Opening Remarks
There is a purpose in this slow and random start. There is a reason why the soul is perennially tied to creation and its fate. It is not an accident but a choice, not a purposeless game but a conscious Will that has gone into creation.
The Divine Sacrifice
In the enigma of the darkened Vasts,
In the passion and self-loss of the Infinite
When all was plunged in the negating Void,
Non-Being’s night could never have been saved
If Being had not plunged into the dark
Carrying with it its triple mystic cross.
Creation is the self-loss of the Divine. It is He who has plunged into this dark and painful world and bears its burden upon His shoulders as a cross. It is He who has entered the dark fields of Nature so that this too may wake up to the Light. It is He who has set the cosmic puzzle and He alone is there to solve it. It is this act of self-loss of the One Infinite so as to redeem creation that is spoken off as the great sacrifice of the Divine Being.
Bringing down heaven upon earth
Invoking in world-time the timeless truth,
Bliss changed to sorrow, knowledge made ignorant,
God’s force turned into a child’s helplessness
Can bring down heaven by their sacrifice.
This is what is meant by bringing down the kingdom of Heaven or else marrying Heaven and Earth making them equal and one. This plunge of divinity in the dark fields of nature at first meant forfeiting Its divinity. By this sacrifice thee Divine Bliss, divine Consciousness, Divine Power and Truth turned into its very opposite. It was covered with the darkness and unconsciousness of the field in which It went. But thus alone could the willed-for change arrive. Because the Divine consents to be tied to matter, matter too can hope to be divinised one day.
The contradiction of life
A contradiction founds the base of life:
The eternal, the divine Reality
Has faced itself with its own contraries;
Being became the Void and Conscious-Force
Nescience and walk of a blind Energy
And Ecstasy took the figure of world-pain.
Thus we see the contradiction within life. On the one hand it seeks for bliss but finds itself surrounded in a world of pain. Seeking for Wisdom and Light it discovers its own ignorance and darkness. It is as if life was built out of paired opposites with Truth and falsehood, Joy and sorrow dwelt together arm in arm.
Mysterious law
In a mysterious dispensation’s law
A Wisdom that prepares its far-off ends
Planned so to start her slow aeonic game.
That is how the game begins with opponents and opposing forces standing face to face in each field and form of life. It makes the progress slow and evolution a difficult and complicated process. Yet there is a Wisdom that works within the heart of creation that has so ordained it, a slow and difficult start but with far reaching results. It is as if the challenge of the opposing forces will make the end result far more complete and perfect and rich in detail and diversity.
Self-born twins
A blindfold search and wrestle and fumbling clasp
Of a half-seen Nature and a hidden Soul,
A game of hide-and-seek in twilit rooms,
A play of love and hate and fear and hope
Continues in the nursery of mind
Its hard and heavy romp of self-born twins.
These opposite pairs are born together, of the same fundamental Reality. There is but One Reality that manifests as two, Soul and Nature searching for each other and yet secretly married and linked, creating by their mutual wrestle and embrace, the opposing world currents needed for evolutionary purposes.
The waited for embrace
At last the struggling Energy can emerge
And meet the voiceless Being in wider fields;
Then can they see and speak and, breast to breast,
In a larger consciousness, a clearer light,
The Two embrace and strive and each know each
Regarding closer now the playmate’s face.
Eventually the two embrace each other, Matter and Spirit and grow conscious each other.The long wait is finally over and a larger consciousness emerges and dawns upon the dark material fields of life. In that larger consciousness our understanding grows and we reclaim the divinity we seem to have lost. Then do we hear the secret Lover’s life and all grows beautiful and blissful and tranquil and free.
Infant stir
Even in these formless coilings he could feel
Matter’s response to an infant stir of soul.
When our eyes are thus opened then we begin to see the Wisdom that works in the heart of creation. We see the first spark and stir of the soul even in this obscure beginning.
Riddle of God
In Nature he saw the mighty Spirit concealed,
Watched the weak birth of a tremendous Force,
Pursued the riddle of Godhead’s tentative pace,
Heard the faint rhythms of a great unborn Muse.
Then we understand the riddle of God who uses opposites for our growth, challenges our life with struggle and pain and fall so that His Force may emerge within our soul. The discords of life prepare us for the ultimate harmonious strains. They awaken in us the aspiration for the ultimate and lasting harmony. Such is the play and the riddle of God that Aswapati has discovered.
Closing Remarks
That is why in our life a constant struggle between Light and darkness, Truth and falsehood, Joy and sorrow, Love and hate. Yet, as Sri Aurobindo repeatedly assures us, at the end victory os certain since behind it all there vis a deliberate and conscious hand of the Divine Wisdom and Power that works sleeplessly in heart of creation to lead each element towards the Light and Truth and Force and Bliss of the Divine.
