Purpose of the Divine Manifestation

It is not rational for us to suppose that the Divine must have a purpose for creating the universe. Why should the Divine have a purpose? When the child plays, does he always have a purpose? The best we can do is understand that the artist who creates does it for the joy of the creation. Sri Aurobindo says the act of self-creation through Ignorance is generating an infinite delight of self-expression and self-experience for the Divine. We can best understand that by analogy with the child who builds something and breaks it and builds it again. Today we are trying to understand how Knowledge becomes Ignorance. God’s job was to create the Ignorance, and our job is to rediscover the Knowledge.

The intention of the Divine is not some long journey that leads us back to the starting place of non-manifestation in some blank nirvana beyond. The divine intention is to arrive at something that has never existed before. This is a divine creation. It is a process of spiritual evolution. It is a process of Self-expression through manifestation. Even when the world is transformed into a supramental manifestation, the process need not stop. At that point the rules of evolution may change, because it will become an evolution in Knowledge and with full power and capacity, no longer an evolution in Ignorance, impotence and incapacity as now.

Sri Aurobindo says that the creation did not necessarily have to be an evolution through Ignorance. The Divine could have started with the Supermind and begun with an evolution through full power and knowledge. Why did he start with Ignorance? The Divine wants to have the joy of both the creations. Since it is the Infinite, how can we limit it and say the Divine should do things only in one way? If there is one inherent characteristic of the Divine, it is that it is infinite. It cannot be limited. It explores everything. It creates dinosaurs and then allows them to become extinct.