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Transfiguration THE Divine attributes – such as Peace and Joy, Consciousness and Power,
Freedom, etc. – each and all of them are self-existent realities, existing by
themselves in their fullness and perfection. They are not mere qualities that
are acquired by effort through gradual culture and development, they are not
acquired piecemeal as other human possessions, material or mental. They are
there near us, about us in their fullness and wholeness. We do not see them or
seize them as there happens to be a veil in between. We need not strain and
struggle, labour and sweat, go through all the pains of the world in order to
find them, realise them. It is, as I say, a veil interfering. Remove the veil
or even shift it a little, you have a glimpse of them in their full glory. Brahman, the supreme Reality, is said to be
of the same nature and its relation to the world is also of the same kind.
Brahman is not there because the world is there. Brahman is not realised
through a long process of negating experiences; it is not the sum of all
negations, it is an immediate and absolute realisation. When the vision of the
world-maya is not there, Brahman stands self-revealed in its absoluteness, then
one realises that Brahman only exists, has existed and will exist; there is no
maya, it not only does not exist, it never existed. Brahman alone is there
always. That is what the
Upanishad also says. This experience cannot be acquired by mental knowledge
and argumentation or study of books. Only when it reveals its own body then one
stands before it face to face. As of the Brahman, even so of the Brahman's
qualities. They are various aspects, living aspects or personalities of the One
Divine. The Vedas therefore consider them as Gods and
Page – 188 Goddesses and give each one a name and a
form. They are adored and worshipped as such so that they may enter into the worshipper
and transmute him into something of His image. The Gods bring riches to man.
But these riches are they themselves. Vasu is the richness of their substance,
Ratna is the wealth of their delight. Agni is the energy of consciousness, Varuna
is the vastness of consciousness, Mitra is the harmony. Ila is the revelation,
Saraswati inspiration, Bharati is the Goddess of the Divine Word. In the mental world we meet abstractions,
lifeless ideas, forms without a soul. In reality, however, all movements in
man, all forces in nature are more than mere movements and forces, they are personalities,
embodiments of conscious beings. Indeed the Puranic tradition has elaborated
this conception almost to its extreme limit. Those people crowded the world
with an infinite number of Gods and Goddesses. They speak of 33 crores of Gods.
The earth is the playfield of all godlings. In
this way we come very far from the Supreme Brahman, the Mayavadin's inane
Unity. The Puranic multiplicity is perhaps a corrective of the Vedantin's empty
Absolute. The Vedantin's negation of the world for the
realisation of the Brahman, the Supreme Consciousness, is an effective way so
far as it goes but it does not really negate the world. One only turns one's
back to the world and says, "It is not there". We face the Sun and
cast our shadow behind. The real solution is not to cut away or wipe off the
shadow but instead of an obscure formulation, to make of it a luminous radiant
image. The world is not abolished or eclipsed by the Sun but IS made luminous,
in every particle a radiant and glorious body. This transfiguration is possible, nay,
inevitable, because the higher realities, the truth-expressions of the Supreme
Consciousness are there always self-existent in their total purity and
pressing down upon earth and displacing the lower mayic shadow-realities. We
need not seek to pull down what is already descending of itself. One must be
open and receptive and welcoming in tranquillity the descending Godheads.
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