Opening remarks
This is one of profoundest discoveries given to man, to discover the Divine Presence within Him and by this discovery transform his life.
The Divine playing with Nature
The master of existence lurks in us
And plays at hide-and-seek with his own Force;
In Nature’s instrument loiters secret God.
The Divine Presence is hidden in each atom of existence. He is there not merely as a static Presence but also as a dynamic Power that animates all things. He is hidden behind the workings of Nature which is nothing else but His own Force. But Nature is not always conscious of His Presence and therefore yearns for Her secret Lord. It is this yearning for the Lord hidden within her and seeking and finding Him in countless ways which constitutes the play of creation.
The Immanent lives in man
The Immanent lives in man as in his house;
He has made the universe his pastime’s field,
A vast gymnasium of his works of might.
He who sports with the regions and shines in the Splendour of the galaxies and stars; He who is hidden in the atom and the tiniest particle of creation through which He weaves out this stupendous universes even as He transcends it, dwells in Man as the Lord and Master of our being.
The vast, the Infinite accepts to be limited and small
All-knowing he accepts our darkened state,
Divine, wears shapes of animal or man;
Eternal, he assents to Fate and Time,
Immortal, dallies with mortality.
This creation is nothing but a self-limitation of the Divine. It is the Divine who has become man and bird and beast, consenting to the play of Time. It is the Divine who has entered the field of Ignorance and Death.
He becomes the All, He is the All
The All-Conscious ventured into Ignorance,
The All-Blissful bore to be insensible. (page 67 begins)
It is He, the All-knowing and All-Powerful who has become a limited consciousness. It is He, the All-Blissful who has entered into the experience of pleasure, pain and indifference.
He enters into creation
Incarnate in a world of strife and pain,
He puts on joy and sorrow like a robe
And drinks experience like a strengthening wine.
The Divine enters this world of strife and pain, taking upon Himself its joy and sorrow and each of these experience offered to Him by Nature leads to a greater and greater unfolding of His divinity in creation, in terms and conditions arranged by Nature for the Divine play.
He dwells in each and every element of creation
He whose transcendence rules the pregnant Vasts,
Prescient now dwells in our subliminal depths,
A luminous individual Power, alone.
In the depths of creation, the Divine dwells as the All-knowing Power of the Transcendent.
The Divine brings out His Shakti for creation
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone
Has called out of the Silence his mute Force
Where she lay in the featureless and formless hush
Guarding from Time by her immobile sleep
The ineffable puissance of his solitude.
It is His Force that has gone into creation. It is He, the Absolute, the Perfect the Alone, who has become Two, – Self and Nature, God and World by bringing out His own Force, Shakti from that state of Silence where she was lying beyond creation, beyond manifestation, beyond Time and Space. In the Supreme, the Divine and His Shakti are One, there is only One Reality. His Shakti is asleep within in the Silence of the Infinite. But at His Command for creation She wakes up and emerges out of Him. In fact She is the Knowledge-Will of the One charged with the mandate to create.
Space is himself and Time is only he
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone
Has entered with his silence into space:
He has fashioned these countless persons of one self;
He has built a million figures of his power;
He lives in all, who lived in his Vast alone;
Space is himself and Time is only he.
The Divine Being as the Iswara does not just watch the play of creation but follows in the wake of His Shakti. He enters into whatever the Divine Shakti creates. Multiplying Himself endlessly, He becomes many persons and beings even as She, the One infinite Shakti, becomes many powers and forces that govern the universe. Space is only the One Divine Existence extending Itself and Time is the One Divine Shakti setting all His countless beings into motion.
Our secret self has assumed our mask of imperfection
The Absolute, the Perfect, the Immune,
One who is in us as our secret self,
Our mask of imperfection has assumed,
He has made this tenement of flesh his own,
His image in the human measure cast
That to his divine measure we might rise;
Then in a figure of divinity
The Maker shall recast us and impose
A plan of godhead on the mortal’s mould
Lifting our finite minds to his infinite,
Touching the moment with eternity.
Though He has entered into creation limiting Himself to a name and a form, consenting to the play of Time; though, being Perfect He wears the mask of imperfection, He remains Immune and thus constantly uplifts and transfigures Nature by His Divine Touch. His Presence within each element of creation is the promise and hope of a greater and greater Perfection that must emerge through the process of evolution in Time. This evolutionary manifestation of the Divine through countless names and forms is the very secret of creation. It is also the goal of creation since what has gone within it that must emerge eventually. Since the Divine has become all this manifold creation, creation must become Divine, each element of it bringing out something, some element, some power, some aspect of the Divine, creating a figure of divinity. But most of all it is in man that He seeks to bring out the latent Perfection inherent in creation. Man is the bridge through which the Divine rediscovers Himself in terms of creation and in conditions of Matter.
His human portion, we must grow divine
This transfiguration is earth’s due to heaven:
A mutual debt binds man to the Supreme:
His nature we must put on as he put ours;
We are sons of God and must be even as he:
His human portion, we must grow divine.
Man is the Divine limiting Himself and God is Man’s own highest Self. The coming together of the two, God and Man, of the Divine Supernature hidden in our depths and the lower Nature that is our present endowment, is to uplift and transmute human nature into its divine status, man into Godhead, the human into the Divine.
The key to the paradox of life
Our life is a paradox with God for key.
Until this 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.
Closing Remarks
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.
