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XIII. The Divine Maya

Existence acts and creates. Its conscious being acts and creates from its pure delight. It is the reality that we are. It is the self of all our modes and moods. It is the cause, object and goal of all our doing. It is our becoming. It creates thus. The poet, artist or musician creates. They really develop some potentiality within them. It lies in their unmanifested self. It comes out as a form of manifestation. The thinker, statesman, and mechanist also create similarly. The potential lies hidden in themselves. They bring it out in a shape of something. What emerges is themselves. Even when cast into form, it is still themselves. The Eternal creates the world similarly. All creation is becoming. It is nothing but self-manifestation. In the seed there is the Eternal. Out of the seed it evolves. It is pre-existent in being. It is pre-destined in its will. Its will is to become. It is pre-arranged in the delight of becoming. The resultant organism is in the original plasma. It held it in itself in force of being. It is a secret force. It is a burdened force. It knows itself. Its impulse is irresistible. It is charged with it. The impulse is to manifest itself in form. It is the individual who creates. He develops out of himself. Only he makes a distinction. He sees the force as distinct from himself. The force works in himself. It works in his material. The reality is different. The force is himself. His consciousness is individualised. It becomes his instrument. It is himself. He uses some material. Even that is himself. A form is the result. It too is

himself. We can put it in other words. It is one existence. It is one force. It is one delight of being. It concentrates itself at various points. It says of each, ‘This is I'. Its goal is self-formation. It is a variation of play. It is a play of self-force. That is how it works.

What it produces is itself. It can be nothing other than itself. It has a delight of being. It has a force of consciousness too. It develops its own existence. It is working out a play. That play is a rhythm. Within its deepest being is the Delight. It is the Consciousness. It is the Existence. They suggest ideas to it. They give direction. They use all means. The aim is to perfect the delight. It seeks the various forms of delight. It is a delight of consciousness. It is also the delight of its rhythm. It is the delight of the play of force. It seeks to aggrandise these forms of delight. It seeks delight in the form of being. To come into manifestation is a delight. There is consciousness in it. There is power too. It tries to realise them infinitely. A form is intended. It tries to arrive at it. In the form it tries to enlarge its self-existence. It does so by development and manifestation. Its effort is to increase the delight and realise it. Many things come into the world. They seek to be. They seek nothing but this.

A goal is a completeness sought. It is a goal for the individual. The individual is constituted in a whole. The goal is theirs. Such a goal is one of self-existence. It is a completeness of self-existence. It is a goal of its power and consciousness. It is also that of the delight of being. The individual is concentrated within its limits. It limits its formation. That goal is impossible in the individual. We seek absolute completeness. The individual is the finite. It is alien to the self-conception of the finite. But the infinite consciousness can emerge in the finite. It is the final goal of the individual. He must recover his own truth of himself. It is done by self-knowledge and self-realisation. It is the truth of the Infinite in being. It is the Infinite in consciousness. It is the Infinite in delight. The individual repossesses it as his own Self. It is his Reality. The finite is only a mask. It is an instrument for various expressions.

The world-play has been realised by Sachchidananda. Space and Time are the vastness of His existence extended. We see the nature of that play. We have to conceive of a first involution. Next we need to consider self-absorption. The conscious being is absorbed into substance. The substance is dense and divisible infinitely. The finite variation we see demands this assumption. The next stage is emergence. It is the emergence of a living, thinking being. It emerges out of a formal being. It was imprisoned there. It was a self-imprisonment. The final stage is a release. It comes out as a formed thinking being. Thus it freely realises itself. It realises its unity and Infinity. They are at play in the world. So, it recovers its secret personality. It recovers its existence-consciousness-bliss. This is its real eternal secret. It is a triple movement. It is the key to the world-enigma.

Evolution in the universe is modern. It is a phenomenal truth. Vedanta helps us to know all the truth of evolution. It also illumines and justifies it. Vedanta is ancient. It carries an eternal truth. This modern truth is nothing but the old Truth. It says the Universal develops itself successively in Time. The moderns study Force and Matter. To them the field is opaque. The Vedantic scriptures carry a Light. It is still preserved. The modern mind can benefit by Vedanta. This is a mental Self-discovery and self-illumination. The old

Eastern and the new Western knowledge can fuse now. The world is already turning to that end.

All things are Sachchidananda. We have discovered that. Still, all is not explained. We know the Reality of the universe. But we meet the world as this phenomenon. We do not know how that Reality became this phenomenon. That process remains undiscovered. We have the key of this riddle. It turns in the lock of this creation. We are yet to discover that lock. This is Existence, Conscious-Force, Delight. It does not work directly. Nor is it a magician with sovereign irresponsibility. He builds up works by the mere fiat of a word. We perceive a process. We are aware of a Law.

It is true there is a Law. It reveals as an equilibrium when we analyse it. The play of forces arrives at a balance. There is a determination to fix that play in certain lines. It looks to be an accident of development. It is a habit of past realised energy. This is an apparent truth. It is secondary too. It can't be final if we go beyond Force. In the plane of Force it is final. That Force is a self-expression of Existence. We can perceive it. There is a self-truth of Existence. It governs. It determines the constant curve. It fixes the destination also. There is a correspondence between these two lines. Consciousness is the nature of Existence. Existence is original. Consciousness is the essence of its Force. This truth must be of the Conscious-Being. It must be its self-perception. There is a self-directive knowledge in Consciousness. It is inherent in it. This determination is a line taken by the Force. It must be a power of that knowledge. It enables it to guide its own Force. It will be a logical line. It is from the original self-conception. So, it must be a self-determining power. It must be in the universal consciousness. The infinite existence is self-aware. This is a capacity of it. It can perceive a certain Truth in itself. It has a force of creation. It lies along the line of that Truth. It can direct it thus. That presides over cosmic creation.

We know of the infinite Consciousness. We also know the result. This result is the workings of that Consciousness. Now we are trying to discover something in between. Is this necessary? This Consciousness is a Self-awareness. Its range is Infinite. It freely creates forms. Afterwards they remain in play. It will continue, if not stopped. The old Semitic Revelation tells us, ‘God said, Let there be Light, and there was Light'. Here we assume something. We assume a power of Consciousness. Also we assume it can determine light out of everything not light. There is a further assumption. When we say, ‘there was light', we assume a directing power. It is an active power. It corresponds to the original power. It is a perceptive power. It brings out the phenomenon. It works out Light. It does so according to the original perception. It prevents Light from being overpowered by other phenomenon. There are infinite possibilities that can overpower any one form. Infinite Consciousness acts. It acts infinitely. Its action is infinite. It produces infinite results. We want a fixed Truth. Or, we need an order of truths. We want to build a fixed world. It should conform to a fixed world. For that there must be a selective faculty. It is a faculty of knowledge. It is commissioned to shape finite appearance. It must come out of the Infinite Reality.

This power was known to the Vedic seers. They called it Maya. They saw the infinite consciousness as Maya. Maya, to them, comprehended. It contained in itself. It measured out. They

understood Maya as a force that forms. Force is delimitation. The infinite existence is an illimitable Truth. It is vast. Out of it Maya shapes. It gives a Name. The Reality is Truth. It is static. Its truth is essential. Maya creates out of it. It creates an active being out of it. Its truth is ordered. It can be put in a philosophical language. In the Supreme Being, all is in all. There is no barrier. Barrier creates separative consciousness. Creation is a play. Existence plays with existence, consciousness with consciousness, force with force, delight with delight. This is the life of the phenomenal being. Maya creates this play. This play is of the all in each. It is also a play of each in all. First it is concealed. The mental play conceals it. We call it the illusion of Maya. Maya gives an illusion. It makes us believe that each is in all. It prevents us from seeing that all is in each. He is in all, Maya pervades, as a separated being. The truth is, he is inseparably one with all existence. This is an error. The Supramental play is the truth. It is the truth of Maya. We have to emerge out of the error and enter into the Supramental truth. There ‘each and all' coexist. They are united, inseparable. It is deluding. It is present. We have to embrace it. Then we must overcome it. It is God's play. God plays with division and darkness. He plays with limitation and desire. Strife and suffering too are His playthings. The Force came out of Himself. He subjects Himself to the Force. The Force is obscure. The obscure obscures Himself. He suffers it. Mental Maya conceals the higher Maya. Embrace it and then overpass it. The Force went out from Him in the beginning. God fulfills in the Force illumined. It is for that the Force went out of Him. He emerges out of Force. His emergence is the play of God. Existence has its infinities. Knowledge has its splendours. The Force has its own glories. Love has its ecstasies. They are illimitable. It is for this play God created the universe.

There is a distinction between the higher and lower Maya. It is a thought. It is a link also. It is also a cosmic Fact. The philosophers miss it. The pessimists too miss it. It is an illusionist philosophy. They miss it or neglect it. For them Overmind is Mind. They think mental Maya created the world. What would the world be so created? It would be a paradox. We can explain it. It would be a nightmare. It would be floating. It would be of conscious existence. It would not be a reality. It would not be even an illusion. It would be fixed. Above is Supermind. It is a creative governing knowledge. Below is the soul imprisoned in works. Mind is in the middle. It is an intermediary. Sachchidananda has a lower movement. The Force is absorbed in it. It is Self-oblivious. His workings have a form. The force is lost in the Form. The Form is her own workings. The Force returns to Himself. It thus emerges out of oblivion. Mind is only one of His instruments. It is an instrument in the descent and in the ascent. It is an instrument of descending creation. Mind is not the secret creatrix. In the ascent, Mind is a transitional stage. For the cosmic existence, there is an origin. It is the source. It is also the consummate term. Mind is not that source or origin.

Some philosophies recognise Mind as the creator of the worlds. They believe in an original principle. Mind is the only mediator between it and the forms. They are of two kinds. One is realistic, the other is idealistic. The first recognises cosmos as the work of Mind, Thoughts, Ideas. The idea can be arbitrary. It may not have any essential relation to Truth. A Truth is of existence. Such Truth may exist. Then it may be an Absolute. It can have no relations. It is irreconcilable with the world. Our world is a world of relations. Idealism sees a Truth behind. It sees an appearance in the front. The appearance is a phenomenon. It comes out of

conception. Idealism sees a relation between the Truth behind and the appearance in the front. It is a relationship of opposition. Sri Aurobindo presents a third view. It goes farther in idealism. To it the creative Idea is a Real-Idea. It means it is a power. It is a power of Conscious-Force. It expresses a real being. It is born out of real being. It partakes of its nature. It is not a child of the Void. Nor does it weave a fiction. It is a Conscious Reality. It throws itself into forms. Those forms change. They are the forms of its own substance. That substance is imperishable. Nor will it change. The world is not a story. It is not a fiction of the Mind or the Universal Mind. It is a conscious birth. That which is beyond Mind is so born. It is a birth into forms. They are forms of itself. The conscious being has a truth. It supports these forms. That truth expresses itself in them. There is a knowledge corresponding to that truth. When expressed, it becomes supramental Truth-Consciousness. It organises real-ideas. It does so in perfect harmony. They are cast into other moulds. They are of the Mind, Vital and Body. These forms are inferior in consciousness. They are a partial expression. Beyond Mind there exists a superior expression. It is the expression of that Truth-Consciousness. These forms evolve variously. They strive to arrive at this goal. The ideal is Beyond, beyond Mind. The ideal is trying to realise itself. It labours so in its own conditions.

There is an ascending point of view. From there we can say the Real is behind all that exists. The ideal is a truth. It is a harmonized truth of itself. There is an intermediate stage. It is the ideal. The ideal throws out a phenomenal reality. It is a variation of the conscious-being. This is drawn to its source. That source is the essential Reality. It tries to recover its original value. It tries to do so entirely. It can be by a violent leap. Or, it can be through the Ideal. This came out of that Ideal. The Mind sees human existence as imperfect. Now we know why it is an imperfect reality. The mental being has an instinctive aspiration. It is towards a perfectibility. It is always beyond itself. There is a harmony in the Ideal. It is concealed. Perfection aims at it. Beyond the ideal there is a supreme surge. It is of the spirit. It swells towards the transcendent. Our consciousness has some facts. It has a constitution. It has a necessity also. Therefore a triple order has come into existence. The Absolute and the relative is an antithesis. It is dual. This triple order negates that duality.

There is an existence in the universe. Mind is incapable of explaining that. We know of the Infinite Consciousness. It has become the universe. For that, first it has to translate itself into infinite faculty of knowledge. It is omniscience from our point of view. But Mind is not a faculty of knowledge. Mind is also not an instrument of omniscience. Mind is a faculty for seeking knowledge. There are relative thoughts. Certain forms of them can be gained by Mind. Mind can express them towards certain capacities of action. Even when it finds, it does not possess. It cannot keep the Truth itself. It can keep a coin of Truth. It keeps certain funds of such coins. The Mind keeps them in the bank of Memory. It draws upon it according to its needs. Mind does not know. Mind tries to know. It knows as in a glass. It knows darkly. It is a power of interpretation. It can interpret truths of universal existence. To create order we need this power for practical use. It is not the power which knows. It cannot guide existence. Therefore it cannot be the power that created the world. Nor could it have manifested it.

We can suppose an infinite Mind, free of limitations. Can we

say it might have created the world? We know what Mind is. We know its mentality. We know the definition of it. This Mind we suppose will be different from it. It would be the supramental Truth. The terms of mentality are fixed. If an infinite Mind is so constituted, well, it can create. It could create infinite chaos. It would create a vast clash of chance, accident. It could create vicissitudes. They could wander towards an indeterminate end. One would aspire towards that end. It would be groping. Such groping would be tentative. A Mind can be infinite, omniscient and omnipotent. It would not be mind at all. It would be supramental knowledge.

Mind is a reflective mirror. It receives images. They are presentations of a Truth or Fact. They are pre-existent. These Facts are external to the Mind. Or they are a vaster Truth. Mind acts from moment to moment. It represents phenomenon. They are either present or came into existence earlier. It possesses another faculty. It is a faculty of construction. It can construct images not known to it. Mind represents what is or what may come into existence. It is incapable of knowing the immediate future. It can do so, if it is a repetition. It has the faculty of forecasting new modifications. This it does out of the meeting of the past and future. The past is a fulfilled possibility. The future is an unfulfilled possibility. In this it succeeds sometimes in some things. Here its success is more or less exact. Others fail to realise. They are cast into other forms than the Mind expected. It serves other purposes than the Mind planned.

An infinite Mind of this type can construct. The construction may be an accidental cosmos. It would be full of conflicting possibilities. It might take shape into something shifting. It would always be something temporary. Even in the drift it would be uncertain. It may be real or unreal. It can have no definite purpose or end. There would be endless aims. They are really aimless aims. It is so because there is no direction from above. This is realism. Its natural end is Nihilism or nothingness. Or it may end in an illusion, Mayavada. Such a cosmos reflects not itself. It presents what does not exist. It is false presentation. It is a distorted reflection. There all cosmic existence would be an imagination of a Mind. Mind has to struggle to work it out. But it never succeeds. It is so because there is no basis of Self-truth. This construction is the result of past energies. It is overpowered by them. It would be borne onwards forever. There would be no issue as there is no determining factor. In the end it may slay itself. Or, it may fall into eternal stillness. Traced to its roots it is Nihilism and Illusionism. There is an original conception at work in the universe. There is the highest cosmic force. If we suppose our human mentality represents them, then Nihilism is the only wisdom.

We find in the original power of knowledge a higher force. It is higher than the force of our mentality. Now our conception changes. It makes it invalid. It is a partial truth, not the whole truth. It is a law, a law of immediate appearance. It is not a law of the original truth. It does not represent the ultimate fact. Behind the action of Mind, Life and Body there is something. It is not embraced by the Force. But that embraces and controls the Force. It is not born into this world. Nor does it seek to interpret it. But it has created in its being a world. It has the omniscience of it. It does not labour perpetually. It does not force something else out of itself. It drifts in the overmastering energies of the past. It can no longer control. There is a perfect Form. It is there in its consciousness. It is gradually unfolding it. The world expresses a Truth. It was

foreseen by it. It obeys a predetermining will. There is a self-vision. It is original and formative. It is the growing image of a divine creation.

We work through mentality. It is governed by appearances. That something beyond is vaguely felt. We infer it. What is behind is immanent. It is always present. We perceive a law. It is one of cyclic progress. We infer an ever-increasing perfection of that. It is somewhere foreknown. Everywhere we see a Law. It is founded in self-being. We can penetrate within. We can try to know the rationale of the process. That Law is the expression of an innate Knowledge. This Knowledge is inherent in existence. It is expressing itself. It is implied in the force that expresses it. It is a Law developed by Knowledge so as to allow of progress. It is towards a divinely seen goal. The motion is directed towards it. Our reason seeks to emerge out of the drift. It tries to dominate it. It is a helpless drift. It is a drift of our mentality. We see it. Now we perceive the truth of Reason. Reason is only a messenger. It is a representative. It is a shadow of a greater consciousness. It is an end to itself. It knows all that it is. This source of Reason is a knowledge. Reason is identical with that knowledge. It acts as Laws in the world. We see this as an inference. This knowledge determines its own Law. It is sovereign. It knows what has been. It knows what is. It also knows what will be. It knows all that because it knows itself. Its knowledge of itself is infinite. It eternally knows itself. Therefore, it can do it. It is being that is infinite consciousness. It is infinite consciousness that is omnipotent force. It makes a world. To make a world it makes a harmony of itself. World is its object of consciousness. That we can understand. Our thought can seize hold of it. It knows it as cosmic existence. It is an existence that can know its own truth. It realises its truth in forms. It knows the forms.

We must cease to reason. We must go deep into ourselves. It is the secret centre of Man. There all activity is stilled. In that stillness the higher consciousness is felt. It is manifest to us. It is imperfectly seen by us. It is due to our mental reaction. That reaction is a habit. That is how mind limits itself. Then we can know surely. There is an increasing illumination. Reason's light is pale. It is uncertain, flickering. Earlier we know this higher consciousness by Reason. Now we can know it for sure. Knowledge waits there. It is seated beyond Mind. It is beyond intellectual reasoning. Beyond is self-vision. It is illimitable and luminous. There Knowledge is enthroned.

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