Surya And The Harmonisation Of The Two
Vedic Deities
A divine harmonisation of both the ascending and descending path of the Divine Gnosis in the terrestrial is a culmination and crown of a highest spiritual synthesis of divine Knowledge, a two-way movement of the Spirit realised and put into a puissant manifestation in the terrestrial. The dynamics work themselves out in the settled knowledge of the Rishi, the harbinger of a highest Truth, the seeker after a perfect perfection, who in his spiritual Siddhi synthesises these two movements into a single movement of a pragmatic ritual to be performed, often repeatedly in order to realise the synthesisation — and thereby the efficacy and intended result — of the two-way movement of the Spirit. An integral movement of the gnostic Spirit here in the terrestrial as a settled Power and Consciousness might seem at first to be of the nature of a silent influence hardly perceptible to mental experience, for mind, by virtue of its composition, moves always away from the essential unity of the Spirit or if it is perceived at all, it is only as an impossible negation of outward life and its constituted elements. It is only by a vast surrender within and a large opening to the Supracosmic above that it can be experienced and realised as a supreme possibility of the transcendent Divine in the mind as well as in the lower vital and physical. An effective utilisation of the gnostic Power and Consciousness depends as much on the receptivity of the individual as on the collective humanity, for the higher Power and Consciousness of the Supreme Supermind does not impose on the individual or the race by an arbitrary whim or autocratic sagacity; both the individual and the race must aspire for the highest Truth of the Divine by an earnest effort and ardent aspiration. It is on these lines that we have to establish an impulse to progress towards greater heights of the divine Spirit to be realised in the Life and Matter, besieged by Ignorance and Falsehood. Not only an individual but a collective mastery of Life here in the terrestrial is an inevitable outcome of an integral divine Consciousness, sought out by the great Rishis of the Veda.
A wide and an all-embracing movement of the Supramental Gnosis in the terrestrial consciousness, of which the Vedic Surya is a representative symbol, is a result of a vast synthesis or an inscrutable formula worked out by the Divine himself directly instead of hammering out of the sense of the recondite Vedic symbol and ritual, for such a synthesis of self-exceeding knowledge and power cannot come even of the complex Vedic tradition; here the Vedic Surya is a preparatory movement, a precursor to the great integral movement of the Supreme Supramental Shakti in the terrestrial consciousness. Such a possibility must presuppose a higher Power other than the highest mental to be in embodied existence in the physical evolution and expected to carry on the difficult and often impossible work of transformation of lower nature, to be able to bear the burden of all the world’s pain and anguish in a nature consecrated entirely to the Divine within and without, and out of this singular Godhead comes into successive manifestation a divine descendancy of beings to carry the burden further till all is transformed by the Supramental Power. A newer and vaster symbol is thus created, and more detailed ritual to invoke and express the powers of the Supramental Surya. This is the logical completion and fulfilment of the Vedic cycle, and of the bearing of the fruits of its mystic symbol and ritual, not only in the spiritualised mind but also in the terrestrial consciousness. The immense and bountiful yield of the ritual is always a greater, an ever-ascending and an ever-progressing knowledge of the Spirit and a youth of the infinite Being in the chalice of embodied life.
Neither the symbol nor the ritual of the Veda is a mere propitiatory stuff of a rustic and uncivilised race of men wallowing in self-illusion, for the Western mind would have us believe so and conclude that these men were impractical recluses without a grain of intellectuality or ability to reason beyond the scope of their barbaric nature! To the external mind of reason, both the symbol and the ritual seem to be enmeshed in a mass of confusing and lengthy procedures without any possibility of a decisive outcome beneficial to the human mind or life, for the intellect of man measures by its limited and often defective yardstick the limitless puissance of the Vedic symbol and ritualism and derives out of its own errors a perfect defence of the intellectual and scientific creed against the spiritual light and illumination of the Vedas. From the intellectual viewpoint, from the outgoing scientific temperament, from the limited world-view of the external mind, the evolution of Life is a mechanical process of visible Matter without an underlying Spirit, or even if it admits the invisible and the incognisable, it is only so much as a reference point to showcase the irrelevance of the immaterial phenomena of existence or of the immaterial Spirit as the basis of all universal as well as terrestrial existence. Material science revels in its knowledge of the apparent phenomena and its ability to control and manipulate them to build giant or colossal apparatuses which strive only to serve the outward urges and interests of humanity, not to dig deeper into the nether mysteries of manifest Life or the secrets of inner and higher existence, which have been documented and synthesised in the Vedas by the great Rishis of the past, who still live in the immortal ether above and eager to guide humanity to a sunlit existence of the divine Spirit above and here. The Vedic analogy of existence, of which we find only through a coded and cryptic language and expressed through recondite symbols, cannot be expressed in a direct human tongue or by geometrical drawings, for the mysteries of higher existence, of the illimitable divine Self above, of the higher principle of the Ishwarahood cannot be expressed in the most apparent and limited figures of human knowledge, and any attempt to express them, as we have already found, will only result in an aberration and gross misreading of the original divine Sense and therefore, will not serve our purpose. We must draw close to the higher ideal of the infinite Truth and identify ourselves with its vast synthesis by a practical approach of the surrendered heart and mind, not by insisting on dissection of the Spirit to suit our favourable scientific temperament.
The divine path of the Supramental Surya, once synthesised here in the terrestrial, will express a manifold number of possibilities for the humanity to make use of, but not without a rider. The supreme Power in the evolution cannot be approached with a material mind or temperament or vital curiosity, for these are but instruments to be transformed by the Divine Gnosis; it ought to be approached by a conscious aspiration and self-surrender in all parts of the being, not intellectual or moral or emotional, but psychic and spiritual in self-seeking. The academic abracadabra perpetrated in the name of Indology by the Western scholars, the stupidities of their reasoning intelligence must be rejected resolutely by the earnest practitioner of integral Yoga. The surface mind of man sees in the Vedic texts only a mass of unintelligible verses without any actual connection to the world of apparent reality or to any semblance of practicable or useful model for productive knowledge, but this is to be expected as the external mind is only an expression of Ignorance, not of Knowledge, and therefore it cannot hope to see anything beyond its present limitations and apparent weaknesses. But there is behind the surface mind a stratum of subliminal selves, subtler and more plastic, living in a vast expanse of endless domains, kingdoms of the Gods and the demi-gods, worlds of greater harmony and peace, and the seeker must live more and more in these inner worlds and grow in the constant influence of the Psychic till his whole nature comes under the dominant impulse and control of the psychic Being, which is the evolving divine term of the Supreme Lord here in the terrestrial, and it is out of this Psychic perfection comes the direct possibility of a still greater spiritual perfection of the Spirit, a beginning of the exploration of the higher Divine in the nature of greater ineffable existences in the supreme ascension of the divine Spirit. From the standpoint of Veda, from the viewpoint of the living practitioner of integral Yoga, a spiritual transformation of being does not automatically lead to a Supramental transformation of nature or to its illimitable divine synthesis, for the bridge between the spiritual and the Supramental is a still vast gulf of luminous overlappings of infinitely stacked states of the Consciousness forming an invisible as well an incomprehensible layer or membrane, through which nothing can pass into the Gnostic Supermind from the higher spiritual planes; the Vedic Rishis had attempted to go beyond the Overmind Consciousness into the Supramental Gnosis but could not do; they saw the Supramental from a higher spiritual vision and drew its contours in a language which exhorts the new and dynamic seekers of knowledge to use their recorded experience as a starting point for a still greater divine adventure of consciousness. The Vedic Surya symbolises the acme of their psychological as well as spiritual developments and heralds the arrival of the Dawn-Goddess, the supreme Principle of the Divine in all the Worlds of Existence. It is not the most favoured but the most valiant and most self-giving that shall pass beyond into the Supreme Supramental Gnosis, of which the Vedic Surya is a prelude and a secret symbol.
A perfection here of the two-way movement of the Divine Gnosis is only inevitable in the scheme of Nature’s progressive movements, in her march towards a greater perfection in the physical and in her devising of a new race in the image of the Supreme Divine. A self-asserting symbol of the Supreme Gnosis expressing itself through the ritual of the consecrated heart and illumined mind and buddhi will be the norm and spiritual standard of its initial self-expression till it has descended into the individual physical to transform the brute nescience and the subconscient. It is in this play of the Supreme Divine that the role and purpose of the Vedic Surya is amplified and transformed to accommodate and embody vaster and greater Powers and psychological attributes of the Divine Spirit, expressed through a still greater symbol than what can be found in the Vedic cycle.
Mahasaraswati and The Sense and History of the Vedic Symbol
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Mahasaraswati And The Perfection of Consciousness