Opening remarks
Having hinted to us the workings of a supreme creative Intelligence behind forms and figures and qualities that manifest in and through each form, Sri Aurobindo now gives us a glimpse of this Creative Power. She is not a mechanical energy but a conscious Power of God that has gone into creation. It is this truth that is being revealed now to us.
Links that join the parted spheres
On the margin of great immaterial planes,
In kingdoms of an untrammelled glory of force,
Where Mind is master of the life and form
And soul fulfils its thoughts by its own power,
She meditates upon mighty words and looks
On the unseen links that join the parted spheres.
The Divine Shakti reveals Herself as Maya on the Overmind plane, where she appears as the power of the Lord that measures out the Infinite. Each aspect of the Divine that is harmoniously fused in His Infinity becomes, by Her Power, a distinct world in its own right; She is the Power that mediates between the Oneness of the Supramental Gnosis and the Multiplicity of the lower triple creation of Mind, Life and Body. This is the border between the lower and the higher hemisphere where She releases the power of the Word for creation and the creative Vision that becomes a template for the forms.
The light of her mysterious planes
Thence to the initiate who observes her laws
She brings the light of her mysterious realms:
Here where he stands, his feet on a prostrate world,
His mind no more cast into Matter’s mould,
Over their bounds in spurts of splendid strength
She carries their magician processes
And the formulas of their stupendous speech,
Till heaven and hell become purveyors to earth
And the universe the slave of mortal will.
Occultism is the understanding and practice of these forces hidden behind and beyond the limited human consciousness. Those who are initiated into these secrets the occult truth is shown to them as patterns of different kinds of light and symbol figures. It is a detailed and careful study. Those who undertake it, following its various processes, they discover the secret forces, energies and powers and beings that influence our existence. All this comes in the field of a vaster cosmic Ignorance created by Maya.
Mediatrix with veiled and nameless gods
A mediatrix with veiled and nameless gods
Whose alien will touches our human life,
Imitating the World-Magician’s ways
She invents for her self-bound free-will its grooves
And feigns for magic’s freaks a binding cause.
The god’s influence our lives hidden in the blinding light and storm that crosses our lives. It is she who brings the gods into existence and fixes for them their powers and domain and scope of influence. She limits each creature compelling them to act within these invisible boundaries of Nature. Yet, since something of the Lord is there within each element, she also gives to each creature the sense of a free-will within her limits. This is what we call as laws of Nature but in reality each law is a pattern created by her for her incalculable purpose.
Her balanced web of miracles
All worlds she makes the partners of her deeds,
Accomplices of her mighty violence,
Her daring leaps into the impossible:
From every source she has taken her cunning means,
She draws from the free-love marriage of the planes
Elements for her creation’s tour-de-force:
A wonder-weft of knowledge incalculable,
A compendium of divine invention’s feats
She has combined to make the unreal true
Or liberate suppressed reality:
In her unhedged Circean wonderland
Pell-mell she shepherds her occult mightinesses;
Her mnemonics of the craft of the Infinite,
Jets of the screened subliminal’s caprice,
Tags of the gramarye of Inconscience,
Freedom of a sovereign Truth without a law,
Thoughts that were born in the immortals’ world,
Oracles that break out from behind the shrine,
Warnings from the daemonic inner voice
And peeps and lightning-leaps of prophecy
And intimations to the inner ear,
Abrupt interventions stark and absolute
And the Superconscient’s unaccountable acts,
Have woven her balanced web of miracles
And the weird technique of her tremendous art.
This bizarre kingdom passed into his charge.
In a long master-piece of a poetically enthralling passage Sri Aurobindo reveals to us the nature of the occult world and their powers acting in our lives. Though much wider and powerful than the human world the field of the occult is still a field of cosmic Ignorance where truth and error are mixed and the Superconscient rays and the Inconscient darkness come together creating a magic wonder web through which the creature moves. There are worlds below, worlds of darkness where also a concealed knowledge works. Then there are the worlds that are subliminal, behind the threshold of our awareness, – the inner physical vital and mental world that influence us. Finally there is the Superconscient Above whose powers also pour into our lives, filtered through the agency of the gods. All these various forces and influences are mixed and allowed in our lives and weave the steps of our Destiny. These occult energies and forces now yielded their powers and truths to Aswapati, the Seer-yogi. They entered into his inner kingdom and he became a master of these forces.
Herself she gave for rapture and for use
As one resisting more the more she loves,
Her great possessions and her power and lore
She gave, compelled, with a reluctant joy;
Herself she gave for rapture and for use.
One who identifies with the Divine quite naturally becomes a Master of these hidden powers even as the Divine. These occult forces, even the gods, are compelled to yield their powers to such a being. The creature bound by the Maya of the Lord becomes now, by Her Grace, the Lord of Maya.
Surrendered to the service of the soul
Absolved from aberrations in deep ways,
The ends she recovered for which she was made:
She turned against the evil she had helped
Her engined wrath, her invisible means to slay;
Her dangerous moods and arbitrary force
She surrendered to the service of the soul
And the control of a spiritual will.
Ultimately, all the various experiences of life, the twists and turns of Fate are organized so that we may discover a higher consciousness and recover our hidden and true self. Then this vast and complex play changes its rhythm and we are masters of Fate. We discover the good behind evil and the secret rapture that the soul enjoys as our being is led through the narrow doors of suffering and pain towards the delight of the Master that awaits us at the end of our journey. Then evil, grief and danger passes away and we are freed from illusion and delusion. All the forces of creation obey us and all that hindered us from advance begins to give way before our sincere aspiration and persistent will.
A greater despot
A greater despot tamed her despotism.
Nature seems to act as if arbitrarily and in a fanciful manner but behind her caprice there is a deep Wisdom that acts. We call her a despot and are bewildered because we do not understand her ways. But when we discover Her Lord who is the greatest despot of all then all her secret ways stand revealed to us in a higher Light than the mind can possess. Then the workings of Nature, its laws and processes yield before His Power and Presence.
Her own unexpected king
Assailed, surprised in the fortress of her self,
Conquered by her own unexpected king,
Fulfilled and ransomed by her servitude,
She yielded in a vanquished ecstasy,
Her sealed hermetic wisdom forced from her,
Fragments of the mystery of omnipotence.
It is for this moment that Nature waits. Her task is fulfilled when a soul prepared by her arrives at the peak and apex of creation set out by her. Then she becomes her partner and mate in the great game of creation and rests in luminous and blissful secrecy of the Soul that has so conquered her occult realms and ascended the Overmind throne.
Closing remarks
This is the occult world whose conquest has become part of Aswapati’s siddhi. It is still the Overmind perfection, not yet the perfect perfection of the Supramental Truth-Consciousness but a perfection as of the gods. This comes as a result of a widening and universalization of our consciousness and an ascent to the Overmind plane.
