The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7

THE WORLD-SERPENT

The universe is often conceived as a serpent coiling round and eating itself, the head turning about and swallowing the tail. The image is that of a sphere or globe enclosing the whole existence and that of something without end or beginning, infinite. It also gives the idea of a perpetual lengthening out, that is, constant creation, but at the same time of a turn back: the unrolling of the universe is not in a straight line, but circular.

The universe is however a complex entity. It is not made of only one plane, but consists of many planes superimposed upon each other. Thus at the bottom as the basis is the physical—matter—and at the top as the acme is the most subtle, the spiritual: in between there are gradations whose number varies according to the mode of the outlook.

Reverting to the image of the serpent, one can say that its head represents the spirit, the supreme consciousness, and the tail the other end, matter or supreme unconsciousness. The image, furthermore, gives a graphic picture of the great truth that extremes meet, the head bends round and catches the tail. Psychologically this means that if one rises higher and higher in consciousness, starting from the body consciousness, traversing Life and Mind and Overmind and reaches the very source, the head and front of consciousness, then, curious to

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say, one finds oneself all on a sudden landed in the heart of matter. In the occult language this is expressed by saying that the consciousness that shines on the highest peak, is imbedded also here below in the cavern of dead matter. If one rises sufficiently high, rung by rung, to the extreme end of the ladder, one comes round exactly at the point from where one started without having to pass through all the rungs. Conversely too if one probes sufficiently deep into the farthest comer of matter, the last limit of inconscience, one comes out into the blaze of the same infinity that covers above and below and around.

One can recall here the curious conclusion reached by some modern scientists in regard to the spherical character of the universe that the universe being an endless bounded plane it is quite likely that a particular star you see in front of you may not at all be situated direct against you, but that it might be sending out rays that have come round the whole sphere and taken you, as it were, from behind!

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