[In the opening passage of the Book of Fate in Savitri, we have a complete description of the proto-atoms
constituting our material world. The beginning of the objective universe starts
from the Akash-element viewed as the etheric sea and goes down below to the
dense form of the Prithvi-element. In the ether is the first stir, a vibration
set into motion, Spandan with an urge towards the physical creation. Akash is
the high substratum needed for the objects to come into existence, the
subtlest, the finest support, the spiritual ādhāra for matter to exist.
Narad the heavenly sage pays a visit to Aswapati on an important mission. He
has to make known the future opening out to the world, but in an apparently
calamitous way. Aswapati’s daughter Savitri has chosen a doomed lover as her
life’s partner and in it Narad sees something remarkable which must be
promoted. For this purpose he has to assume a gross physical body and present
himself to them. He does it by the Sankhya process of materialisation.]
If Narad has a mission of delivering the Word of Fate at the
king’s palace in Madra, he must first establish communion with Matter in order
to appear on the earth. The spiritual must undergo a change and take up the
corporeal. The suns that govern this process must be invoked and through their
creative-formative power the needed transformation worked out. What happens in
the cosmic modus should also be carried out, analogously, at the individual
level. The essential technique perhaps remains the same in all the cases, as it
is already a part of Nature’s basic methodology of working things out here. The
appearance of the mental being is an aspect of this well-founded procedure. The
suns we see in Narad’s arrival at Madra are the suns that shine below him,
below the soul-space, and therefore their best light is of the Overmental
realms. Other suns brighter than these will have to be born if a being beyond
the mental species has to make an entry in the scheme of the terrestrial evolution.
Not only the spiritual, also, more importantly, the corporeal substance will
have to be receptive to the incoming rush of the transcendental Substance of
the Truth-Existent. A new body functioning in all its subtler and luminous
modes can be fully operative only when the twelve suns overseeing it appear in
this dense material sky. In that glory the materialisation of the psychic being
itself will give the ever-growing and dynamic immortality to the physical; it
will also assure continuity of the evolutionary progress in the vastness of the
triple Spirit.
The Taittiriya Upanishad describes the birth of man as follows.
This is the birth for which the five elemental states of the Sankhya matter
seem to be sufficient. “This is the Self, the Spirit, and from the Spirit ether
was born; and from the ether, air; and from the air, fire; and from the fire,
the waters; and from the waters, earth; and from the earth, herbs and plants;
and from the herbs and plants, food; and from the food man was born. Verily,
man, this human being, is made of the essential substance of food.” But beyond
the Food giving rise to this Man, beyond Annamaya Purusha, are other selves,
the Self of Prana, the Self of Mind, the Self of Knowledge, the Self of Bliss.
(The Upanishads, pp. 327-31) But presently as Narad is coming only as
Man divine, his technique is just the same as that of the technique that has
given rise to the Annamaya Purusha. Here need come into operation only the
elemental states of the Sankhya Matter. From them he has to successively
prepare the lower mental, vital-nervous and gross physical sheaths.
When the Spirit enters the world of form using
this technique and when there is the descent of life, there is also the
accompaniment of death with it: there is the sap of life and there is the sap
of death: they remain locked together. The food prepared by this cosmic Spirit
turns out to be on this earth the begetter of death too. Agni and Apas carry
the elements of mortality that are, in their not yet well-formed rudiments, present
even in the realms of Vayu and Akash and possibly even beyond in this vast
material domain.
The
form Narad is assuming on his way to Madra springs up not from the inconscient
energy, the lower heavy Prakriti or Nature, not built up from below above, but
comes from the soul-space with its suns a-dazzle with their spiritual lights,
with spiritual essences working towards weightiness and mass, from above
downward. The ripples of the etheric sea, the primal air, the might of the
creative fire, the sap of life and the sap of death, and the gross solid matter
constitute its almost visible ingredients. The way in which the body is built
up on the basis of these elements, it is in the same way that it will be
dissolved when the piece of work that has to be completed shall be completed,
when the formative will behind it is withdrawn. But before we proceed further
let us read the corresponding passage again:
Below him circling
burned the myriad suns:
He bore the ripples of
the etheric sea;
A primal Air brought
the first joy of touch;
A secret Spirit drew
its mighty breath,
Contracting and
expanding this huge world
In its formidable
circuit through the Void;
The secret might of
the creative fire
Displayed its triple
power to build and form,
Its infinitesimal wave-sparks'
weaving dance,
Its nebulous units
grounding shape and mass,
Magic foundation and
pattern of a world,
Its radiance bursting
into the light of stars;
He felt a sap of life,
a sap of death;
Into solid Matter's
dense communion
Plunging and its obscure
oneness of forms
He shared with a dumb
Spirit identity.
Here we have a complete description of the
proto-atoms constituting our material world. The beginning of the objective
universe starts from the Akash-element viewed as the etheric sea and goes down
below to the dense form of the Prithvi-element. In the ether is the first stir,
a vibration set into motion, Spandan with an urge towards the physical
creation. Akash is the high substratum needed for the objects to come into
existence, the subtlest, the finest support, the spiritual ādhār for
matter to exist. Sri Aurobindo writes, “…the nature of the action of cosmic
Mind is the cause of atomic existence. Matter is a creation, and for its
creation the infinitesimal, an extreme fragmentation of the infinite, was
needed as the starting-point or basis. Ether may and does exist as an
intangible, almost spiritual support of Matter, but as a phenomenon it does not
seem, to our present knowledge at least, to be materially detectable. Subdivide
the visible aggregate or the formal atom into essential atoms, break it up into
the most infinitesimal dust of being, we shall still, because of the nature of
the Mind and Life that formed them, arrive at some utmost atomic existence,
unstable perhaps but always reconstituting itself in the eternal flux of force,
phenomenally, and not at a mere unatomic extension incapable of contents … realities of pure existence, pure substance…
are the reality underlying Matter, and not the phenomenon which we call
Matter.” (The Life Divine, p. 238) A body made from this pure existence,
this pure substance accompanied with the truth-conscient dynamism has yet to be
created. But presently Narad is passing from Mind into material things and
therefore he picks up first the Akash-atom.
The etheric sea is not just a static
extension, a tenuous featureless expanse, a colourless blue, a blank substance,
so to say. Already a degree of fluid density has occurred, a certain thin form
appeared, a body of the creative energy, a word with its power of expression
has taken a shape. This movement is the appearance of the objective or we might
say of physical Time itself. It is an early sensation of the dynamic unfolding
that Narad is now experiencing while he has started coming down. The pressure
of the sea’s ripples is now being felt by him, its impingement becoming
perceptible. The spiritual is getting impinged by the gross physical’s density,
though as yet insubstantial in the sense that protean Matter has yet to undergo
several modifications.
The ultimate constitution of Matter is a
question of profound interest. The traditional Sankhya based on the lower
Nature or Prakriti attributes to it three irreducible Reals: Sattwa, Rajas and
Tamas. An object presents itself to the sense of our cognition by its essence,
that which manifests itself in the phenomenon, Sattwa; all work comes from
kinesis, Rajas; matter-stuff showing gravitational property is made of inertia,
Tamas. In the objective series subtle material potencies become determinates
and assume coherent and integrated forms. In the Sankhya description Ether or
Akash corresponds to both the containing space and the proto-atom. It is at
once all pervasive, we may say vibhu in a restricted sense, and is
charged with the sound potential. In this philosophy it is from the universal
Energy that the material creation begins. Narad’s stepping out of the
soul-space into Mind and then into material things is by the process of the
higher Sankhya. The first step towards material transition has been taken. Here
Narad is not carried by the ripples of the sea but it is he who is carrying
them forward. He feels the contact, even the load of these waves; the
immortal’s transition into the corporeal has this weight now on him. He bears
the ponderous earthly Time; things have started becoming thick and heavy.
Formation, gathering-in, densification by the process of movement in a static
extension have set in to give him a kind of solidity. It is also the beginning
of material inconscience. The Ether or Akash is not a plane of existence, of
Matter, but is a state of the physical universe; ditto for the other four:
Vayu, Agni, Apas, and Prithvi. Akash is just a fine element constituting this
Matter.
But now Narad has to meet the Vayu-atom. After
the vibratory is the impinging. Impact and mechanical intensity lead to the
tactile aspect. It is this tactility which brings to the heavenly sage the joy
of touch, of contact, of exchange. But what is unceasing expansion and
contraction, rarefaction and densification, the breathing in and breathing out
of the secret Spirit, that must acquire the definiteness of form and shape.
With its triple power the Agni-atom brings
fixity to the things in flux, securing for them a definiteness of form.
Specularity, granularity is introduced. A dense particle of light is formed,
but that particle is also a wave, a speedy undulating corpuscle of energy, a
wave-spark; it is a quantum of electromagnetic rush that provides shape and
size and contours. There is the condensation and collocation of the particles
producing a recognisable body of the flowing energy. A swift-moving wave weaves
a pattern as though a dance would give rise to form, work out a structure, draw
a figure. When this formation has taken place, then bursts in it its radiance.
Until now there was radianceless starlight. But it is actually the presence of
Agni which makes stars, the stars. “I am the radiance in the sun,” says the
Gita. (The Gita, X:21) In fact without this radiance the sun could not
have taken any shape or form or acquired the material character that it has. It
is this radiance that is ablaze in inconscient energy of the physical matter
following evolutionary course of the sun itself. Narad’s experience is that of
creative play of the Spirit as Agni-atom, but it is also a stage towards
further personification, of acquiring a structured shape.
“He felt the sap of life, a sap of death.” The
element of death is becoming prominent in material things in the domain of the
Apas-atom. The creative fire has already built the form and life is flowing
into it. However, life cannot have its full freedom of operation, because this
viscous flux is entering into a gross material world deep down below where
resides a power that negates life; there is now death. To escape this material contingency
life’s device is to constantly change form—life is adopting death as a
mechanism to escape death. Hence both life and death are saps; they are runny.
If persistence of form is what we may call as material immortality, then
constant change of form is life’s present mode of immortality in Matter; death
is an aspect of the working of that immortality. To cast the Spirit into a
physical form was the assigned task, but this entails a difficulty. To meet
that difficulty death has become a part of total functioning in the Apas-world.
The contingency has become functionally beneficial.
Why does Narad feel this sap of life and sap
of death at this late stage of his Sankhya journey downward? Is there no life
in the ether, in the air, in the fire? But life is universal, is all-pervasive;
life is also all-potent. Then, how is it that Narad didn’t feel it in the
etheric sea? That is because a stable form does not appear there, does not
exist there in the etheric expanse. Life with a shape and mass is absent in it.
Naturally, there can be no question of death either—if its role is in
connection with the change of form. It is the appearance of form that imposes
limits on life and hence there is death. Yet subtle if not ingenious presence
of death is there everywhere, such being the constitution of the mortal world,
of this Mrityu Loka.
In the earthly sun the dominant principle is
the fire; it is brought into being by the Agni-atom. It has a fiery form and
hence in it life too has a fiery character. But being an aspect of the mortal
world, in it too the play of death has to be present in some manner or the
other. Could not that be, in the heaven of our night, the reason for the birth
and death of the sun and of the countless stars that twinkle in the sky? Should
not the universe of the astronomer too meet the same fate? So must also the
minutest material object, every grain of matter, every infinitesimal such as
the proton or the electron, even the photon; they all must face the same
inevitable fate. A theory of the fundamental particles of physics predicts the
decay of the proton, albeit with a long lifetime. Whether this will be
established on the basis of observation or not, the metaphysics asserts that it
ought to be so. Whatever is in Time has to decay and disappear, because Time
itself disintegrates,—as the Buddhist lore proclaims. The transience is
universal, that nothing is permanent. Gravitational weight of the particle of
light is loaded with decay-disintegration-death. Inseparable are the companions
life and death everywhere, here in this time-ordained creation. Manas, Prana,
and Anna that constitute this world operate in the inconscient regime and hence
all that is formed or governed by it must suffer.
Finally, Narad is entering into the
Prithvi-atom, establishing communion with Matter in the manner of the Spirit.
The aspects of cohesion, attraction and diffusion, radiance, impingement, and
the vibratory are all gathered into a solid mould. The pentacle is fully
formed. Narad is now presented with an inorganic-organic body prepared from the
subtle atoms of this vast tangible-physical universe, from the elemental states
of Matter as the basis. But it shall prove to be just an inorganic body if we
should consider only the five elemental states of Matter causing it; in order
that it becomes an organic body also, vital-nervous energy ought to come into
operation to form a bond between them.
Prana and Anna under the aegis of Manas make it so. That is the strength
of the corporeal body in which we are housed; that is its deathful limitation
too.
Indeed, the dense communion with Matter is in the manner of the
dumb Spirit. It is a state of withdrawn activities. The Spirit is without
speech: it is voiceless, it has not yet found expression, its native vibrant
idiom, its true vernacular, its articulation, its own genuine tongue has yet to
be discovered; its possibilities are all lying dormant. That also means that
the thousand qualities of Matter that can come into manifestation have yet
remained unexpressed, the matter with which Narad presently identifies himself.
But this is the Matter which got formed in the furnace of a myriad suns that
burn below the soul-space. These are the Sankhya suns afire in the mortal
creation and the limitations of that mortality not only stun the Spirit but
also make it dumb. They are at the best a product of the most fundamental or
essential sense which later gives rise to our five organs of cognition, the
Jnanendriyas. Behind the sight that creates the eye, and behind the sound that
brings out the ear, there is present that Sense.
In his commentary on the Kena Upanishad Sri
Aurobindo explains the entire process of cognition and its instruments that get
formed in us. There are prominently three sheaths of consciousness in us, the
material, Annakosha, in which the physical contact and image are received and
formed; the vital and nervous, Pranakosha, in which there is a nervous contact
and formation; and the mental, Manahkosha, in which there is mental contact and
imaging. These sheaths or Koshas are formations in a more and more subtle
substance reposing on gross Matter as their base. Mind, subconscious in all
Matter and evolving in Matter, has developed these physical organs in order to
apply its inherent capacities of sight, hearing and other faculties on the
physical plane by physical means for a physical life; but they are inherent
capacities and not dependent on the circumstance of terrestrial evolution and
they can be employed without the use of the physical eye, ear, skin, palate. The
physical being made of Food, as the Upanishad would say, Annamaya Purusha, the
vital being, Pranamaya Purusha, and the mental being, the Manomaya Purusha,
produce in the course of involution-evolution their corresponding bodies. A
spiritual being like Narad has to resort to a similar technique for acquiring a
corporeal body for temporary use connected with his present visit to the
earthly place. He resorts to the inherent measures or capacities available in
this cosmic working of the Consciousness-Force, capacities that are independent
of the circumstance of terrestrial evolution. When he shall withdraw his will
that went behind its formation, he will go back to his original form, will have
his spiritual body alone.
Innate with these capacities are also the
limitations of the body thus formed. Later, Narad is going to sing of the glory
and marvel still to be born and of bodies made divine and life made bliss. Such
bodies cannot be formed by the myriad suns he presently sees below him while
crossing the wide expanses of brilliant peace, below the soul-space. New suns
will have to be set ablaze if this is to happen. Another Sankhya will have to
be created by another yogic tapasya.
RY Deshpande
Source: This is Chapter V of the author’s book entitled Narad’s
Arrival at Madra published by the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of
Education, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry (2006). It is based on the opening
passage of 83 lines of the Book of Fate of Savitri. As it is dealing
with the Sankhya process of materialization, I’m reproducing it here in the
context of the discussion at
http://www.mirroroftomorrow.org/blog/_archives/2009/1/2/4042583.html