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The Stress of the Spirit THE universe is a close-knit pattern in which each part, each point is inextricably linked with every other part and point. Each element acts and reacts upon every other: the karma of one is echoed and re-echoed in the karma of all others. An inevitable, inescapable mutuality rules the behaviour of the constituent entities of a whole; in other words, there is only one Force, one Presence that permeates all, even constitutes the All. The material universe makes one single block of reality, homogeneous and indivisible. Modern knowledge has proved the fact to the hilt. It is one continuous extension like the ocean's rippling wet sheet. If you pull at one point the tension is felt in the whole at every other point. That is Einstein's gravitational field constituting the universe: a change of disposition at one point changes the disposition of the whole universe. The very character of this world is its rigorous determinism: the part is absolutely and completely a portion and parcel of the whole. Somewhat paradoxically one might say that the part is the whole, nothing but the whole, only on a reduced scale. Viewed in this light all human endeavour, its achievements and realisations form a single collective activity: it is one force, one energy realising itself in and through many vehicles and instruments. Not even man's mental activity that seems so free and autonomous is outside the compass of the universal gravitational field where everything is appointed and determined in a compact tensile global unity. Each
individual human effort is in effect the total human effort canalised at a
particular point through a particular receptacle. The unity of the whole does
not consist in the
Page – 374 combination, a summation of separate or independent units: the separate units on the surface are an illusion and valuation of individuals in this viewpoint is an anomaly, for in reality there are no individuals: they are but at the most the various limbs or functions of the same body, of the one and single person. Life as consciousness is one single surge: contagion (also in the good sense), permeation is its law. Vicarious atonement, a phenomenon familiar and well known in the religious domain, finds a very simple meaning in this view and almost becomes a very natural human phenomenon. There is an inevitable interaction and interflow of psychological forces among individuals, it is no more a riddle to say that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, nor that the virtues of the sons wash away the sins of the fathers; and that is how the Avatars automatically, inevitably take upon themselves and have to take upon themselves and bear the stigmata of suffering humanity. And that is how they embody and fulfil the total aspiration of all human beings. An avatar is thus an outburst of the earth's highest need of the hour. Indeed, however great an individual, his greatness is in reality the greatness of the world-spirit in him, and also contrariwise the smallness of an earthly being is the smallness of the universal being at a point, under a particular condition. In other words, the individual represents the weakest or the strongest link as the case may be, in the one single chain constituting the whole human race. And
yet, at bottom, it is not such an absolute determinism, this cosmos, however
apparently it may prove itself to be so. It is found, actually, that behind and
in and through this ineluctable fatalism there are aberrations, freaks that do
not adhere to the common pattern. In the overall macrocosmic view the reign of
the fixed law is perhaps absolute but in the microcosm of infinitesimals
fissures appear, discrepancies show themselves. All strict calculations turn
out in the end to be mere approximations, only they tend to become more and
more approximate. It is like the asymptote or the race between the hare and
the tortoise in the famous story – a mathematical puzzle – where the hare
starting behind can never catch up with the tortoise however fast he may run.
With the discovery of new factors (sometimes only a new way of calculation) the
gap is
Page – 375 sought to be reduced, but the approximation remains. For example, the bending of a ray of light from a star passing by the solar sphere is a subject for interesting calculation: between the figure as given by the Einstein equation and the actual measurement there is a difference, although slight, yet a difference. Such differences are usually explained by some kind of intervention and if that intervention does not fully explain it, another intervention is brought in, and still the hiatus continues. This is just an example. The ultimate particles of matter, points of electric charge (or no-charge), points of tension are incalculables; their position or velocity is an indeterminate, not because of the infinitesimal size of the quantum, their very nature is so; they are erratic in their own essence. And one can justifiably ascribe a kind of free will to these ultimate, almost immaterial material particles, although when they are in bundles or groups they behave quite reasonably and are very obedient to the law, but singly each possessess or is capable of possessing a free independent movement. There is a basis here of the spirit of independence that shows itself more clearly in the biological units, and of course, very overtly and patently in the human mental consciousness. There
seems to be an entity lying at the other end away from Matter, it is the
Spirit, the individual Conscious Being. If Matter is Bondage, Law, Determinism,
Spirit is Freedom,
Page – 376 even reversible. In man a balance is struck between freedom and bondage although apparently bondage overweighs freedom. In the higher evolved status of being man arrives and can arrive at yet greater degrees of freedom and in the end eliminate altogether the element of bondage and transmute it into the self-expressed rhythm of the higher consciousness. The supreme Divine Consciousness or Being is that where Nature's determinism is dissolved in the self-law of the All Spirit, the Divine Will becoming the law of the being. The whole process of creation, the final goal of the Divine Lila is the liberation of Nature, Prakriti. Prakriti is born in Bondage as inconscient Energy. Prakriti itself is a prison-house made of, wholly made of unconsciousness. The conscious Being is there involved, imprisoned and suffers and is miserable. For the gloom of unconsciousness covers it and almost swallows it up. That is the immanent Godhead in creation and is in man his soul, an emanation and representative of the Godhead. As it is commonly understood, liberation means the release of the Godhead out of the prison escaping into the Transcendent. The riddle of this creation is therefore to be solved by this process of escape of the Conscious Principle from out of the unconscious covering beyond into the pure Consciousness – laya for the human being and pralaya for the creation. Actually the Upanishad gives graphically the direction to the human soul to pull himself out, out of the containing form: even as one draws the inner stem of a blade of grass out of its covering, for that which is Pure, Stainless is not here but out there. But
we have set before us a different process. The immanent Godhead, the Conscious
Being imbedded, apparently lost in matter need not withdraw or depart elsewhere
to be free and to be itself. We have already said the force of its
consciousness has or can have a different function and is strong enough to
carry out that function. Its very presence is sufficient to infuse its own
light and freedom into the environing covering and gradually dissolve its dark
ignorance. Man through his soul and self can liberate his ordinary ignorant
nature: he not merely liberates himself from this nature but transmutes it into
an expression and emanantion of the Divine
Consciousness. Even so the cosmic Godhead buried in
Page – 377 the universe grows, evolves and slowly spreads and establishes the radiance of its consciousness in the cosmic nature, makes this also the expression and embodiment of his conscious energy. That is the liberation or rebirth of nature, not its dissolution and extinction. Not extraction, but infiltration is the process. The Divine Purusha descends into his own shadow and by his own light transmutes the dark silhouette into a luminous image, his very self concretised upon earth.
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