The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 10

IV

Transfiguration

The Divine attributes—such as Peace and Joy, Consciousness and Power, Freedom, etc.—each and all of them are self-existent realities, existing by themselves in their fullness and perfection. They are not mere qualities that are acquired by effort through gradual culture and development, they are not acquired piecemeal as other human possessions, material or mental. They are there near us, about us in their fullness and wholeness. We do not see them or seize them as there happens to be a veil in between. We need not strain and struggle, labour and sweat, go through all the pains of the world in order to find them, realise them. It is, as I say, a veil interfering. Remove the veil or even shift it a little, you have a glimpse of them in their full glory.

Brahman, the supreme Reality, is said to be of the same nature and its relation to the world is also of the same kind. Brahman is not there because the world is there. Brahman is not realised through a long process of negating experiences; it is not the sum of all negations, it is an immediate and absolute realisation. When the vision of the world-maya is not there, Brahman stands self-revealed in its absoluteness, then one realises that Brahman only exists, has existed and will exist; there is no maya, it not only does not exist, it never existed. Brahman alone is

Page 18

there always.

That is what the Upanishad also says. This experience cannot be acquired by mental knowledge and argumentation or study of books. Only when it reveals its own body then one stands before it face to face

.

As of the Brahman, even so of the Brahman's qualities. They are various aspects, living aspects or personalities of the One Divine. The Vedas therefore consider them as Gods and Goddesses and give each one a name and a form. They are adored and worshipped as such so that they may enter into the worshipper and transmute him into something of His image. The Gods bring riches to man. But these riches are they themselves. Vasu is the richness, of their substance, Ratna is the wealth of their delight.

Agni is the energy of consciousness, Varuna is the vast-ness of consciousness, Mitra is the harmony. Ila is the revelation, Saraswati inspiration, Bharati is the Goddess, of the Divine Word.

In the mental world we meet abstractions, lifeless ideas, forms without a soul. In reality, however, all movements in man, all forces in nature are more than mere movements and forces, they are personalities, embodiments of conscious beings. Indeed the Puranic tradition has elaborated this conception almost to its extreme limit. Those people crowded the world with an infinite number of Gods and Goddesses. They speak of 33 crores of Gods. The earth is the playfield of all godlings.

In this way we come very far from the Supreme Brahman,

Page 19

the Mayavadin's inane Unity. The Puranic multiplicity is perhaps a corrective of the Vedantin's empty Absolute.

The Vedantin's negation of the world for the realisation of the Brahman, the Supreme Consciousness, is an effective way so far as it goes but it does not really negate the world. One only turns one's back to the world and says, "It is not there". We face the Sun and cast our shadow behind. The real solution is not to cut away or wipe off the shadow but instead of an obscure formulation, to make of it a luminous radiant image. The world is not abolished or eclipsed by the Sun but is made luminous, in every particle a radiant and glorious body.

This transfiguration is possible, nay, inevitable, because the higher realities, the truth-expressions of the Supreme Consciousness are there always self-existent in their total purity and pressing down upon earth and displacing the lower mayic shadow-realities. We need not seek to pull down what is already descending of itself. One must be open and receptive and welcoming in tranquillity the descending Godheads.

Page 20