Thoughts and Aphorisms 17

17. Someone was laying it down that God must be this or that or He would not be God. But it seemed to me that I can only know what God is and I do not see how I can tell Him what He ought to be.. For what is the standard by which we can judge Him ? These judgments are the follies of our egoism. [Sri Aurobindo: Thoughts and Aphorisms]    God IS. He is the Pure Existence, the Pure Consciousness, along with His Supreme Creative Force, and He is also the Pure Bliss and Joy. Sri Aurobindo says that we can know God and what God is, but we cannot dictate what God should be. We cannot qualify God's Existence or His Consciousness, or His Form or Formlessness, or His Joy. If we try to impose what God should be, then He will no more be the Supreme, but a plaything of the half-conscious physical mind of Man, crowned with Ego..   Generally, in the ordinary state of human consciousness, there is mainly the play of the vital being and the physical mind. And the individual consciousness there has taken the false form of the Ego in Man. And the Ego carries with it the heavy weight of ignorance, darkness, inertia and vital and physical grossness.   A few religious preachers have limited God to their choice. Some say that one particular Teacher or Embodiment is the only Manifestation of God on earth. Some say that He has this (one particular) Form and no other. Some even declare that He has no Forms.  Some say that He is far above the Creation and does therefore never interfere. There are several specifications which often create religious conflicts. These are all the results of choices and impositions made by Ignorance and Ego.   The Mother has said that when God is realized by someone, his physical mind is then changed and transformed. And the Realization comes with an identification with the Divine  when the individual consciousness surpasses the physical mind and its limits.   The Divine is within Man  as the Psychic Being and It has to be unveiled. According to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother, though the Soul is present with all living beings, the Psychic Being is  different from it in the sense that the psychic is an active and evolving aspect of the soul and is present only in Man.**   In the ordinary level of human being, the psychic being is veiled and the consciousness is covered with Ignorance. But then, he has the Task and the Opportunity of going deep within and unveiling the psychic. That is the First Step of the possible Transformation of Man.   When the psychic being is unveiled, the human being then has the Divine Realization, for he has the Identification with the Divine residing within, and his physical mind is changed — he ascends to a Mind of a higher Consciousness.   Man, in the level of ordinary consciousness, lives in the lower triplicity — the mind, the vital and the physical. There is the possibility of a Divine Realization in that level, only when the consciousness in Man reaches and realizes the Supermind and has the required Transformation. Otherwise, Man has reach and live in a level beyond Mind.   The Mother has said: "The capacity to know God can be achieved in the lower triplicity — the mind, the vital and the physical — only with the supramental transformation, and this comes only just before the ultimate realization, which consists in becoming Divine."   OOOOO   We have seen in what is said by The Mother that Man can know the Divine by becoming the Divine himself. And the first step thereof is the unveiling of the psychic, the discovery of the Soul in Man's innermost Depth.   The Mother says: "To find the soul, you must step back from the surface, withdraw deep inside, and go in, farther in, go down, farther down, into a very deep hole, silent and still: there you will find something warm, tranquil, rich in content, and very still, very full, a sort of softness — that is the Soul. And if you persist and are yourself conscious, there comes a sense of plenitude, of something complete that contains unfathomable depths. You feel that if you entered there, many secrets would be revealed; it's like the reflection of something eternal on a very peaceful surface of water. And the limits of time no longer exist. You have the impression of having always been and of being for eternity."   The Mother has also given us, in Her way, the guidance for how the psychic is opened, how the soul is discovered :  " You are seated before a closed door, as it were, like a heavy door of bronze, and you remain there with a will that it should open to let you through to the other side. So, all your concentration, all your aspiration is gathered in a single beam and keeps pushing and pushing against that door, pushing harder and harder, with increasing energy, until suddenly the door gives way. And enter, as if thrust into the light."   And that is indeed a New Birth, a New Becoming for the Aspirant. The man in ignorance is reborn for ever with a Divine Light, a Divine Fire. Prior to this state of discovering the Inner Divine, the soul, the psychic being, our life is but a march onward from Matter to the "timeless Self" — this unveiling, this discovery should be and is our first Goal.   The physical mind, or even the rational mind, has no necessity of deciding what God should be or should not be, though it may gather information, as a preparatory measure from Those who have seen or realized. In order to know the Divine, one has to become the Divine, or , to be more specific, one has to unveil and realize one's own Divinity — hence there is no need or scope to decide or determine or impose what God should be.  O man, the events that meet thee on thy road, Though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief, Are not thy fate,--they touch thee awhile and pass; Even death can cut not short thy spirit's walk: Thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate. On the altar throwing thy thoughts, thy heart, thy works, Thy fate is a long sacrifice to the gods Till they have opened to thee thy secret self And made thee one with the indwelling God.. O soul, intruder in Nature's ignorance, Armed traveller to the unseen supernal heights, Thy spirit's fate is a battle and ceaseless march Against invisible opponent Powers, A passage from Matter into timeless self. [Sri Aurobindo: Savitri, Book VI, Canto II] NB: ** "In all living beings, there is a soul, who resides in the background, not easily known or realized. The soul presides over the living being, but somewhat inactively, in the background. The Soul does not generally participate in the Evolution.   In the Evolution from the animals to the human beings, there has been no active role of the Soul, though the Divine Will was ever active. … … …    However, in Man, there is an active part or aspect of the Soul, which is termed by Sri Aurobindo as the Psychic Being, which participates in the Evolution of Man, in the onward journey of the human being on the Path of Evolution into the higher beings, the supramental beings, towards the Manifestation of the Supramental Consciousness, the next phase of the Evolution. The Psychic is not present in any other living beings.    Sri Aurobindo adopted the term "psychic being" for the word soul is vaguely used :   "The word soul is very vaguely used in English- as it often refers to the whole non-physical consciousness including even the vital with all its desires and passions. That is why the word psychic being has to be used so as to distinguish this divine portion from the instrumental parts of the nature.' "     [Quotations are from The Psychic Being written by me in the website The New Horizon, http://barinchaki.webs.com/, published by me.]     Barindranath Chaki 19-09-2009 [Simultaneously published in Sulekha, All choice and ASPIRATION   Barindranath Chaki 19-09-2009