-40_The Novel Alchemy

 

ACCORDING to the Bible, God said, "Let there be Creation", and the Creation came. God was pleased, not only because the Creation came but also because the Creation was all-perfect, with nothing to change: it was like an edifice firm and solid and flawless, it would endure eternally firm and unchanging, fixed in every detail and exactly as it was on the first day.

The Rishis of the Upanishads give us a slightly different version. God was not at all pleased with the first sketch and with the forms of animalkind created. He tried a second time, and again it failed to please. After several essays of this nature, He was at last pleased with His work when man came into being. Now it was truly well done, sukrtam etat.

In fact, Creation is a continuous process, a progressive movement. The earth is moving forward every moment, it is assuming constantly an ever-new garb. This story of evolution has been one of the supreme discoveries of modern man in the field of knowledge. It has opened the door to many hidden mysteries, provided a solution to a number of problems.

The deepest of all mysteries, the most complex and recondite of all problems of Creation is the origin and prevalence of suffering. Man's first and persistent query has been prompted by this; he has been subjected to the attacks of the three kinds of suffering, hence he wants to know, duhkha-trayabhighatat Jijñasa.

The question is: if there is God, if He is all-merciful, if the 

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Power or Being in charge of the created universe is a benign and not a malign Power, siva and not asiva, then why is our earth afflicted with disease and suffering and sorrow and pain? Why are mortals in fear of the death that overhangs all? Not God but Satan then is the creator and supreme controller?

A well-known modern western thinker and sage has propounded a novel theory of his own on this problem. He too has suggested that the world is not something that is static with all things fixed and settled for good. The world is in movement, and the movement is ever forward, towards a higher consciousness that progressively unfolds its riches. As first results of this urge towards the heights" there have appeared all sorts of cracks and rifts, acute pulls and strains; these are translated into sorrow and suffering, deprivation and death. The earth or human society is not like a well trimmed garden, all has not been selected and arranged and put in its proper place according to a pattern and given a permanent shape. It is on the contrary like a wild bush with its innumerable shrubs and trees which have been continuously growing. So many of the dead leaves and branches have been shed, so many flowers have dried up. But new twigs are constantly forming on top and radiating their beauty of green leaves and flowers in bloom. Sorrow and suffering, pain and misery are like those dried-up and discarded flowers and leaves and twigs. These are concomitant results of the original total movement, perhaps even an inevitable necessity. But even from the individual's point of view this seeming waste and destruction is no sign of any futility, for through each individual there has been flowing that upward stream of consciousness, each individual has within himself an impulse and an endeavour to move along that stream and as an aid to it, no matter what outer form it might take. Or else the thing may be compared to the work of soldiers in a war. The common aim of war is victory. Every soldier has an equal self-devotion, "energy and steadfastness 

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to secure this victory. Nevertheless, all do not survive till the end, many have to give up their lives, and on this immolation of the many is founded the ultimate victory. So, in the evolution of man on earth, the first step is represented by sorrow and suffering, misery and pain; these are the signs and symbols of the upward urge. Those who put up with suffering and sorrow, misery and pain, to the extent these can be borne, do not do so wholly under a sense of unwilling submission. The inner core of this suffering is a keen desire and urge and capacity to act as an instrument and support of the upward urge. Even from the point of view of the individual what appears in a sense a simple negation is in truth a thing of deep- import. Teilhard de Chard in has thus seen a spiritual meaning in the Christian's bearing of the cross; the cross-brings in the end a realisation of eternal life.

Sri Aurobindo too has given us a full theory and history of suffering. In one place, however, he has said this about earthly suffering and sin: those who are the worst sinners, the thieves and murderers too are deserving of our salute, for the reason that they are the ones who have drawn upon themselves the load of sin, it is these unfortunate ones who have swallowed up most of the poison that has come out of the churning of the ocean of life.

These words of Sri Aurobindo seem to lend support to the view of the Western thinker. Both echo an almost identical feeling. But what Sri Aurobindo says here is only a fraction of all he has to say on the subject, it is not his final word, whereas in the view of the Western sage, sorrow and suffering, misery and pain appear as ultimate truths at least for the individual, and for the ordinary life of the common multitude; this manner of complete self-immolation of the individual serves a collective end, like the self-sacrifice of an army or a multitude of soldiers in a war. But in Sri Aurobindo's view, even for the individual, for any individual, this consummation in self-sacrifice is not the final end; for the individual too this is merely an episode in one or more 

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of his lives. Through this self-sacrifice, every individual goes on developing himself along with the development of the collectivity, and this is done not by losing or abolishing oneself. No one is rejected or lost, like the dried-up leaves or flowers. For the individual too there are levels of progression. There is not merely one class of fortunate people who pass into the highest realisation as suggested by the Christian thinker and have won a seat alongside of God in a heavenly consciousness. All are coming up gradually in their footsteps and will participate in an identical realisation. It cannot be regarded as ordained of God that the upward movement .and supreme attainment of one small section should be founded involuntarily or however willingly on the self-immolation of another bigger group. If evolution has to proceed through the rejection and sacrifice of the many, then does it not imply in the end the survival of the few? Whatever the size or the integrality of those few, it still remains only a portion of the whole.

It is true that sorrow and suffering, old age and death are facts of an earlier part, that is to say, the first stage of the evolutionary process. When in the beginning of things darkness was enveloped in darkness, tamo asit tamasa gudham agre, when all was inconscient ocean, apraketam salilam, when the dense unconsciousness of matter ruled at the beginning of creation, the first stirrings of the life-force that burst through this solid darkness took form as a pressure of deep and acute pain. It is this forceful impact of pain that shakes and breaks the dark foundations. It is through the many forms of suffering that inconscience and ignorance gradually become consciousness and knowledge. Finally, in man there awakens the spiritual urge under the blows of suffering, and it is in the transformation of suffering that the spiritual consciousness finds its growth. Not merely to escape from suffering but to transform it is the real problem and the greater achievement. What the poet calls "an escape from suffering in the midst of suffering" is the self-satisfaction of the martyr 

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and patriot and soldier in annihilating self. This may be described as the way of the heroic seeker, vira-bhava, but of a different nature is the work of the more godly seeker, devabhava. The latter no doubt has to pass through suffering, but he does not lose himself there, nor does he find his sole satisfaction in ending it. He crosses beyond suffering to another shore, through a tunnel as it were, and emerges into a laughter of light, a satisfaction of delight. The final end or significance lies not in the suffering itself nor even in the virtues of courage, ability, aspiration and steadfastness which are gained through or at the cost of suffering. Suffering is in reality a form of delight, although a distorted form of delight. A delight which is so keen as to become unbearable appears in the form 'of suffering. Again, enter into the inner unfathomable core of suffering and you will see and feel that it is not suffering but delight, the supreme form of delight, just as on piercing through the veil of the cosmic illusion one finds standing behind only the sole eternal Brahman. Death too is not the annihilation of the individual, not an end, but a change of-form and outward appearance. This change has been an inescapable necessity for further progress. At the final end, suffering ceases to exist, it too is transformed into delight. Death too ceases to be, it too finds its death; what remains is only immortality, an immortal life.

Chardin has been speaking of the gradual unfolding and realisation of a spiritual consciousness. It is a constant one-pointed upward movement, the being and consciousness of earth gradually moving higher and higher as a collective entity through a new creation that is growing more and more pure and integral. In this way this consciousness has been overpassing the limits of earth and the material universe and moves into a different kind of world, creates or becomes a different kind of world. It is as if a ball of fire throwing its tongues of flame as it breaks through the barrier of matter and soars up on high, and the more it grows immense and clear and attains its true form, the more it burns gradually 

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to ashes with its massive concentration of heat whatever remains of the old creation. It seems that in the view of Chardin, the manifestation and establishment of an integral spirituality will one day set aflame the whole earth and the material body with its physical base. It is as if another world, but once it manifests here in full, its fiery energies will turn the old earth to ashes, perhaps reduce it to its primordial form. A school of scientists too hold the view that at the beginning of creation there was an infinite expanse of ether charged with intensely hot particles. The universe had neither cohesion nor a settled form, it was a gaseous nebula. And in its final end too it will have to go back to that formless state. The material world is simply a mould for the spirit. This mould or basis will be gradually rent asunder and broken and scattered before the reign of spirit manifests and establishes itself. Will it then be somewhat like the eruption of a volcano? The upward urge and movement of evolution is as if a volcanic peak slowly raising its head; as it grows in energy and heat within, the peak gets detached and is thrown into a liquid flood of lava which proclaims its flaming glory by sweeping aside and drowning and destroying all else; Will the old give place to the new and the unmanifest along these lines?

What is this world that is to be the fruit of the new spiritual realisation? Where will it be? It would appear to be a supraphysical and transcendent realisation. Chardin has clearly suggested that the new earth will not be anything like a planet renovated into a "sidereal" body illumined by its own light and not that of another. It will not be a thing of the gross material world at all. It would rather come into being as if by rending through the old earth and destroying it, almost as a result of a universal catastrophe, pralaya. Would it then be something non-material? If it were to be made up of pure consciousness, then it might be termed the realisation of Brahman, the Brahmic status. Is then evolution of the manifested universe moving towards this final destruction or dissolution?

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Or else is the new world to be conceived as something belonging to the supra-physical? But the supra-physical world too has its planes, and this new world may be the field of a spiritual realisation somewhere among these planes beyond life, mind and the above-mind. The Vedantins speak of the world of Brahman, they aim at realising the grand status of Brahman, brahma-loke mahiyate. But theirs is. something outside the created universe, beyond manifestation. The Vaishnavas have spoken of a highest spiritual world, go-taka, which is within the manifestation. The Christians too speak of their Heaven. We also hear of the world of Shiva, the world of Vishnu; these too are not entirely outside the manifestation or created universe. Does then Chardin aim at something overmental, utterly beyond and above the mind?

In the vision of Sri Aurobindo, the process of creation is not merely an ascent and upward movement, it has a movement of descent too. There is not merely a crossing of levels upon levels, not merely a progressive purification, enlargement, deepening, intensification and sharpening of the consciousness and status; the aim is to transfigure all in the image of the divine being. This process involves a going upward and a, descent with a view to reshape the lower reaches anew in the mould of the heights, not a final extinction, nirvana, in the world of Brahman by a rejection of all individuality and collectivity. No level of the created universe has to be bypassed or abolished, not even the lowest material plane. On the contrary, the aim is to take one's stand on this material plane itself and transmute it into a new matter, even as the secret aim of the old alchemists had been to transmute the base metal into gold.

And we know how, thanks to modern science, gross solid matter now appears before our eyes in its true form of electricity and light; but it remains matter all the same in spite of its possessing the properties of light and electricity. If we will probe a little deeper into its secrets, matter acquires 

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the attributes of consciousness, but even then it may still remain matter. Materiality need not abolish itself in order to become consciousness. The spiritual world too need not transcend matter; the establishment of the spirit will not mean the extinction of the material world in a final dissolution.

This twofold movement, this dual line of ascent and descent, carries forward the entire creation, including in it man on earth as a collectivity as well as all the parts of creation, through an integrated harmony, not through any inescapable and huge conflict and destruction and dissolution.

As the Vedic Rishis would say, Agni the Mystic Fire aspires to the heights, its flames continue to rise upwards. It purifies and brightens and adds keenness and strength to the consciousness and bears it upward through level after higher level until it reaches a proximity to and even an identity with the Supreme, in the very home of the gods. But Agni has an assistant and counterpart in Parjanya, the Rain-God. The work of this godhead is to help in the descent, the bringing down of the waters of heaven, as in a downpour of rain. To establish here on this earth what has risen to the heights and exists there, is the supreme and integral achievement.

The spiritualised body of man will not be simply a spiritual consciousness. It will be all-conscious no doubt, and yet its substance will still be matter. To prepare this new earth-matter will be the novel alchemy of the new age. 

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