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The Story of Creation CONSCIOUSNESS is the
source and basis of creation. Even the most material object, apparently
unconscious, the stone, for example, has inherent in it a vibration of
consciousness. Where there is absolutely no consciousness, it is the
Inconscient. If you ever descend into the Inconscient, that is to say, further
down the scale from the inanimate stone, you will know the difference. The gulf
between the stone and the Inconscient is very much, very much indeed, greater
than that between the stone and man. For it is a secret consciousness that
links man to the stone, but beyond there is a hiatus, something unbridgeable.
The Inconscient is the Void, the absolute zero ("Inane," Sri
Aurobindo names it in Savitri): it is hot sub-stance, it is pure
negation. Consciousness is at the back of the material universe: without that
consciousness there would not be the marvellous organisation that is found
within the material particle of atom. The Inconscient is pre-existent to the
material creation. The
one indivisible Reality and its pure consciousness: that is the origin. This
Supreme Consciousness chose to objectify himself, bring himself out of himself,
witness himself in play – the Upanishad says, the One wished to have a second,
a companion. to himself, sa
dwitiyam aichhat. This
power of self-objectification is a free-will given to the consciousness to move
out of its original unified status and move abroad and away, as it liked. Thus
the Supreme saw himself as his own power of self-manifestation,
and that is the Mother Consciousness, Adya Shakti, Aditi – consciousness-power,
who again in her forward creative urge expressed herself in the first four
major Emanations (Maheshwari, Mahakali, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati). But this
free urge, free to separate itself and proceed
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in an independent movement of
self-expression and evolution precipitated itself immediately, almost as a
logical consequence of its career of free choice, into the Denial, the Negation
that is inconscience. So, against the Supreme, the Divine Consciousness, there
stood out the utter unconsciousness: the Light disappeared into absolute
Darkness. It was the result of a self-choice in the consciousness: but the end
was the very opposite of consciousness. It
was a dead silence, more silent than Death and more dead
than Silence itself. And it was utter helplessness and hopelessness. The Divine
Consciousness – Aditi – saw the terrible line of destiny that freedom had taken
and ended in: she could stand it no longer and a cry went out for succour, for
help. And the answer came immediate, a ray shot down
from the one Supreme Consciousness and entered into the womb of Inconscience.
Lo, the miracle, Matter was born, the first creation, the first manifestation
of the Supreme Grace. Matter holds in it the spark of consciousness that is to
grow and unfold itself, shine more and more into the enveloping gloom of
Inconscience, illumining it farther and farther, pushing its frontiers ever
backward and away. The
birth of Matter coincided with another descent of the Supreme Consciousness; it
is a descent in graded stages linking up the highest to the lowest through
intermediate formations: they are telescoped into Matter so that Matter might
lodge and express them gradually through its inherent developing consciousness
till the highest is revealed and embodied here as it is always self-revealed at
the highest. In the graded descent, in the
hierarchy of planes and levels, there appeared forces and beings also proper to
each domain. The earliest, the first among them are the Asuras, rather the
original Asuras – the first quaternary (some memory of them seemed to linger in
the Greek legend of Chronos
and his brood). For they embody the powers of division, of Inconscience: they
are the Affirmations of the Negation. Against the Asuras there came and
ranged-at the first line of division, on the one side of the descent of the
Light – the first godheads, the major powers and personalities of the Divine
Consciousness. The battle of the gods and Titans for the possession of the
earth has been going on ever since. The end will come one
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it will mean the dissolution of the forces of Negation, at least within the
earthly sphere, and the establishment there of the reign of ,Light.
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