I am going to tell you a story today, a story both for the old and the young, a very old and ancient story . Indeed it is from the Veda.
  Once upon a time -of course I am speaking of a time when there was no time nor space, before the existence of time and space, when there existed only One Being, the nameless Being -named Brahman! To us, human beings, it is the Supreme Existence, the Lord, God or whatever one chooses to call him. He is also the Lord Surya, the luminous Truth, the sole Light of Lights. So then it once happened: this luminous Brahman looked at himself and found surprisingly that his luminosity, his brightness was getting dimmed, he was becoming darker and darker. He was at a loss, and confused. What was it due to ? Then he thought of the Gods, his companions. They came along immediately, and the foremost among them was Varuna : Varuna means also one who has the vast consciousness and vision. He can see far, far into the longest distance, into the unseen future. Then he found it out, what the matter was, and said: "Lord, your Shakti has gone away." Brahman and his Shakti, Brahmajaya, were one: they were both together, fused into one united single being always. Varuna said : "the Bride of Brahman has left Brahman." Now it was the task of all to find out where she had gone leaving Brahman in this state of darkness. Then it was always Varuna who through his sight, long sight, his penetrating vision found that Brahmashakti, the Divine Power has gone away far, very far, deep into the bosom of the Earth, and has disintegrated herself into material substances. She has become Matter, unconscious and dark like matter. The Gods found she was there one with ordinary creatures and things and objects. Then they conferred among themselves and decided: "We must awaken her, make her conscious of herself, take her back to her Lord, the Brahman -so can he also reclaim and regain his own identity." So the first of the Gods who approached her was the God Soma. Soma means the Moon or Delight, that is Ananda. The Gods said: It was Ananda, Delight, that joined them together, the Lord and the Shakti; so, for their union, their reunion, it is natural and in the fitness of things that Soma should lead the way and approach her. So all the Gods went together to her and explained to her the situation, and at last persuaded her to follow them in their path, the long journey, the return journey homeward. We may recollect here also the image of Parvati sojourning in her earthly mother's " home and returning to Kailash, to her heavenly Lord.
        There is also another, similar or parallel story in the Veda about the God Agni, about the disappearance of this very important God, Fire. He is, as you know, the God who presides over and even carries out the sacrifice, the Vedic ritual of yajna. Sacrifice cannot be done without fire, he is the Purohita, one installed in front of this great ceremony, the ceremony, I may immediately disclose to you, of the advancement of consciousness. It starts with the kindling of fire -which means the symbol of the awakening of the aspiring will. Now the story runs: the sacrifice was to begin and all things were ready when all of a sudden it was found that the leader of the sacrifice, the Deity was not there. They all searched for him, he was found nowhere. He had  fled. Then, as usual, once again all the Gods assembled and rummaged everywhere to catch the defaulter. Now the problem: where could he go after all? It was his duty to be present and begjn the work, but at the critical moment he is not there! All went about in all directions, and at last found the Fire hiding -hiding where ? -under water . Then the Gods approached him and asked: "0 Fire, why are you hiding? Come out, your task is there." Fire answered: "No, I won't go, whatever you say, I remain here."
   -"But why?" -"It is a very difficult task. Many others before me had tried to do this job, undertaken to shoulder this responsibility .But none succeeded, at least completely. So I don't want to take the trouble of repeating a failure. It is a useless attempt." The Gods persisted, prayed, entreated: "No, Agni, it is your job. You will reap the full benefit of it, we assure you." The Gods in the end succeeded in pacifying and persuading the truant God.
      Sacrifice means -as I have told you just now -the ascension of the consciousness. When we rise up from the ordinary material letel, when we have moved towards the higher Light from out of the obscurity of the senses, that is ascension, and that is called sacrifice: for you move up by rejecting the lower strand, the lower levels of nature, and acquire the higher realities. The Fire is the fire that is the force of your heart, of your aspiration that you want to be something more than the ordinary mortal that you are. So it is indeed a tapasyti, a strenuous effort to rise up -against the pull of gravity; indeed, it is a great trouble. Agni did not want to take the trouble because man, the normal man also refuses it. But as I said, there was a happy ending, for at last Agni agreed. Here we find Agni hiding under water. What does water signify? Water is the symbol of vitality, vital-power, the life-force. This also is a form of the same Consciousness-Force that is Agni, but robe, clothed in a material sheath, a hidden home as it were. It is to be released ; from there and move up.
      Now we go back to our story. The Gods accompanied' , Brahmajaya, the Bride of Brahman in her journey back home. But the story has a beginning, an earlier episode a prologue as it were. Why did the Divine Bride leave at all her Lord? What was it that made her run away? - leaving him alone with whom she was once one in perfect union? The story is as the Upanishad reports, the Lord Brahman was long -in fact for eternity -single, alone, the One Existence, the One Truth, undivided, indivisible; but at one time of his existence he became conscious that he was alone. So long he had not thought of it at all. No thought of being alone or of other people being around was there. He was simply Existence, existing. But now he felt, he saw that he was alone, and once you begin to think you cannot stop. Then he said: Alone how can one be happy? You must be two to become happy -ekaki na ramate. When you are alone you don't enjoy. So you must be two. Thus Brahman, the Supreme, divided himself into two, One divided two-fold: one part man, the other part woman ; one part consciousness, the other part force, power; one part Brahman, the other part Brahmashakti. So long both the parts were there, but they were united, soldered as it were, fused into one being and person; Shakti and her Lord, Fire and its Flame- they were one and indivisible. But, as I said, when the thought came they must be two, in fact also they separated, Brahman separated himself from his Shakti and took Shakti out, and Shakti herself went out, and the two separated actually, stood face to face as it were. You may remember -I mean the elder generation -the drama that was staged here in the Theatre, directed by the Mother -"He and She" -and the play, the Lila of "He" and "She" was displayed, how they were one, how they separated, and the play of union and reunion. Now when they separated, in order to look closely and carefully they separated more and more, the distance grew slowly, so much so that they were completely separated, and the Shakti was so far away from her Lord that she went to the other extreme. Brahman was the supreme consciousness above, and She became the absolute dark Matter below. And Brahman too separated utterly the other way from his Shakti and went off in the contrary direction, towards Nothingness, Shunya as reported by the Buddhists.
   Now the return journey. The Shakti cannot be for long away from her Lord, that cannot be the final stance. She is to come back to her Lord. This is the story of the redemption of material nature and her gradual transmutation into the higher Nature, regaining her status by the side of her Lord. The process or the series of steps described by the Veda remains always the same, for human beings also for their liberation from inferior nature and regaining the spiritual nature. The Veda says the Gods came one, by one and led the Shakti up the way. First Soma came, that is to say, Delight touched the inner core of the fallen Nature and impelled her to awake and rise. As Ananda was the source of their first union, so for the reunion Ananda is the inspirer and the leader. Next Agni was directed to take the Shakti along with him on the way. Agni means, as I have said, the light and fire of aspiration to rise up. Agni first initiated the ignorant Shakti with a mantra, it is like a normal human initiation when you enter the spiritual life. You have to go to a Guru and the Guru gives you the mantra that awakens your consciousness. Now Agni gave as mantra the Divine word "Brahma" as the image of the Divine. She was to concentrate upon it till she became in consciousness identified with Him. She did so and after a time when she felt she recognised her Lord and accepted Him, the God Agni said: "Now proceed. You have to go to the second stage. Enlarge your being, enlarge your consciousness; what you have got now is the realisation that you are the Brahman, you are one with Him. Now you have to unite yourself with all beings, with all Gods, with all creatures, universalise yourself." So the Bride of Brahman from her individual realisation went forward into the universal where she met her Lord, dwelling in all beings and all creatures everywhere, -she entered into the mansion of all the Gods.

   Now, you know there are three steps, three steps of consciousness, three steps of your being in its ascension towards the Supreme: first, your ordinary individual being with your particular name and form, that is the personal individual; then, coming out of that shell you learn to be one with all beings, all humanity, all things even. You become as large as creation itself; however, that is not the end. You have to go beyond, beyond, into what is known as the Transcendent, there you find the Supreme, the total, the Supreme Truth of your being. So the Bride of Brahman from her universal realisation went into the Transcendent, into her Lord, her own total Self. From her ignorant material formulation in her upward march she was shedding her scales as it were, of her inferior formations, putting on purer and higher and more glorious embodiments. Ultimately she found herself to be as she used to be originally and always and ever before the separation. When thus united the Gods were also included in their embrace and all found themselves happy at last.
      It is said that this separation and this reunion meant a greater fulfilment upon earth. Without the separation the fulfilment also would not have happened upon earth. Earth would have remained as it is but because of the separation, that is to say, the Bride of Brahman separating herself from her Lord and coming down into Matter and becoming one with Matter, there arose the possibility, the inevitability of fusing her reality and the reality of Brahman into Matter.
   The Divine Bride dropped down on earth and dived into Matter and became one with it. She became Matter, material Nature, dense, dark, heavy with all its weight. She became as the Veda names her, "Bhimajaya" -the mighty, the terrible spouse -in fact our Mahakali. She was originally the fair spouse- Saumyajaya. But there is to be a progress, a gain. So when she rises and is on her upward march she has now acquired the capacity to carry and lift with her the heaviest load of the Inconscient and gradually transmute it. In the final realisation all the Gods are to come to the forefront and all mankind are to come out as it were into the open and bask in the Solar Light and share in the delight of the union of the Divine Bride and her Bride-groom.
   This is the drama that is happening, a real drama, it is not a fictitious story. It is an action that is happening in some other world in a subtler realm. It is repeated in those "heavens" as the Vedas say, and repeated so that it becomes more and more concrete, more and more. real upon earth and finally is embodied and materialised upon earth.
   In this cosmic drama one remarkable feature is to be observed. If there has been a descent there must inevitably follow an ascent. The Shakti has come down alone apparently, but she cannot be alone essentially. She comes down with her Lord behind in the background. In the utmost gloom of hard Matter, Brahman is also there, imbedded in its very core as an infinitesimal spark, a tiny particle of light as it were. And that means an upward urge or clan, aspiration as we say is always there. That is what happens in fact when the Shakti reaches the bedrock of total unconsciousness, there is a rebounding movement, the movement of a boomerang as it were. That is the awakening of the inanimate Nature, her evolution, her initiation into the upward journey. In her growth, it is to be noted, the Lord also grows side by side with her unfoldment; that is to say, the Lord too manifests Himself more and more: this is a biune manifestation. The two can never be separated, they were always together, the apparent separation or obscuration is only a play, a Lila, for a greater reunion.
   I do not know but perhaps we of this age are very much near, may be to the very door of the final realisation of which they, the ancients, spoke, when really Matter, concrete, dull, obscure Matter, our material Mother -Bhimajaya of the Veda - will be transformed and our humanity even will have a share in thr transformation. As it is now, these things, I have said, are repeated in other worlds, in the subtler realms, in subtler forms and subtler forces. The absolutely material form is not there, but is perhaps preparing just behind the rising dawn, All of you, all of us, will surely take part in the consummation in some form or other, earlier or later