SECTION
SIX
The Divine and the Hostile Powers
1. FALSEHOOD AND IGNORANCE 1
IGNORANCE means Avidya, the separative consciousness and the egoistic mind
and life that flow from it and all that is natural to the separative
consciousness and the egoistic mind and life. This Ignorance is the result of a
movement by which the cosmic Intelligence separated itself from the light of
the supermind (the divine Gnosis) and lost the Truth, – truth of being, truth
of divine consciousness, truth of force and action, truth of Ananda. As a
result, instead of a world of integral truth and divine harmony created in the
light of the divine Gnosis, we have a world founded on the part truths of an
inferior cosmic Intelligence in which all is half-truth, half-error. It is this
that some of the ancient thinkers like Shankara, not perceiving the greater
Truth-Force behind, stigmatised as Maya and thought
to be the highest creative power of the Divine. All in the consciousness of
this creation is either limited or else perverted by separation from the
integral Light; even the Truth it perceives is only a half-knowledge. Therefore
it is called the Ignorance.
Falsehood, on
the other hand, is not this Avidya, but an extreme
result of it. It is created by an Asuric power which intervenes in this
creation and is not only separated from the Truth and therefore limited in
knowledge and open to error, but in revolt against the Truth or in the habit of
seizing the Truth only to pervert it. This Power, the dark Asuric Shakti or Rakshasic Maya, puts forward its own perverted
consciousness as true knowledge and its wilful
distortions or reversals of the Truth as the verity of things. It is the powers
and personalities of this perverted and perverting consciousness that we call
hostile beings, hostile forces. Whenever these perversions created by them out
of the stuff of the Ignorance are put forward as the
1 This letter was written to explain certain terms
occurring in the book The Mother by Sri Aurobindo.
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Truth of things, that is the
Falsehood, in the yogic sense, mithyā, moha.
2. POWERS AND APPEARANCES
These are the
forces and beings that are interested in maintaining the falsehoods they have
created in the world of the Ignorance and in putting them forward as the Truth
which men must follow. In India they are termed Asuras,
Rakshasas, Pishachas
(beings respectively of the mentalised vital, middle
vital and lower vital planes) who are in opposition to the Gods, the Powers of
Light. These too are Powers, for they too have their cosmic field in which they
exercise their function and authority and some of them were once divine Powers
(the former gods, pūrve devāh,
as they are called somewhere in the Mahabharata) who have fallen towards the
darkness by revolt against the divine Will behind the cosmos. The word
“appearances” refers to the forms they take in order to rule the world, forms
often false and always incarnating falsehood, sometimes pseudo-divine.
3. POWERS AND PERSONALITIES
The use of the
word Power has already been explained – it can be applied to whatever or
whoever exercises a conscious power in the cosmic field and has authority over
the world-movement or some movement in it. But the Four 1 of whom you speak are also Shaktis, manifestations of different powers of the Supreme
Consciousness and Force, the Divine Mother, by which she rules or acts in the
universe. And they are at the same time divine personalities; for each is a
being who manifests different qualities and personal consciousness-forms of the
Godhead. All the greater Gods are in this way personalities of the Divine – one
Consciousness playing in many personalities, ekam sat bahudhā. Even in the human
being there are many personalities and not only one, as used formerly to be
imagined; for all consciousness can be at once one and multiple. “Powers and
Personalities” simply describe different aspects of the same being; a Power is
not necessarily impersonal and certainly it is not avyaktam,
as you suggest, – on the contrary, it is a
1 Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi, Mahasaraswati.
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manifestation acting in the
worlds of the divine Manifestation.
4. EMANATIONS
Emanations
correspond to your description of the Matrikas of
whom you speak in your letters. An emanation of the Mother is something of her
consciousness and power put forth from her which, so long as it is in play, is
held in close connection with her and, when its play is no longer required, is
withdrawn back into its source, but can always be put out and brought into play once more. But also the
detaining thread of connection can be severed or loosened and that which
came forth as an emanation can proceed
on its way as an independent divine being with its own play in the world. All
the Gods can put forth such emanations from their being, identical with them in
essence of consciousness and power though not commensurate. In a certain sense
the universe itself can be said to be an emanation from the Supreme. In the
consciousness of the sadhak an emanation of the Mother will ordinarily wear the
appearance, form and characteristics with which he is familiar.
In a sense the
four Powers of the Mother may be called, because of their origin, her
Emanations, just as the Gods may be called Emanations of the Divine, but they
have a more permanent and fixed character; they are at once independent beings
allowed their play by the Adya Shakti and yet
portions of the Mother, the Mahashakti, and she can
always either manifest through them as separate beings or draw them together as
her own various Personalities and hold them in herself, sometimes kept back,
sometimes at play, according to her will. In the supramental plane they are
always in her and do not act independently but as intimate portions of the
supramental Mahashakti and in close union and harmony
with each other.
5. GODS
These four
Powers are the Mother's cosmic Godheads, permanent in the world-play; they
stand among the greater cosmic Godheads to whom allusion is made when it is
said that the Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple
world “stands there (in the overmind plane) above the
Gods”. The Gods, as has already
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been said, are in origin and
essence permanent Emanations of the Divine put forth from the Supreme by the
Transcendent Mother, the Adya Shakti; in their cosmic
action they are Powers and Personalities of the Divine each with his
independent cosmic standing, function and work in the universe. They are not
impersonal entities but cosmic Personalities, although they can and do ordinarily
veil themselves behind the movement of impersonal forces. But while in the overmind and the triple world they appear as independent
beings, they return in the supermind into the One and stand there united in a
single harmonious action as multiple personalities of the One Person, the
Divine Purushottama.
6. PRESENCE
It is intended
by the word Presence to indicate the sense and perception of the Divine as a
Being, felt as present in one's existence and consciousness or in relation with
it, without the necessity of any further qualification or description. Thus, of
the “ineffable Presence” it can only be said that it is there and nothing more
can or need be said about it, although at the same time one knows that all is
there, personality and impersonality, Power and Light and Ananda and everything
else, and that all these flow from that indescribable Presence. The word may be
used sometimes in a less absolute sense, but that is always the fundamental
significance, – the essential perception of the essential Presence supporting
everything else.
7. THE TRANSCENDENT
This is what is
termed the Adya Shakti; she is the Supreme
Consciousness and Power above the universe and it is by her that all the Gods
are manifested, and even the supramental Ishwara comes into manifestation
through her – the supramental Purushottama of whom the Gods are Powers and
Personalities.
Of course, the
gods exist – that is to say, there are Powers that stand above the world and
transmit the divine workings. It is
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the physical mind which believes
only what is physical that denies them. There are also beings of other worlds –
gods and Asuras, etc.
There are gods everywhere on all
the planes.
The dynamic aspect of the Divine
is the Supreme Brahman, not the Gods. The Gods are Personalities and Powers of
the dynamic Divine. You speak as if the evolution were the sole creation; the
creation or manifestation is very vast and contains many planes and worlds that
existed before the evolution, all different in character and with different
kinds of beings. The fact of being prior to the evolution does not make them
undifferentiated. The world of the Asuras is prior to
the evolution, so are the worlds of the mental, vital or subtle physical Devas – but these beings are all different from each other.
The great Gods belong to the overmind plane; in the
supermind they are unified as aspects of the Divine, in the overmind
they appear as separate personalities. Any godhead can descend by emanation to
the physical plane and associate himself with the evolution of a human being
with whose line of manifestation he is in affinity. But these are things which
cannot be very easily understood by the mind, because the mind has too rigid an
idea of personality – the difficulty only disappears when one enters into a
more flexible consciousness above where one is nearer to the experience of One
in all and All in one.
The Formateurs
of the overmind have shaped nothing evil – it is the
lower forces that receive from the overmind and
distort its forms.
In the descent it [the falsehood]
begins with Mind, in the
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evolutionary ascent it is difficult
to say where it begins – for here the beginning is Inconscience and Ignorance;
but I suppose we may say that conscious falsehood begins with the beginnings of
mind still involved in Life or appearing out of it.
The Gods are in the universal
Self – if identified with the universal Self one can feel their presence there.
Also there is the experience of microcosm (the universe in oneself) in which
all that is in the macrocosm (the larger universe) is present. All these things
are for experience, for knowledge and must be taken as such. No merely personal
turn should be given to them.
Again, what do you mean by a
soul? My proposition simply meant that there is no existence which has not the
support of something of the Divine behind it. But the word soul has various
meanings according to the context; it may mean the Purusha supporting the
formation of Prakriti, which we call a being, though the proper word would be
rather a becoming; it may mean, on the other hand, specifically the psychic
being in an evolutionary creature like man; it may mean the spark of the Divine
which has been put into Matter by the descent of the Divine into the material
world and which upholds all evolving formations here. There is and can be no
psychic being in a non-evolutionary creature like the Asura; there can be none
in a god who does not need one for his existence. But what the god has is a
Purusha and a Prakriti or Energy of nature of that Purusha. If any being of the
typal worlds wants to evolve, he has to come down to
earth and take a human body and accept to share in the evolution. It is because
they do not want to do this that the vital beings try to possess men so that
they may enjoy the materialities of physical life
without having the burden of the evolution or the process of conversion in
which it culminates. I hope this is clear and solves the difficulty.
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The three stages you speak of are
stages not of evolution but of the involution of the Divine in Matter. The Devas and Asuras are not evolved
in Matter; for the typal being only a Purusha with
its Prakriti is necessary – this Purusha may put out a mental and vital Purusha
to represent it and according as it is centred in one or another it belongs to
the mental or vital world. That is all.
There is no
essential difference anywhere, for all is fundamentally the essential Divine,
the difference is in the manifestation. Practically we may say that the
Jivatman is one of the Divine Many and dependent on the One; the Atman is the
One supporting the Many. The psychic being does not merge in the Jivatman, it
becomes united with it so that there is no difference between the eternal being
supporting the manifestation from above and the same being supporting the
manifestation from within it, because the psychic being has become fully aware
of the play of the Divine through it. What is called merging takes place in the
Divine Consciousness when the Jivatman feels itself so one with the Divine that
there is nothing else.
While the Gods cannot be transformed,
for they are typal and not evolutionary beings, they
can come for conversion – that is to say, to give up their own ideas and
outlook on things and conform themselves to the higher Will and supramental
Truth of the Divine.
Where do you find in “The Life
Heavens”1 that I say or anybody says the conditions on the earth are
glorious and suited to the Divine Life? There is not a word to that effect
there! The Life Heavens are the heavens of the vital gods and there is there
a perfect harmony but a harmony of the
sublimated satisfied senses and vital desires only. If there is to be a
Harmony, it must be of all the powers raised to their highest and harmonised
together.
1 A poem by Sri Aurobindo. See Collected Poems and
Plays, Vol. II, pp. 282-84.
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All the non-evolutionary worlds
are worlds limited to their own harmony like the Life Heavens. The Earth, on
the other hand, is an evolutionary world, not at all glorious or harmonious
even as a material world (except in certain appearances), but rather most
sorrowful, disharmonious, imperfect. Yet in that imperfection is the urge
towards a higher and more many-sided perfection. It contains the last finite
which yet yearns to the supreme Infinite, (it is not satisfied by sense-joys
precisely because in the conditions of the earth it is able to see their
limitations). God is pent in the mire (mire is not glorious, so there is no
claim to glory or beauty here), but that very fact imposes a necessity to break
through that prison to a consciousness which is ever rising towards the
heights. And so on. That is “a deeper power”, though not a greater actual glory
or perfection. All that may be true or not to the mind, but it is the
traditional attitude of Indian spiritual experience. Ask any yogin, he will tell you that the Life Heavens are childish
things; even the gods, says the Purana, must come down to earth and be embodied
there if they want mukti, giving up the pride of their limited perfection; they
must enter into the last finite if they want to reach the last infinite. A poem
is not a philosophical treatise or a profession of religious faith – it is the
expression of a vision or an experience of some kind, mundane or spiritual.
Here it is the vision of the Life Heavens, its perfection, its limitation and
the counter-claim of the Earth or rather the Spirit or Power behind the
earth-consciousness. It has to be taken at that, as an expression of a certain
aspect of things, an expression of a certain kind of experience, not of a
mental dogma. There is a deep truth behind it, though it may not be the whole
truth of the matter. In the poem, also, there is no question of a divine life
here, though that is hinted at as the inexpressed
possible result of the ascent – because the Earth is not put aside (“Earth's
heart was felt beating below me still”); nevertheless the poem expresses only
the ascent towards the Highest, far beyond the Life Heavens, and the
Earth-Spirit claims that power and does not speak of any descent of a divine life.
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The Gods have their own
enjoyments though they may not be of a material character.
The higher beings are not likely
to be in disharmony with each other, as they are not subject to the lower
ignorance.
There are no planes of
manifestation without forms – for without form creation or manifestation cannot
be complete. But the supraphysical planes are not
bound to the forms like the physical. The forms there are expressive, not
determinative. What is important in the vital plane is the force or feeling and
the form expresses it. A vital being has a characteristic form but he can vary
it or mask his true form under others. What is primary on the mental plane is
the perception, the idea, the mental significance and the form expresses that
and these mental forms too can vary – there can be many forms expressing an
idea in different ways or on different sides of the idea. Form exists but it is
more plastic and variable than in physical nature.
As to the gods, man
can build forms which they will accept but these forms too are inspired into
man's mind from the planes to which the god belongs. All creation has the two
sides, the formed and the formless, – the gods too are formless and yet have
forms, but a godhead can take many forms, here Maheshwari, there Pallas Athene. Maheshwari herself has many forms in her lesser
manifestation, Durga, Uma, Parvati,
Chandi, etc. The gods are not limited to human forms
– man also has not always seen them in human forms only.
The lion with Durga on it is the
symbol of the Divine Consciousness acting through a divinised
physical-vital and vital-emotional force.
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The lion is the attribute of the
Goddess Durga, the conquering and protecting aspect of the Universal Mother.
The Death's Head is the symbol of the Asura (the adversary of the gods)
vanquished and killed by the Divine Power.
Mahakali and Kali are not the
same. Kali is a lesser form. Mahakali in the higher planes appears usually with
the golden colour.
I indicate the psychological
powers which they bring with them.
Mitra – Harmony.
Varuna – Wideness.
Aryamana – Power – Tapasya.
Brihasapati – Wisdom (Word and Knowledge).
Vishnu – Cosmic
Consciousness.
Vayu – Life.
Yes, Mitra
is rather a combination of two powers [Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati].
Vayu
and Indra are cosmic godheads presiding over the action of cosmic principles – they
are not the manomaya purusa or prānamaya purusa in each man.
The Purusha is an
essential being supporting the play of Prakriti; the godhead (Indra, Vayu, etc.) is a dynamic being manifested in Prakriti for
the works of the plane to which he belongs.
Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva are only
three Powers and Personalities of the One Cosmic Godhead.
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Brahma is the Power of the Divine
that stands behind formation and the creation.
As for Vishnu being the creator,
all the three gods are often spoken of as creating the universe – even Shiva
who is by tradition the Destroyer.
There is no particular connection
between Shiva and the Overmind – the overmind is the
higher station of all the Gods. It is better not to call it the overmind until the action of it is clear and there can be
no mistake.
Mahashiva
means a greater manifestation than that ordinarily worshipped as Shiva – the
creative dance of a greater Divine manifesting Power.
It is probably the realm of the
dynamic creative spirit from the highest mental plane which you saw as the
world of Parvati-Shankara.
Shiva is the Lord of Tapas. The
power is the power of Tapas. Krishna as a godhead is the Lord of Ananda, Love
and Bhakti; as an incarnation, he manifests the union of wisdom (Jnana) and works and leads the earth-evolution through this
towards union with the Divine by Ananda, Love and Bhakti.
The Devi is the Divine Shakti – the Consciousness and Power of
the Divine, the Mother and Energy of the worlds. All powers are hers. Sometimes
Devi-power may mean the power of the universal
World-Force; but this is only one side of the Shakti.
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It is, I suppose, the image of
Sri Krishna as Lord of the divine love and Ananda – and his flute calls the
physical being to awake out of the attachments of the physical world and turn
to that love and Ananda.
The boy with the flute is Sri
Krishna, the Lord descended into the world-play from the divine Ananda; his
flute is the music of the call which seeks to transform the lower ignorant play
of mortal life and bring into it and establish in its place the Lila of his
divine Ananda. It was the psychic being in you that heard the call and followed
after it.
This is the Krishna of the Gita
(the boy Krishna is the Krishna of Brindaban), Krishna
bringing the spiritual Knowledge, Will, bhakti – and not love and bhakti alone.
The eye
indicates the vision of the higher spiritual consciousness and the blue expanse
indicates that consciousness.
Buddha stands for the conquest
over the Ignorance of the lower nature.
Narada
stands for the expression of the Divine Love and Knowledge.
Ganesha
is the Power that removes obstacles by the force of Knowledge; Kartikeya represents victory over the hostile Powers. Of
course, the names given are human, but the gods exist.
Ganesha
(among other things) is the Devata of spiritual
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Knowledge – so, as you are
getting this Knowledge you saw yourself in this form identified with Ganesha.
The peacock is the bird of
Victory and Kartikeya the leader of the divine
forces.
II
The hostile forces exist and have
been known to yogic experience ever since the days of the Veda and Zoroaster in
Asia (and the mysteries of Egypt and the Cabbala) and in Europe also from old
times. These things, of course, cannot be felt or known so long as one lives in
the ordinary mind and its ideas and perceptions; for there, there are only two
categories of influences recognisable, the ideas and
feelings and actions of oneself and others and the play of environment and
physical forces. But once one begins to get the inner view of things, it is
different. One begins to experience that all is an action of forces, forces of
Prakriti psychological as well as physical, which play upon our nature – and
these are conscious forces or are supported by a consciousness or
consciousnesses behind. One is in the midst of a big universal working and it
is impossible any longer to explain everything as the result of one's own sole
and independent personality. You yourself have at one time written that your
crises of despair etc. came upon you as if thrown on you and worked themselves
out without your being able to determine or