Apropos of the line “And Savitri too
awoke among these tribes”
a friend of mine tells me that this has bearings on an important
topic which shed some light on the nature of the evolutionary process. He draws our attention to
conversations Sri Aurobindo used to have with his disciples before his
retirement in 1926. These conversations took place during the period 1925-26 and
were recorded by
Pavitra, his French disciple.
When
Pavitra was guided into meditation by Sri Aurobindo, practising the separation
of Purusha from Prakriti, aspiring for his personal liberation, Mukti, he got
the descent of the Divine Power from above, and all his meditation changed; it
got centered on it and he became more receptive, more open to it. In this
process, he asked Sri Aurobindo about the completion of what he started to do:
the separation of Purusha from Prakriti and his final liberation. Sri Aurobindo
answered that it was surely going to happen, but was not important anymore, for
the Shakti was already working in this ādhāra,
the ready support, and she knew better what to do and how to do it.
This
Shakti is of the nature of Ishwara-Shakti, where the separation of Purusha and
Prakriti is no more an issue. In fact the whole Vedic tradition is based on
this Ishwarakoti power, where the realization of the Self was seen in the
context of manifestation and not as separation from it. The idea of liberation,
Mukti, as we know it now, is a later idea. In the view of my friend, a Vedic
scholar, it cannot be sanctioned by the Divine Shakti; therefore we have only
few liberated souls, and mainly Avatars and Vibhutis, who had something else to
accomplish in the world.
The
process of liberation offered by the Vedas and early Upanishads was having a
character of transformation: turning our senses within in search of their
higher universal domains, devatās,
and then making them passive, as it were, or rather attentive to the Presence
of the Spirit beyond, which was gradually to take over the whole substance of
the sense and thus to come to the surface of consciousness, Manifestation.
There was neither separation nor liberation offered, but Immortality.
To what the Vedic exponent said,
and said it with great insight, let me add here the following from Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa, the Sage of Dakshineshwara.
Once a devotee asked Ramakrishna if it is possible for everybody to become one
like
On another occasion the Paramahamsa explained: “There are the Jivakoti and the
Ishwarakoti. The bhakti of the Jivakoti is ritualistic: It consists of
worshipping with a prescribed number of articles, or repeating the name of God
so many times, or performing so much punahshcharaņas. Ritualistic worship leads one to
knowledge of God, when the self merges in the Universal Soul never to return.
The case is different with the Ishwarakotis. For them it is like involution and
evolution. Saying, ‘not this, not this,’ they get to the roof top and find that
the staircase is made of the same material—bricks, lime and brick dust—as the
roof itself. So they walk up and down the staircase and sometimes rest on the
roof.”
Ramakrishna himself gives an example: “Shukadeva was in samadhi—in nirvikalpa
samadhi, jada samadhi. Bhagavan sent Narada to Shukadeva since he was to
narrate the Bhagavata to Parikshit. Narada observed that Shukadeva was seated
like a stone, absolutely dead to the world of the senses. Narada began to play
upon the vīnā, singing and praising
the form of Lord Hari in four verses. The first verse caused the hair of
Shukadeva’s body to stand on end. The second brought tears to his eyes. Then he
saw, realized within himself, the spiritual form of the Lord. After jada samadhi,
he again had the vision of the form of the Lord. Shukadeva belonged to the
class of Ishvarakotis.”
At this point let us take the stock of the situation vis-à-vis the Ishwarkoti
and the Jivakoti souls, belonging to the Divine category and the human category.
Incarnations of God or those born with some of their characteristics belong to
the Ishwarakoti. Ordinary men are called Jivas, or Jivakotis, Manushyakotis.
They can attain God by practising spiritual disciplines, but in the best of
their achievements they remain absorbed in samadhi and don’t return to normal
consciousness. Once having ascended, they have not the strength to descend
again to do the divine work here.
The Ishwarakoti is like a prince.
He has the keys to all seven stories of the palace—he can climb to all the seven
floors and come down at will, the different worlds of the ascending hierarchy. The
Jivakoti is like a junior official. He can only go to a small area in the
seven-storied palace, restricted in his boundaries, working in limitations, a
smallness living in smallness, not free in his actions and feelings and
thoughts.
The Ishwarakoti gets to the roof
top and finds that the staircase is made of the same material as the roof
itself; the dichotomy is dissolved, spirit and matter just two poises of the
universal oneness and identity. He walks up and down the staircase and
sometimes rests on the roof.
Shukadeva, the author of the Bhagavata Purana was, in his samadhi, seated like
a stone, absolutely dead to the outside world. After initiation by Narad he
came out of that condition absorption and had the vision of the form of the
Lord, of his manifestation and his play in the vastness of this creation. He
could at will move up and down the ladder, as it was the ladder of his Lord,
each step of the ladder a mode of his delight. He ascended to the state of the Ishwarkoti.
In the context of the post-human
destinies, if at all we have to extend the rationalist formulation to this
class, then it should amount to the Jivakoti becoming the Ishwarakoti, freedom
in existence in the utter delight of existence, with a free unhindered movement
upward and downward.
In the language of the Gita: “…there
are two aspects of the divine birth; one is a descent, the birth of God in
humanity, the Godhead manifesting itself in the human form and nature, the
eternal Avatar; the other is an ascent, the birth of man into the Godhead, man
rising into the divine nature and consciousness, madbhāvam āgatah; it is the being born anew in a second birth of
the soul. It is that new birth which Avatarhood and the upholding of the Dharma
are intended to serve.” (Essays on the
Gita, pp. 147-48)
The birth of man into the Godhead
is the real significance of the post-human destiny. But even there he has a
choice: to participate in the divine work in the creation or to step out of
this creation and remain in the eternal beatitude of the wonderful Elsewhere.
But if this creation has to have a divine meaning, and sense and purpose, the
Jivakoti must turn into the Ishwarkoti, turn in the dynamism of the manifesting
Spirit. That is the post-human destiny for the Jivakoti.
For this to happen there is needed the
effort and there is needed the higher reckoning to approve or endorse the whole
operation, the sequence, the process. In the spiritual sense there are, as the
Upanishad says understandingly, the decisive elements of tapahprabhāva and devaprasāda,
there is the human endeavour and there is the heavenly or benedictive grace.
Both are requireed for the truer realisation, for the luminous siddhi, for receiving
the fruit of the spiritual endeavour. In the formulation of Sri Aurobindo there
has to be the call from the individual and there has to be the sanction from
the supreme from above, and between the call and the sanction there has to be
the presence and power of the executive divine Shakti who alone can work out
the truth of the sanction coming from the Supreme.
Our arts and sciences and
philosophies and thousand sports, our daily occupations and transactions of
wealth and technologies and religions—they are there to promote the
possibilities of the greater spirit’s will to be here multiply and richly,
widely, in ample measures. Add to that the call of the aspiring soul of man for
the higher powers to descend in it. The answer to it, the response to the call,
cannot be demanded as a matter of right; but when it comes it becomes the
sanction of the higher wisdom, that things can shape in it. And yet this is not
sufficient if the gleaming dynamism has to be the God’s way of doing things
here. There is needed the power and presence of the executive force as the
intermediary between the two. There has to be the call from below and there has
to be the sanction from above; the presence and power that mediates between the
call and the sanction is the presence and power of the Divine Shakti. Indeed,
in reality, in the case of a realized soul it is she who does everything. When
this is seen, understood that it is she who is doing everything, when this is well
recognised, this truth of the soul, then it is she who will decide what is best
for us.
Earth must transform herself and
equal Heaven
Or Heaven descend into earth's
mortal state.
The alternatives point in two different
directions, with their respective richnesses. The possibility of earth
transforming and equalling herself with heaven has evolutionary richness, of an
unending progress, from lesser knowledge to greater knowledge, from delight to
delight. The second alternative could be the progress by the higher stepping
into evolution and carrying it forward. If these involutionary beings come here
as an aspect of involution only, then the progress cannot be more than the
state to which they belong, from where they come. However, if there has to be
the continuous growth they must be prepared to come to earth by taking the
human birth. They must be Shukadevas, with an opening for the Shakti to work in
them. It is only the psychic entity as an agent of the evolution that can
participate in the endless progress.
That is the glory and the beauty, the marvel of the
embodied Guest within.
Let us read again our Vedic
scholar’s insightful comment. “This Shakti is of the nature of Ishwara-Shakti,
where the separation on Purusha and Prakriti is no more an issue. In fact the
whole Vedic tradition is based on this Ishwarakoti power, where the realization
of the Self was seen in the context of manifestation and not as separation from
it. The idea of liberation, Mukti, as we know it now, is a later idea. In my
view it can not be sanctioned by the Divine Shakti, therefore we have only few
liberated souls, and mainly Avatars and Vibhutis, who had something else to
accomplish in the world.”
If the
Ishwara-Shakti is the Vedic aspect of spirituality, then one could almost say
that the Vedic practices also had a powerful presence of the Tantrik principle
in it. Is it true? We don’t see that Shakti aspect in the Upanishads and not
explicitly so in the Gita also, which is what makes it an Upanishad, the
Upanishad of the Bhagavatgita.
When and
how started the separation of the Ishwara and the Shakti leading to two
independent approaches? Was that inevitable in the Vedic system if it saw
Ishwara-Shakti as a single biune reality? We will be thankful to have our Vedic
scholar’s views about this important theme.
In any case, we can simply say that
the incarnations of God are called Ishwarakotis.