Opening remarks
The workings of Nature are at once a marvel and a wonder. Its complexity and the working out of several lines of forces at several levels together is enough to make us see that there is behind her workings an unseen Hand of Light and wonder.
Almighty Occultist
An almighty occultist erects in Space
This seeming outward world which tricks the sense;
He weaves his hidden threads of consciousness,
He builds bodies for his shapeless energy;
Out of the unformed and vacant Vast he has made
His sorcery of solid images,
His magic of formative number and design,
The fixed irrational links none can annul,
This criss-cross tangle of invisible laws;
His infallible rules, his covered processes,
Achieve unerringly an inexplicable
Creation where our error carves dead frames
Of knowledge for a living ignorance.
This world is not what it seems. The appearances are constructs of the mind and senses on one side, and on the other side, a complex play of forces and energies that remain hidden to our sight and grasp. Out of this complex play our creation emerges whose surfaces only are visible to our eyes. Our very sense of solidity is an illusion. All that we can do is to study these laws but none knows how these laws came into being and how does order emerge out of chaos. We know not how are forms weaved and by what thread out of emptiness. Strangely out of randomness and even error marvels arise. But all that we end up doing is to erect systems of knowledge and theories while the play of forces, conscious and half-conscious escapes our grasp.
Veiled Creator
In her mystery’s moods divorced from the Maker’s laws
She too as sovereignly creates her field,
Her will shaping the undetermined vasts,
Making a finite of infinity;
She too can make an order of her caprice,
As if her rash superb wagered to outvie
The veiled Creator’s cosmic secrecies.
Nature, even while operating in Ignorance is still pushed from behind by the Divine Wisdom. As Maya she puts a veil over the Infinite and creates an impression of finiteness and separateness. But Maya too is the Maya of the Infinite even when it seems to work with randomness and caprice there is in her magical moods a Wisdom operative hidden behind the veil. She hides the Creator behind Her Works and does not easily lend her forces to grasp and understanding by the human mind.
Footsteps of her fantasy
The rapid footsteps of her fantasy,
Amid whose falls wonders like flowers rise,
Are surer than reason, defter than device
And swifter than Imagination’s wings.
All she new-fashions by the thought and word,
Compels all substance by her wand of Mind.
Yet even behind her fancy and fantasy there is a beauty and wonder because the Lord dwells in her. Her seemingly casual steps and chance mutations give rise to flowers and the butterfly even is it builds man out of chemicals and dust. Indeed her reach and power is the power of the Mind whose highest reaches touch the borders of the Supreme Intelligence.
Closing remarks
With a sense of divine Wisdom and Wit, Sri Aurobindo reveals to us the paradox of life which can only be fully understood by knowing the Divine Presence or a supreme Intelligence at work within creation. If there is a living proof of the Divine, it is creation itself if we care to see and dare to explore.
