The Shadow of the Spirit and the Plunge Being is the essential Reality, Becoming the phenomenal. It is as though in Being there cannot be Becoming, that it turns into total Non-Being wherefrom the process starts. The evolutionary possibility of the material world contains in it the possibilities of all the other typal non-material worlds or formulations. It is through this evolutionary manifestation that the other wolrds will be fulfilled; however they will always remain typal; they have a stationary world-formula. At the same time, it should be recognized as a fundamental fact that without the Divine Will earth-nature’s evolution would be impossible. It means that, in order to be an aspect of manifestation, to align oneself with the Divine Will is what is expected of the evolving soul, of the individual and the earth’s, in its evolutionary progress rather than its withdrawal into the peace of the Supreme. That withdrawal or laya, dissolution into the Unconditional, this immergence into the luminous Original Shadow is going out of manifestation altogether. This of course can be the choice of an individual but can never be the intention in the cosmic working. But let’s read from The Life Divine: [pp. 680-82]

The supraterrestrial existence is ... a truth of being; for the material is not the only plane of our existence; other planes of consciousness there are to which we can attain and which have already their hidden links with us: not to reach up to whatever greater regions of the soul are open to us, not to have the experience of them, not to know and manifest their law in ourselves is to fall short of the height and fullness of our being. But worlds of a higher consciousness are not the only possible scene and habitation of the perfected soul; nor can we find in any unchanging typal world the final or total sense of the Spirit's self-expression in the cosmos: the material world, this earth, this human life are a part of the Spirit's self-expression and have their divine possibility; that possibility is evolutionary and it contains the possibilities of all the other worlds in it, unrealised but realisable. Earth-life is not a lapse into the mire of something undivine, vain and miserable, offered by some Power to itself as a spectacle or to the embodied soul as a thing to be suffered and then cast away from it: it is the scene of the evolutionary unfolding of the being which moves towards the revelation of a supreme spiritual light and power and joy and oneness, but includes in it also the manifold diversity of the self-achieving spirit. There is an all-seeing purpose in the terrestrial creation; a divine plan is working itself out through its contradictions and perplexities which are a sign of the many-sided achievement towards which are being led the soul's growth and the endeavour of Nature. It is true that the soul can ascend into worlds of a greater consciousness beyond the earth, but it is also true that the power of these worlds, the power of a greater consciousness has to develop itself here; the embodiment of the soul is the means for that embodiment. All the higher powers of Consciousness exist because they are powers of the Supreme Reality. Our terrestrial being has also the same truth; it is a becoming of the One Reality which has to embody in itself these greater powers. Its present appearance is a veiled and partial figure and to limit ourselves to that first figure, to the present formula of an imperfect humanity, is to exclude our divine potentialities; we have to bring a wider meaning into our human life and manifest in it the much more that we secretly are. Our mortality is only justified in the light of our immortality; our earth can know and be all itself only by opening to the heavens; the individual can see himself aright and use his world divinely only when he has entered into greater planes of being and seen the light of the Supreme and lived in the being and power of the Divine and Eternal. An integration of this kind would not be possible if a spiritual evolution were not the sense of our birth and terrestrial existence; the evolution of mind, life and spirit in Matter is the sign that this integration, this completed manifestation of a secret self contained in it is its significance. A complete involution of all that the Spirit is and its evolutionary self-unfolding are the double term of our material existence. There is a possibility of self-expression by an always unveiled luminous development of the being, a possibility also of various expression in perfect types fixed and complete in their own nature: that is the principle of becoming in the higher worlds; they are typal and not evolutionary in their life principle; they exist each in its own perfection, but within the limits of a stationary world-formula. But there is also a possibility of self-expression by self-finding, a deployment which takes the form and goes through the progression of a self-veiling and an adventure of self-recovery: that is the principle of becoming in this universe of which an involution of consciousness and concealment of the spirit in Matter is the first appearance. An involution of spirit in the Inconscience is the beginning; an evolution in the Ignorance with its play of the possibilities of a partial developing knowledge is the middle, and the cause of the anomalies of our present nature,—our imperfection is the sign of a transitional state, a growth not yet completed, an effort that is finding its way; a consummation in a deployment of the spirit's self-knowledge and the self-power of its divine being and consciousness is the culmination: these are the three stages of this cycle of the spirit's progressive self-expression in life. The two stages that have already their play seem at first sight to deny the possibility of the later consummating stage of the cycle, but logically they imply its emergence; for if the inconscience has evolved consciousness, the partial consciousness already reached must surely evolve into complete consciousness. It is a perfected and divinised life for which the earth-nature is seeking, and this seeking is a sign of the Divine Will in Nature. Other seekings also there are and these too find their means of self-fulfilment; a withdrawal into the supreme peace or ecstasy, a withdrawal into the bliss of the Divine Presence are open to the soul in earth-existence: for the Infinite in its manifestation has many possibilities and is not confined by its formulations. But neither of these withdrawals can be the fundamental intention in the Becoming itself here; for then an evolutionary progression would not have been undertaken,—such a progression here can only have for its aim a self-fulfilment here: a progressive manifestation of this kind can only have for its soul of significance the revelation of Being in a perfect Becoming.

The Shadow of the Spirit is thus the starting point for the evolutionary process, the Zero-Ground, on which then appears the Cosmic Shadow, the Night of God not in the sense of suspending our faculties of cognition but as the power of the Antagonist pulling everything back to the Shadow-beginning. With the Cosmic Shadow comes a kind of dark mysticism, dark occultism, and the only safety from it is the psychic dependence, of keeping the Divine Agni ever burning as the Protector and the Leader and the Guide of the authentic spiritual journey, a pilgrimage to the manifesting deity in us. It is here the evil persona has to disappear if the transformative power is to work in us. Our souls in the Transcendent once felt curious about the Shadow of the Spirit, saw the interminable infinity in it too and took a plunge into it. Now they have to cross the Cosmic Shadow in order to realize that for which they had taken the plunge. ~ RYD