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PART
FIVE
At the Origin
of Ignorance THE Divine Consciousness, basically and
essentially one and unique, has inherent in it four cardinal attributes – principles
of its modulation, modes of its vibration – developing into or appearing as
four aspects and personalities. They are Light, Force, Delight and Knowledge.
Originally and in the supreme status the four movements are one and indivisible
and form one indissoluble identity with the Divine's pure essence and absolute
unity. The differentiation or variability there in the Immutable is a play
immanent in the integral self-nature of the Supreme. The one and the many form
on that level a single entity, an undivided whole: the unity running in and
through and holding the multiplicity and the multiplicity being the playfulness
of the unity. Multiplicity, however, implies freedom of movement in the Unique.
In other words, the very
character of variability is the absolute freedom of the variables; the play
consists precisely in the free choice and self-determination of the partners,
the differentiated units. For a formation in the Divine Consciousness, an individualised formulation of its being must necessarily
have the Divine's own freedom. Now, the result of this freedom is somewhat unexpected,
to put it in the human way, that is to say, it was not explicit at that point,
in that field of consciousness. For the freedom, in the normal course of its
play, reached a degree or arrived at a mode which brought about I a
shift and an impulsion meaning a rift and a clear separation: I the
momentum of the free movement carried the individual formation beyond the range of its sense of
unity and identity with all and the One. More and more it isolated itself,
limiting itself to its own orbit and to its own fund of energy. This isolation,
it must be noted, occurs at the origin without any
Page – 169 sense of perversity or revolt or disobedience on
the part of the free entity, as the legend formulated by the human mind imaged
it. The movement of freedom and individual formation in its urge crosses, as
it were, a borderline, passes from the safe zone within the Divine's own status
into a different zone, creates it, as a matter of fact, by that overzealous and
self-concentrated free movement. But, as I have said, there is no premeditation
or arrière pensée
or "bad will" or spirit of contradiction there at the origin of
the deviation. It is no original sin: it is a spontaneous, almost a logical
consequence, an inevitable expression of the freedom that
particulars enjoy as part and parcel of the Divine Universal. And yet the result is strange and
revolutionary. The game once begun develops its own scheme and pattern and
modality. For that crucial step in the movement of freedom, that definite
moving away, the assertion of complete independence and isolation immediately
brought about a reversal of realities, a complete negation of the original
attributes. Thus Light became obscurity or Inconscience, Life became death,
Delight became pain and suffering, Power became incapacity, Knowledge became
Ignorance, and Truth became falsehood. In other words, Spirit became forthright
Matter. What seemed, however, to be nothing more than
an accident is pregnant nevertheless with a profound meaning and significance. Indeed God has not created the world in jest.
Spirit became Matter, that is to say, an apparent negation of the Spirit, to
demonstrate that the negation is a way of affirmation, a more integral way of
affirmation of the Spirit. Matter has been brought out to express another poise
of the spirit, spirit concretised and embodied.
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