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THE PERSONAL AND THE IMPERSONAL As you go up in your consciousness towards the origin of things you come finally at the end of things: you are beyond the names and forms that make up the universe, beyond even the subtle names and forms at the topmost. You arrive at something formless, impersonal, unthinkable, unique, infinite and eternal. It is at best a vast force or a state of consciousness. When you come in contact with it, you lose your personal form, your separate individuality and become the featureless absolute. Many religions and philosophies consider this status to be the supreme, the highest and the origin of things. In reality, however, it is not the end of things nor the supreme status. You can rise further beyond. Your consciousness enters into the formless and impersonal and merges its separate existence there and then emerges again; it envisages a reality which is not formless but has a form, it is not impersonality but a Person, with which or with whom you can have a personal relation unlike the relation or lack of relation with the Impersonal. But this form beyond the formless is not like the forms of the inferior consciousness: it is the Form Page-73 of forms. And it is not a person like a human being or even a divine being or god, but an essential Personality, the Person of persons. It has not the limitation or exclusiveness of ego-bounded individuality (even the gods are ego-bounded); it has a kind of fluid boundedness or outline which is recognizable as that of a definite Person, but it has not the fixity or rigidity of lower forms. And yet to arrive at this supreme Person, to come in contact with Him, it is necessary to pass through and have the experience of the formless impersonal infinity. For that breaks the inferior moulds, the narrow egoistic formations which are only aberrations or obscure images of the true Person. Somewhat on the same line the vital too has to proceed to transform itself. It must get rid of its ignorant and violent impulses, its obscure formations: it must be thoroughly cleansed and purified. For that it must learn to be quiet and silent—absolutely still and passive; and in that quiet passivity to feel, to be conscious of the Divine Presence, to be saturated with it. When once that is done, it is called upon to come out and take part in active life. Normally, however, the tendency is, when one has withdrawn and lived an inward quieted life, on coming back to outer life, to turn to the old accustomed ways and reactions; one falls back into the old groove of the consciousness. Page-74 The vital should then make the experience and the realisation of the Divine Presence dynamic so that it may be a living reality; the vital must be conscious of it in the midst of all activities, not merely in the indrawn state. The energy of the vital must be put out into a complete and perfected living, but it must not run into old moulds and take up the habitual modes; with the constant sense of the Divine, the everpresent truth and beauty of the Divine's consciousness, the vital will possess a new life and create a new pattern of living. Page-75 |