Verse 7·19

बहूनां जन्मनामन्ते ज्ञानवान्मां प्रपद्यते ।वासुदेवः सर्वमिति स महात्मा सुदुर्लभः ॥

bahūnāṁ janmanāmante jñānavānmāṁ prapadyatevāsudevaḥ sarvamiti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ

At the end of many births the man of knowledge attains to Me. Very rare is the great soul who knows that Vasudeva, the omnipresent Being, is all that is.

Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy

AI translationAI-synthesised translation — not Sri Aurobindo’s text

Mottoes of The Life Divine

Rare is the great of soul to whom all is the Divine Being.

All is the Divine Being.

Essays on the Gita

Therefore, in this uncertainty, what has now to be done is to give more completely the knowledge on which divine works are to be founded. And this can only be the complete, the integral knowledge of the Divine who is the source of works and in whose being the worker becomes by knowledge free; for he knows the free Spirit from whom all works proceed and participates in his freedom. Moreover this knowledge must bring a light that justifies the assertion with which the first part of the Gita closes. It must ground the supremacy of bhakti over all other motives and powers of spiritual consciousness and action; it must be a knowledge of the supreme Lord of all creatures to whom alone the soul can offer itself in the perfect self-surrender which is the highest height of all love and devotion. This is what the Teacher proposes to give in the opening verses of the seventh chapter which initiate the development that occupies all the rest of the book. “Hear,” he says, “how by practising Yoga with a7·1 mind7·1–2 attached to me and with me as āśraya (the whole basis, lodgment, point of resort of the conscious being and action) thou shalt know me without any remainder of doubt, integrally, samagraṁ mām. I will speak to thee without omission or remainder, aśeṣataḥ,” (for otherwise a ground of doubt may remain), “the essential knowledge, attended with all the comprehensive knowledge, by knowing which there shall be no other thing here left to be known.” The implication of the phrase is that the Divine Being is all, vāsudevaḥ sarvam, and therefore if he is known integrally in all his powers and principles, then all is known, not only the pure Self, but the world and action and Nature. There is then nothing else here left to be known, because all is that Divine Existence. It is only because our view here is not thus integral, because it rests on the dividing mind and reason and the separative idea of the ego, that our mental perception of things is an ignorance. We have to get away from this mental and egoistic view to the true unifying knowledge, and that has two aspects, the essential, jñāna, and the comprehensive, vijñāna, the direct spiritual awareness of the supreme Being and the right intimate knowledge of the principles of his existence, Prakriti, Purusha and the rest, by which all that is can be known in its divine origin and in the supreme truth of its nature. That integral knowledge, says the Gita, is a rare and difficult thing;7·3 “among thousands of men one here and there strives after perfection, and of those who strive and attain to perfection one here and there knows me in all the principles of my existence, tattvataḥ.”

For note that it is bhakti with knowledge which the Gita demands from the disciple and it regards all other forms of devotion as good in themselves but still inferior; they may do well by the way, but they are not the thing at which it aims in the soul’s culmination. Among those who have put away the sin of the rajasic egoism and are moving towards the Divine, the Gita distinguishes between four kinds of bhaktas. There are those who turn to him as a refuge from sorrow and suffering in the world, ārta. There are those who seek him as the giver of7·16–18 good in the world, arthārthī. There are those who come to him in the desire for knowledge, jijñāsu. And lastly there are those who adore him with knowledge, jñānī. All are approved by the Gita, but only on the last does it lay the seal of its complete sanction. All these movements without exception are high and good, udārāḥ sarva evaite, but the bhakti with knowledge excels them all, viśiṣyate. We may say that these forms are successively the bhakti of the vital-emotional and affective nature,^* that of the practical and dynamic nature, that of the reasoning intellectual nature, and that of the highest intuitive being which takes up all the rest of the nature into unity with the Divine. Practically, however, the others may be regarded as preparatory movements. For the Gita itself here says that it is only at the end of7·19 many existences that one can, after possession of the integral knowledge and after working that out in oneself through many lives, attain at the long last to the Transcendent. For the knowledge of the Divine as all things that are is difficult to attain and rare on earth is the great soul, mahātmā, who is capable of fully so seeing him and of entering into him with his whole being, in15·19 every way of his nature, by the wide power of this all-embracing knowledge, sarvavit sarvabhāvena.

It may be asked how is that devotion high and noble, udāra, which seeks God only for the worldly boons he can give or as a refuge in sorrow and suffering, and not the Divine for its own sake? Do not egoism, weakness, desire reign in such an adoration and does it not belong to the lower nature? Moreover, where there is not knowledge, the devotee does not approach the Divine in his integral all-embracing truth, vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti, but constructs imperfect names and images of the Godhead which are only reflections of his own need, temperament and nature, and he worships them to help or appease his natural longings. He constructs for the Godhead the name and form of Indra or Agni, of Vishnu or Shiva, of a divinised Christ or Buddha, or else some composite of natural qualities, an indulgent God of love and mercy, or a severe God of righteousness and justice, or an awe-inspiring God of wrath and terror and flaming punishments,7·19–20 or some amalgam of any of these, and to that he raises his altars without and in his heart and mind and falls down before it to demand from it worldly good and joy or healing of his wounds or a sectarian sanction for an erring, dogmatic, intellectual, intolerant knowledge. All this up to a certain point is true enough. Very rare is the great soul who knows that Vasudeva the omnipresent Being is all that is, vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti sa mahātmā sudurlabhaḥ. Men are led away by various outer desires which take from them the working of the inner knowledge, kāmais tais tair hṛtajñānāḥ. Ignorant, they resort to other godheads, imperfect forms of the deity which correspond to their desire, prapadyante ’nyadevatāḥ. Limited, they set up this or that rule and cult, taṁ taṁ niyamam āsthāya, which satisfies the need of their nature. And in all this it is a compelling personal determination, it is this narrow need of their own nature that they follow and take for the highest truth, — incapable yet of the infinite and its largeness. The Godhead in these forms gives them their desires if their faith is whole; but these fruits and gratifications are temporary and it is a petty intelligence and unformed reason which makes the pursuit of them its principle of religion and life. And so far as there is a spiritual attainment by this way, it is only to the gods; it is only the Divine in formations of mutable nature and as the giver of her results that they realise. But those who adore the transcendent and integral Godhead embrace all this and transform it all, exalt the gods to their7·22–5 highest, Nature to her summits, and go beyond them to the very Godhead, realise and attain to the Transcendent. Devān deva-yajo yānti mad-bhaktā yānti mām api.

Whether we entertain or we dismiss this cosmological notion,—which depends on the value we are inclined to assign to the knowledge of “the knowers of day and night,”—the important thing is the turn the Gita gives to it. One might easily imagine that this eternally unmanifested Being whose status seems to have nothing to do with the manifestation or the non-manifestation, must be the ever undefined and indefinable Absolute, and the proper way to reach him is to get rid of all that we have become in the manifestation, not to carry up to it our whole inner consciousness in a combined concentration of the mind’s knowledge, the heart’s love, the Yogic will, the vital life-force. Especially, bhakti seems inapplicable to the Absolute who is void of every relation, avyavahārya. “But” insists the Gita,—although this condition is supracosmic and although it8·22 is eternally unmanifest,—still “that supreme Purusha has to be won by a bhakti which turns to him alone in whom all beings exist and by whom all this world has been extended in space.” In other words, the supreme Purusha is not an entirely relationless Absolute aloof from our illusions, but he is the Seer, Creator and Ruler of the worlds, kavim anuśāsitāram, dhātāram, and it is by knowing and by loving Him as the One and the All, vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti, that we ought by a union with him of our whole conscious being in all things, all energies, all actions to seek the supreme consummation, the perfect perfection, the absolute release.

This is what is intended by the phrase, vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti; the Godhead is all that is universe and all that is in the universe and all that is more than the universe. The Gita lays stress first on his supracosmic existence. For otherwise the mind would miss its highest goal and remain turned towards the cosmic only or else attached to some partial experience of the Divine in the cosmos. It lays stress next on his universal existence in which all moves and acts. For that is the justification of the cosmic effort and that is the vast spiritual self-awareness in which the Godhead self-seen as the Time-Spirit does his universal works. Next it insists with a certain austere emphasis on the acceptance of the Godhead as the divine inhabitant in the human body. For he is the Immanent in all existences, and if the indwelling divinity is not recognised, not only will the divine meaning of individual existence be missed, the urge to our supreme spiritual possibilities deprived of its greatest force, but the relations of soul with soul in humanity will be left petty, limited and egoistic. Finally, it insists at great length on the divine manifestation in all things in the universe and affirms the derivation of all that is from the nature, power and light of the one Godhead. For that seeing too is essential to the God-knowledge; on it is founded the integral turn of the whole being and the whole nature Godwards, the acceptance by man of the works of the divine Power in the world and the possibility of remoulding his mentality and will into the type of the God-action, transcendent in initiation, cosmic in motive, transmitted through the individual, the Jiva.

To know Vasudeva as all and live in that knowledge is the7·19 secret. He knows him as the Self, immutable, continent of all as well as immanent in all things. He draws back from the confused and perturbed whirl of the lower nature to dwell in the still and inalienable calm and light of the self-existent spirit. There he realises a constant unity with this self of the Divine that is present in all existences and supports all cosmic movement and action and phenomenon. He looks upward from this eternal unchanging spiritual hypostasis of the mutable universe to the greater Eternal, the supracosmic, the Real. He knows him as the divine Inhabitant in all things that are, the Lord in the heart of man, the secret Ishwara, and removes the veil between his natural being and this inner spiritual Master of his being. He makes his will, thought and works one in knowledge with the Ishwara’s, attuned by an ever-present realisation to the sense of the indwelling Divinity, sees and adores him in all and changes the whole human action to the highest meaning of the divine nature. He knows him as the source and the substance of all that is around him in the universe. All things that are he sees as at once in their appearance the veils and in their secret trend the means and signs of self-manifestation of that one unthinkable Reality and everywhere discovers that oneness, Brahman, Purusha, Atman, Vasudeva, the Being that has become all these creatures. Therefore too his whole inner existence comes into tune and harmony with the Infinite now self-revealed in all that lives or is within and around him and his whole outer existence turns into an exact instrumentation of the cosmic purpose. He looks up through the Self to the Parabrahman who there and here is the one and only existence. He looks up through the divine Inhabitant in all to that supernal Person who in his supreme status is beyond all habitation. He looks up through the Lord manifested in the universe to the Supreme who exceeds and rules all his manifestation. Thus he arises through a limitless unfolding of knowledge and upward vision and aspiration to that to which he has turned with an15·19 all-compelling integrality, sarvabhāvena.

In the unrolling of this comprehensive vision of existence and super-existence the Yoga of the Gita finds its unified significance and unexampled amplitude. This supreme Godhead is the one unchanging imperishable Self in all that is; therefore to the spiritual sense of this unchanging imperishable self man has to…Read the whole passage · 533 wordsClose the passage

In the unrolling of this comprehensive vision of existence and super-existence the Yoga of the Gita finds its unified significance and unexampled amplitude. This supreme Godhead is the one unchanging imperishable Self in all that is; therefore to the spiritual sense of this unchanging imperishable self man has to awake and to unify with it his inner impersonal being. He is the Godhead in man who originates and directs all his workings; therefore man has to awake to the Godhead within himself, to know the divinity he houses, to rise out of all that veils and obscures it and to become united with this inmost Self of his self, this greater consciousness of his consciousness, this hidden Master of all his will and works, this Being within him who is the fount and object of all his various becoming. He is the Godhead whose divine nature, origin of all that we are, is thickly veiled by these lower natural derivations; therefore man has to get back from his lower apparent existence, imperfect and mortal, to his essential divine nature of immortality and perfection. This Godhead is one in all things that are, the self who lives in all and the self in whom all live and move; therefore man has to discover his spiritual unity with all creatures, to see all in the self and the self in all beings, even to see all things and creatures as himself, ātmaupamyena sarvatra, and accordingly think, feel6·32 and act in all his mind, will and living. This Godhead is the origin of all that is here or elsewhere and by his Nature he has become all these innumerable existences, abhūt sarvāṇi bhūtāni; therefore man has to see and adore the One in all things animate and inanimate, to worship the manifestation in sun and star and flower, in man and every living creature, in the forms and forces,7·19 qualities and powers of Nature, vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti. He has to make himself by divine vision and divine sympathy and finally by a strong inner identity one universality with the universe. A passive relationless identity excludes love and action, but this larger and richer oneness fulfils itself by works and by a pure emotion: it becomes the source and continent and substance and motive and divine purpose of all our acts and feelings. Kasmai devāya haviṣā vidhema, to what Godhead shall we give all our life and activities as an offering? This is that Godhead, this the Lord who claims our sacrifice. A passive relationless identity excludes the joy of adoration and devotion; but bhakti is the very soul and heart and summit of this richer, completer, more intimate union. This Godhead is the fulfilment of all relations, father, mother, lover, friend and refuge of the soul of every creature. He is the one supreme and universal Deva, Atman, Purusha, Brahman, Ishwara of the secret wisdom. He has manifested the world in himself in all these ways by his divine Yoga: its multitudinous existences are one in him and he is one in them in many aspects. To awaken to the revelation of him in all these ways together is man’s side of the same divine Yoga.

This transcendent Origin of our existence is not separated from us by any unbridgeable gulf and does not disown the creatures that derive from him or condemn them to be only the figments of an illusion. He is the Being, all are his becomings. He does not create out of a void, out of a Nihil or out of an unsubstantial matrix of dream. Out of himself he creates, in himself he becomes; all are in his being and all is of his being. This truth admits and exceeds the pantheistic seeing of things. Vasudeva is all, vāsudevaḥ sarvam; but Vasudeva is all that appears in the cosmos because he is too all that does not appear in it, all that is never manifested. His being is in no way limited by his becoming; he is in no degree bound by this world of relations. Even in becoming all he is still a Transcendence; even in assuming finite forms he is always the Infinite. Nature, Prakriti, is in her essence his spiritual power, self-power, ātmaśakti; this spiritual self-power develops infinite primal qualities of becoming in the inwardness of things and turns them into an external surface of form and action. For in her essential, secret and divine order the spiritual truth of each and all comes first, a thing of her deep identities; their psychological truth of quality and nature is dependent on the spiritual for all in it that is authentic, it derives from the spirit; least in necessity, last in order the objective truth of form and action derives from inner quality of nature and depends on it for all these variable presentations of existence here in the external order. Or in other words, the objective fact is only an expression of a sum of soul factors and these go back always to a spiritual cause of their appearance.

There is a spirit here at work in the world that is one in innumerable appearances. It is the developer of birth and action, the moving power of life, the inhabiting and associating consciousness in the myriad mutabilities of Nature; it is the constituting reality of all this stir in Time and Space; it is itself Time and Space and Circumstance. It is this multitude of souls in the worlds; it is the gods and men and creatures and things and forces and qualities and quantities and powers and presences. It is Nature, which is power of the Spirit, and objects, which are its phenomena of name and idea and form, and existences, who are portions and births and becomings of this single self-existent spiritual entity, the One, the Eternal. But what we see obviously at work before us is not this Eternal and his conscious Shakti, but a Nature which in the blind stress of her operations is ignorant of the spirit within her action. Her work is a confused, ignorant and limiting play of certain fundamental modes, qualities, principles of force in mechanical operation and the fixity or the flux of their consequences. And whatever soul comes to the surface in her action, is itself in appearance ignorant, suffering, bound to the incomplete and unsatisfying play of this inferior Nature. The inherent Power in her is yet other than what it thus seems to be; for, hidden in its truth, manifest in its appearances, it is the Kshara, the universal Soul, the spirit in the mutability of cosmic phenomenon and becoming, one with the Immutable and the Supreme. We have to arrive at the hidden truth behind its manifest appearances; we have to discover the Spirit behind these veils and to see all as the One, vāsudevaḥ sarvam iti, individual, universal, transcendent. But this is a thing impossible to achieve with any completeness of inner reality, so long as we live concentrated in the inferior Nature. For in this lesser movement Nature is an ignorance, a Maya; she shelters the Divine within its folds and conceals him from herself and her creatures. The7·25 Godhead is hidden by the Maya of his own all-creating Yoga, the Eternal figured in transience, Being absorbed and covered up by its own manifesting phenomena. In the Kshara taken alone as a thing in itself, the mutable universal apart from the undivided Immutable and the Transcendent, there is no completeness of knowledge, no completeness of our being and therefore no liberation.

The more secret thing, guhyataram, developed by the Gita is the profound reconciling truth of the divine Purushottama, at once self and Purusha, supreme Brahman and a sole, intimate, mysterious, ineffable Godhead. That gives to the thought a larger and more deeply understanding foundation for an ultimate knowledge and to the spiritual experience a greater and more fully comprehending and comprehensive Yoga. This deeper mystery is founded on the secret of the supreme spiritual Prakriti and of the Jiva, an eternal portion of the Divine in that eternal and this manifested Nature and of one spirit and essence with him in his immutable self-existence. This profounder knowledge escapes from the elementary distinction of spiritual experience between the Beyond and what is here. For the Transcendent beyond the worlds is at the same time Vasudeva who is all things in all worlds; he is the Lord standing in the heart of every creature and the self of all existences and the origin and supernal meaning of everything that he has put forth in his Prakriti. He is manifested in his Vibhutis and he is the Spirit in Time who compels the action of the world and the Sun of all knowledge and the Lover and Beloved of the soul and the Master of all works and sacrifice. The result of an inmost opening to this deeper, truer, more secret mystery is the Gita’s Yoga of integral knowledge, integral works and integral bhakti. It is the simultaneous experience of spiritual universality and a free and perfected spiritual individuality, of an entire union with God and an entire dwelling in him as at once the frame of the soul’s immortality and the support and power of our liberated action in the world and the body.18·63, 7·19

“A perfect perfection comes only by living in the supreme and the whole Divine. Then the soul of man is united with the Godhead of which it is a portion; then it is one with all beings in the self and spirit, one with them both in God and in Nature; then it is not only free but complete, plunged in the supreme felicity, ready for its ultimate perfection. He still sees the self as an eternal and changeless Spirit silently supporting all things; but he sees also Nature no longer as a mere mechanical force that works out things according to the mechanism of the gunas, but as a power of the Spirit and the force of God in manifestation. He sees that the lower Nature is not the inmost truth of the spirit’s action; he becomes aware of a highest spiritual nature of the Divine in which is contained the source and the yet to be realised greater truth of all that is imperfectly figured now in mind, life and body. Arisen from the lower mental to this supreme spiritual nature, he is delivered there from all ego. He knows himself as a spiritual being, in his essence one with all existences and in his active nature a power of the one Godhead and an eternal soul of the transcendent Infinite. He sees all in God and God in all; he sees all things as Vasudeva. He is delivered from the dualities of joy and grief, from the pleasant and the unpleasant, from desire and disappointment, from sin and virtue. All henceforth is to his conscious sight and sense the will and working of the Divine. He lives and acts as a soul and portion of the universal consciousness and power; he is filled with the transcendent divine delight, a spiritual Ananda. His action becomes the divine action and his status the highest spiritual status.

Mottoes of The Life Divine

Rare is the great of soul to whom all is the Divine Being.
Gita.^*

1. vāsudevaḥ sarvamiti, VII. 19.

All is the Divine Being.
Gita.^*

The Synthesis of Yoga

Here the one thing that is always and constantly present, that which one has grown to and in which one lives always, is infinite being and all that is is seen, felt, known, existed in as only substance of the one being; it is infinite consciousness and all that is conscious and acts and moves is seen, felt, received, known, lived in as self-experience and energy of the one being; it is infinite Ananda and all that feels and is felt is seen and felt and known, received and lived in as forms of the one Ananda. Everything else is only manifestation and circumstance of this one truth of our existence. This is no longer merely the seeing or knowing, but the very condition of the self in all and all in the self, God in all and all in God and all seen as God, and that condition is now not a thing offered to the reflecting spiritualised mind but held and lived by an integral, always present, always active realisation in the supramental nature. There is thought here and will and sensation and everything that belongs to our nature, but it is transfigured and elevated into a higher consciousness. All thought is here seen and experienced as a luminous body of substance, a luminous movement of force, a luminous wave of Ananda of the being; it is not an idea in the void air of mind, but experienced in the reality and as the light of a reality of the infinite being. The will and impulsions are similarly experienced as a real power and substance of the Sat, the Chit, the Ananda of the Ishwara. All the spiritualised sensation and emotion are experienced as pure moulds of the consciousness and Ananda. The physical being itself is experienced as a conscious form and the vital being as an outpouring of the power and possession of the life of the spirit.

Other writings

Therefore this was the next thing He pointed out to me,—He made me realise the central truth of the Hindu religion. He turned the hearts of my jailers to me and they spoke to the Englishman in charge of the jail, “He is suffering in his confinement; let him at least walk outside his cell for half an hour in the morning and in the evening.” So it was arranged, and it was while I was walking that His strength again entered into me. I looked at the jail that secluded me from men and it was no longer by its high walls that I was imprisoned; no, it was Vasudeva who surrounded me. I walked under the branches of the tree in front of my cell, but it was not the tree, I knew it was Vasudeva, it was Srikrishna whom I saw standing there and holding over me His shade. I looked at the bars of my cell, the very grating that did duty for a door and again I saw Vasudeva. It was Narayana who was guarding and standing sentry over me. Or I lay on the coarse blankets that were given me for a couch and felt the arms of Srikrishna around me, the arms of my Friend and Lover. This was the first use of the deeper vision He gave me. I looked at the prisoners in the jail, the thieves, the murderers, the swindlers, and as I looked at them I saw Vasudeva, it was Narayana whom I found in these darkened souls and misused bodies. Amongst these thieves and dacoits there were many who put me to shame by their sympathy, their kindness, the humanity triumphant over such adverse circumstances. One I saw among them especially who seemed to me a saint, a peasant of my nation who did not know how to read and write, an alleged dacoit sentenced to ten years’ rigorous imprisonment, one of those whom we look down upon in our Pharisaical pride of class as chhotalok. Once more He spoke to me and said, “Behold the people among whom I have sent you to do a little of my work. This is the nature of the nation I am raising up and the reason why I raise them.”

The Upanishad first sets forth the universality of the Supreme Being; whatever we see, hear or are in any way sensible of, we must feel the presence of the Lord surrounding it. This tree that I am sitting under, I must not consider as only so many leaves, bark, pith, sap and roots encased in earth and air; I must realise that it is a manifestation in the Supreme who is the only reality. This voice that I am uttering, vibrates in the atmosphere of the Divine Reality; only because it vibrates there, is it capable of sound, articulation and meaning. No action I do or watch others do, but the Lord is there surrounding and upholding it; otherwise it could not be done. Whatever I see, I am seeing God; whatever I hear, I am hearing God; whatever I do, it is the Energy of God which is governing my actions. This is the first thing the Karmayogin has to realise and until he has set his mind on the realisation, Karmayoga is impossible. The Lord is everywhere; the Lord surrounds everything with His presence; the Lord is all. वासुदेवः सर्वमिति । This Karma that I do, I do it in the Lord; this subjective I who act, exist only in the Lord; this objective he, she, it to whom the action is done, exists only in the Lord. It is the omnipresent universality of the Supreme, that has first to be realized. When the Yogin has had spiritual experience of this universality, then only is he fit for Karmayoga; for not till then can he sink the constant feeling of I and thou and he in a single higher and wider Existence; not till then can he escape from apparent self to true Self, and without such escape Karmayoga cannot really begin. To clothe all things with the Supreme, to be conscious of Him in all you say, do, think, feel or are sensible of,—this experience is the beginning of Karmayoga. The transformation of this experience into the habitual condition of the soul, is the consummation of Karmayoga; for it leads straight to the knowledge of Brahman and the ecstasy of union with Him, Karma melting into and becoming one with Jnana and Bhakti. Karma, Bhakti, Jnana,—Action, Love, Knowledge, are the three paths which lead out of phenomenal existence to the eternal reality, and where the three meet & become one, is the end of the great journey, that highest home of Vishnu towards which it is the one object of the Upanishad to turn and guide us. The Isha Upanishad is the Scripture of the Karmayogin; of the three paths it teaches the way of Action, and therefore begins with this first indispensable condition of all Godward action, to see all things, creatures, causes, effects, changes & evolutions as so many transitory phenomena enveloped with the presence of the Supreme Being and existing in Him and by Him only. Not I but He, for He is my real self and what I call I is only so much covering and semblance,—this is Vedanta; the first feeling of this truth is the beginning of Jnana, the beginning of Bhakti, the beginning of Karma. सोऽहं. He is the true & only I.

But standing on Eternity’s luminous brink
I have discovered that the world was He;
I have met Spirit with spirit, Self with self,
But I have loved too the body of my God.

Writings in Bengali

Next I will discuss some of the specific points raised in your letter. I do not want to say much here about what you write as regards your yoga. It will be more convenient to do so when we meet. But there is one thing you write, that you admit no physical connection with men, that you look upon the body as a corpse. And yet your mind wants to live the worldly life. Does this condition still persist? To look upon the body as a corpse is a sign of asceticism, the path of nirvana. The worldly life does not go along with this idea. There must be delight in everything, in the body as much as in the spirit. The body is made of consciousness, the body is a form of God. I see God in everything in the world. Sarvam idaṁ brahma, vāsudevaḥ sarvamiti (“All this here is the Brahman”, “Vasudeva, the Divine, is all”)—this vision brings the universal delight. Concrete waves of this bliss flow even through the body. In this condition, filled with spiritual feeling, one can live the worldly life, get married or do anything else. In every activity one finds a blissful self-expression of the divine. I have for a long time been transforming on the mental level all the objects and experiences of the mind and senses into delight. Now they are all taking the form of supramental delight. In this condition there is the perfect vision and experience of Sachchidananda—the divine Existence, Consciousness and Bliss.

O Earth, my foster-mother, hold me to your breast.
How beautiful, how vast a form is yours today,
Of smiling Nature, the nimble grace.
It dances on water and on land. That smile of the sun,
Hiding and showing in a fickle play,
Amid the gentle tree-branches. The ripple of the wind,
Stirring as if a sea, the forest’s lap
Roars in its fierce delight. With a subtle eye I see
The honey-mad troop of a thoughtless life.
Laughing, laughing, dancing, dancing, here and there they run,
Chasing each other in wood and pleasure-grove,
The many boys of the wind. With their small footsteps’ weight,
See, the pond-water has shivered
In a motherly mood. On the mountain peak,
By the wind’s oppression, the bowed-headed trees
Bear… the crowd…
…of this. This sun, this wind,
This water, this tree-covered earth, this vast sky,
This world-wide sunlight of the golden god,
O God, your majesty is manifest today
In this vastness, as it were. Not only is this
Your great creation, this is You Yourself,
O Krishna, who roam in the world-Brindavan. Existence,
Consciousness, bliss, manifest in this matter
(In vain why do I call it matter, this conscious Brahman)
The endless in this finite guise, the formless in this form,
I clearly feel. Sky and earth,
The sharp fire, the world-light, the unconquerable wind,
In a great cosmic rhythm are singing today
The utterance of Veda and Vedanta in my world-soul.
That roams in the void, circumambulating the sun,
In this vast blue, with a calm face stooping,
Kisses the infinite, a release in its play.

ব্রহ্ম, তুরীয়; কারণ সূক্ষ্ম, স্থূল, সুষুপ্তি, স্বপ্ন, জাগ্রৎ, ব্রহ্মমায়া পুরুষ প্রকৃতি তুমি আমি সেই সবই তিনি, বাসুদেবং সর্ব্বমিতি, ইহাই এই জ্ঞানের মূল মন্ত্র।

তারপর তোমার পত্রের কয়েকটী বিশেষ কথার আলোচনা করি। তোমার যোগের সম্বন্ধে যা লিখেছ, সেই সম্বন্ধে এই পত্রে বিশেষ কিছু লিখতে চাই না, দেখা হলে সুবিধে হবে। তবে এক কথা লিখেছ, মানুষের সঙ্গে দেহ সম্বন্ধ নাই, তোমার চোখে দেহ শব। অথচ মন টানছে সংসার কর্ত্তে। সেই অবস্থা এখনও কি আছে? দেহকে শব দেখা সন্ন্যাসের, নির্ব্বাণপথের লক্ষণ। ওই ভাব নিয়ে সংসার করা যায় না। সর্ব্ববস্তুতে আনন্দ চাই, যেমন আত্মায় তেমন দেহে। দেহ চৈতন্যময়, দেহ ভগবানের রূপ। যাহা আছে জগতে, তাহাতে ভগবানকে দেখি, সর্ব্বমিদং ব্রহ্ম, বাসুদেবঃ সর্ব্বমিতি, এই দর্শন পেলে বিশ্বানন্দ হয়, শরীরেও

ওহে ধরা, ধাত্রী মম, বুকে মোরে ধর কি সুন্দর কি বিশাল মূর্ত্তি আজি তোর হাস্যময়ী প্রকৃতির সুচঞ্চলা আভা নৃত্য করে জলে স্থলে। সূর্য্যের সে হাসি লুক্কাইছে দেখাইছে চপল ক্রীড়ায় স্নিগ্ধ তরুশাখা। মাঝে বায়ুর হিল্লোল আলোড়ি সমুদ্রে যেন অরণ্যের ক্রোড় গরজে তীব্র উল্লাসে। সূক্ষ্ম চক্ষে দেখি চিন্তাশূন্য জীবনের মধুমত্ত দল হেসে হেসে নেচেকুদে হেথা সেথা ধেয়ে তাড়াইছে পরস্পর বনে উপবনে পবন বালক যত। ক্ষুদ্রপদ ভরে শিহরে উঠেছে দেখ পুষ্করিণী জল কম্পমান মাতৃভাবে। পর্ব্বত চূড়ায় পবনের অত্যাচারে নতশির রাজী সহ্য করে……… জনতা……… ………ইহার। এই সূর্য্য বায়ু জল, বৃক্ষাচ্ছন্ন ধরা বিস্তীর্ণ আকাশ, এই বিশ্বময় রৌদ্র সুবর্ণদেবের, ঈশ্বর, সুব্যক্ত আজি তোমার মহিমা এ বিশালতায় যেন। শুধু নহে ইহা তোমার মহতী সৃষ্টি, ইহা যে তুমিই কৃষ্ণ, বিশ্ববৃন্দাবন-বিহারী। অস্তিত্ব, চৈতন্য আনন্দ প্রকাশিত এই জড়ে (বৃথা কেন জড় বলি সচেতন ব্রহ্মে) অনন্ত এ সান্ত ছলে, অরূপ এ রূপে স্পষ্ট অনুভব করি। আকাশ পৃথিবী তীক্ষ্ণ (?) তেজ বিশ্বদীপ্তি, অজেয় পবন

Letters

(3) I mean by the supramental the Truth-Consciousness whether above or in the universe by which the Divine knows not only his own essence and being but his manifestation also. Its fundamental character is knowledge by identity, by that the Self is known, the Divine Sachchidananda is known, but also the truth of the manifestation is known, because this too is That—sarvaṁ khalvidaṁ brahma, Vāsudevaḥ sarvam etc. Mind is an instrument of the Ignorance trying to know—Supermind is the Knower possessing knowledge because one with it and the known, therefore seeing all things in the Light of His own Truth, the light of their true Self which is He. It is a dynamic and not only a static Power, not only a Knowledge, but a Will according to Knowledge—there is a supramental Power or Shakti which can manifest directly its world of Light and Truth in which all is luminously based on the harmony and unity of the One, not disturbed by a veil of Ignorance or any disguise. The Supermind therefore does not transcend all manifestation, but it is above the triplicity of mind, life and matter which is our present experience of this manifestation.

The Arya — text not in the CWSA

Gita VII. 1–28

Evening talks

Krishna’s coming down on the earth made possible the realisation that all is Vasudeva, the Personal Divine. The realisation that all is Brahman, the Impersonal Divine, was already there.

There is much truth in that. Brahman is impersonal. He is the support for the play of Prakriti. To merely rest in the impersonal is, as the Isha Upanishad says, andham tamah, ‘blind darkness’. But it is a strong way of putting it. It is not true to say that ‘All is Brahman’ (sarvam brahma) just because Brahman is impersonal. It is only a way of putting the matter. What the Gita states as sarvam vāsudevah, ‘All is Vasudeva’, is the supreme truth. The highest Truth for us is the Purushottama. Practically we cannot go so far as that, we can only see the Ananda plane through the supramental. Krishna is seen as golden lightnings shooting through a ground of blue. When you are completely fit in your reception of the higher power, you first see a ground of blue colour (the Ananda plane is Beauty) and then you see golden lightning coming from above. This is the symbol of the cloud and lightning as resembling Krishna. But Krishna is seen in different forms by different people: e.g. Vaishnavites. What the ancient tradition speaks of as Blue Krishna has a truth of experience behind it, If the mind is very insistent we can’t easily open to the Truth; for it externalises and does not go inside. In the mind we are safe, but it does not carry us very far. It goes round and round in its progress. The heart or the emotional-psychic takes you inside and goes direct, straight to the truth. The trouble with the heart is impure emotion, mixture of vital elements and the imaginative side of mind. Women enter more easily than men into the psychic. Pure Bhakti comes from the psychic.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, but that is from another standpoint. By opposition they help man in his upward evolution. This is the standpoint from which God is known integrally – _samagram; vāsudevah sarvam_ [“The Divine Being is all.” The Gita, VII, 19.]

Sri Aurobindo: That seems to be the same thing as the Gita’s idea of Vasudeva that is in all and Vasudeva that is the Supreme Absolute: both are the same. Worship of the Impersonal Divine may not be as powerful for change — it tends to be more etherealised and the knowledge that enters into it makes devotion less intense or rapid.

Sri Aurobindo: Yes, the Supreme Absolute. That is the same thing as the Gita’s idea of Vasudeva who is in all and Vasudeva who is the Supreme Absolute. Both are the same.