The Soul and its Journey

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When a man dies, his soul or psychic being, after a time goes to the psychic world and takes rest there till the hour comes to take birth again in another body upon earth. There are then these two periods in the life after death. First, the passage and next the rest. The passage means the gradual shedding of all the other sheaths or envelopes that surround the psychic being and form its earthly frame. With the physical body has to go also the subtle body, then the vital and finally the mental too. The reason why one does not remember the past lives is this that one leaves behind the instrument of memory-the brain mind-with one's death. One does not carry over with the psychic being the other parts that constitute the terrestrial life. They are dispersed and dissolved in their respective cosmic spheres. The subtle body gives up its elements to the subtle physical plane, the vital elements are taken up into the vital world and the mental elements go into the mental world,-unless the psychic being is highly developed and has organised around itself as its instrument of self- expression any of these elements. In that case, as much of the terrestrial parts-namely, of the subtle body and life and mind-as have come into direct contact with the psychic and have allowed themselves to be moved and moulded by its consciousness, will alone persist and share in the immortality of the soul. Normally, the elements of the human vehicle form a loose and unorganised aggregate massed round the psychic centre. When the centre withdraws, they too falloff automatically and are scattered into the universal storehouse of Nature. Only when they have been organised and when they have attained a definite form and character expressing something of the psychic nature, can they maintain their identity, for this identity is part and parcel of the psychic identity.

I have said that the memory of past lives is effaced because of the effacement of the instrument. But there is a higher memory which is the attribute of the psychic consciousness. The psychic being is made of light and knowledge: it knows, rather it sees and can survey the whole curve of its past growth and development. Of course, it may not see or remember- very often it does not-all the physical details of things and happenings of an earthly life, the hundred incidents, accidents and contingencies that are not directly linked to its consciousness. But all things that have had its touch and have contributed to its growth and development and have in their turn received its influence--0bjects, persons, happenings or movements-find themselves harboured in the psychic memory . And thus the only sure way of remembering the past, remembering, that is to say, what is worth remembering, is to go into the psychic being, possess the psychic consciousness. There one has the whole panorama of the soul's odyssey revealed. Any other way leads only to imagination, conjecture and delusion.

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The passage between death and the arrival at final rest in the psychic world is a most difficult and dangerous ordeal for the human being. He has left the protection of the body and has not yet found the refuge in the psychic, he is obsessed and pulled back by his past-the desires, the hungers, the attractions and repulsions, the plans unfulfilled, problematic schemes-all haunt him still, things done, things not done crowd around him and fetter his forward march. Not only his own Karma, but the Karma of others too pursues him, all persons with whom he has had relation, who think of him now, pity him, mourn for him, lament his absence, raise so many hurdles and obstacles in his path, oblige him to turn and look back. Again, there are forces and personalities the intermediate worlds with whom the poor disembodied creature has now to come in contact, and not unoften he feels like one unskinned and all his nerves on edge open helplessly to rough and painful impacts.

Indeed, although it may sound somewhat strange and wonderful, nevertheless it is literally true that the body is the fortress par excellence for the individual being: it is not merely an ugly dirty clothing that has to be cast off so that one may go straight to the enjoyment of the beatitude of Paradise; on the contrary, it is, as it were, an armour, a steel-frame that protects the subtle body against -the attacks or harsh and cruel touches of other worlds and their beings. Once outside the body, there is every danger for the individual to go astray and be hurt, unless he is guided and protected by a guardian angel, as Dante has had Virgil as his Maestro. We may note here that the passage of Dante from Hell through Purgatory to Heaven across their various levels is almost an exact image of what happens to a soul after death. The highest Heaven where Dante meets Beatrice may be considered as the psychic world and Beatrice herself the Divine Grace that bathes, illumines and comforts the psychic being.

If one has, however, within oneself an ardent and sincere and unflickering flame, one can go through more or less easily and unscathed; but that is rare. Even when alive, in sleep one goes out often into other worlds and the foreign and unpleasant contacts and experiences he has there are recorded in the brain-mind as nightmares: on such occasions the best way to escape is to rush back into the body, the best place of safety. Many have this experience of rushing headlong into the body-dropping into the body, as it were-in order to escape from a threatening danger in sleep and waking up all on a sudden to find to one's relief that all was illusion and hallucination.

An easy and quick passage to the place of rest, that is what the being needs and asks for after death. This is determined by one's Karma in life and the last wish and prayer at the moment of death-for the force of consciousness at this critical moment acts not only upon the character of the passage but also upon the character even of the next birth. Apart from one's own merit, one can be helped by others also who are still upon earth and who claim to be his friends and relatives and well-wishers-not in the way they think they do at present, that is to say, by grieving and lamenting or even by performing rites and ceremonies, these often retard rather than accelerate the passage, but by an inner detachment and calm prayer and goodwill, often perhaps to forget the departed is the best way to help him. A truly conscious help can be given only by one who has the requisite occult power and spiritual realisation-the Guru, for example.

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Once in its place of rest the soul enjoys profound peace and delight and is in a kind of luminous sleep. There it assimilates all the experiences of its last life, that is to say, imbibes out of them all the substance that goes to increase and strengthen its consciousness, the sap that lends itself to the growth of the build and stature of the being. These experiences are meant to bring the soul nearer-each life being one step nearer-to the fullness of its union with the Divine Consciousness out of which it came originally upon earth as a mere spark, a parcel yet apart. This process may be short or long according to the nature of assimilation undertaken. Here also the being prepares for the impending birth, that is to say, gathers all the elements that will be required for the play of the consciousness in that life. A broad planning too is made here, a scheme in outline of the kind of experiences that one will need for the particular growth of consciousness envisaged. Some forces of consciousness, out of the stock developed and assembled by the being, are kept back, in reserve, others are brought forward for immediate use in the life to be lived next. AIl this, however, is not the deliberate rational process of the mind, it is something spontaneous, involved, a luminous brooding and incubation, something like the trance of Brahman within which the seed of creation is about to germinate. The psychic being is a packet of gathered power, a charged battery, as it were; when it comes down upon earth, it calls round itself elements of mind and vital and even subtle physical needed for the purpose of the particular life' experience, and even those that would go to constitute the physical body. The psychic being usually picks up these elements of mind and life and body out of the universal store-house of earth's atmosphere as it needs them, in the same way as it returns them there on the journey back after death. But as I have already said, there are beings who have developed well- formed personalities of mind and life and even of the physical consciousness. These formations are not mere loose accretions, temporary arrangements for a life experience, but are welded, organised, given a more or less permanent shape, as the proper instrument of the psychic being, as its own expression. In such cases, the outer personality too continues to exist as an essential mode or vibration in and with the psychic consciousness itself and when the soul descends upon earth, is in contact with the earth's atmosphere, it projects out of itself the external personality and formation. This does not mean certainly that the personality remains something fixed and rigid, but that it has attained an essential fullness of form and yet retains the capacity for further change and growth through further growth of the psychic being in other life experiences.

Now the time and occasion for a particular birth of the soul depends naturally on the inner need of that being. But it must be noted-as it is a fact in the occult world-that the souls are not so many absolutely separate unrelated autonomous self-sufficient entities, each one coming and going as and when it chooses and likes: on the contrary, the souls form groups or families according to some secret affinity. And when they come down, they do so not unoften in company. A call goes, a bell is rung as it were intimating that the hour is come and they rush down. And it may even happen that in rushing down a psychic being is not too careful or fastidious about the instrument, the vehicle he chooses to inhabit.

whatever is handy and nearest and on the whole suitable to his purpose he takes up and goes forward. He takes it all as an adventure and has the joy of battle and the warrior spirit that can taste of victory only when hard fought and won. That is how we meet not unoften a considerable discrepancy between the inner being of a man and his earthly tenement, his soul and his external character and physical nature. There is a meaning in the choice, a significance in the utilisation of unfavourable conditions: there is a method in the madness.

This grouping will appear natural and inevitable when we bear in mind the purpose of creation and the role of the psychic consciousness. For it is not a matter of individual salvation, of the unilateral growth and development and fulfilment of an individual psychic being. The soul is a luminous point in an inconscient universe and its role is to make it conscious, at least a representative portion of it. The psychic being's activity is the means of a new creation, the tranmutation of the earth-consciousness, the growth and advent of a divine race, the manifestation and embodiment of the Divine and his play upon earth. The souls are the warriors, playmates, the beloved of the Lord. They have to assemble and move together for the interest of the play. They have to be in companies and regiments and battalions, in associations and concert and harmonised formations.

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The souls group themselves into natural types according to the fundamental mode of consciousness and its dynamism. And they form a hierarchy: they exist and function in an organisation, the type and pattern of which is the pyramid. At the apex is the One Supreme, at the base the infinity of individual and disparate souls, earthly sparks, that are emanations, derivations, scattered condensations, parts and parcels of that One Supreme. In between, from the top towards the bottom, lie in a graded scale formations more and more specialised, particularised and concretised : as we rise we meet the larger, vaster more comprehensive forms of the same entities till we arrive at the typal and original, the source being. Thus we can view a soul along its line of emanation from the central source as a series of beings, the higher enclosing and encompassing the lower. Not only so, a higher entity can have several lower emanations and each of these again can emanate several others. The number of emanations multiply as one goes down and they decrease as one goes up. We can understand now what is meant when we speak of kindred souls. When there is an inexplicable natural affinity or similarity between two souls, it happens in such a case that the souls are emanations of the same Over-Soul. And it happens also sometimes that the guardian angel or daemon whom one may contact is none other than one's own Over- Soul. The term Over-Soul takes thus a literal and a profound significance.

We may illustrate here a little. At the apex of the pyramid of existence is the Divine, the Supreme Person, the Purushottama. Even there as He begins to lean and look down, He expresses himself at the very outset as the dual personality of Ishwara and Shakti (the Divine Father and the Divine Mother) -sa dvitryam aicchat, as the Upanishad says. That is still the Divine in His highest transcendent status, partitpara. Next, this dual or biune or divalent reality shows itself or throws itself further out in a fourfold valency of the dynamic truth consciousness, creating and leading the cosmic evolution. The Four Aspects of Ishwara, forming the male or puruya line, are the great names: Mahavira, Balarama, Pradyumna and Aniruddha. And the corresponding four aspects of Ishwari form the other great quaternary : Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati. They embody the four major attributes of the Divine in his relation to the created universe: Knowledge, Power, Love and skill in work. They also represent thus a divine fourfold order. The first embodies the Brahmin quality of large wisdom, wide comprehension, a vast consciousness; the second has the Kshatriya quality of force, dynamism, concentration and drive of energy; the third possesses the Vaishya quality of harmony, beauty, mutuality and the fourth has the Shudra quality of perfect execution, thoroughness in detailed working, order and arrangement. The higher Gods, like those, for example, envisaged in the Veda, may be considered each as an emanation of one or other of these Divine Aspects. They are dwellers of Swar or the Overmind. Varuna seems to be an emanation of Mahavira, a son of Maheshwari: for he is pre-eminently the god of the pure and vast consciousness who releases us from the triple bonds and shows us the winding way into the embrace of the infinite Mother. His associate, Mitra, is the lord of love and harmony, evidently an emanation of Pradyumna (or Mahalakshmi). Other gods of the same category are Bhaga and Soma. The Balarama or Mahakali aspect is manifested in Aryaman: Rudra being another form of the same. And Mahasaraswati (or Aniruddha) must have given birth to and inspired the Ribhus, who are artisans of divinity. The Puranic trinity-Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva-with Indra as the fourth member forms a parallel system embodying a similar conception.

Another tradition gives the Four Supernals as ( I) Light or Consciousness, (2) Truth or Knowledge, (3) Life and (4) Love. The tradition also says that the beings representing these four fundamental principles of creation were the first and earliest gods that emanated from the Supreme Divine, and that as they separated themselves from their source and from each other, each followed his own independent line of fulfilment, they lost their divinity and turned into their opposites. Light became obscurity, Consciousness unconsciousness or the inconscient, Truth became falsehood and Knowledge ignorance, Life became death and finally Love and Delight became suffering and hatred. These are the fallen angels, the Asuras that deny their divine essence and now rule the world. They have possessed mankind and are controlling earthly existence. They too have their emanations, forces and beings that are born out of them and serve them in their various degrees of power. Men talk and act inspired and impelled by these beings and when they do so, they lose their humanity and become worse than animals.

But still the Pure Reality descends undeviated in its own line and man enshrines that within him, the undying fire that will clean him and bear him to the source from where he came. And there are luminous godheads that help him and wish themselves to participate in the terrestrial transformation. There is a pressure from above and there is an urge from below, between these two infinities all is ground and moulded and changed. Even the Lords of Denial will in the end change and learn to affirm, become again what they truly were and are.

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First then there are the supreme divinities, aspects or own personalities of the Divine in his supreme status, the Supermind; next come the first emanations, the true or pure gods in the Overmind. Thence or simultaneously there is the line of deformation, that of the false gods and godheads, the Asuras and Titans. These too extend in a series of emanations down to the subtle physical; except when they themselves incarnate on the earth in an earthly body.

Man, the soul, we said, comes direct from the Divine and is thrown and almost stuck into the earth as a spark, as a point of luminous consciousness-force. This soul, as it develops, we find, belongs to one or other of the fundamental type of divine personality, it is a lineal descendant, as it were, of one of the quaternary and its growth means growing into the nature of that particular godhead and its fulfilment means identification with that.

We may try to illustrate by examples, although it is a rather dangerous' game and may tend to put into a too rigid and f mathematical formula something that is living and variable. Still it will serve to give a clearer picture of the matter. Napoleon evidently was a child of Mahakali; and Caesar seems to have been fashioned largely by the principle of Maheshwari ; while Christ or Chaitanya are clearly emanations in the line of Mahalakshmi. Constructive geniuses, on the other hand, like the great statesman Colbert, for example, or Louis XIV, le grand monarque, himself belong to a family ( or gotra, as we say in India) that originated from Mahasaraswati. Poets and artists again, although generally they belong to the clan of Mahalakshmi, can be regrouped according to the principle that predominates in each, the godhead that presides over the inspiration in each. The large breath in Homer and Valmiki, the high and noble style of their movement, the dignity and vastness that compose their consciousness affiliate them naturally to the Maheshwari line. A Dante, on the other hand, or a Byron has something in his matter and manner that make us think of the stamp of Mahakali. Virgil or Petrarch, Shelley or our Tagore seem to be emanations of Beauty,

! Harmony, Love-Mahalakshmi. And the perfect artisanship of Mahasaraswati has found its especial embodiment in Horace and Racine and our Kalidasa. Michael Angelo in his fury of inspirations seems to have been impelled by Mahakali, while Mahalakshmi sheds her genial favour upon Raphael and Titian; and the meticulous care and the detailed surety in a Tintoretto makes us think of Mahasaraswati's grace. Mahasaraswati too seems to have especially favoured Leonardo da Vinci, although a brooding presence of Maheshwari also seems to be intermixed there.

For it must be remembered that the human soul after all is not a simple and unilateral being, it is a little cosmos in itself. The soul is not merely a point or a single ray of light come down straight from its divine archetype or from the Divine himself, it is also a developing fire that increases and enriches itself through the multiple experiences of an evolutionary progression-it not only grows in height but extends in wideness also. Even though it may originally emanate from one principle and Personality, it takes in for its development and fulfilment influences and elements from the others also. Indeed, we know that the Four primal personalities of the Divine are not separate and distinct as they may appear to the human mind which cannot understand distinction without disparity. The Vedic gods themselves are so linked together, so interpenetrate one another that finally it is asserted that there is only one existence, only it is given many names. All the divine personalities are aspects of the Divine blended and fused together. Even so the human soul, being a replica of the Divine, cannot but be a complex of many personalities and often it may be difficult and even harmful to find and fix upon a dominant personality. The full flowering of the human soul, its perfect divinisation demands the realisation of a many-aspected personality, the very richness of the Divine within it.

A Yoga of the Art of Life

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WHEN Sri Aurobindo said, "Our Yoga is not for ourselves but for humanity," many heaved a sigh of relief and thought that the great soul was after all not entirely lost to the world, his was not one more name added to the long list of Sannyasins that India has been producing age after age without much profit either to herself or to the human society ( or even perhaps to their own selves) .People understood his Yoga to be a modern one, dedicated to the service of humanity. If service to humanity was not the very sum and substance of his spirituality, it was, at least, the fruitful end and consummation. His Yoga was a sort of art to explore and harness certain unseen powers that can better and ameliorate human life in a more successful way than mere rational scientific methods can hope to do.

Sri Aurobindo saw that the very core of his teaching was being missed by this common interpretation of his saying. So he changed his words and said, "Our Yoga is not for humanity but for the Divine." But I am afraid this change of front, this volte-face, as it seemed, was not welcomed in many quarters ; for thereby all hope of having him back for the work of the country or the world appeared to be totally lost and he came to be looked upon again as an irrevocable "metaphysical" dreamer, aloof from physical things and barren, even like the Immutable Brahman.

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In order to get a nearer approach to the ideal for which Sri Aurobindo has been labouring, we may combine with advantage the two mottoes he has given us and say that his mission is to find and express the Divine in humanity. This is the service he means to render to humanity, viz, to manifest and embody in it the Divine: his goal is not merely an amelioration, but a total change and transformation, the divinisation of human life. Here also one must guard against certain misconceptions that are likely to occur. The transformation of human life does not necessarily mean that the entire humanity will be changed into a race of gods or divine beings; it means the evolution or appearance on earth of a superior type of humanity, even as man evolved out of animality as a superior type of animality, not that the entire animal kingdom was changed into humanity.

As regards the possibility of such a consummation,Sri Aurobindo says it is not a possibility but an inevitability-one must remember that the force that will bring about the result and is already at work is not any individual human power, however great it may be, but the Divine himself, it is the Divine's own Shakti that is labouring for the destined end.

Here is the very heart of the mystery, the master-key to the problem. The advent of the superhuman or divine race, however stupendous or miraculous the phenomenon may! appear to be, can become a thing of practical actuality , precisely because it is no human agency that has undertaken it but the Divine himself in his supreme potency and wisdom and love. The descent of the Divine into the ordinary human nature in order to purify and transform it and be lodged there is the whole secret of the sadhana in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga. The sadhaka has only to be quiet and silent, calmly aspiring, open and acquiescent and receptive to the one Force ; he need not and should not try to do things by his independent personal effort, but get them done or let them be done for him in the dedicated consciousness by the Divine Master and Guide. All other Yogas or spiritual disciplines in the past envisaged an ascent of the consciousness, its sublimation into the consciousness of the Spirit and its fusion and dissolution there in the end. The descent of the Divine Consciousness to prepare its definitive home in the dynamic and pragmatic human nature, if considered at all, was not the main theme of the past efforts and achievements. Furthermore, the descent spoken of here is the descent, not of a divine consciousness- for there are many varieties of divine consciousness-but of the Divine's own consciousness, of the Divine himself with his Shakti. For it is that that is directly working out this evolutionary transformation of the age.

It is not my purpose here to enter into details as to the exact meaning of the descent, how it happens and what are its lines of activity and the results brought about. For it is indeed an actual descent that happens: the Divine Light leans down first into the mind and begins its purificatory work there- although it is always the inner heart which first recognises the Divine Presence and gives its assent to the Divine action-for the mind, the higher mind that is to say, is the summit of the ordinary human consciousness and receives more easily and readily the Radiances that descend. From the Mind the Light filters into the denser regions of the emotions and desires, of life activity and vital dynamism; finally, it gets into brute Matter itself, the hard and obscure rock of the physical body, for that too has to be illumined and made the very form and figure of the Light supernal. The Divine in his descending Grace is the Master-Architect who is building slowly and surely the many-chambered and many-storeyed edifice that is human nature and human life into the mould of the Divine Truth in its perfect play and supreme expression. But this is a matter which can be closely considered when one is already well within the mystery of the path and has acquired the elementary essentials of an initiate.

Another question that troubles and perplexes the ordinary human mind is as to the time when the thing will be done. Is it now or a millennium hence or at some astronomical distance in future, like the cooling of the sun, as someone has suggested for an analogy. In view of the magnitude of the work one might with reason say that the whole eternity is there before us, and a century or even a millennium should not be grudged to such a labour for it is nothing less than an undoing of untold millenniums in the past and the building of a far-flung futurity. However, as we have said, since it is the Divine's own work and since Yoga means a concentrated and involved process of action, effectuating in a minute what would perhaps take years to accomplish in the natural course, one call expect the work to be done sooner rather than later . Indeed, the ideal is one of here and now-here upon this earth of material existence and now in this life, in this very body- not hereafter or elsewhere. How long exactly that will mean, depends on many factors, but a few decades on this side or the other do not matter very much.

As to the extent of realisation, we say again that that is not a matter of primary consideration. It is not the quantity but the substance that counts. Even if it were a small nucleus it would be sufficient, at least for the beginning, provided it is the real, the genuine thing-

Swalpamapyasya dharmasya trtzyate mahato bhayat.

Now, if it is asked what is the proof of it all, how can one be sure that one is not running after a mirage, a chimera ? We can only answer with the adage, the proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof.

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I have a word to add finally in justification of the title of this essay. For, it may be asked, how can spirituality be considered as one of the Arts or given an honourable place in their domain ? From a certain point of view, from the point of view of essentials and inner realities, it would appear that spirituality is, at least, the basis of the arts, if not the highest art. If art is meant to express the soul of things, and since the true soul of things is the divine element in them, then certainly spirituality, the discipline of coming in conscious contact with the Spirit, the Divine, must be accorded the regal seat in the hierarchy of the arts. Also, spirituality is the greatest and the most difficult of the arts; for it is the art of life. To make of life a perfect work of beauty, pure in its lines, faultless in its rhythm, replete with strength, iridescent with light, vibrant with delight- an embodiment of the Divine, in a word-is the highest ideal of spirituality; viewed as such, spirituality- the spirituality that Sri Aurobindo practises - is the ne plus ultra of artistic creation.

The Bride of Brahman

(Rig-Veda: X.109)

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