grows with the growth of man.

In reality it is God's growth in man and earth that is reflected and embodied in the growth of man and earth. The debt spoken of is the debt of God himself to himself. In other words, it is a work, a mission that he has himself 10

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taken upon himself for his own mysterious delight of existence.

Earth moves forward through man who is its flowering and man moves forward through his representative, the higher man, who reveals and embodies still greater potentialities of God's creation, having the privilege of being so conscious as to contact the gods and God Himself—-he is master of life-force (aśwapati); he climbs to the summits and brings down upon earth the heavenly riches and the Divine Grace, which fulfils, transmuting all debits into credits.

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