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Falsehood and Evil—a Price to be Paid

by RY Deshpande on Fri 12 Dec 2008 06:34 PM IST | Permanent Link | Cosmos

Falsehood and Evil are the byproduct of a world or cosmic movement, making their appearance somewhere in the involutionary-evolutionary process, it becoming inevitable because of the Ignorance. As far as the individual is concerned remove ignorance, the self-limiting knowledge of the Self, and these will simply fade away, will just depart. In the evolution out of the inconscient existence there rise up powers and beings who will not allow any progress towards manifestation of the divine possibilities, manifestation of light and love and beauty and joy. But the problem at the cosmic realm is, if these can be eliminated or dissolved for ever. We read in Savitri: (p. 510)

The cosmic evil is too deep to unroot,

The cosmic suffering is too vast to heal.

Terrifying and pitiless are these agents holding us back, and a high price must be paid to get rid of them. Being ‘fundamental’ in the cosmic working, only a supra-cosmic force can successfully tackle them, only the incarnate Divine, the Divine himself born as Man, accepting all his suffering and evil, can handle them. By his “martyred body” is the dark account of the mortal’s ignorance settled. That is the debt God pays to Man. The Son of God born as the Son of Man must drink the bitter cup, must carry on his back the heavy cross of the afflicted creature.

It is in that context that the world-redeemer, the world-saviour himself must do the qualifying, the demanding Yoga. This is precisely what the divine incarnate power as Savitri has to do; she must do the Yoga of Conquest in the evolutionary movement. She is told: (Savitri, pp. 536-38)

Thou hast come down into a struggling world
To aid a blind and suffering mortal race,
To open to Light the eyes that could not see,
To bring down bliss into the heart of grief,
To make thy life a bridge twixt earth and heaven;
If thou wouldst save the toiling universe,
The vast universal suffering feel as thine:
Thou must bear the sorrow that thou claim’st to heal;
The day-bringer must walk in darkest night.
He who would save the world must share its pain.
If he knows not grief, how shall he find grief's cure?
If far he walks above mortality's head,
How shall the mortal reach that too high path?
If one of theirs they see scale heaven's peaks,
Men then can hope to learn that titan climb.
God must be born on earth and be as man
That man being human may grow even as God.
He who would save the world must be one with the world,
All suffering things contain in his heart's space
And bear the grief and joy of all that lives.
His soul must be wider than the universe
And feel eternity as its very stuff,
Rejecting the moment's personality,
Know itself older than the birth of Time,
Creation an incident in its consciousness,
Arcturus and Belphegor grains of fire
Circling in a corner of its boundless self,
The world's destruction a small transient storm
In the calm infinity it has become.
If thou wouldst a little loosen the vast chain,
Draw back from the world that the Idea has made,
Thy mind's selection from the Infinite,
Thy senses' gloss on the Infinitesimal's dance,
Then shalt thou know how the great bondage came.
Banish all thought from thee and be God's void.
Then shalt thou uncover the Unknowable
And the Superconscient conscious grow on thy tops;
Infinity's vision through thy gaze shall pierce,
Thou shalt look into the eyes of the Unknown;
Find the hid Truth in things seen null and false,
Behind things known discover Mystery's rear.
Thou shalt be one with God's bare reality
And the miraculous world he has become
And the diviner miracle still to be
When Nature who is now unconscious God
Translucent grows to the Eternal's light,
Her seeing his sight, her walk his steps of power
And life is filled with a spiritual joy
And Matter is the Spirit's willing bride.
Consent to be nothing and none, dissolve Time's work,
Cast off thy mind, step back from form and name.
Annul thyself that only God may be.

The command to Savitri is, after the discovery of the soul, to annul herself that only God may be. The cosmic evil and falsehood are cosmic issues, and are beyond the capacity and means of Man; the human potential is totally inadequate to tackle them. It is only the divine Incarnate who can do so. It is the problem of creation arising out of the Inconscience and, naturally, Man born out of this stark foundational stuff will find himself ill-equipped, even his best effort proving no more than a temporary palliative. It is this which makes coming of the Divine as the Incarnate, as an Avatar inevitable in the universal working. It is the occult-spiritual work he comes here to do, nay, he comes here to do the divine work, divyam karma as the Gita says.

There are godheads born from the dim Inconscient, and there is the stone-still figure of high and godlike Pain staring into Space with fixed regardless eyes, seeing grief's timeless depths but not life's goal. (Savitri, p. 10) He is bound to his throne, and awaits, unappeased, the ceaseless sacrifices offered to him. Of this gruesome situation, the Mother says the following:

All earth is under the governing shadow of the vital beings. Even the Highest Divinity, when coming upon earth cannot escape the consequence of this shadow governing all the events of the earth. For life upon earth to become entirely divine, harmonious, happy, painless, these forces and beings of the vital world must be conquered or destroyed, transformed; they must disappear—that is, return to the Nirvana of the Origin.

That is the divine work not of Man but of the divine Incarnate. He bears wounds that are difficult to heal. To write about these matters is to write the spiritual biography of the Avatar which only a siddha or perfect accomplished Yogi can do. These, and not the university or academic or the so-called researched presentations, are the aspects of utmost concern. We should be appreciative of the things that constitute the essence of the divine work, divyam karma.

RY Deshpande

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Re: Falsehood and Evil—a Price to be Paid

by auroman on Sat 13 Dec 2008 12:58 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

> To write about these matters is to write the spiritual biography
> of the Avatar which only a siddha or perfect accomplished Yogi
> can do. These, and not the university or academic or the
> so-called researched presentations, are the aspects of utmost
> concern.

Section on the Transformation of the Mind in the Letters on Yoga

The power to discuss and debate is, as I say, a common human faculty – and habit. Perhaps it is here that man begins to diverge from the animal; for animals have much intelligence, many animals and even insects have some rudimentary power of practical reasoning, but so far as we know, they do not meet and put their ideas about things side by side or sling them at each other in a debate,¹ as even the most ignorant human can do and very animatedly does.

But this, though a general faculty of the race, is very often specialised, so much so that a man whom it is dangerous to cross in debate in the field of literature or of science or of philosophy may yet make a fool of himself and wallow contentedly in a quagmire of blunders and fallacies if he discusses politics or economics or, let us say, spirituality or yoga.

Re: Re: Falsehood and Evil—a Price to be Paid

by RY Deshpande on Sat 13 Dec 2008 11:41 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

I’ve made, en passant, a number of comments about the highly controversial biography The Lives of Sri Aurobindo. Links to some of them are listed in the following. These observations however must be seen in the overall context of the respective articles but particularly it as pertaining to the divine work, divyam karma of the Gita.

http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/11/29/3999434.html

http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/11/27/3997815.html

http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/12/1/4002901.html

http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/12/3/4005379.html

http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/12/2/4004239.html

http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/11/26/3996217.html

http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2008/11/30/4000477.html

We go to a spiritually accomplished person to seek his spiritual help to make spiritual progress, and we endeavour to follow it if we are centrally alert to its assuring methodology and its demands, truthful to our own earnest and sincerest yearning.

The author of a recent biography of Sri Aurobindo and his eloquent friends simply disregard this central principle of spiritual discipline. But absence of the psychic and spiritual awareness will put even the best of our thinking and reasoning in a permanent mental trap, a secure trap from which escape may not be easy, may not be simple and straightforward. We should follow the higher precepts in their truthfulness. It is this superior and elevating expectation we have from the biography of a spiritual giant, and that too the biography of a Yogi par excellence. When this is not available then one feels disappointed—whatever be its other claims and good points, its academic or research presentations.

While these few stray comments have been summarised only briefly here, a more thorough and detailed presentation is necessary, in fact not only necessary but is obligatory also. Yet it is felt that this material will provide the essential background for the purposes of appreciating the many dimensions that are present here. This need be seen from several yogic-spiritual perspectives.

RYD

If the doors of perception are cleansed, reality will appear to man as it truly is, infinite.

- William Blake

Re: Re: Re: Falsehood and Evil—a Price to be Paid

by auroman on Sat 13 Dec 2008 10:35 PM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

The biography notes that Sri Aurobindo drank wine and smoke without providing an explanation.

This condition can be easily explained by the fact that the outer nature may be untamed even after one has attained Nirvana, as defined by the states of Balavat, Jadavat, Pishachavat, Unmattavat.

See Chapter Gnosis and Ananda in Synthesis of Yoga

The very physical consciousness in man, the annamaya puruşa, can without this supreme ascent and integral descent yet reflect and enter into the self of Sachchidananda. It can do it either by a reflection of the Soul in physical Nature, its bliss, power and infinity secret but still present here, or by losing its separate sense of substance and existence in the Self within or without it. The result is a glorified sleep of the physical mind in which the physical being forgets itself in a kind of conscious Nirvana or else moves about like a thing inert in the hands of Nature, jadavat, like a leaf in the wind, or otherwise a state of pure happy and free irresponsibility of action, balavat, a divine childhood. But this comes without the higher glories of knowledge and delight which belong to the same status upon a more exalted level. It is an inert realisation of Sachchidananda in which there is neither any mastery of the Prakriti by the Purusha nor any sublimation of Nature into her own supreme power, the infinite glories of the Para Shakti. Yet these two, this mastery and this sublimation, are the two gates of perfection, the splendid doors into the supreme Eternal.

The life soul and life consciousness in man, prāņamaya puruşa, can in the same way directly reflect and enter into the self of Sachchidananda by a large and splendid and blissful reflection of the Soul in universal Life or by losing its separate sense of life and existence in the vast Self within or without it. The result is either a profound state of sheer self-oblivion or else an action driven irresponsibly by the life nature, an exalted enthusiasm of self-abandonment to the great world-energy in its vitalistic dance.

The outer being lives in a God-possessed frenzy careless of itself and the world, unmattavat, or with an entire disregard whether of the conventions and proprieties of fitting human action or of the harmony and rhythms of a greater Truth. It acts as the unbound vital being, pisacavat, the divine maniac or else the divine demoniac. Here too there is no mastery or supreme sublimation of nature. There is only a joyful static possession by the Self within us and an unregulated dynamic possession by the physical and the vital Nature without us.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Falsehood and Evil—a Price to be Paid

by RY Deshpande on Mon 15 Dec 2008 06:18 AM IST | Profile | Permanent Link

But perhaps it is none of these. It is just the essence of ananda in everything, its enjoyment, divine bhoga.

RYD

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