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The Double Ladder
I HAVE said, at the very beginning creation was a mass of material particles, dust-particles as it were, millions and hundreds and thousands of millions of them strewn about and scattered in infinite Space. And these gradually condensed and gathered in volumes and masses, definite forms and shapes, gradually changed their material nature also, developed into sentient forms, living creatures, conscious beings and self-conscious human persons. I have said also that the original dead material particles had in them or associated with them or fused into them particles, as it were, of light. They were not merely material energies but light energies which on their side contained or were associated or infused with energies of consciousness. It was because there was behind the dead particle this luminous particle that evolution has become possible not only in degree but in kind, the expression in forms of sentience and consciousness as living entities and creatures. This continued until we arrived at the human level and at the level of the present world from where we are trying to trudge beyond. Now from where did this speck of light or consciousness come? Indeed, from where did come the dead dust-particle itself? The rishis declare that the origin of things, of the whole creation is Sat, Being, pure Being, absolute Existence. It is absolute unity, indivisibility, immobility. It has two other fundamental qualities, Chit or Consciousness and Page – 15 Ananda or Delight, but fused into the Being and one with it. However, in this Being there occurred a movement, a stirring, which meant a division in the indivisibility. This urge to division sent the Being rushing head forward, as it were, right down into its opposite, the dead material being, inconscient matter where it pulverised itself into infinite infinitesimal particles, the two standing as though at opposite poles. But the original division – apart from its first downward rectilinear dash so to say – had another chequered career. It was also a gradual movement of fission, or a process of genealogical multiplication as it were. Division meant subdivision leading to further subdivisions, stretching ad infinitum downwards, towards regions more and more impure, imperfect, narrow and dense, of lesser and lesser values till we reach the bedrock of them all, the earth. I may give here a picture or illustration of what the process of division and subdivision was like. In the first original gesture the One Supreme Being divided into a double Existence – Ishwara and Ishwari. They further subdivided themselves, that is to say, sent down – In the gradation of consciousness – parts and portions, personalities and emanations of themselves in diminishing values. In the present cycle of terrestrial evolution, Sri Aurobindo says, four are the powers of the supreme Ishwari that have come forward to guide and effectuate the destiny of the hour. They are the supreme effective Powers, they are from – what is called – the Supramental Consciousness. But they have sent down into the still lower regions nearer to the human consciousness, more easily available to it, other forms and figures of the divine Personality. They are chiefly the gods of the Overmind who are interested in the human destiny and some of them appear as presiding deities or Ishta-devata and establish individual relations with men. Now this process of devolution has gone on; from the supreme Consciousness, it has entered into the Supramental, then into the Overmental and then into the mental regions, Page – 16 and peopled all of them with gods and divinities. In the lower regions – lower, that is to say, denser, obscurer, and more ignorant forms of consciousness – they have become smaller gods, dwarf gods. Perhaps to these also the Vedic Rishis offered their namas and stoma, their obeisance as bÄlakhilya gods. The gods have come down farther still and proliferated liberally in the earth's atmosphere. The gods and goddesses of the woodland, of rivers and springs, of mounts and hills, form a whole world of mythology – they are not mere creations of fancy or abstract imagination. The totems of the primitive people continue the same story of proliferation into still darker and denser regions of being and consciousness that may rather be called non-being and unconsciousness. And even, I may say if I am allowed to, the world of rocks and stones is not excluded: they too in their solid material dead body enshrine something of the god in devolution. There is no question here of any human intervention – of the infusion of man's will and thought-formation. That is another subject altogether. Here I am speaking of the inherent intrinsic spiritual status or even divinity of a material body – Its dravya-guna – that which a lingam or a Kaaba possesses. So we see in the system of creation two lines of growth or development or expression – a double ladder, one mounting up from below and the other coming down from above. They are more like, they have been described as, genealogical trees, the upward rising tree is the tree of evolution starting from matter, the root substance, growing gradually into the trunk, its multiple branches and sub-branches spreading up and abroad, each new shoot branching out is represented by the advent of a new form of being or species or creature. We all know the gradations from the unformed, ill-formed types to better and better formed types till we reach man. On the other hand, the other tree is the Vedic Ashwattha tree that has its roots up in the supreme Space and sends down gradually Page – 17 its branches below. The unity at the origin gradually fissuring, dividing and subdividing and multiplying itself, at the same time the multiplied products becoming more and more distinct and definite, even rigid and limited, although more and more concrete and firm in form and function. In this line of devolution, the forms or the formations and emanations that have appeared and manifested, I have named in a generic way, gods. Their function is to infuse themselves wherever needed into the formations that have been prepared by the upward surge of the evolutionary movement from below and thus help fulfil that urge. Each type of divinity at the appropriate stage and occasion comes forward, embodies itself so to say, in the external creative movement. We know this process, although somewhat symbolically described, in the famous song of Jayadeva describing the Avataras. The Gods, I have said, are types, self-existent realities, models for new creations which are gradually coming forward in the material world, which are to be directed and organised. Specially with man at the top of this new creation, the terrestrial situation has changed considerably and is being changed continually. I have said, human consciousness has arrived at a stage when it has to leap over and attain a new dimension of earthly existence; just over him the gods of the age have gathered and are preparing themselves to take the field in. the new creation: the gods that men have to become and embody in their life, and thus manifest a new type of conscious being and activity. The gods are approaching to change humanity but perhaps humanity also will bring about a new change in the status of the gods themselves. They may lose something of their typal stability or fixity and attain a new human flexibility. The Gita speaks, of course in its own way, of man increasing the gods and the gods also increasing man. Perhaps the divinity that man attains will increase the value Page – 18 of the Divinity itself. We remember the line from Savitri:
"A godhead greater by a human fate.‹
Also the lines Satyavan addresses to Savitri: "What high change is in thee, 0 Savitri? Bright Ever thou wast, a goddess still and pure, Yet dearer to me by thy sweet human parts Earth gave thee making thee yet more divine." Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book XII – Epilogue Page – 19
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