Opening remarks
The Divine Maya is the Occult Power that works behind creation. She is not a power of illusion as is often believed to be but a power of the Divine that stands at the borders of the Overmind – Supermind where the two hemispheres part. She receives her impetus from the Supramental Divine and turns it into real and living forms and figures breathing into them something of her power. In this sense she limits the Infinite while in another sense she also creates representative images and symbols for the Divine Inhabitation.
A border sovereign
A border sovereign is the occult Force.
This border sovereign is the Overmind as it meets the Supramental domains and beyond. The overmind Gods receive the Divine Fiat to work out the Divine Will in creation. They have countless representatives further in lower domains. Each of these deities and sub-deities has a field of action. They derive their authority and power from the Overmind Godhead who is their sovereign, himself being a delegate of the Supermind.
Threshold Guardian
A threshold guardian of the earth-scene’s Beyond,
She has canalised the outbreaks of the Gods
And cut through vistas of intuitive sight
A long road of shimmering discoveries.
There, on the Overmind plane, the Divine Mother reigns over all the Gods as the Adya-Shakti or Mahamaya, the Power of the Lord that arranges and orders and marshals the forces of creation. It is She who has built the paths for the Gods to act. It is She who invests them with the vision and power to act and commands them to stay on their appointed roads.
Worlds of a marvelous Unknown
The worlds of a marvellous Unknown were near,
Behind her an ineffable Presence stood:
Her reign received their mystic influences,
Their lion-forces crouched beneath her feet;
The future sleeps unknown behind their doors.
She and her impenetrable forces guard the doors of the marvelous Unknowable where our face of Future sleeps Unknown. At Her mighty Feet lie powerful forces that have emerged from the Ineffable Transcendent Supreme and leap into creation at Her behst and command.
Infernal abysms and peaks divine
Abysms infernal gaped round the soul’s steps
And called to its mounting vision peaks divine:
An endless climb and adventure of the Idea
There tirelessly tempted the explorer mind
And countless voices visited the charmed ear;
A million figures passed and were seen no more.
The Overmind is still a part of the Cosmic Ignorance, even though in itself, it is free from Ignorance. However, there is here too the possibility of darkness surrounding it though not actually entering it. It is a plane of possibilities, including the possibility of darkness and ignorance. Each such possibility takes a form and a figure as one climbs towards this summit where the form and the formless meet and all Ideas fuse into a single Truth.
Forefront of God’s thousandfold house
This was a forefront of God’s thousandfold house,
Beginnings of the half-screened Invisible
A magic porch of entry glimmering
Quivered in a penumbra of screened Light,
A court of the mystical traffic of the worlds,
A balcony and miraculous facade.
This is the meeting point of the One and the Many. Sri Aurobindo call sit the magic porch where all the different forces of creation arrive and enter into oneness. It is the penumbra that surrounds the core of Light or the Supramental Truth. It is the meeting point of countless worlds climbing towards the One. The Overmind is a translucent screen where the world forces come and knock at the doors of the Invisible.
Edge of hourless Time
Above her lightened high immensities;
All the unknown looked out from boundlessness:
It lodged upon an edge of hourless Time,
Gazing out of some everlasting Now,
Its shadows gleaming with the birth of gods,
Its bodies signalling the Bodiless,
Its foreheads glowing with the Oversoul,
Its forms projected from the Unknowable,
Its eyes dreaming of the Ineffable,
Its faces staring into eternity.
This is a wonderful description of the junction between the lower and the higher hemisphere. It is the meeting point of Time and the Timeless, finite and the infinite. It is the birthplace of the Gods. Though the Eternal Himself is not there yet there is in the Overmind plane the sense of the Timeless or endless Time.
Gulfs and transcendences
Life in him learned its huge subconscient rear;
The little fronts unlocked to the unseen Vasts:
Her gulfs stood nude, her far transcendences
Flamed in transparencies of crowded light.
The seer-yogi Aswapati stands on this borderline where the hemispheres part and casts his gaze into the vastness around and above and below. He is in the luminous company of the Original Gods.
Closing remarks
It is at the gates, the entry porch, the balcony from where the forces of the higher hemisphere lean down, that Aswapati stands. This is the Overmind Maya that has built countless systems of worlds and forces and energies that obey her command.
