Canto IV: The Secret Knowledge Archives

Book One Canto IV Summary

Feb 4, 2018

Aswapati seeks and discovers the Master plan of this universe, its occult cause and moving force, the far-off goal towards which creation moves. This knowledge is secret because we cannot find it through the mind or the senses but can discover it through other faculties and powers which have now awakened in Aswapati.

The Soul’s Journey and the Great Purpose Hidden in Creation pp. 71-73

Feb 2, 2018

Thus ends this marvelous passage describing the grand culmination of the soul’s journey. This close is not nirvana or extinction in the Divine but a divine perfection of life and a divine fulfillment of creation itself.

The Sailor on the Flow of Time pp. 69-71

Jan 29, 2018

Sri Aurobindo compares the human soul to a sailor who sails through many lives and in the course of this journey discovers itself and the world. The world experiences are not just a means for the soul to discover itself but also a means for its self-fulfillment in the conditions of material existence.

The Journey of Life pp. 68-69

Jan 20, 2018

The great journey of life is the Purusha sailing through the fields of his experiences created by Nature. It is through this journey that he grows into his full stature. Sri Aurobindo gives us here the broad outline of this journey that the soul undertakes impelled by the currents and waves of nature.

Our Present State pp. 68

Jan 15, 2018

Ignorance too is a mask of the Divine that He wears upon Himself for the play of multiplicity. The individual soul must go through it, until, growing from depth to depth of its own being, it discovers that We are That and that our individual Self and the Universal Self are one.

The Master of Existence Dwells Within Us pp. 66-67

Jan 6, 2018

Until the transformation takes place, human life will remain imperfect, beset with riddles, struggling on its road in the fields of Death. But with God and His transforming Touch, all can become beautiful and wonderful, as life should be, is meant to be, and must one day become. Thus we see the essential unity of the Lord and His Shakti as well as of the Creator and His Creation. This is the fundamental basis of transformation. Since the Divine has become this creation, therefore this creation must also become divine.

The Play of Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature (4) pp 65-66

Jan 2, 2018

The game being played between Soul and Nature starts with the utter self-forgetfulness and slavery of the Soul to Nature but ends in Mastery through discovery of our true and highest Self. All the experiences that Nature arranges for the soul, - things terrible and beautiful and dangerous and divine, - are really a schooling and a training for the Soul to grow and recover its lost divinity.

The Play of Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature (3) pp 63-65

Jan 1, 2018

As our being evolves, as we grow in soul-power and soul-consciousness, the relation between Soul and Nature too begins to change and evolve. Slowly the soul begins to discover itself and realizes itself to be the master and lord of nature, Isa.

The Play of Purusha and Prakriti, Soul and Nature (1-2) pp 61-63

Dec 22, 2017

The Soul and Nature are two poises of One Truth. Indeed Prakriti is the power of the Purusha. She builds for the soul the instruments needed for their play and gives the experiences necessary for the growth and fullness of the evolving soul in creation. This evolving soul is a portion of the Jivatma sent down into the bounds of Time and Space for the replicating the truth of Iswara and Shakti here, in the conditions of matter and earthly life.