A Treatise on Hindu Philosophy

Insights from the Holy Chandee ‘The Triune Hymn’

Satyendra Nath Ghosh

Kolkata

(unedited version, please do not cite)

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 Contents

PREFACE...................................................................................................................................... 3
THE PROLOGUE .......................................................................................................................... 4
PRATHAMA CHARITA -------THE FIRST HYMN .................................................................... 16
THE EPILOGUE ........................................................................................................................ 131
APPENDIX A........................................................................................................................... 167
APPENDIX B........................................................................................................................... 177

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 PREFACE

The Holy Chandee - the Scriptural Hymn which symbolically embodies the

highest transcendentalism of the Vedas and the Upanishads I have called it the

Triune Hymn because it spiritually integrates three Hymns into one to reveal the

Indian concept of the Process of Becoming.

The book is divided into four parts - { I } The prologue which seeks to convey

briefly an idea of its place in the growth and development of the Hindu religion

and philosophy, { II } the text of the first Hymn, freely translated into English

with appropriate comments, { III } the Epilogue which attempts to show how the

first Hymn, the briefest, subtlest and the occultest of the three, fore-shadows

and throws forward the ideas developed in the second and the third and brings

out and establishes the links which bind together the three, and { IV } the two

appendices, the first of which traces its origin to a group of verses in the Rig

Vedas while the second contains certain explanatory notes.

One of the motivations of the book is that it may convey to Western readers a

true idea of the Hindu religion and the philosophy on which it is based. The

Hymn embodies itself in a radiant symbolism and is vibrant with a rhythm and

music of unequalled power and charm.

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 THE PROLOGUE

The Vedic Age and the Post-Vedic era constitute together the earliest and

perhaps the longest period of sustained spiritual thinking and aspiration and of

heightened intellectual striving towards an understanding of the problems of life

and death, in human history. Great intuitive visions illumined the giddiest heights

of sublime thoughts and ideas and generated mighty currents from which great

philosophical systems evolved themselves From Monistic. Transcendentalism

at one end to atheism and near-atheism at the other, great ideas and emotions,

- radiant, profound and subtle, - surged up, for the first time, from the mind of

man, to mark the first great awakening of the human spirit. It was a long

glorious dawn and we owe it our greatest – our imperishable – heritage.

It is however impossible to gather these ideas into a dependable chronological

account. We enter a region of fruitless controversy whenever we seek to come

to any conclusion, even approximately regarding the periods and eras during

which these ideas, theories and philosophies were formulated. We Indians

place them some thousand years of variously estimated at between six and

eight thousand before the Christian era while Western Scholars believe that the

gap between the Christian era and the Vedic civilization can not be longer than

fifteen hundred years. The truth may lie somewhere between the two.

To us our traditional beliefs are more important than these scholarly

assumptions. We believe, the Vedas and the Upanishads are the earliest and

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the greatest scriptures of the human race. We believe that the ideas and

assumptions which were later systematized by the six well-known schools of

Indian Philosophy were in vigorous circulation during the late Vedic era and that

some of the Puranas which refer to, enunciate and interpret many of the highest

Vedic concepts besides offering quasi-historical narratives of India’s

contemporary social, political and intellectual life were certainly in existence

during the period.

The Shakta believes that the Markandaya Purana which contains the Holy

Chandee was a dominant force in India’s spiritual and religious thought during

the post-Vedic era and might have been influencing and stimulating a militant

school of thought contemporaneously with some of the Upanisads. We shall not

elaborate any further because we have no chronological data but we feel certain

that those who may contradict it have not any acceptable chronological data

either. We may however add that the “ Shakta “ has, from time immemorial

linked the ‘Chandee’ with the Vedas. The First Hymn has been traditionally

equated with the Rig-Veda, the Second with Yayurveda and the Third with the

Sam Veda while the concept of the Mother as the Ultimate Reality – both

transcendent and immanent -, enshrined in the Devee Sukta { vide Appendix A }

of the Rig Veda, provides the spiritual basis of the three Hymns and runs

through them to unify the Triune Hymn with the monistic mysticism of the

Upanishads. The Upanishads offer us scattered glances at the Ultimate Reality

– scattered Prints, suggestions and glimpses. In the Triune Hymn, the Prints,

the glances and the glimpses gather themselves together into a steady vision of

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the Ultimate Truth and the Ultimate Reality, reflecting itself in the mirror as

many-splendid Symbolism.

The symbolism of the Triune Hymn is profoundly significant for two reasons.

Human words are fundamentally pedestrians; their connotation is incurably

literal. One of the reasons why common men and women love and admire their

poets and philosophers is that they alone can make our familiar words race and

fly and tune them up to match our finest and loveliest feelings and emotions and

our highest and most exalted aspirations. And poets and philosophers have

always used symbols, in the widest and subtlest sense, to rescue words from

the bondage of the literal. The Seer who envisioned the ‘Chandee’ introduced

therefore a bright, multi-hued, multi-tonal, kaleidoscopic symbolism to unmask

the truth, as he saw it of the Ultimate Reality manifesting itself in creation and

the cosmos. The Upanishads offer us glimpses of the Ultimate Truth; the

‘Chandee’ offers us a sustained interpretation. Words, however inspired, could

not have done it alone without the aid of symbols and images which can

dramatise super-mundane ideas and lend them a potency and vitality far

beyond the reach of the most expressive words. The other reason is bound up

with the mood and character of the symbolism. It reveals itself as a militant,

cosmic game in which the spirit of battle is matched by the spirit of delight. It

stages a battle between divine and undivine forces, both released by the Mother

and both permeated by Her all-pervasive presence .The Creative Forces and

the Cosmos, charged with an evolutionary urge, complete the pre-designed

process of evolution through this battle in which the undivine must die, to be re-

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born into divinity. The Sakta believes that nothing else can reveal the long

process of fulfillment which man must complete through many births, deaths

and re-births so convincingly as this militant symbolism does. It carries its

message straight into the inmost being and impels the man who grasps its

meaning to identify himself with the truth which stimulates and sustains the

battle.

The Sage decided perhaps to be militant for other reasons. There were other

ideas in circulation and they had to be militantly repelled.. The Sankhya System

of philosophy, frankly atheistic, bases its doctrine on the twin assumption of

Purusha and Prakriti – with Prakriti, the phenomenal nature, blindly dynamic

and endlessly throwing up on the one hand non-living and living matter with all

life-forms from the simplest organism to man – blindly creating the senses of

perception, the organs of action, the heat and the mind – and, on the other hand,

with Purushas – countless uncreated eternal souls - aimlessly wandering

about in the Universe and getting trapped in the meshes of life created by

Prakriti. The uncreated, eternal souls stay supremely detached and indifferent,

even when trapped, but in some mysterious way, they create empirical selves

for men – and perhaps for many lower animals – by getting themselves

reflected in the mirrors of their minds and intellects. These reflected ‘empirical’

egos then come in for agonies and sufferings of life, punctuated by fugitive

moments of imagined rather than real happiness, and therefore seek ways of

escape from the meshes of Prakriti through births, deaths and re-births for a

long, long spell until they achieve complete self-extinction to merge in the Great

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Nihil and to liberate the detached, uncreated and eternal souls transmigrating

from bodies to bodies with their reflected eyes through births and deaths. This is

a fictitious, fantastic concept but it held some great minds in captivity in the past

and sneaked its way into the philosophical thought in later times. Although the

Yoga system brought in the idea of God, more as a matter of logical

convenience than as a matter of genuine spiritual faith, it adopted the fiction of

Purusha and Prakriti in the same way as the Sankhya did. Its basic doctrine had

therefore no higher or stronger chain to philosophical and spiritual validity than

that of the Sankhya but it evolved the technique of Yoga – the art and technique

of concentration – which has been uninterruptedly valued both in ancient and

modern times as an instrument of both physical and spiritual discipline. It does

not however specify the goals and objectives to which the art and technique of

concentration is to be dedicated and in a sense, it seems to ask one only to

concentrate on ‘concentration’. That is its one great weakness. But it stresses

the importance of abstinence, physical and moral education, severe mental

discipline and of meditation. Wedded to deep spiritual beliefs and dis-interested

pursuit of knowledge, it is known to have produced miraculous results. But the

powers gained through Yoga are also known to have been prostituted to serve

lower ends and with many people in India and elsewhere, Yoga is no more than

a sophisticated form of physical exercise to-day.

It can not be stated as a historical proposition in the absence of chronological

data but it can be logically assumed that the ‘Chandee’ emerged at a time when

the Monistic idealism of the Upanishads lay hidden or partly hidden under debris

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of spurious philosophies and philosophical distortions. The Triune Hymn

removes this debris with a militant sweep and restores Monistic

transcendentalism through the Mother concept of the Ultimate Reality. King

Suratha who had been disciplining his whole being through a long series of

births re-births has at last worked his way up into an awareness of the profound

mystery surrounding the Creation and Cosmos and man’s life and death

although he does not yet know how to understand and interpret the mystery

precisely to himself. He goes round to the hermitage of a great sage to question

him about the mystery and is hospitably received. But he is restless within and

he strolls around the hermitage, he goes deeper into himself and discovers his

own philosopher self – the Vaishya – who stands aloof from the Self

immediately in contact with life and tries to systematize the thoughts and

impressions flowing in. He had discovered earlier that the ideas, philosophies

and scriptural injunction, on the basis of which he ruled the kingdom of his own

self and governed the psychic empire of his own relations with the external

world of men and nature have proved totally inadequate. The whole foundation

and structure he had built up with these ideas dis-integrated and collapsed. And

he learns from the Vaishya – his philosopher self – that the art and technique of

concentration, so carefully pursued in accordance with the tenets of the Yoga

philosophy, has proved futile because there was no exalted ideal,- no goal and

destination – in view. They however felt strangely drawn towards these ideas

and practices because of their long association with them and from a sense of

personal involvement and they decided to go together to the Great Sage and to

seek his guidance as to how the mysteries which so deeply perplexed them

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should be solved.

What were those ideas and assumptions which King Surath wanted so

desperately to repudiate? It is very difficult to answer this question. There are no

chronological data which could have provided a basis. But the name ‘Samadhi’

with which the Vaishya – the King’s philosopher self – has been designated very

clearly points to the Yoga philosophy and the Yoga must attract the Sankhya as

a matter of Course. The ideas and assumptions which sustain both these

systems are practically identical and it seems safe to assume that the Triune

Hymn is a repudiation of the Sankhya doctrine and a vindication of the Monistic

Idealism of the Upanishads. The final battle between ‘Shumbla’ – the Supreme,

Sovereign ‘undivine’ – and the Mother { the Ultimate Reality } towards the end of

the Third Hymn seems to confirm this view. There in that battle, Shumbla seeks

to destroy the idea of one Ultimate Reality; he jumps into the void with the

Mother to destroy Her; he fights with Her in the Void which is the eternal

boundless space in which the Sankhya’s eternal, uncreated Souls are supposed

to wander about and which is also the Great Nihil in which the reflected egos

supposedly created by them are supposed to disappear through self-extinction.

But the Sage who envisioned the Mother as the Transcendent and Immanent

Reality had little patience with this doctrine and Shumbla was thrown down and

destroyed the next moment. It seems pretty certain that there was a time in

Ancient India when the Sankhya doctrine of eternal, uncreated soul led to

unholy, undivine colossalisation of the individual-self and that the Triune Hymn

emerged contemporaneously to disown it and to re-affirm the monistic idealism

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of the Vedanta.

The Great Sage to whom Suratha And Vaishya come to refer their doubts and

problems goes straight to the point. He briefly discusses the strange and

mysterious behaviour of the ego – the self sense – which inevitably and

invariably accompanies life and then introduces the Mother Concept of the

Ultimate Reality to unmask the mysteries of Creation and the evolution of the

Cosmos. He accepts the Vaisheshika theory of the Cosmos having been a sea

of atomic particles at the beginning of each cycle of Creation and represents the

Mother as both the Transcendent and Immanent Reality, standing away from

the Cosmos in Her Transcendent status as the inscrutable, unknowable and

mysterious Source and pervading the whole Cosmos and the Creative,

evolutionary process as the Immanent Reality. She is the supreme creatrix and

sovereign of the Universe and she has been perpetually creating and sustaining

the laws and rhythms which govern all changes in the Cosmos – both

phenomenal and noumenal.. Life has emerged out of these rhythms and self-

sense has emerged with life to give every separate unit of life its individuality

and sense of direction.. Although pervaded by the Mother like the physical

atomic particles, self-sense is originally a tiny psychic spark which remains

unidentifiable but the cosmic rhythm draws these sparks together and blends

them into separate and different forms of life equipped with minds of widely

differing and diverse potencies. It is however difficult to say at what particular

point, the self-sense assumes character of an immortal soul. The Sakta only

assumes as a Hindu that when a living being is equipped with fine senses of

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perception, five organs of action, five life forms [ forces ] and mind and intellects

and is thus able to draw down into himself the consciousness he needs from the

all pervasive indeterminate cosmic consciousness, and to finite-ise it and

transform it into his own finite consciousness force, he becomes an immortal

soul – relatively speaking. Such a self or soul is not – and can never be – the

supposedly uncreated and eternal soul of Samkhya. But in final analysis and in

the light of the final goal every soul is destined to reach, it must be held to be

divine. There is nothing undivine in the Cosmos in the Ultimate Sense because

every bit of it – living and non-living – has come out of the Mother’s immanent

reality. Life is therefore essentially divine but it must begin undivine on account

of the unawareness of its inherent divinity. When the self-sense of a living being

develops however into a fully equipped soul, it has already moved up and is

fairly on its way to the realization on its divine role. Such a soul becomes

immediately the throne of the Mother and the all – pervasive Cosmic

Consciousness casts a fragment of itself into its mould to become the Divine

Self of the living being concerned. In the light of whatever little experience we

have been able to gather during man’s march towards Light, such a living being

has to be a man.

The Divine Self has also been described elsewhere as the Witness Self. But the

Sakta does not feel happy with this expression. The Monistic thinkers who use it

generally propound that the Witness Self only watches but remains entirely

separate and detached from the Ego with which it is closeted and with which it

travels as a dis-interested spectator through berths and re-births. The Triune

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Hymn negates the assumption. The divine Self is the Mother Herself pervading

the Ego. She simultaneously pervades the Cosmos and minute atoms with

which it is constituted. She is simultaneously at the opposite extremes. Her

Impulse of delight created the gravitational pull as it gushed down to manifest

itself in the Cosmos. But it generated an upward pull at the same time to

restrain and reverse the downward movement. These conflicting pulls oppose

each other from the very beginning and their actions assumes the character of a

Cosmic game, played in accordance with pre-designed laws and harmonies.

The Divine Self acts seemingly as an umpire during the initial stage – perhaps

through many births and re-births – until the conflicting pulls divide the human

ego into two – the higher and the lower. .The battle goes in favour of the lower

for a long spell and the higher suffers many defeats. But it keeps on surviving

to fight another day. And then desperately invokes the Mother in a crisis and the

Mother responds through the Divine Self. She joins the battle; She uses the

higher ego as Her mount and rides it hence into the upper hemisphere of the

being, drawing the lower ego upward with all its delights and hungers for

refinement and purification.

This is the basic theme of the Triune Hymn. The human soul is not immortal in

the absolute sense. It has emerged out of life and has therefore a beginning

and it will have an end when it merges in the Mother’s Consciousness Force at

the end of the process of refinement and purification which may take millions of

years It is immortal in the sense that it survives many physical deaths but is not

eternal like the eternal uncreated Soul of Samkhya. There is a belief that it may

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retain its separateness as a pulse in the Eternal. Consciousness even after the

merger and may be re-born somewhere in the Cosmos for some special

reasons and to serve some divine purpose but we are not competent to enter

into any speculations on this subject. It seems however necessary, to

emphasise that the journey of an ego, - through many births and re-births, -

from the point where it stabilizes and individualises itself as a finite

Consciousness Force to the final merger in the Eternal Consciousness is spear-

headed by Delight. Delight, seeking fulfillment of our common hungers, may be

robust and reckless at the beginning but as it spear-heads the adventure of an

ego through births and re-births, it continuously refines itself and causes the

hungers which fuel it to look higher and higher upward and to chasten

themselves until they refine themselves into great hungers for light and

knowledge – truth and beauty. Countless sorrows and grievous disappointments

must come between the beginning and the end – both to depress and stimulate

– but no human ego can irrevocably stray away from the pre-determined path.

The Triune Hymn peremptorily reminds us that the Mother is always there to

guide us along this path, however far we may stray – Her Impulse of Delight

created the Universe because the One intended to diversify Itself into many. It

played the Cosmic game with non-living many for ages and ages until life

emerged here and there – as on the Earth of ours – to produce living many,

equipped with finite consciousness forces which enable them to understand,

however imperfectly, the mysteries of the Cosmic Consciousness Force and to

commune with it – to feel that the messages we address to it through prayers

are received and reciprocated and that we can receive and understand the

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messages which come down from it. The Mother – the One Ultimate Reality – is

not a mere witness or dis-interested spectator. Her Impulse of Delight set the

whole Cosmos and the cosmic game in motion and She remains an active

participant until the End.

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 PRATHAMA CHARITA -------THE FIRST HYMN

Verse 1 “ “ Listen to me, Ye men “ says the sage “ as I narrate to you the

events which led to the birth of one who came to be blessed with the awareness

and knowledge of having emanated from and being one with the resplendent

Ultimate Reality { !—of which the solar force and light is the visible symbol on

earth } and then descended, trailing that knowledge, into his next incarnation to

become a super-man, achieving the eight- Super-psychic forms of fulfillment

{ II—and breaking the barriers of finite consciousness to expand and become

one with the cosmic consciousness force }

I— The words within brackets seek to offer an indication as to

how the words Saborni and Surjo tanoy may be interpreted.

II— The words within brackets suggest an interpretation of the

word M.

Verse 2 “ The events to be narrated will show hiw this one acquired the

Solar force of transcendental knowledge and became the son of Eternal Light to

be born thereafter as a super-man—a possessor of the Super-mind—{ I—

whose spirit governed the life of man for a long, long cycle of time, extending

over many billions of years } through the blessings and mercy of the Mother.”

I— These words R {within brackets} suggest an interpretation of the

words MANNANTARADHIP

Verse 3 “This man who had passed through many strange and diverse life

forms { I—Transmigrating from one to the other under the compulsion of an

immutable rhythm through countless births and deaths } and whose inner being

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was now illumined { II—illumined, during the life-term which is the subject-

matter of the Triune Hymn, by the vision—mercifully vouchsafed to him—of the

Mother- the Ultimate Reality—creating, pervading and manifesting Herself in the

cosmos } came to be known throughout the whole world as King Surath { III—

the good charioteer }.

I— The words within the brackets suggest an explanation of

the words CHAITRABONGSHA SAMUDBHABAH.

II— The words within the brackets suggest an interpretation of

the words SWAROCHICHISHEHANTAR.

III— The suggestion is that through a long, long process of

transmigration from simpler to more and more complex

life-forms, his ego had now gained a human body and

mind which placed him on a very high psychic level where

his inner mind, emerging out of the matrix of the vital mind,

could accommodate the new vision and the radiant truth

flashing out of it.. The tiny little psychic sparks which

animated him in his lower forms of life had gathered

themselves together in the vital mind of man vitally

necessary for self—preservation and growth in the lower

region and from the vital mind, had now emerged the inner

mind which enabled him to see truths opening up new and

radiant horizons at a higher level. The body had become

an well-ordered chariot; the inner mind could generate

power to sustain movements into unexplored regions and

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 the ego, disciplined, bold and competent—equipped with

the power to see—could now function as the good

charioteer }.

II— .

Verse 4-- King Surath fostered his subjects like his own children

but they became his enemies in the end and launched an assault on the

citadel of his inner being”.

The reference is to the kingdom of his own mind and to the psychic empire

he built for himself with his knowledge of the world outside. The subjects are

the thoughts and ideas ploughed up by his Ego from the soil of life, using

the mind as the plough and with the ideas, concepts, rules and norms which

he adopted and evolved himself; he used his sense of harmony and

coherence to build them up into a well-co –ordinated system. But when the

new vision awakened unfamiliar, dormant longings, roused and stimulated

the inner mind and encouraged it to go all out for unfamiliar and audacious

ideas and truths, there was a confrontation between the new and the old

and the old desperately sought to defeat the inner-mind and hold it down.

The assault launched on the heart and the inner mind was intended to

destroy their aspiration—their capacity for upward striving.

Verse 5-- “Then followed a deadly conflict between the king

and the rebels, but the rebels, though inferior to him, succeeded in

overpowering the king “. The king gained his knowledge of the outside world

through inductive cum deductive processes of thought and reasoning and

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 maintained both his control over it and liaison with it through that knowledge

The vision which illumined his inner being and awakend new longings and

aspirations within it could not be interpreted in terms of inductive and

deductive processes of reasoning and were therefore repelled and rejected

by the rebels. The King had to accept defeat because the vision and the

awakening were intensely subjective and did not offer him anything which

could be marshaled objectively in defence against distrust and disbelieve.

Verse 6--- “Defeated and chased by the powerful enemies,

the king, fortunate even in defeat, retreated upward into his heart—his inner

being and tried to establish himself as a sovereign there”.

The king is fortunate because it was no downward

flight, even in defeat. He retreated upward into his inner being where he

tried to establish himself as a sovereign with the psychic force of the new

vision and of the truths which he glimpsed in its light. The forces which

governed his life at this higher level were certainly subtler and more potent.

They were the spiritual ideas and principles which he adopted for his inner

being and the quasi- spiritual edicts of the institutionalized religion. He had

an idea- a hope- that he will be able to discover and establish a relationship,

based on reciprocity and harmony, between the two. These ideas and edicts

had been his counselors and friends heretofore and he hoped, they would

absorb the new truths and strengthen and purify themselves with them.

Verse 7.--- “ But within the domain of his inner mind and heart, his old

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counselors had since transformed themselves into his enemies—evil, wicked

and powerful- - and violently dispossessed him of his treasury. “

The spiritual truths and principles- -which he accepted as

principles and truths of the supposedly highest spiritual value – and the quasi –

spiritual edicts of the SHASTRAS which he adopted for self – guidance now

fiercely clashed with his new vision, aspirations and longings and started

robbing him of his delight. These truths, principles and edicts had heretofore

been his counselors but face to face with aspirations and longing which sought

to supersede them, they became uncompromisingly hostile.

His treasury was the fund of delight which he had built up

within the recesses of his being through many births and deaths. In the crisis

which followed the deadly conflict between the old edicts and principles and the

new aspirations, the old drained out and robbed a good deal of the delight

which had dug itself into his being over a long, long period of transmigration of

his Ego { his soul } through births and deaths.

The whole creation has emerged out of the Mother’s Impulse of Delight and a

thirst and search for delight generates the primordial psychic compulsion which

always determine the life course of every living being. The impulse of delight

seeps into our being through all our impressions and actions and keeps on

refining and purifying itself – keeps on adding to itself and strengthening itself –

as the human Ego migrates from one life – form to another through deaths and

births. It responds to the Mother’s upward pull and impels the Ego upward,

drawing out the inner mind and the super- mind gfrom the depths of the vital

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mind as it moves on to higher levels of being and brings new ideas,, aspirations

and truths into the vastly expanded field of vision. To be robbed of this delight –

or even of a part of it – in a spiritual crisis is indeed a grievous misfortune – a

spiritual disaster. Sorrow enters into human consciousness only when the

perennial thirst and search for delight is frustrated

Verse –8.---“ Then feeling dis- possessed and dis-inherited,

the King mounted his steed as though he was going out to hunt alone and rode

on into the densest forest. “.

It was a glorious adventure for a new discovery. The budding, nascent, Gnostic

and visionary, hitherto lying dormant within his own Ego – his own soul – had

awakened himself and had a resplendent – but confused – vision of creation

and genesis through the eye of the inner mind which had just surfaced. It was

not a full awakening; the Gnostic was half – awakened, unsure, elusive and

playing almost a game of hide – and – seek. The King mounted therefore the

steed of his inner mind and rode into an unexplored regions of his own being –

regions ‘ wooded ‘ with glorious, radiant ideas and thoughts which had not yet

hardened themselves into graspable realities. He wanted to explore these

regions to hunt out of his own Gnostic in a half – serious mood { MRIGAYA

BYAGENO }, to identify him firmly and to obtain from him, if possible, the

answers to his own obstinate questionings.

The impact of his vision shook the deepest roots of his being,

he envisioned a cosmic Impulse of delight, streaming down from the Mother,

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creating the Universe and diversifying itself into countless multitudes of

separate units – both living and non – living. He saw these units, both separate

and inter – linked; he saw them pervaded and enlivened by one force; he saw

the one in many and many in one. He could not yet define and analyse what the

vision precisely signified but it finally dislodged him from the ideas, beliefs and

faiths to which he had so long anchord his whole being. For him, life was never

going to be like what it was before. He tried to be like what it was before. He

tried to be half – serious because he was desperately trying to hide, even from

himself, the stupendous nature of the change. He played with the idea of getting

back into the old set-up but he had reached the point of ‘ no return ‘.

The tension was indeed intolerable. He pretended to be half – serious about it in

self-defence – to evade the emotional thrust which threatened to overwhelm

him. He went deep into the unexplored regions oh his own psychic and he rode

out simultaneously into the external, phenomenal world to relieve the tension.

He had perhaps known or heard of the sage ‘vedas’ and under the pressure of a

sub – conscious urge; he trotted round to his hermitage. It was no ordinary hunt;

there was no pack or party. He was severely alone; he discarded or was trying

to discard his own belief, ideas and faiths. What sustained him was his yearning

for the vision he had already glimpsed.

And the sage rewarded him with the knowledge. Fate ordained that the nascent

Gnostic within his own being was to be awakened and instructed by the sage he

had earned his fulfillment as the fruit of his actions in his previous births. The

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process of fulfillment had to be a long one, beginning in the current life and

extending into the next and into the life or lives after the next. But it an onward

move all the time and there was to be no faltering –no turning back.

The eight opening verses sum up briefly and simply – in an unostentations

narrative manner – a tremendous spiritual experience which may be variously

described as ‘ revealation ‘, ‘vision ‘ and a’ new birth into a higher life.’. The vital

mind which had hitherto been his sole psychic instrument for such vital

purposes as eating, drinking, mating and endless seeking of ease and comfort

immediately proved itself inadequate and was condemned to play thence

forward a minor role trailing the process of becoming through many births and

deaths, the’ Good Charioteer” had worked his way up to a point where his inner

mind –to develop later into the super – mind – had emerged to new realities, to

survey old realities in a new light and to discover the presence of a sovereign

rhythm binding together and integrating realities at higher and lower levels

Teleologically speaking, he had a vision of the first cause – the cause that

evolved Itself into the creation and cosmos – and the omnipotent, sovereign

rhythm which he felt and discovered everywhere as the cosmic pervasive force,

convinced him that it was the Mother’s Impulse of Delight..

__Verse – 9. “ He came round thereafter to the hermitage of the sage

Vedas, a leader of the twice born order,, and saw hordes of predatory animals,

chastened and controlled, quietly roaming about, other sages { in whom all

inner conflicts and discords had resolved themselves into a pregnant,

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harmonious silence } as also disciples { who accepted the disciplines of a

hermit’s life } gracing the hermitage with their presence.”

A man becomes a twice – born – enlightened – one when a revelation, a vision,

accompanying super – heightened consciousness, causes him to be re-born

into a higher life. Surath { the good charioteer } had just had that experience but

Vedas had it long ago and absorbed and accommodated its impact and force

into his own psyche. He was now on the summit of the twice- born enlightened

order and his knowledge and enlightenment had had a profound influence on

the whole hermitage. The other sages who lived there and accepted_his

authority had achieved a deep spiritual silence which had muted their inner

conflicts and discords into a perfect harmony. And there were disciples who had

cheerfully submitted to the austere disciplines of a hermit’s life. This harmony

could govern their lives because the predatory hordes within their own being –

the human senses perpetually activated and urged by their appetites for

pleasure and experience – had been leashed, trained and chastened through

discipline and meditation

Verse 10---“ He was kindly received by the sage and he

stayed there in that hermitage for sometime, strolling about from one point to

another “

He was kindly received by the sage and he felt immensely rewarded. As he

strolled around from one part of the hermitage to the other, he breathed in the

24
quiet and harmony which prevailed and which supported and sustained the

state of heightened consciousness animating his inner life at that moment. But

he was still vulnerable to the pull of the lower hemisphere of the being from

which he had just lifted himself.

Verse 11 --- “ Then .his mind was stirred by an impulse of

self- love and his thoughts turned to his home { in the lower hemisphere of the

being } which he had just left and which his predecessor had maintained and

preserved before him. And he wondered whether his old home was now being

maintained in conformity with righteous principles by his old servants, so

devoted to the pursuit of the ephemeral. “

Now begins an intense psychic crisis in which Surath is actually aware of his

Ego having divided itself, first into two and , as we shall soon see, finally into

three personalities. A sudden discovery reveals his own self divided into two –

the higher and the lower – the higher retaining its sense of sovereignty over the

whole ‘being’ but dispossessed of the strength to exercise it. It has indeed

moved upward into a purer rarer atmosphere, assisted by a new vision and

riding the winged steed of the inner mind but it is still a weak psychic entity

incapable of governing the ‘being’ which is its home { PURI }. It has however

been blended, despite its lack of potency, with the vision of the ‘process of

becoming’ which reveals the Ego and ‘the being’ indissolubly entwined with it

into one indivisible force, surviving deaths and being piloted into new births in a

ceaseless quest for fulfillment. The soul { this one indivisible force } must pass,

25
through deaths and births, into new lives and incarnate itself into new bodies

until it reaches the terminal point where it is destined to play its final role. And

until that final point is reached, each finite self { each Ego or soul } must

reproduce itself under inescapable compulsions generated by its own actions in

proceeding births, and rule and maintain the bodies and minds which constitute

the ‘being’ and in which it must inhere during the pre-destined life – terms.

Gripped by this vision and the truth it conveys, the higher Ego discovers itself in

the ‘Selves’ which ruled the ‘being’ in previous births were really the fore—

runners from whom it had descended to rule the ‘being’ { the body and the

mind } during the current life-term. But through a King, it was not yet in a

position to exercise its sovereignty and to this sense of frustration was added a

strong sense of responsibility as the vision changed it with the task of piloting

itself and the ‘being’ into the higher hemisphere – into divinity and fulfillment. It

laments because it feels expelled and dis-inherited. It has installed itself in the

higher psychic region and can even vaguely see the path that heads to glory

and emancipation but has not yet developed the will force which can compel the

recalcitrants and rebels into submission. Its servants- the vital mind and the

senses- are so insanely devoted to the merely ephemeral that it is not certain as

to whether they are proceeding on the right lines or not in the lower region of

the ‘being’. It expresses doubts as to whether the body and the mind are

properly fostering and using their strength and resources.

Verse—12. --- “ And I wonder how that mighty, royal

elephant of mine, always intoxicated with delight and with hunger for delight

26
should now fare, controlled as he is by my enemies. “

The mighty royal elephant is the lower Ego. The ties that bind together the

higher and the lower have indeed been loosened but they have not been dis-

linked, and the higher cannot relieve itself of doubts and worries about the lower.

The two have however sharply individualized themselves and have placed far

apart- one in the higher psychic region { of BUDHDHI } and the other in the

lower hemisphere of the being. And as it happens when the being is split by

inner contradictions, there is a gap of strange distrust and contempt between

one and the other. At one end, at a particular moment, there is a complete

distrust of the radiant assumptions which float about as profound truths in the

upper region and there is simultaneously at the other end, a sneering contempt

for the low appetites, unwholesome desires and course delights which govern

life in the lower hemisphere. These conflicting currents of thoughts clash and

produce a duality which is deeply significant and is characteristic of spiritual

experience during a transitional period. There is genuine solicitude mixed with

contempt as the higher Ego refers apparently enquiringly to the course feed of

unwholesome delights with which the hungers of the lower Ego are now being

appeased by the vital mind and senses, formerly its servants and now its

enemies.

Verse 13.---- “ Those who recognized me as their King and had, in return

for their loyalty, peace and happiness assurance { PRASAD }, their hopes and

desires fulfilled { DHAN } and had their hungers { both physical and spiritual }

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appeased { BHOJAN } will now transfer their allegiance to another King.”

The higher Ego which is soliloquizing has now the vital mind and senses in view.

As long as it governed the whole undivided being, it enforced a discipline which

ensured harmony within the ‘being’, preserved balance and peace, fulfilled the

attainable hopes desires and appeased all hungers—physical and spiritual—

within approved limits. The vital mind and the senses are natural predators.

Their hungers are strong and many and they seek to satisfy their appetites in

the most unrestricted manner. They may create chaos unless held firmly in

leash. They were under proper control when the higher Ego ruled the whole

being but now after it has withdrawn itself, it is certain the senses will be under

the unrestricted control of the vital mind, their natural leader and will become its

vassals. And the vital mind will misguide and mis-lead the lower Ego into

excesses.

Verse 14.-- “ Habitually inclined to go in for lavish spending, they { the

vital mind and senses } will squander the resources, painfully stored and the

Coffer will soon lose all its treasure “

The Ego and the being in which it inheres, generally marches onward and

upward through births and deaths, strengthening itself with new psychic and

spiritual powers. There are certainly cases in which some human souls do go

downward by fouling the springs of their lives but generally speaking, humans

do inch upward in time with the cosmic rhythm. They gather in new strengths

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and powers as they move into their next births but it is a painfully slow process.

The higher ego which has now a glimpse into the “ process of becoming “ fears

therefore that these psychic and spiritual resources, painfully garnered are now

in danger of being squandered and exhausted by the vital mind and the senses,

operating independently.

The vital mind, assisted by the senses which are its natural subsidiaries, is

tremendously strong but its power is matched by its prodigious capacity for

fickleness and eccentric and wayward behaviour. It is a highly potent instrument

placed at the disposal of the human Ego by the cosmic ‘process of becoming’

but it has to be firmly controlled and directed. Unless held under restraint, it will

misguide the Ego into positions where extravagant and wasteful activities

become inevitable. Doubts about the ability of the lower Ego to discharge the

responsibility generate therefore the fear that strengths and powers stored in

the coffer of the ‘being’ painfully through a long series of births and deaths may

now be recklessly squandered. This may stop the upward move and may even

start a downward trend.

Verse 15.--- “ These and similar other thoughts disturbed the King

and then he suddenly saw a ‘Vaishya ‘ strolling about near the hermitage of the

saint.”

The ‘Vaishya’ is the philosopher self of the King- the philosopher self which is

destined to merge in the Gnostic in due course. He personifies the ‘meditator’-

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the philosopher- inherent in every human Ego at higher levels of the ‘being’. He

has helped the higher Ego to meditate on life’s ultimate destiny and to reward

himself with a luminous idea which borders on a vision. This idea has enabled

him to discover a Gnostic within himself although it was not yet a clear-eyed

discovery. It now reveals his philosopher self, personified as ‘Vaishya’. And the

Trinity- the three in one – the Ego as the moral force equipped for action, the

budding Gnostic aspiring to envision the mysteries of life and death and the

meditator and philosopher trying to evolve and systematize thoughts and ideas

which may mirror life and destiny – stands revealed.

The word ‘Vaishya’ may suggest thoughts linked with commerce and

commercial exchanges. Life, at all levels, is a matter of contact and exchange of

thoughts and influences between the Ego and the vast, incalculable cosmic

Non-Ego outside it. And the contact and exchange must inevitably occur

through the medium of the philosopher self.

Verse 16.--- “ And the King enquired as to who the ‘Vaishya’ was,

what his mission might be and why should he look so sad and care-worn?”

Verse 17,--- “ To these words from the king, inspired by love and

sympathy, the Vaishya, moved by the King’s kindness, humbly made his reply, ‘

The King had so long been soliloquizing and now seems to be participating in a

dialogue. But the dialogue is only apparent because the higher Ego,

30
personifying itself as the king is only trying to understand and interpret a

message from the philosopher inherent in the same ‘being’. The soliloquy is

therefore continuing, disguised as a dialogue.

Verse 18.--- “ Samadhi is my name,” replied the Vaishya and

added that he was born into a wealthy tribe but has since been ousted from

home by his sons and wives dishonestly hungering for his wealth. He

continued---

Verse 19.---- “ Dispossessed of my wealth, mis-appropriated by

my wives and sons who had only my wealth in view – and dis – owned by

friends and relatives, I have come out into this forest- sad and dis-illusioned “

The name ‘Samadhi’ firmly indicates the dividing line between the ‘vital mind’

and the ‘inner mind’. The vital mind, entrusted with the task of preservation and

perpetuation of the human race, always looks outward to fulfil its pre-destined

role – to avoid dangers and to face and defeat them when necessary, to devise

measures for both safety and comfort and to satisfy the many hungers of man,

both physical and mental. Its main trend bias is utilitarian. The philosopher self

personified as Vaishya, has emerged out of the vital mind, absorbing and

nourishing itself with the residual psychic energy of the vital mind and seeks,

initially to evolve and express thoughts and ideas which pitch themselves above

man’s animal existence and beautify, brighten and sweeten it with poetry and

literature, with various arts and higher sciences and with different systems of

31
philosophy. But when it moves up into a rarer and purer atmosphere to

contemplate the problems of life and death and life’s ultimate destiny, start

evolving metaphysical theories and doctrines and finally seeks to systematize

them into transcendental philosophy, the vital mind repels and rejects it as

fanciful system – building. It accepts from the inner mind the arts, poetry and

literature which broaden, sweeten, vivify its intellectual and emotional life; in the

same way, it accepts the higher sciences which extends its intellectual horizon

and help life to cruise hopefully into the unknown and it takes in and absorbs

the social and moral philosophies which ensure well-ordered social life. Life,

with all these consolations, is certainly, tolerably pleasant and the lower ego and

the vital mind controlling the lower hemisphere forcefully – argue that instead of

chasing transcendental fancies, it is better to forget the inevitable agonies and

the sorrows surrounding the ultimate dissolution and death { from which there is

no return } and to make the best of life, as it is.

The different methods of cognition evolved by the inner mind and the various

thought-processes generated in association with them are its wives and sons

and the ideas and thoughts formulated are the wealth and treasure. The

philosopher self regrets therefore that they have allied themselves with the vital

mind in the lower region, mis-appropriating the thoughts and ideas and expelled

him from home only because it transferred its quest for knowledge to a higher

plane. .And the whole hosts of ideas, truth, fancies and emotions which were

his friends and relatives at one time have co-operated with them in this act of

expulsion. They are like lovely, multi-hued flowers, beautiful on the branches. Of

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a plant which has its roots in the common earth; they could not transcend the

limits of their origin inspite of being divinely beautiful for a brief while and

rejected the idea of being eternally beautiful and divine.

The inner minds of human beings are the creators and preservers of the highest

ideas of man. They are the real wealth of mankind and Vaishya, personifying

the philosopher self of Surath claims therefore to have sprung from a wealthy

tribe.

The name ‘Samadhi’ assumed by Vaishya is highly significant. In Indian

philosophy, ‘Samadhi’ signifies the point of climax in a process of meditation and

concentration, marking the efflorescence of a thought process into the discovery

of a great truth. Indian philosophies have defined it as the end result of an

octophased process of meditation and concentration. Vaishya looked back to

the past when he referred to the wealth of thoughts and ideas. He looks

forward to a transcendental, supra-mental vision when he names himself

‘Samadhi’. There is indeed running through this discourse and under current of

regret that the process of meditation and concentration, now to be applied to the

pursuit of the ultimate question of life, was directed heretofore to the satisfaction

of common hungers and desires.

‘Samadhi’ although generally { and narrowly } understood as the point of climax

runs through the whole eight-phased process, beginning with the ‘ notion ‘ of the

final objective anding with the transformation of the ‘notion’ into realty. It is

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initially ‘notional’ meditation culminating in the final concentration at the end.

Verse 20.-- “ I have no news now,” says Vaishya “of how things are

getting on with my wives, sons and relatives at my old home.”

Verse 21.-- “and I am worrying’, he continues, “as to whether they

are faring ill or well at the old home and whether they are behaving themselves

or are mis-behaving,”

It is primarily the old human emotion of sorrow and sadness at the moment of

parting. The human mind and soul has a way of striking its roots into whatever

soil it may find itself on and sorrow and agony is man’s inevitable experience

when these roots are loosened or severed. The inner mind is determined to

move upward, exiling itself from the familiar life of routine and futilities and

renouncing the delights which that life abundantly offered. But it cannot help

feeling the gravitational pull of that life- the downward pull of the old ways of

thinking and acting, and of the familiar thoughts and ideas which were its wives,

sons and friends.

Verse 22 .---- “ But do you feel any love’ enquired the King, ‘for those wives,

sons and friends who impelled by their desire for your riches, dis-owned you

and expelled you from home ?”

The king had asked himself this question only a little earlier. As a matter of fact,

34
the same soliloquy is continuing and we are hearing it from a different listening

post.

Verse 23 .--- “ ‘you have correctly described my position’ replied the

Vaishya, ‘but I cannot bring myself to feel cruelly aloof from them and cannot

feel differently even though I try. “

Verse 24 .---- “ I still feel drawn to those, ‘continued the Vaishya, ‘who

prompted by an unholy desire for my riches, dismissed from their hearts all

sentiments of love and affection which a father, husband and friend may claim.’

Verse 25 .--- “ I cannot indeed understand, my lord’, continues the Vaishya,

‘why my heart, influenced by love and affection, should turn even to friends and

relatives who are behaving unlike relatives and friends. “

Verse 26 .-- “ I deeply sigh for them and cannot spare myself restless

anxieties on their account; I wonder why I cannot feel unfeelingly unconcerned

about them even though they have been guilty of unfriendly behaviour. “

These opening verses which conclude the prologue to the first Hymn

symbolically embody a perplexing, painful and exciting schizophrenic drama.

The whole being stands divided, for a moment, into two entities, separated by

conflicts and contradictions. There is a sudden and startlingly painful discovery

35
that the old familiar life with the delights and graces is empty and futile until it is

linked up with fundamental truths based on a deeper study and understanding

of man’s life and destiny. The quest for these truths creates strivings and

aspirations which dislodge the better part of the Ego and the better part of the

psyche from the old moorings and starts the upward move. The higher Ego { the

King } and his philosopher self { the Vaishya } constitute the higher entity

thereafter and, for a while, there is a head-on collision between the higher and

the lower. There is regret at the upper end that there should be questioning…,

and protests against the quest for these truths from the lower region; this regret

goes together with a good deal of contempt. The Vaishya { the philosopher self }

refers both regretfully and contemptuously to the traitorous behaviour of his

wives and sons, the wives being the different methods and ways of cognition

which had evolved themselves in course of the quests for lesser truths and the

sons being the thoughts and ideas formulated as a result of these quests. They

relied on the analytical method in these quests, constructing and building up the

truths bit by bit, synthesizing the results gained by analysis into self-consistent

wholes. But the higher Ego, using the inner mind as its instrument, seeks to

have a vision of the fundamental truths at a glance and the old methods and the

old ideas immediately rebel.

There is indeed a wide gap between the old, familiar analytical method of

thinking and perceiving with its dependence on inductive cum deductive

processes of reasoning and the new passion for intuitive vision. Yet the

knowledge gained through the inductive cum deductive processes had been

36
creating, all along the line, intense pressures and compulsions which have

generated this passion for intuitive understanding. It has led to the discovery

and formulation of laws and principles which inevitably derive themselves from

an all pervasive cosmic rhythm and harmony. These laws, ideas and principles,

having been immediately harnessed to man’s social purposes, - to his utilities

and comforts – have acquired an utilitarian bias and the utilitarian bias has

created certain habits of thought which form a screen between the laws and

truths discovered and formulated – and the fundamental truth – the beauties

and harmonies – to which they stand inductively related. Men stall themselves

in the comforts and consolations gained, in final analysis, by the inductive cum

ratiocinative process through many lives and deaths and then for some of them,

comes the moment of awakening when the screen moves away or is moved

away by some unusual happenings to grant them a vision of the Ultimate

Realty.. The Vaishya found himself /awakened’ now – but not with the whole

‘being’, a part of which was still steeped in somnambulistic slumber and was

seeking to drag him down. The downward pull created an awareness of

confusions and perplexities for which no solution was yet in sight.

How can the lesser truths and ideas in which rhythm and harmony is unfailingly

present exist unless man believes in the cosmic rhythm and in the Cosmic Mind

which is its creator? That is the question the Vaishya asks himself and is

determined to go out of himself to find an answer.

37
Verse 27

And Verse 28 .----- “ Then the two – the King, the best among men and the

Vaishya, named Samadhi –went out together to meet the Sage. They offered

him their respects and greetings in the prescribed manner and then introduced

themselves with appropriate words.”

The two, symbolically and separately indivisualised, are really two in one. The

King, as the lord of the ‘being’, exercises will-power and controls the emotive

forces while the Vaishya, his philosopher self, strengthens and sharpens the

faculty of understanding and strives to develop a capacity for vision. The two

constitute the higher Ego of one individual who finds himself awakened into a

state of heightened consciousness and as passionately eager to see some

nascent vision – he can not yet define – and to receive, accommodate and

absorb its impulse.

Verse 29

And Verse 30 .-- “ The King addressed the Sage as follows :- ‘Oh Lord, I

seek an answer from you to a question which baffles me. I know that my

personal and proprietory interest in my kingdom and the whole crowd of men

and matters relating to it is the source of all my sorrows. But with all this

knowledge, I have been grieving and suffering like an ignorant person. What is

the answer to this riddle, O’Sage ? “

Verse 31.--- “ The King continued :- ‘And now look at the case of this

38
Vaishya, who inspite of having been persecuted by his sons and wives,

dishonoured by his servants and deserted by his relatives and friends, still feels

attached to them by feelings of love and affection,’ “

Verse 32 and 33 ---

“ This makes both of us acutely unhappy as we feel our minds

drawn in the wrong direction by sentiments and personal love and affection,

even though we see the folly of it,

Why should those, equipped with knowledge, suffer from this

delusion as we two have been sharing the wrong – headed delusions of the

ignorant ?”

The King presents the eternal riddles of human life to the Sage. The ephemeral

nature of human relationships and of man’s life itself is painfully obvious but so

overwhelming is the force of the gravitational pull of the earth and of all that we

have created and built up on it that many of the finest minds see nothing better

than to make the best of what we have got and discover nothing more than

glittering unreal fancies in man’s supra-mental aspirations. Yet the urge to move

upward shall not be denied and repressed. The gravitational pull which draws

downward is a matter of daily experience but the upper gravitational pull which

impels a man upward from below and compels him to strive and aspire will be

found to be equally and unfailingly with us whenever we pause to think and

meditate. It is no difficult to see that we often equate the ephemeral with the

39
eternal. Yet our life is painfully short; our few moments of happiness are illusions

mainly because they are short-lived; we share our fundamental knowledge of

life with sub-human animals. Either life has a deeper meaning which we must

discover or it is an empty dream, signifying nothing.

Verse 34 .-- “ The Sage comes straight to the question and says – ‘oh,

you blessed and fortunate King, knowledge derived from sense – impressions

{ of things seen, heard , smelt, tasted or touched } must be shared by all living

beings and impressions must come in separately { through separate senses }.’ “

The Sage simply states that sense – impressions are the primary source of all

knowledge and they are available both to man and sub-humans. There is not

really much for clarification on this point although. Sense, impressions running

in separately emphasise their fragmentary charaeter and point to the need for a

process of co-ordination designed to transform the impressions into ideas. The

qualities of these ideas will naturally depend on the qualities of the processes of

co-ordination and therefore on the qualities and grades of the minds assessing,

co-ordinating and finally moulding these impressions into knowledge. Vast

differences will inevitably emerge but it will still remain the same kind of

knowledge.

The most significant note is however struck when the Sage addresses the King

as the ‘blessed and fortunate one.’ He was in severe mental distress; he had

temporarily lost his senses of direction and was in the depths of gloomy despair.

40
But the sage knew, this was the twilight gloom which precedes the dawn. This

was the moment of transition at the end of which he was destined to start his

upward journey into light. He was severing the old links and had to endure the

inevitable agonies but it heralded a new beginning. He was fortunate because

he had at last reached the point where fate and destiny must pick him up for a

life of heightened consciousness and delight (the mild dig at ‘knowledge’ is just

a bit of playful fun which the Sage permits himself to focus the light on what the

humans ostentatiously claim as knowledge).

Verse 35 .-- “ The sage continues apparently to amplify the subject of

sense – impressions. He says –‘there are creatures incapable of seeing during

the of daylight and there are others, incapable of seeing during the hours of

night while there are still others, equally able to see both during day and night.’”

This reads and sounds simple enough. It only states a fact. Senses do indeed

gather in impressions which are, in due course, converted into notions and

ideas but some senses of some living beings do not function at all during certain

periods of time. The Sage seems to suggest that the physical senses have their

limitations and that in certain circumstances some of these limitations may be

so serious as to make certain senses totally ineffective. But one may still

question the relevance of this statement in the current context unless it is linked

with an exploratory query which the sage meant specifically for the king. He

wanted to find out if the king understood and followed him when he said by

implication that there are three kinds of knowledge – the empirical derived from

41
sense – impressions, the transcendental based on an intuitive, Supra – mental

understanding of the universe and the gnosis, based on esoteric awareness of

the links between the phenomenon and the noumenon and harmonizing and

intigrating the empirical and the transcendental into one

The veiled reference to the three different groups of men possessing the three

different kinds of knowledge can be understood only if we interpret the three

relevant words, used in this connection, in highly restricted senses. The word

‘creatures’ occurring in the verse must be taken to mean only ‘men’ – not sub-

humans. The word ‘ day ‘ means the light of transcendental knowledge while

‘night’ stands for empirical knowledge which is perpetual twilight, occasionally

moving towards light but more often, deepening into darkness. If we assume

these meanings for these words, it becomes immediately clear that those who

cannot see in day light are the empiricists who deny the existence of any reality

beyond the phenomenal realities we see around us, while those who cannot

see during the hours of night are the transcendentalists who recognize the

Ultimate Reality – the ultimate source of ever – changing cosmic panorama – as

the only reality and the countless units of living and non-living matter with

diverse, countless cosmic manifestations as ephemeral illusions. They bubble

up out of the Ultimate Reality for a brief while only to return to It at the end of

their brief lives. The Gnostics who can see both during day and night come in

between them to synthesise and integrate the ephemeral and the

transcendental into the concept of one Ultimate Reality, creating pervading and

transcending the cosmos – existing as the One in many and containing the

42
many in one. These three groups represent three fundamental schools of Indian

thought form times immemorial. They still strek their way into Indian life along

paths which perpetually cut and intersect each other.

One wonders however why the Sage introduced this theme, rather obliquely, at

this early stage. One explanation is that he wanted to test the reactions of the

king and it may well be presumed that he went straight into it because he found

the reactions favourabl

Verse 36 .--- “ The Sage continues –

{1} ‘Men are certainly knowledgeable but they are not the only ones as

beasts and birds and ruminants like deer are indeed equally knowledgeable.’

Verse 37 , --{II} ‘Men’s knowledge of this kind is exactly like knowledge of the

same kind possessed by beasts and birds. And men, beasts and birds are

comparable on equal terms in the same way { when you come to sleep,

thirst and hunger }’

Verse 38- {III} ‘But look at those birds, putting bits of grains into the beaks of

their little ones through love – inspite of this knowledge – although they

themselves are enduring the pangs of hunger.’

Verse 39 - { IV } ‘ Oh, lord of men, cannot you see that human beings are

swayed by feeling of love and affection towards their children because they

are lured by the expectation of being recompensed { in old age } ?’ “

{ I and II }—With a gentle dig at the assumption that men has a

43
 monopoly of knowledge, the Sage reminds the King that men share their

knowledge of many common desires and hungers and of common dangers

and fears with beasts and birds. { He makes a special mention of ruminants

like deer, presumably because they are supposed to be more vulnerable

than others to hunters wiles }.The facts as they are, in the world of men and

in the animal world, are indeed comparable both as regards the manner in

which such knowledge originates and as regards the manner in which it

creates desires with compulsive inherent urges for appeasement and

satisfaction. This urge for appeasement of hungers thirsts is the first and

primary expression of self-love in the whole animal world.

{ III and IV }---But what is more remarkable is the way in which

self-love expands and broadens its path of appeasement both among

humans and non-humans. Birds even when hungry themselves, pick up

grains to feed their young ones first before satisfying their own hungers. T

only shows their self-love expanding itself and accommodating their young

ones during a certain stage into their sense of self.

And many instances of similar and apparent self-sacrifice may

be seen among humans though in their case, this instructive self-

expansion is assisted by utilitarian expectations of being recompensed in

old age by children growing up into adult hood. But it should not be

confused with self-sacrifice or self-denial. It is only the self expanding and

proliferating itself out of an inherent impulse of delight

Verse 40 --- “ The Sage continues:-

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 ‘ And inspite of all that may be said against it, this self-love

{ often under-rated and sneered at as unlovely, prosaic and devoid of moral

force } eddies round and round the ego under the compulsive urge of a

cosmic impulse released by the Mother { the Ultimate Reality } for the

purpose of maintaining and stabilizing the universal system drags down all

finite beings into pits of delusion. “

Self-love, seemingly homely and humble, is primordial.The

Ultimate Reality { the Mother – Parama Brahma } is eternally conscious in

status – holding Itself, unrevealed unmanifested – but after It vibrates into

Kinesis with a Super – cosmic Impulse of delight, a part of Its eternal

consciousness flows down with that Impulse to create the cosmos and the

continuum of space and time. Finite beings come later and the cosmic

Impulse of delight immediately reproduces itself in them as delight in their

own selves and their self-based activities. Led and lured by self-love which

soon grows into an obsession under the influences of their environments

and heredity, the finites enter into a state of diverse relationships with each

other, ,loving, hating, fighting, quarrelling, cheating and playing and loose

sight of the One in many. They eventually fail to see anything beyond them

or above them. And the Sage has this in mind when he refers to the eddies

of self-love and the pits of delusion into which men are led or lead

themselves.

The Sage will deal with the subject of ‘self’ and’ self-love’ all

through the Hymn; he introduces it rather parenthetically only to emphasise

that delusions generated by self-love are not to be under-rated.’ .

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Verse 41 .-- “ The Sage starts explaining the position more fully and

assures the King:-

{ I }—‘ There should be no surprise therefore over the experience

the King had had; The Ultimate Reality draws { even } the Lord of the Universe

into cosmic slumber and as the Super-cosmic Enchantress,- takes away such

knowledge as the King refers to and bewitches the whole cosmos.

Verse 42 ,-- { II } “ She, as the Supreme Divinity proceeds along Her own

way forcibly dragging behind Her the bewitched hearts of even the wise. “

Verse 43 .-- { III } “ She creates the cosmos – the whole world with all

that moves and all that does not move – and She, if propitiated, can grant

salvation and deliverance from delusion “

Verse 44- { IV } “ She is Ultimate { Transcendent } knowledge; She is

the Eternal cause of deliverance and She is the cause of bondage in the world;

She is the Supreme Authority over us and the cosmos – the Ultimate Reality. “

I and II - All finites in this world – indeed the whole cosmos – stand poised

between two opposing currents – one moving downward and the other trying to

arrest the downward movement and to move up. The Mother { the Ultimate

Reality } draws the Lord of the cosmos – the cosmic consciousness force – into

46
Herself and wills him to slumber. That signifies the end of one cycle of creation

after it has been on for billions of years. It is what some religions image as the

Doomsday. But it is not the end. For the Mother releases again an Impulse of

Delight and with it a stream of Her consciousness force. The two blend together

and become one and starts creating a new cosmos and functioning as a duality

in which there is constant conflict and drama with one current – the current of

delight – tumultuous and seemingly untamable, rushing downward and the

consciousness force trying to restrain and arrest it and to force it to discover a

rarer and purer delight by turning it to a higher point in the opposite direction

and to move upward to it enroute to the source from which both came. When

living being emerge and finite minds evolve themselves out of life, this cosmic

conflict and drama reproduces itself in finite minds and generates forces and

tensions which govern man’s personal, communal spiritual life. This dichotomy

is therefore planted in the human mind by the Mother { the Ultimate Reality in

Kinesis } through the medium of the cosmic consciousness force spear-headed

by delight and the Mother uses the dichotomy as the invisible string to drag in

the whole cosmos in general and man in particular to participate in the cosmic

drama and to endure the conflicts and delutions to which the king refers. Such

knowledge as the king has in mind cannot show a way out. The Ultimate Reality

must be understood with reverence as the super-cosmic Enchantress playing

Her cosmic game with countless units of living and non-living matter and

pervading them with Her consciousness force blended with Her delight. { The

expression ‘ Super- cosmic Enchantress “ is no pejorative. It seems suitable and

has been used with due sense of reverence).

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III and IV --- Thus does the Mother {the Ultimate Realty in Kinesis } create a

cosmos and cause it to function as an ordered whole – not just once but many

times. There is not just one Doomsday but many. She has created the cosmic

rhythm which governs the Universe and from which all rhythms must flow. And

she has so ordained the consciousness force { blended with delight } both in the

cosmos and in finite minds that deviations from these rhythms must inevitably

occur. These deviations lead to delutions and the Mother pervades both the

rhythms and the deviations. But She has, at the same time, set in motion an

upward pull which blazes the path leading up and back to rhythms and thus

ensures deliverance from delusions and illusions. This is her cosmic game and

she is with us all along the way from the sinner to the Saint.

This is Ultimate knowledge and the Mother can be propitiated only with the

knowledge. This knowledge alone can secure salvation and deliverance. The

Mother is the source of this Supreme Knowledge which derives itself from an

awareness of the Mother originating and pervading both the rhythms and the

deviations and is therefore the Ultimate cause of both bondage and deliverance.

The moralists’ concept of good and evil, of vice and virtue and of pieties and

impieties is so far below this knowledge that it does not come into the focus at

all. Equally negligible is such knowledge as the King had in mind.

Verse 45 .-- “ And now the King poses the Ultimate question :-

‘ who is then Ultimate Divinity { the Ultimate Reality, - the

Mother – in status and in Kinesis whom you call Mahamaya the Super –

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cosmic Enchantress } ? How does She originates Herself ? And how does She

function, oh Lord ? ‘

Verse 46 --- ‘ What is Her nature and character ? How does she image

{ manifest } Herself ? And where does She come from ? I should like to hear the

answers to those questions from you as you are one of the great Gnostics who

have been blessed with the knowledge of the Ultimate truth – The Ultimate

Reality ‘ “

Here are six questions on the Super – cosmic Ultimate Reality. They sound

rather matter-of-fact as though the king’s intention is to establish a kind of

personal relationship once the relevant truths are known. This is not surprising.

He had had enough of philosophy and speculation; his mind had wandered far

and wide and he wanted to know whether there was any point in pursuing the

question any further.

Verse 47 --- “ And the Sage replies –

I . ‘ She is the Eternal Reality imaging Herself in the cosmos

which She wholly pervades. Still She variously originates { and manifests }

Herself { on special occasions } and you may as well listen to me on this

subject.’

Verse 48 -- II ‘Although She should be called { recognized as } Eternal

Unchangeable, She does appear { incarnate Herself } at times to fulfil the

strivings and efforts of Divine forces { operating in the Universe } and then it

49
may be said that she originates and creates Herself { in this world }

I-- The Sage lumps together the questions and gives an

comprehensive answer. It will not remove doubts and uncertainties but it is a

firm, unambiguous pronouncement which may be the starting point for

discussion. The Mother is the Eternal Reality in status – Eternally existent and

unchangeable but the whole cosmos which she pervades becomes Her image

in Kinesis. And while in Kinesis, She does incarnate or reveal Herself for special

purposes on occasions.

II -- In status, She is eternal, unchangeable and super-cosmic but

when she descends into the cosmos, like light descending into darkness, to play

Her cosmic game, She creates both the divine and the undivine and orders the

scheme of things in such a manner that confrontation between divine and

undivine has to be ceaseless and uninterrupted. The cosmic consciousness

force which She releases for the purpose of creating and vitalizing the Universe

is a blend of her consciousness force and Delight. The delight, super –

abundant and tempestuous, bubbles up into a countless multitude, transforming

the One into many and the many, discovering immense delight in individualizing

themselves, become competitively separate and distinct in growing

unawareness of the fact that they are ineluctably pervaded and linked together

by One. This is how the undivine, designed by the Mother to participate in the

cosmic game, operates in various shapes and forms. But the divine operating

through the consciousness force continually tries to draw the undivine back into

an awareness of the Mother’s immanence and transcendence. Conflicts

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becomes inevitable and it is only when a struggle for supremacy climaxes into a

crisis that the Mother intervenes to tilt the balance in favour of the divine

through incarnations and revelations. People have these incarnations and

revelations in mind when they say that the Mother originates Herself on

occasions.

The Sage introduces the subject of genesis and creation

with these observations and seems to plant it as an immensely luminous and

mysterious light on the summit of a mountain. The theologians’ concept of God

and Satan and of Good and Evil and the moralists’ idea of virtue and vice,

flickering far below, seem to fade away.

Verse 49 and Verse 50

“ The Sage now goes straight into the great theme –

‘ After Lord Vishnu fell into the slumber of communion with the

Ultimate Reality, hugging and surrendering to It at the end of a cycle of creation

{ KALPA } with the whole cosmos transformed { under super-cosmic

compulsion } into a Sea { of undefinable, amorphous substance }, two undivines

{ undivine forces }, frightfully tempestuous and known as the celebrated Madhu

and Kaitava emerged out of lumps in the ears of Lord Vishnu and threatened to

kill Lord Brahma.’ “

This is how the Sage chooses to introduce the doctrine of creation genesis in

highly esoteric language. At the end of a cycle of creation { Kalpa } which lasts

billions of years, the vast material cosmos dis-intigrates and dissolves into the

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minutest indivisible particles and the whole physical nature returns to its original

pre-cosmic fluidity The limitless space which has been described in this verse

as the ear of Lord Vishnu has ceased to function because Vishnu – the cosmic

consciousness force – has surrendered his powers as preserver of the cosmic

order to the Ultimate Reality { the Mother in status } and has retired into the

slumber of communion under super-cosmic compulsion. The limitless space is

therefore held by a vast, frozen silence – as vast as the space itself – and can

neither create the sounds with which it filled itself before nor can it cause them

to be heard. But into this vast, frozen silence which is the lump in the ears of

Lord Vishnu, The Mother directs the mighty current of her warm Delight and the

frozen silence melts tumultuously into immense sonic booms to mark the

beginning of a new cycle of creation.

These sonic booms create tremendous, overwhelming vibrations which shake

up and transform the one immense, unbroken pre-cosmic fluidity into many and

different units of non-living matters. And as these different units whirl in space

with sonic booms and as both measure themselves in terms of duration the

space-time continuum is born.

The Mother’s super-cosmic delight, expressing itself in Sonic booms and in vast

universal vibrations thus creates the ever-expanding space-time continuum,

destined to accommodate the ever-expanding cosmos itself. It draws out from

the Mother’s consciousness force a Creative Urge with which it blends itself and

as it blends itself and as it descends further into kinesis, it begins to build the

52
cosmos jointly with that creative urge. Winds and atmospheres arise out of the

cosmic vibrations, held separately in separate spheres under separate rhythms

and laws which operate as absolute imperatives. Stars, planets and mateors

evolve themselves, generating heat and light and producing matter

approximating to water and earth. The pre-cosmic fluidity transforms itself into

the material cosmos, shaped and regulated by the creative urge descending

from the Mother’s consciousness force and blending itself with her delight. And

then comes the conflict. The creative urge,- symbolically described as Lord

Brahma – evolves rhythms and laws, imposing absolute restraints which must

be respected and Delight, tending to be turbulently chaotic, is impatient of

restraints of any kind. There comes then the moment of climax when Delight

threatens to kill the creative force itself in a bid to throw off all restrains and

restrictions.

This is the symbolical interpretation of the truth, envisioned by the Indian Seers,

as they looked back to the first cosmic beginning, The physical cosmos was

building itself up, so to say, and taking shape...But even as it looked

incomprehensively vast and entirely physical, it was being shaped, regulated

and guided by the cosmic mind, operating through its creative force { Lord

Brahmaa} which the Mother had released with Impulse of Delight. It evolved

rhythms and laws which the vast, incalculable cosmic mass had to obey as it

broke itself up and diversified itself into countless finites, big and small. They

whirled about within the space – time continuum held along their orbits in a state

of cosmic somnambulism by these laws and rhythms. The cosmos ceased to be

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one unbroken and undivided amorphous fluidity; it was one cosmic entity

consisting of widely different finites. Both the cosmos and the finites which

constituted it are mindless and wholly physical but they are both shaped,

controlled and governed by a supreme mind through the cosmic rhythms and

laws which indisputably reveal the one unchallengable psychic power – the

Ultimate Reality – regulating the whole universe with all finites within it and

compelling all elements constituting them to be uniform in their behaviour and

performance. The vision was one of a well-ordered, well-orchestrated whole and

the truth of the One and many indissolubely integrated – of many in One and of

One pervading the many – became inescapably evident and streaked its way

into the consciousness of the Seer like a mighty flash of lightning

But the antithesis between the one and the many did not escape the vision of

the seer. He envisioned it first as an inter – relation of which the dominant trait is

a vast difference and separateness and then as one of timed and fear-stricken

confrontation between the tiny and the colossal.. He discovered rebel action in

the vast planetary and sub-planetory masses breaking away from bigger vaster

masses and their orbital rhythms but gripped elsewhere by other rhythms but

gripped elsewhere by other rhythms and firmly held. Looking around himself

with his own highly developed mind, then poised for a new vision on the Supra-

mental summit, and observing countless finites- both living and non-living – and

particularly the finite mind of men, - the seer detected the sense of antithesis

between the one and the many expressing itself in breath taking diverse forms –

ranging from belief in the Ultimate Reality as Eternal existence – consciousness

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– Delight at one end to total unawareness of any links between the two at the

other, coupled with the grudging recognition of the one as a blind force

operating certainly in harmony with some laws and rhythms but remaining

eternally insensitive to human hopes, fears and aspirations. The wide gap

between these two ends accommodate various beliefs and attitudes but those

that approximate to unawareness of any links between the one and the many

and unconcern for such links stem, generally speaking, from obsessive delight

in being themselves. Non-living finites which exist and function in a state of

somnambulism have to be left out but living finites like men with developed

psychic power, have to look into themselves to find out how they stand. In them

such unawareness of the affinities which link them with the Infinite and

Ultimate Reality is undivine, specially when it goes together with a total or an

almost total absence of imaginative self-questioning and curiosity about what

they may really be

To the seer, the vision of the undivine, nestling in the heart of excessive, self-

based delight was a startling discovery . His psyche raced back from this point

to the cosmic beginning to discover two currents streaming down from the

Mother’s Super-cosmic consciousness force-one, an impulse of delight and the

other, a creative urge.. The two blended together to create the cosmos and to

diversify it into numberless finites. And from this stage, as the seer envisioned it,

the conflict between the two currents began, the impulse of delight becoming

the undivine twin force of Madhu and Kaitava and seeking to drag the whole

cosmos deeper down into the undivine and the creative force, symbolically

55
described as Brahmaa trying to resist the downward drift, with the cosmos

anchored to universal laws and rhythms. Madhu is Delight and Kaitava is

Delight in being many and they together maddened the finites into such a frenzy

of delight that they threatened to become laws unto themselves and to destroy

Brahmaa { the creative force } with the cosmic rhythms and laws.

From the summit of inspired and heightened imagination, Indian seers and

sages had a vision of the enthralling drama of confrontation between the

Creative Impulse and the Impulse of Delight for which the Mother set the

cosmos itself as the stage. They have called it the Mother’s cosmic game. Both

the impulses streamed down from the Mother’s super-cosmic consciousness

force and are divine but Delight was predestined first, to play undivine role,

spiraling down into dark ego-based recesses as soon as life and mind evolved

and the Creative Impulse to exercise a restraining influence on it with far-flung

all-pervasive laws and rhythms showing up the downward movement into an

easy-paced rhythm and keeping the path open for the upward return journey to

light- to higher and purer delights-to real Delight. The cosmos thus became the

centre of two conflicting pulls – the gravitational pull dragging down whole

chunks of the cosmos with living beings mentally equipped and the upward pull,

apart from exercising restraints, selectively picking up a chosen few to pursue

the upward path in order that lesser beings may be attracted and enabled to

follow them.

Our seers felt and saw that this conflict and confrontation between the Creative

56
impulse and the impulse of Delight began vaguely and seemingly as a sub-

conscious urge even when the cosmos and the finites it accommodated were

mindless. And the Creative Impulse was loosing during the initial round and had

to appeal to the Mother to intervene and to release the main stream of the

cosmic consciousness force, then locked in slumber in Her arms.

Verse 51, Verse 52 and Verse 53 ---

“ The sage continues in the same esoteric language :-

‘Having seen two anti-Divines, imperiously threatening and

Lord Vishnu deeply immersed in sleep, Lord Brahmaa, the Creator—seated in

the lotus- like Naval of Vishnu—prayed to the Mother { the Ultimate Reality }

with his whole heart and soul steadfastly fixed on Her, addressing Her as the

Blessed Sleep of ‘Communion,’ the mistress of the Universe, the Mother and

the sustainer of the cosmos, the Preserver and the destroyer in one, the

Peerless Ultimate Divinity, whose Grace tenants the eyes of Hari [ Lord

Vishnu ] and quietens his cosmic force into slumber and besought Her to

awaken Lord Vishnu.’ “

The cosmic { consciousness } force which creates, preserves, destroys and

renews { through new creation } the cosmos is envisioned as a Trinity of the

Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer. It is one but is functionally a triune

Reality streaming down from the Mother under Her super-cosmic mandate. The

creation of the physical, the evolution of life from non-living matter in countless

57
forms from germs, planets, insects and animals to human beings, the evolution

of mind from life and the evolution and emergence of physical and psychic laws

and rhythms matching and sustaining the successive stages and phases of the

cosmic drama of creation is symbolically the role played by Lord Brahmaa [ the

creator ]. The emphasis is on physical and biological creation culminating in the

emergence of man’s vital mind which man has been using as his most potent

instrument for survival, expansion and growth from .the first beginnings of the

human race. Lord Brahmaa has been installed in the ‘naval’ region of the

cosmic force as it is the field of biological urge and creation.

But physical and biological creation is not the end. The Mother’s impulse of

Delight, carrying a fragment of Her consciousness force with it, drew out life

from non-living matter and the mind with its hungers, thirsts, passions and

desires from life, but it was not and is not – an easy process. Even non-living

matter tended to break away from the rhythms and laws which governed it and

had to be held in a state of somnambulism to ensure its adherence to the laws.

Symbolically speaking, Lord Brahmaa had to face threats to his creation right

from the beginning and the threats multiplied themselves when life and mind

angered to generate finite selves and finite wills. The finites powered

themselves with the impulse of delight and tumbled tumultuously down into their

hungers and desires in defiance of the rhythms on which the cosmos and the

creation are based and imperiled their existence. But deep beneath the cosmic

current of delight impetuously flowing down ward, an equally strong current-

charged with an indomitable urge for upward movement in search of higher and

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purer delights, entrusted with a strength which can preserve the cosmos and

enforce adherence to its laws and rhythms and blessed with a knowledge which

helps finites to ascend into an awareness of the subtlest harmonies and the

profoundest truths- lies frozen in slumber. This current, held firmly in the grip of

cosmic sleep at the beginning of creation, is the main current of cosmic

consciousness force personified as Lord Vishnu in the Hymn. But because it

contains within itself both the strength which preserves the cosmos and the

knowledge which sustains a perpetual process of renewal through a perpetual

process of dissolution and thus keeps it eternally young, it accommodates

forces which simultaneously preserve and destroy and has been personified

elsewhere as ‘Hari-Har’ { both the preserver and destroyer }.But in the present

context, the stress is on preservation and the cosmic consciousness force has

therefore been symbolically personified as Lord Vishnu to emphasise the role of

the Preserver.

This frozen current lying deep beneath the surface must be thawed reawakened.

It was having its sleep of communion under the Mother’s Super- Cosmic

command and was held within the Matrix of the Mother’s Will much in the same

way as a child is held within mother’s womb. The thaw had therefore to begin

immediately and the waters of the re-awakened current had to surge up into the

surface to mingle and blend with the waters of delight and save the cosmos

from what threatened to be a lawless, unrhythmic and self destructive

downward flight. Lord Brahmaa prayed therefore to the Mother for release of

Lord Vishnu from the sleep of communion and for his immediate re-awakening.

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 And so Lord Brahmaa articulated his prayer as follows :--

Verse 54 “ Thou art { O’ Mother } the word { Swaha }*I. with which offerings

are made to the gods, thou art the word { Swadha } *II with which ancesters are

remembered and thou art the soul and essence of the Symphony *III which

tunes up the chanting of sacred incantations. Eternal and Eternally existent,

riding the three-phase – tri-syllabic chariot-*IV- { in the same way as the soul

rides the body }, Thou art, O Mother, the nectar *V { for which man has been

forever thirsting }.

I- ‘Swaha’—is the word, prescribed in the Vedas for working the Divine

forces with offerings.

II- ‘Swadha’—is the word prescribed for remembering { worshiping }

ancestors.

III- The collective expression for all ‘mantras’ { incantations } to be

chanted in connection with the rites and rituals of worship is

‘Bashatkar’, the chanting to be correctly modulated to the pitches

broadly classified as High, Low and Medium { udatta, anudatta,

smabit } and the voice to be keyed up and down accordingly.. The

esoteric idea is that if the ‘mantras’ { incantations } which are esoteric

abbreviations and the Hymns which accompany them are carried

properly by human voice along the line of ascension from the lowest

point of articulation { baikharee }, to the next higher point

{ pashwantee} and thence upward to the summit of human

consciousness { para }, the truth enshrined in the incantations and

hymns reveals itself. The Mother has therefore been evoked as the

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 Symphony tuning up the incantations.

IV- ‘The three-phase- trisyllabic chariot’ is a free rendering of the words

used in the text – perhaps excessively free. But it seems to convey

the underlying idea. The sonic abbreviation ‘Om” is indeed the

Mother’s chariot combining the sounds AA,, Woo and M where AA

signifies creation, woo preservation of the created cosmos and m

both its dissolution and the rhythm and harmony of renewal which

inter-links the three phases. ‘Om’ is definitely the Mother’s chariot. It

is an appropriate symbol of the cosmos pursuing countless orbits with

countless planets and spheres and still governed and bound together

by one supreme law and rhythm- creating and destroying- seemingly

in a state of perpetual flux and motion and then re-building and

recreating within the vastness of the space-time continuum but

incapable of departing from the one cosmic rhythm.

V- The Mother is the giver of the nectar which bestows on man the

immortality of the soul. Under law of ‘Karma’, every human soul must

move on and on and up and up through deaths, births and rebirths,

the kind and quality of life it is destined to live through each

successive birth being determined by its actions in previous births.

These actions do not mean only overt deeds but includes thoughts,

ideas and strivings-motives and intentions and even the urges still

lying in the sub-conscious region of the mind and striving to surface.

And this journey of the human soul through transmigration –

through renewed bodies and minds – is always an upward journey.

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 There may be downward slips and falls but it is, inspite of it all, an

upward movement. The Mother draws us upward through deaths and

births – through dissolution and renewal. Life is a blend of divine and

undivine and the Mother pervades and animates both the Divine and

the Undivine forces which activate our being. But from the cosmic

beginning, She released an upward current – the upward pull – which

redeems man from fears of death and ransoms from the sins of his

falls and downward slips. It governs man’s ‘process of becoming’

which signifies slow but irresistible progress towards divinity and final

emancipation from all that is undivine and unclean in him. The human

soul has to be immortal in order to be able to redeem and purify itself

through deaths and births, and the Mother’s upward pull which

operates through and uses the immortal soul as its medium purifies

the venom of the undivine in man into divine nectar through

transmigration of the soul. The Mother has therefore been invoked as

the Nectar of life.

The idea of eternal damnation is ruled out altogether because we are

gripped be a ‘process of becoming’ which leads us resistlessly to

deliverance and salvation.

Verse 55 --- “ Unreachable precisely by the human voice and accent

{ and by the human mind } seated on the edge of the { first } Nascent

syllable of the word{ {marked by the first sonic boom }, Thou art O’Mother,

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the eternal creatrix and the supreme –Ultimate – Mother of us all { the

cosmos }’

Lord Brahmaa invokes the Mother in the opening verse as the rhythm and

harmony which inspires man to lift his thoughts and ideas above himself

towards the divine and creates an awareness of the stream of life flowing

backward to ancestors and forward to generations yet to be born The

fundamental idea is that ancestors do renew themselves in their

successors.- not only lineal descendants but in all those who are born after

them – not in a merely symbolical or biological sense but in the sense that

their inner selves carrying forward their moral and spiritual identities pass

into and inhere in such bodies and minds as are created under the

compulsion of the law of ‘Karma’ specially for the purpose of

accommodating these identities and of refining or coarsening or stalling

them as they move along their predestined paths smoothened or roughened

– illumined or obfuscated – by the consequences of their actions in previous

births. Their immortal selves – their immortal souls flow with the stream of

life in this manner, sometimes up and sometimes down, but whether flowing

straight on or eddying round, they flow progressively upward, through

transmigrations, into divinity in the end.

Lord Brahmaa ‘sees’ this manifestation of the Mother in Kinesis and then

permits himself a backward glance. He seeks to envision the Mother in

status but can see Her no further back than the first fleeting moment of the

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 beginning of creation when he himself emanated as the first creative

impulse with the impulse of delight from the Mother’s super-cosmic

consciousness force. Brahmaa sees Her poised on the first syllable – the Aa

of ‘Om’, the first sonic boom bringing in the created cosmos with Aa

standing specifically for creation. And because he cannot stretch his vision

further back, he looks downward into the Kinesis to see Her as the Creatrix,

the Supreme Mother and the Ultimate Divinity

Verse 56 ---“ Yours, Oh, Mother, is the matrix which holds the whole cosmos

within it, you are creating and preserving it and you are all the time eating it up

{ destroying it by stages for renewal } “

The Mother is now invoked as the Creator, the preserver and the destroyer of

the Universe but the emphasis is on the continuity and near-endlessness of the

process of creation, preservation and destruction...The Cosmos is always

developing and expanding, it is being preserved all the time and is being always

changed and transformed through continuous process of destruction and

renewal. Dissolution and renewal does indeed ensure preservation and this

process is nearly endless because it lasts through out a whole ‘Kalpa’ which

covers billions of years

Verse – 57 -- “ Pervading the whole cosmos as the Immanent force, as the

Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer during the whole process of creation,

preservation and dissolution.”

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This only sums up and formulates what has been said in the preceding verse.

But one point has to be specially noted. The Mother – the Ultimate Reality –

does not stand away from her creation. Any idea of duality between the creator

and the created is an illusion. She pervades the cosmos – Her creation – as the

Immanent force and that Immanent force is the eternal link between the Mother

in Kinesis and the Mother in Status. This concept of immanence has been

emphasized in the verses which follows.

Verse 58 ---“ Thou art, O, Mother, both the Ultimate Sovereign Knowledge

and the Ultimate Ignorance { striving for ever towards knowledge }; Thou art

both the supreme Illusion and the Supreme Disillusion; Thou art both the Super-

mind and the Super-mindlessness; Thou art both the Immortal memory

{ extending backward beyond this birth into earlier births and lives } and the

Densest oblivion; Thou art the Supreme Enchantment and the Supreme

Disenchantment; and thou art O’ Mother, the Ultimate Divinity and the Supreme

undivine. “

The world presents countless contradictions conflicts, contrasts, contraries and

sorrows together with symmetries, harmonies and delights. But these are all

pervaded by the Mother’s unifying Immanent force permeating and governing

the cosmos. She is both with Good and Evil, With Divine and Undivine, with

gnosis and Ignorance, with the most heightened and most refined

consciousness and the grossest materialism,- with both God and Satan She

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implanted Her upward pull in the heart of evil which impels it upward to good.

The upward pull working deep within the undivine compels it to move up into the

Divine; it causes Ignorance .to strive up towards gnosis; it impels Oblivion to

work its way into immortal memory which unmasks the links between this and

the earlier births and lives and reveals the eternal link between the finite self

and the Ultimate Reality. The grossest materialism is forever working under the

upward urge – its way into the most heightened consciousness by drawing life

out of non-living matter and mind out of life. All our illusions and enchantments

about the illusory realities of this life are being ceaselessly impelled into the

eternal radiant reality through a process of disillusion and disenchantment.

Satan – the supremely undivine – is inescapably gripped by this compulsive

upward urge and is resistlessly impelled towards God to divinize himself.

Verse 59 --- “ Thou art O’ Mother, the Ultimate cause, manifesting

yourself both in the ingfinite cosmos and the finites as the Ultimate law and

force of their being –designing the whole course of entelechy { the process of

becoming } along the interlinked orbits of the three primordial psychic habits

{ the qualitative phases Tamas, Rajas, and Sattwa } – and revealing yourself as

Moharatri – the end of the painful Tamas – dominated phase – as Maharatri, the

end of the phase in which Rajas is dominant force – and finally as Kalaratri

which is the end pof the Sattwa – oriental phase.”

Here is the most condensed enunciation of the Indian

doctrine of the Ultimate cause and of the cosmic ‘process of becoming’. The

whole Universe came out of the Mother’s pre-cosmic Impulse of Delight,

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carrying a fragment of Her consciousness force and manifesting itself in a vast

boundless ocean of seemingly lifeless and mindlessness – of light into darkness.

But the vast boundless ocean of fluid and floating matter was, from the very

beginning, anchored to certain laws rhythms which fashioned it and have been

fashioning it ever since into the continually changing and expanding universe. It

was lifeless and mindless and although it was in a state of flux and whirled

about in the time-space continuum, it was totally unaware of the rhythms and

laws which caused it to move as though in a state of somnambulism. Tamas

signifies the psychic state of sloth, stupor and torpidity and it may be questioned

as to whether it carries any meaning in the context of inanimate matter may will

be said to embody Tamas in its total form.

But the world lay exposed to the Mother’s upward pull from the very beginning.

It drew life out of non-living matter on this earth and then mind out of life. The

same process of evolution must have occurred and has been occurring on

many other planets and sub-planets in the cosmos. It is conceded that an idea

or statement of this kind will, inevitably touch off a dispute. There are many

knowledgeable people who, basing their conclusions on the knowledge, the

human race has gained so far about other planets of our Solar system,

dogmatically assert that condition for evolution and existence of life do not exist

anywhere outside this earth. They forget however that there are millions of suns

many of them incomparably larger than this smallish sun of ours, and millions of

solar systems in the cosmos. To maintain stubbornly that conditions suitable for

growth and evolution of life do not exist anywhere within these other solar

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systems is indeed less reasonable than to assume that life does exist in other

distant planets as our seers are inclined to maintain. But this kind of speculation

can have no end. We must accept our experience and knowledge of this earth

as the basis of our thoughts and ideas and recognize and formulate the truths

which reveal themselves in the light of that knowledge. There is no denying the

fact that life on this earth has come out of non-living matter. It is the most

stupendous and most breath-taking miracle and the process of happening has

been governed and regulated by such laws rhythms as rule out immediately any

half-baked ideas of chances accidents.

Long after the Sonic boom heralded the Creation, it was still matter all around-

fluid floating and hardening under the heat and glare of growing luminaries,

swayed by mighty winds and whirling about in limitless space. It was Tamas in

cosmic form. But the cosmic Rajas which is the Mother’s upward pull- the

upward pull of the cosmic consciousness force, started operating

simultaneously. The Cosmic Tamas had to adhere to the laws and rhythms

under the compulsive influence of the cosmic Rajas in a somnambulistic spell

and pre-dispose itself to the inevitable awakening. And then beginning with

minute organism and vegetation, the Cosmic Rajas drew out diverse life-forms

from Tamas-bound matter, powered them, with the reproductive instinct and the

instinct of self-preservation, eliminated and discarded many life-forms which

had far too much of matter and far too little of consciousness force and finally

produced man. The Mother created the cosmic modes of Tamas and Rajas and

made them clash, inter-play and interact to set the ‘process of becoming’ in

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motion. It produced countless organisms including diverse plants and life-forms

over millions and millions of years until it reached the climax with the

emergence of man. It has not yet been possible for man to discover the process

except in a vague, uncertain and speculative fashion. One fact however stands

out clear. Mere physical power and strength have counted for little in the

‘process of becoming’; once it started streaking round and round the inter-linked

orbits of cosmic Tamas and Rajas,- stabilizing the laws which bound together

the diverse phenomenon of the physical Universe into a coherent whole and

spreading itself over thousands of centuries as it slowly moved upward –

revealed the fundamental truths that those among the living beings who could

absorb, accommodate and exploit more of the consciousness force had a better

chance of survival and better prospects of fulfilling their inherent possibilities.

And man proved and established this truth by becoming the ruler of the earth,

using all living beings as his vassals and exploiting all that nature can offer as

his birth-right. The emergence of man completes the first stage of the entelechy

– the pre – human phase of the ‘process of becoming’.

Man took a very long time to develop himself and to train and develop his mind.

He painfully built up his religious, social and philosophical systems and different

races of men did it in strikingly different ways. The way the Indian seers and

sages envisioned the ‘process of becoming’,- after its first phase ended with the

physical, phenomenal world providing a platform for life, - was in its own way

profoundly unique. They held that, having evolved man and the human mind, it

left the phenomenal world behind, to start a quest for the noumenon,, on this

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earth, using the human mind as its instrument. The three primordial psychic

habits of TAMAS, RAJAS and SATTWA now acquire precise and separate

connotations in the context of man’s organized social, political, religious and

philosophical ideas and thoughts. TAMAS strives to seek out, store and

preserve the comforts of this life, hugging the thoughts and ideas which justify

this way of looking at life. For many people, it degenerates into total inaction

and aimless indolence, coupled with lazy pursuit of pleasures. But it serves one

useful purpose. It becomes the reservoir of the accepted thoughts and ideas,

of the accepted codes of conduct and of all accepted notions and conventions.

It provides a foundation for the social and the conventional religious life of

common men and women. As we look at the common crowd, eating, mating,

sleeping and playing – performing all their social duties without any intellectual

and spiritual yearnings, wholly unconcerned about any questions which pose

themselves above the prose – level of their existence – we can have no doubt

whatever that TAMAS is the most dominant psychic trait of mankind.

The RAJAS on the other hand is born of the response of the human mind to the

Mother’s upward pull. It creates divine discontent,--an impatience with the

existing order and its illusions, delusions and vanities – and seeks to expand the

area of consciousness and delight. It creates new aspirations which look

upward to wider knowledge and experience and generates doubts and

questionings which impel man into intense study of the realities of life and its

secrets. Ordinary men and women – the common crowds who constitute the

vast majority of mankind – remain unaffected by it. But it awakens new and

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unfamiliar impulses in poets, dreamers, philosophers, scientists and men of

action. It uses those gifted few as media to produce art, poetry, and literature –

the philosophies and sciences – and stimulates thinking about the fundamentals

of religion and spiritual thought. It throws up explosive ideas which enable a few

to revolutionise and transform the social and religious life of vast masses of

men and women. It breaks down the barriers of TAMAS,; it wells up from within

to destroy and dissolve the placid surface of life and releases vast, idle

energies held under it to seek new and revolutionary manifestations.

In between these two, runs the path of the Mother’s upward pull and the psychic

forces streaking sideways into it from both TAMAS and RAJAS – inter-twine and

blend themselves. The upward pull keeps the vast energies lying under the

cover of TAMAS in a state of ferment – ready to surface with spurts of delight in

response to the upward impulse of RAJAS and to move up in tune with an well

orchestrated rhythm which compels TAMAS to merge in the RAJAS and

participate in the upward movement. It now develops into a new psychic force

moving up along the path of the Mother’s upward pull and becomes the vehicle

of the inherent SATTWA – orientated psychic urge for knowledge wisdom. This

psychic urge gains us knowledge of physical sciences, it stimulates awareness

of the inherent sense of right and wrong and formulates ethical norms on the

basis of human experience; it evolves thoughts and ideas which fashions social

and political philosophies; it awakens man’s dormant sense of beauty and

harmony and impels his mind and heart to surge up into divine dreams and

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immortal longings which create poetry, literature and art in the widest sense; it

impels man’s finite consciousness to break its barriers and to grow, expand and

embrace the whole of life and nature It operates through a gifted few but

thoughts and ideas they formulate become a part of the intellectual and spiritual

heritage .f mankind. Majorities of men and women slowly pick up and absorb

these ideas and move up to higher moral and spiritual levels at a pace which is

almost intolerably slow. If we take the last four thousands years of man’s life on

the earth and pause to look into it in a spirit of introspection, we may discover

with a shock that man has not advanced at all from the moral and spiritual point

of view although he has made vast and phenomenal changes in his ways of life

through scientific exploitation of the physical forces and resources of nature. But

during this long period, individual seers and saints have scaled moral and

spiritual summits of dizzy height. They moved up along the path of the Mother’s

upward pull, responding to Her upward impulses and installing their ideas and

visions as beacon lights on this path, .These signals attract upward the vast

masses of men and women from down below at an almost imperceptibly slow

pace. This is what our philosophers have described as the ‘process of

becoming’. It fulfils itself in two ways. For majority of men and women, it works

its way upward through a whole ‘KALPA’ which means billions of years; for

seers and saints who have prepared themselves for upward spiritual spurts by

intensely purifying themselves through many births and deaths,; it fulfils itself by

drawing them on to the heights of revealed knowledge from where they can

envision the Ultimate secrets and truths od man’s destiny on this earth. We can

feel certain that the same ‘process of becoming’ is fulfilling itself in various ways

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elsewhere in the cosmos. But we are not at this stage in a position to offer

anything more convincing than this faith.

But one may question as to how this ‘process of becoming’ begins and ends on

this earth for men. The answer has already been given in the preceeding verse.

The gap which the ‘process of becoming’ must span is as wide as the distance

between the juxtaposed opposites set forth in that verse. It is the gap between

ignorance and supreme gnosis; it is the gap between mindlessness and the

super-mind. But the gap can be spanned because the Mother pervades and

activates both the extremes and inter-connects the two with the invisible chain

of Her upward pull.

The second line of this verse focuses the light on how the three phases are to

end for individual men and women. It has a purely subjective connotation. For

one who has rescued himself from the Tamas dominated illusions and vanities,

the Mother signals the end of the life of delusion it is inevitably accompanied

by a strong spurt of self awakening induced by a decisive upward movement

of RAJAS. The life of Civilised man striving towards knowledge during some

thousands of years has been a blend of TAMAS and RAJAS – a ceaseless

struggle for supremacy on the path of the Upward pull between the two

primordial psychic forces. It is a struggle between the downward semi-

somnumbulistic pull of TAMAS, creating compulsions which bind down the

human soul to certain ideas and conventions as a matter of habit and routine

and the RAJAS impulse, defiantly striking upward to awaken the human spirit

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from the sophorific spell of TAMAS and lead it upward to the discovery of the

realities of life in the light of a new dawn. When therefore the struggle ends in

the victory of the RAJAS, the man whose mind and soul experiences the

tensions, the thrills of the bottle and the exultant delights of the victory suddenly

finds himself awakened on a higher level of being to discover new realities. All

that appeared significant before fade away as vanities, futilities and illusions.

The old life of delusion is well and truly left behind.

The awakened man now enters the grand life. He finds his inner life illumined

and the light grows intenser as he moves on upward to progressively higher

summits. The range of vision grows wider and wider and wider fields of truths

and realities swim into vision and higher and higher summits are reached.. The

mind broadens out to embrace the whole Universe and the super-mind emerges

at last to reflect, like a mirror, the secrets and mysteries of life and death and the

boundless time-space continuum with the whole cosmos within it. The immense,

infinite self-expansion becomes unbearably exciting, and as the RAJAS impulse

reaches giddy heights, a schizophrenic confusion may sometimes grip the soul

of an even awakened man and create serious complication.. The conflict

between TAMAS and RAJAS must always create schizophrenia in various

forms ranging from very mild and almost imperceptible to deadly and

irreconcilable. They co-exist but there is always deadly antagonism between the

two. During the terminal stage of the ‘life of delusion’ the ego of a man who has

reached the final point splits itself up into two – the TAMAS – dominated ego

which we may call the lower clashing in mortal struggle with the higher,

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governed by RAJAS. The battle continues- and must continue through a series

of births and deaths- until the lower ego merges in the higher through a process

of purification and catharsis. And then as the ‘grand life’ moves further upward

the TAMAS impulse, lying dormant in a death-like trance deep below is roused

by the thrill and pride of self-expansion finds itself blended with RAJAS. It crawls

up the thrill and pride and streaks into the supra-mental region where the ego of

the awakened man posits itself. There it splits up the ego again into two – the

higher and the lower. It immediately takes possession of the lower ego, arrests

the upward march by causing the lower ego to hug the thrill and pride and to

stay where it is and stalls the whole being in passions and the dreams of a

megalo-maniac. Vision is dimmed and distorted by the mists of these dreams; it

seeks to equate itself with the infinite; the content strives to equate itself with the

continent. It seeks to enjoy perpetually the grand delusions born of the new

sense of grandeur through births and deaths. The higher ego and the lower are

locked once again in a deadly battle at the end of which the lower ego finds

itself divinised and merges finally in the higher. The awakened man scales

loftiest supra-mental height and experiences in ineffable joy of being blessed

with divine knowledge. He sees the life’s course charted for man by Mother’s

will. Every man must pass through a life of delusion in a ceaseless search for

delight extending over many births and deaths. He will then enter the ‘grand life’

through many splendoured experiences and delights. He will have to endure

multi-coloured delusions even on the supra-mental height. And then the ‘grand’

life will come to a pre-destined, blessed end on the summit of supra-mental

consciousness.

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What happens after the process of awakening complete itself and the ‘grand’

life ends? The fully awakened man looks round and sees the spectacle of life

and nature perpetually striving upward in search of purer and purer delights and

purer and rarer experiences. His short-lived delusions about being a demiurge

competing with the Mother Herself { the Ultimate Reality in Kinesis } have finally

disappeared. He has merged in the cosmic consciousness force and has cut

himself free from the vicious chain which links the consequences of his actions

in previous births with a long long series of births, re-births and deaths. But

even after the merger, he retains his separate identity and is at the disposal of

the cosmic consciousness force for re-birth any where within the universe for

any cosmic purpose. He is experiencing the SATTWA – oriented supra-mental

delight with full awareness of his separate existence and identity and is looking

upward to the Ultimate Reality of the Mother in status beyond the farthest limit

of the space-time continuum. The only force that limits his freedom now is the

restraint of the space-time continuum which he can not transcend as long as he

is in the cosmos. But the terrible auspicious moment from where he must cease

to exist separately comes round inevitably in the end to take him over the hump

of the time-space continuum from Kinesis into status. He passes into the infinite

which is incomparably vaster than cosmic space and into Infinite Eternal

timelessness which is immeasurably vaster than cosmic time. The time-space

continuum had to evolve itself in the mind of man because no event or idea can

be understood without placing it somewhere in the universe and without

interpreting it in terms of concurrence, consecutiveness and cause-effect

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sequence. For a man who passes into status from Kinesis, the concepts of time

and space loose their significance and they cease to exist for him.

Verse 60 -- “ You manifest yourself, O Mother, as Beaty and Harmony,

you reveal yourself as the sovereign Mistress of the Universe, you are the

Elusive { Bashful } One and you are the sovereign Cosmic Mind { generating

that spirit of unshakable assurance without which understanding and knowledge

is impossible and manifesting yourself as Super-Mind in blessed mortals } tou

reveal yourself as Modesty { in men and women, creating a spontaneous

awareness of what they should be ashamed of }, You are the force which

nourishes and strengthens the body and mind, you are the spirit of Delight

{ which helps man to strive upward inspite of sorrow and misfortunes }, You are

the spirit of peace { which strengthens fraternal ties between men and men }

and you are the spirit of compassion and forgiveness. “

The whole Universe in general man in particular are gripped by the ‘process of

becoming’ which is a process of transition from matter to life, from mindlessness

to mind, from incoherence and dis-equilibrium to rhythm and equilibrium, from

discord to harmony, from ignorance to supreme knowledge, from undivine to

divine. This is the message conveyed by the sage to Surath [ the good

charioteer ] who had been trying to struggle out of the life of delusion into the

‘grand’ life He was treading the path of Mother’s upward pull with full awareness

of the clash and inter-action of the three primordial psychic forces and the sage

found the moment opportune to string together the great Ideas through which

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She reveals Herself to the enlightened man to sustain his upward march.

The first to come in order of precedence is the idea of beauty. It evolves

spontaneously in the mind of man. It is impossible to explain how it originates

itself but the primitive man must have recognized it with a sense of wonder

when it flashed through his mind. The loveliness of a human body and of

flowers, the beauty of seas, mountains and rivers, claimed and received

unquestioning recognition. The sweetness of human voice and the happy

chatter and songs of birds conveyed a sense of beauty as strongly as a

pleasing sight. Fragrance such as we experience in the world of nature and in

life conveyed the same impression. It is the M<other’s first and the most

significant gift to mankind and it invariably goes together with delight to help

man to march forward an upward. Ideas of coherence, symmetry and

proportion come much later to reveal themselves as ingredients of the sense of

beauty which man spontaneously and unquestioningly experiences. He uses

these ideas to produce art, poetry and literature and to construct his

philosophical, social and political thoughts and systems. But beauty as the first,-

the primordial idea- entered the mind of man with a sense of wonder and with

the force of a revelation, illumining his life at the lowest point and then purifying

and refining his inherent hunger for delights at progressively higher and higher

levels as it ran upward through the ‘life of delusion’ and the ‘grand life’ to reach

the summit.

Fear, as an idea and emotion, may however compete with the idea of beauty for

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primordiality.. Facing a nature, often inclement and terrible with raging winds,,

torrential rains and vast frightful primitive forests harbouring ferocious, predatory

animals, incomparably stronger than him, the primitive man must have often

lived in a state of fear. Having being mentally ahead of other animals., he must

have also feared occasionally an omnipotent and sinister demiurge against

whom he was totally defenceless. But even if the sense of beauty and the

instinct of fear, had simultaneously surfaced, the sense of beauty was easily the

more significant. It provided him with experiences which helped him to

overcome fears and to survive., In diverse ways, the idea of coherence,

symmetry, order and rhythm which he extracted from the sense of beauty

helped him to build up a primitive social life. He built his home and erected his

defences against predators; he organized social life on a tribal basis and

became a lord of the forests and wastes which held so many terrors for him

before. He proved himself an architect both in the literal and symbolic sense,

having variously used his ideas of order, symmetry and rhythm during long

countless decades. And as he did it, he discovered that the phenomenal world

was governed and held together by an incomparably superior symmetry, order

and rhythm, - protected by immutable laws. And he felt with the shock of a

tremendous discovery that the Mother is the Divine Architect and the Absolute

Mistress of the Universe. She is ineffably beautiful, omni-potent and omniscient

but the instinct of fear which blended with reverence planted in the mind of man

the irremovable idea that the Absolute Mistress of the cosmos could be terrible

at times, striking terror into the heart of sinners and restraining and defeating

the forces of evil. Whatever safeguarded and protected his life and all that he

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called his own was good and whatever imperiled them was evil. And he assured

himself, the supreme Mistress of the Universe is always with him and against

evil.

It was then at this stage that he found himself shocked into a new awareness

and discovery. He felt and found that his own ego was seeking to model itself on

his idea of the Sovereign Mistress of the Cosmos and to become the absolute

ruler of the tiny little Kingdom within his own body and mind. The discovery

came to the enlightened few – not to common crowds of men and women all at

once. And some of those enlightened few instinctively concluded that the

human ego had to behave in this fashion because it was an emanation from the

supreme cosmic ego of the Mother. This idea of the cosmic consciousness

linking itself up with the finite consciousness of man broadened out and

ultimately merged in the concept of the cosmic consciousness force pervading

the whole cosmos with all living beings and non-living matter. And from this

point onward, Indian seers and saints felt and preached that even the minutest

units of life and matter have an element of divinity in them and are symbols of

the divine. The Ultimate Divinity is everywhere and the sage very significantly

describes It as the Elusive One. This is Monism – not Monotheism which is

intellectually and spiritually inadequate and even unacceptable at the highest

level. Followers of some One-God religions do not indeed make the images of

their gods with plastic materials but they build up their images with words which

make them easily identifiable. And then the blind devotion and fanatical loyalty,

they become as idolatrous with one god as others may become with more than

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one. Indian Monism is pitched at the highest point of human aspiration. There

can be no greater purifying concept of divine worship; it sanctifies polytheism

and rescues it from idolatry as long as the symbols worshipped are regarded as

diverse manifestations of the Divine Ultimate Reality. It reveals Itself to the

blessed few and cause to others striving for light and knowledge only in fugitive

moments of inspired awareness. The Elusive One grants elusive visions which

can enter into and purify the inner life only when the visions are remembered

with reverence. But apart from these intuitive visions which are Supra-mental,

the Mother’s cosmic mind, reproducing itself in the finite mind of man, can

generate faith through heightened human consciousness with signs and signals

which a human mind can understand and interpret. The mind of man cannot for

instance view the absolute miracle of life emerging out of non-living matter

without recognizing with a shock that life which is inseparable from

consciousness does indeed lie dormant in what is seemingly inanimate. The

Sage does not make any mention of this miracle in this verse but he refers to

some of the finer ideas and emotions which has spontaneously evolved

themselves in the human mind to sustain and keep up the miraculous upward

march of man. He mentions the instinct of modesty which spontaneously

creates an awareness of all that is gross, vulgar and unrefined; he mentions

physical nutrients which nourish life and to beautifies, harmonies and rhythms in

both the physical and psychic worlds which nourish man’s inner, spiritual life. He

points to the instinct of delight which transcends the inevitable sorrows and

agonies and keeps up the triumphant spirit of man. And he finally mentions the

instinctive human desire for peace which comes from a deep awareness of the

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rhythms and harmonies pervading both phenomenal and spiritual worlds and

the spirit of compassion and forgiveness which transcend conflicts and

antagonisms. These ideas and emotions are manifestations of the Mother,

mirrored in the human mind and picked up and transformed by man into human

qualities, under the compulsive influence of the Mother’s cosmic consciousness

force.

Verse 61 --- “ You are O Mother, the terrible One, with the sword, the

sharp-pointed prong, the mace and the sharp-edged disk. You are the One with

the thunderous couch-shell, the bow and the arrow, the thick spicked club and

the thick iron rod.”

This verse is intimately linked with the preceding one which

signifies the entry of a man into the ‘grand’ life. The blessed man who sees the

Mother revealed within himself as beauty and harmony and as the Supreme

Mistress of the Universe, compelling adherence to the eternal cosmic laws and

rhythms- who sees Her in sudden moments of heightened consciousness

unmasking Herself in elusive visions which stimulates and intensify his

awareness of the secrets of life and destiny and help him to progress upward –

and who sees the Mother’s cosmic mind mirroring itself with the unveiled

mystics of creation and dissolution in his own mind and super-mined – definitely

leaves the ‘life of delusion’ behind and triumphantly enters the ‘grand life’..The

great ideas and emotions which derive themselves from an awareness of

inexhaustible strength and delight and from a profound sense of peace,

modesty and compassion and on which the seer focuses the light of his vision

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in the preceding verse – together with many other ideas and emotions of the

same genre – now surface themselves spontaneously from the depth of his

being. They create tremendous dynamic forces, generating an upward

movement which slowly carries upward vast masses of men and women. And

they simultaneously cause the ego of the blessed man to grow and expand;; it

broadens out to divinize itself; it seeks to grasp the Universe within itself and

absorb the cosmic consciousness force. He is very near the summit of supreme

knowledge and divinity; he is fully awakened but inspite of it, TAMAS streakes

upward into this supra-mental region from the lower levels of his being and

splits up the ego to create scizo-phrenic confusion. One pert of his self strives to

reach the summit- to complete the journey and pilgrimage. But the other part,

held by TAMAS, is much stronger now. It colossalises itself; it decides to stall

itself in the thrill and pride of self-expansion and the new-born paranoia for ever;

it works itself up into an autolatrous obsession to claim unchallengeable

sovereignty over all that it can see and grasp. It claims to hold and possess the

beauties and delights of the cosmos absolutely as his own.

And then the Mother, using the other part of his self – his higher ego – as Her

instrument starts striking the blows – hard and strong – to cleanse, purify and

divinize the lower self. Having refined his sense of beauty and harmony through

many births, deaths and re-births under the pressure of diverse experiences

and emotions, he { his personality still unsplit } effortlessly discovers the whole

Universe as one Bound together by beauties, symmetries and harmonies. He

evolves beautiful truths and ideas which flow from this discovery. For a moment,

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the Mother stands revealed to him as beauty and harmony but when the

oversize lower ego takes possession of his being, he starts imagining himself as

the Creator of the all pervasive beauty and harmony and refuses to recognize

himself as a humble discoverer. The Mother’s invisible sword comes into play at

once; It lends its edge to sharpen the malice and contempt of other humans and

cuts down the over-grown ego to its proper size.

And once this process of self-glorification starts in the case of a man who has

stepped into the ‘grand’ life and finds himself on the supra-mental plane, there

is no limit to it extending itself in all directions. In the light of varied experiences

and intuitive visions spreading over many births and re-berths, he

spontaneously sees the Mother not only as Beauty and harmony but as the

Omnipotent and omniscient Mistress of the Universe at the same time. He

simultaneously discovers his own being – his own ego – as an emanation from

the cosmic ego of the Mother and is possessed by an overwhelmingly delightful

sense of participation in the ineluctable compulsions which ensure adherence

to the cosmic laws and rhythms of the Universe. He now begins to tread the

razor’s edge; he condemns himself to the delusion of equating his participation

in the Mother’s sovereign powers with his own sovereignty.. He finds it easy to

command and to enforce obedience but the distorted sense of power attracts

immediately the Mother’s prong which pierces his being from the lowest point to

be highest and re-awakens and re-activates his awareness of the Mother’s

omnipotence and omniscience and the multi-point prong sharpened by the

distrust and skepticism of his fellow humans which keeps on poking and

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tormenting him until he is compelled to look into himself to re-discover and re-

affirm the truth

His magnified ego and the transcendental megalomania generated by it lead

him into odd ways at himself from other directions. The ineffably beautiful

visions of the Mother he has had in moments of heightened awareness appear

to be the manifestations of his own creative mind and he is immediately

punished with the frightening visions of the Mother as the terrible one. His

super-mind which has since emerged from the matrix of his mind mirrors the

cosmic processes and interprets the cosmic signs signals – the miraculous

appearance of life, the laws and rhythms, the symmetries and harmonies

unifying the cosmos – which reveal the cosmic mind as the sovereign power

behind the Universe. But his excessive obsession with his own self dims his

vision and weakens his faith He wonders whether what he sees and feels about

the cosmic processes is the reality or mere fanciful creation of his own mind,

forgetting that his mind { and super-mind } is only an emanation from the

Mother’s cosmic mind and cannot be distrusted. He is hit at once with the mace

of inspired words – the inspired words and incantations in which the seers and

sages who reached the summit of knowledge and wisdom before have

formulated the Supreme and Ultimate truths. It is clash between intuitive vision

and what we call rationalism in this age. But rationalism based on inductive cum

deductive reasoning can only explain the facts of the phenomenal world without

any adequate explanation of the mysteries and secrets behind them. Why

should the visible fringe of the world behave in the manner it does and why

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should it adhere to certain immutable laws and rhythms? Who created these

laws or how and why did they evolve themselves? The rationalist accepts them

as facts and exploits them for his own purposes, dismissing all ideas and

intuitive thoughts which may arise out of them as fanciful speculation. The mace

of inspired words may however break down the barriers created by his pride of

intellect and awaken his dormant sense of wonder. But if his intellect and

reason still disregard the mace and ignores it and treats the intuitive visions of

the Ultimate Reality as grand illusions and resplendent fancies, he is picked .up

and placed on the sharp-edged disc of ‘KARMAFAL’ { the consequences of

significant actions in the current and previous lives }, to be wheeled round

through continuing cycles of births, deaths and rebirths for purifications and

catharsis. The disc of ‘karma’ spins off the delusions and vanities which affect

the soul of an enlightened or near-enlightened man even on the supra-mental

plane and prepares him for final emancipation

The ego which has streaked its way into the Supra-mental region through many

births, deaths and re-births generates, from within itself, many forces which

broaden and strengthen it automatically It spontaneously shrinks away from all

that is vulgar., obscene, gross and unclean; it is sustained by a sense of

inexhaustible strength- ; it surges up on the crest of an irrepressible wave of

delight. It has a profound desire for peace and a still profounder compassion for

the follies and vanities of erring men and women with whom it is in contact.

These and similar other ideas and emotions well up from the depths of its being

as naturally as buds blossom into flowers, ..They strengthen it and help it

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upward as long as they do not disturb and distort the rhythms and harmonies of

life..

But the moment they start colossalising the ego, they slide into the undivine.

When a man participating in ‘grand life’ feels and acts as though the spirit of

modesty which makes him shy off from everything which is vulgar, ugly and

unclean is exclusively his own – that it does place him above his fellow men - ,

he starts magnifying and distorting his own thoughts and feelings. He starts

entertaining ridiculously high opinions of himself and the Mother’s invisible bow,

strung for ruthless action, sharply rings out through the multi-voice contempt of

those around him to cut it down to bits. If he thinks and feels that he alone

stands supremely triumphant with and can soar up into the divine blue above on

the wings of his avian delight, the Mother’s invisible arrow, powered by the envy

and distrust of others swishes up into the air to clip down the wings and force

him down to grovel in the mud. A man born into the ‘grand life’ may

spontaneously feel a strong desire for peace among men – and among

communities and Nations. But the moment he poses as a prophet, standing on

a summit where he has no equal, the Mother’s invisible multi-spiked club

passes into the hands of common men and women as an instrument for beating

down his pride. In the same way, the thoughts and actions of such a man are

normally inspired by compassion for human sorrows and agonies but when he

installs himself as a superman, having a monopoly of compassion, the Mother

hands over her invisible iron rod to common people to be used for striking down

his vanity

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Man who are born into the ‘grand life’ are always among us. They are very few

and some of them may pass totally unnoticed although their thoughts and

meditations are believed to exercise a healing influence on men and women,

carrying the life’s Cross and still hungering for delight around them. But there

are some among them who find themselves possessed by messianic emotions

and seek to transform and divinize the life of fellow humans one way or the

other. They take up task allotted. To them by Destiny; following the course

charted by his own actions in previous lives, such a man works his way up into

supra-mental awareness and reaches a point where the identity between the

finite mind of man and the cosmic mind stands revealed with the Unities,

harmonies and the rhythms which integrate and unify the cosmos. He feels, this

awareness is communicable and he speaks out. Devotees and disciples gather

round him and he finds himself installed on the razor-thin summit partly by his

own will and partly by the collective will of his disciples and devotees. He must

watch his steps because one false step will make him slide down and fall.

How can such a man – one of the rare and privileged few – make a false step

and deserve a fall ? The answer must come from an understanding of the

nature and behaviour of the human ego. Ego co-exist with life. The ego of every

living being is the master of the being, and a study of the highly developed ego

of man makes the abundantly clear. The ego of a man is the master of his

being; it is the soul and it is, as our seers envisioned it, an important entity. It

survives many deaths to be born into new lives under cosmic compulsions – to

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deepen and broaden the course of its being and to cleanse, and purify and

expand the finite consciousness force it carries with itself until it reaches the

supra-mental level and becomes one of the rare and privileged souls destined

to take over the task of leading human societies to higher stages. But self-hood

is inseparable from selfishness. Selves emerged life as rulers of finite beings to

preserve life and to strengthen and expand their consciousness force The self in

every living being first exercised its inherent will to live and survive and thus

willed the dormant mind to wake up and surface. That was how it began and the

consciousness force, once roused started thereafter to grow and expand,

discovering unknown capacity for knowledge and feeling. It reached the climax

in human beings and in course of a long process of evolution, the human ego

established itself as a sovereign authority in tune with the cosmic rhythm within

its own range, using the senses, the mind and the super-mind as its agents and

instruments. It developed into a demi-urge within its own sphere of influence

and as the Christian Sage said with rare insight, it was made in god’s own

image. It further signifies that, apart from being a sovereign within its own

Kingdom, it is a self conscious and self activating agent, capable of responding

to the Mother’s will and sharing Her Omnipotence and Omniscience, able to

wage a ceaseless war with inherent undivine impulses, through many births and

deaths, and finally to divinize itself and enter the Kingdom of heaven on the

supra-mental summit. .And on its way to the summit, it is its pre-destined

privilege to spread sweetness and light and to show the vast masses behind,

the paths they must pursue on their upward journey.

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How do the undevine forces come in and how do they originate themselves ?

The emergence of the Ego is a stupendous miracle – as stupendous as the

emergence of life. Our seers envisioned It as the Mother – The One Ultimate

Reality – manifesting Herself as many and pervading and accommodating the

many within Her cosmic Ego. They saw it as the One in many and the many in

One The many are the egos in general – evolving themselves continuously both

out of life and non-living matter – and the human egos in particular. The Mother

created the many to play the cosmic game of communion – the game of the

One communing with the many and the many striving to commune with the One

and to understand. The many are the mixture of both divine and undivine; they

are initially undivine with the divine spark lying sub-merged in dense darkness in

the core of the being. The spark fuels itself with the instinctive and inherent

ideas of pity, compassion, mercy and self restraint and self-abnegation – the

great fundamental ideas on which human life and society is founded – through

births, deaths and rebirths and then the blessed few among the many, trailing

the course set by their own actions in previous births, transmigrate into a life

where the awareness of life and Destiny as an integrated whole – the

awareness of the One in many and the many in one – reveals itself. And this

new awareness fuels the tiny little spark burning tamely and timidly in the crypt

of the being into a mighty flame which transforms the surrounding darkness into

light. This awareness is divine and all our divine impulses flow from it. But

before it comes, every human ego is dominated by the undivine and has to

move along the courses of transmigration from one body to another through

births, deaths, and rebirths. Evrey unit of well-defined life has its self or ego; it

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emerges as its preserver and protector within its narrow limits and limited power.

It has therefore to be selfish under the compulsive influence of the life force

which brought it into being and which must lead to its dissolution in due course

It is its fate to be pre-occupied with itself at the beginning but it is not its ultimate

destiny. It is equipped, even in sub-human forms of life, with a mind and senses

through which diverse influences stream into its being from the world outside.

This is best exemplified in man. The human ego is certainly preoccupied with

itself but the subtle-influences of diverse sights and sounds, of diverse colours

and fragrances and diverse human relationships which constitute man’s social

life constantly stream in to widen and strengthen its consciousness and to

broaden and strengthen its sense of being. They produce an awareness of

being linked together with and a sense of participation in a life which

incomparably and immeasurably vaster than the life based on one’s own self

and bounded by the sense of selfhood.

This awareness – this sense of participation in a wider, social and spiritual life

with other men, women and sub-humans – is divine. It releases forces which

take a man out of his fog-bound obsession with himself into the ever-expanding

light of fuller consciousness and knowledge. It is the beginning of the process of

de-egoing the ego –a process which spreads itself over many births and re-

births and eventually divinizes the ego of a blessed man. Although it is the

primary responsibility of an ego is to preserve the life of which it is the master

and to promote its interests, excessive pre-occupation with itself is undivine. If

we prefer the Symbolic name of ‘Satan’, this over-obsession with one’s own self

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may be identified as undivine and satanic. It is an inherent evil in human nature,

it has a way of extending and expanding itself to create gang minds which

dominates groups and communities in the name of religion or of a Nation, totally

overwhelming and suppressing their sense of ethical and spiritual values and

causing a total, moral and spiritual blindness and darkness to descend on them.

This is the Evil, the Satan, the Undivine.

But the Mother is ceaselessly drawing us upward; Her omnipotence reveals

itself as the upward pull and She has implanted in us certain divine impulses

which respond to the pull to lead us upward. It begins with a mild schizophrenic

current which first causes a confrontation between obsessive pursuit of self-

interest and a sense of higher obligation. It begins as a moral impulse which

activates a man’s sense of right and wrong. It impels him to deny himself

opportunities for pursuit of self-interest when he finds it clearly wrong. But it is

initially a feeble current. It is our fate to be born into a life of delusion in which

our hunger for self-based delights and pleasures remains the most dominant

reality during a long, long period extending over many births rebirths. The

human ego emerged to fulfil its pre-destined divine mission of being the

Mother’s companion – Her son – to be impelled by the forces of destiny into the

supreme knowledge which reveals the Mother as the Supreme, Sovereign

Cosmic Ego and the Creatrix of the egos of living beings. But man must tread a

long, long path through births and re-births before the knowledge is gained and

must be largely pre-occupied with his own self enroute. He must will to leave

and survive and must then will to learn and understand. And while doing it, he

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must love, hate, dare and fear, experiencing and consolidating diverse emotions

and seeking fulfillment of self-based desires and delights. And all the time, the

Mother’s omnipotent will continues to draw him upward creating compulsions

which force him to detach himself from his own self and to divide his self into

two. One of the two selves seeks desperately to pin him down to a life of

absolute selfishness while the other strives to see himself as one of the many

and the many as emanations from the One. Then the two selves – the lower

ego and the higher – find themselves locked in a long grim battle and then at

the appropriate moment, the higher ego, ridden by the Mother as though it is

Her mount, finally subdues and defeats the lower. Thus does the awareness of

the many emanating from the One and the One pervading and governing the

many stabilize itself and ends the life of delusion.

The victorious higher ego, free and unchained, finally reaches the supra-mental

summit and the Mother reveals Herself as the cosmic mind manifesting itself as

Beauty, Rhythm and Harmony, linking together both the phenomenon and the

noumenon and inspite of apparent disparities, tuning both up into an integrated

whole. But the lower ego, subdued but not wholly crushed and annihilated,

sneaks up stealthily to create a new complication even on the summit. It

stealthily and gradually transform supra-mental vision knowledge into

transcendental paranoia. Bewitched by autolatrous obsession, even a blessed

man on the supramental summit begins to regard himself as a demiurge; he

strives to disown and repudiate the concept of the Mother as the Ultimate

Reality; he comes to think and believe that the supra-mental vision and

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knowledge which climax his spiritual aspiration and endeavour is exclusively his

own and cannot be shared with others as a boon from the Mother. He has

stepped into the ‘grand life’ after a long series of births, deaths and re-births but

he is gripped by autolatous megalomania and lapses into undivine distemper.

He colossalises his ego dismissing the Mother as the non-existent Nihil and

seeking recast the whole scheme of life and destiny.

He is then struck down with the Mother’s sword, the sharp-pointed prong, the

mace, the sharp edged disk, the hammer and the bow and arrow. He is through

a process of purification catharsis and is finally re-deemed. The undivine forces

can creep into even supra-mental knowledge and wisdom but once crushed

there on the summit, they are finally and irrevocably extinguished. A blessed

man who emerges, free and stainless, from this harsh and strenuous cathasis

stays blissfully divine and reaches his journey’s end.

The weapons, symbolically described in this verse, are among the weapons

which the Mother uses for purification and cathasis both in gthe life of delusion

and in the ‘grand life’. They are invisible, but they strike with deadly accuracy

and precision. They strike down earthly delusions – the ego – based hungers

and appetites generated by earthly longings and passions – as long as the life

of delusion lasts while they strike down psychic and super-psychic delusions of

a man who has entered the ‘grand life’ but to ransom him from the risks of a fall

and to redeem his sins.

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Verse 62 --- “ thou art Beauty and Rhythm, O Mother; thou art more

beautiful than any beauty can conceive of and envision or focuss our vision on;

thou art the most divinely and ineffably beautiful. Of all the realities, eternal and

non-eternal, thou art the Ultimate Reality and the supreme, Sovereign Mistress

of them all. “

The process of purification and catharsis has completed itself

at last through travails and agonies extending over a long series of births,

deaths and re-births and the Mother reveals Herself to the blessed soul as

Beauty, manifesting itself as more and more ineffably beautiful in the ever

lasting light of vision. A blessed soul finally reaches the summit of supreme

knowledge after striving towards it through many births, deaths and re-births,

the supreme knowledge slowly evolving itself out of the growing awareness of

the One in many and many in One. On this summit, the enlightened soul

subdues and finally annihilates what may be called his lower ego and the higher

ego, purified, unchained and blissfully free, enters the Kingdom of heaven. The

ego retains however its identity and has to be alone with and within itself at

times and in such self-centered moods, the blessed man can ‘see’ the Mother

only vaguely as beautiful. But the downward current of delight has been

reversed at last and the upward current fulfils itself through endless self-

expansion. The upward delight now brings the blessed man into communion

with other kindred spirits – those who are already on the summit of supreme

knowledge and those who are striving towards it – and he ‘sees’ the Mother

through the spectrum of his super-mind widened by the communion as

incomparably more beautiful than he saw Her before from the angle of his self-

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centered mood. The upward delight continues to surge up and around the

emancipated, unbound ego and to impel it to expand; the awareness of the One

in many and many in One generates itself as an overwhelming impulse which

causes the finite consciousness of the blessed man to expand and strive to

match the cosmic consciousness itself. And now in this finally triumphant mood

in which he feels as though the whole cosmos – is sharing his sense of

emancipation and moving towards fulfillment with him, the blessed ego sees the

Mother as most ineffably beautiful through the spectrum of his super-mind,

made almost as wide as the cosmos itself by the force of inspired self

expansion.

He realizes at this moment with a force of conviction, never equaled before, that

the Mother is the Ultimate Reality to which all other realities, both eternal and

non-eternal are subordinate. The eternal realities are the cosmic consciousness

force and its manifestations indissolubly linked with it while all other realities

ceaselessly bubbling up and down in the cosmos are short lived, non-eternal

and illusory. But whether eternal or non-eternal, all realities emanate from the

Mother, the Ultimate Reality, and the Mother is the Supreme Mistress of them all.

Verse 63 ,-- { I }. “ Thou art the Soul of the Cosmic, O ‘Mother’; Thou art

the Force which sustains all things in this Universe – big and small – and at all

times – and all that is eternally existent and all that is evanescent and short-

lived. How are we to offer you prayers ? “

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Verse 64 .-- { II } “ You have drawn even the Triune God head of the

Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer of the cosmos into slumber and kept

Him under the compulsive control of cosmic sleep. Who may then be able to

worship you, O’ Mother.”

Verse 65 . { III } “ O’ Mother, You have embodied Me { the Creator },

Vishnu { the Preserver } and Ishan { Siva } { the Destroyer } in cosmic Ideas

{ which fix their eternal identities and their cosmic functions and duties }. Who

may then have the strength to offer you prayers { unless you grant him the

necessary strength and knowledge } ?

{ I } – Having seen the Mother as ineffable Beauty and experienced

the rare bliss of self-identification with the whole cosmos and with the multitude

of finites which constitute it and which pursue their separate courses, regulated

by different speeds and rhythms, to flow eventually into one cosmic rhythm,

Lord Brahmaa Ushering in a new cycle of creation, discovers the Mother as the

Ultimate Immanent Reality of the Universe. Indian Sages and seers on the

supra-mental summit have tried to sum up the significance of the Mother’s

Immanence in the idea of the One { the Ultimate One } in Many and many in

One. The Immanent Reality, carrying with It the Mother’s Omnipotent will,

manifests itself through all objects, big and small. Both light and darkness derive

their characteristic force and quality from the Mother’s Immanence. She

pervades the Universe with every thing in it and the Divine in man and nature

derives itself from the pervasive force as much as the Undivine. And all

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throughout the Universe, this pervasive Immanence force is forever impelling

darkness to strive towards light, ignorance to strive towards knowledge and the

Undivine to strive towards the Divine. A Gnostic who finds himself possessed by

this idea of identity with the Mother’s Immanent Reality on the giddy supra-

mental summit naturally wonders as to how to worship the Mother. All sense of

duality – as between the Finite and Infinite – is lost and the act of worshiping the

Mother may strike the blessed man as self-worship as long as he is gripped by

the heightened consciousness of one-ness with the Mother. But this mood

cannot last forever even for a man who has stepped into supra-mental life. He is

inspired by the feeling and conviction that man climaxes the process of creation

and that She has made him in her own image. When therefore he climbs down

to duality from the exalted sense of One-ness with the Mother, he does not feel

degraded. He feels, he is a person capable of communing with the Mother, - the

supreme person who is the sovereign of the Universe. And prayers are the best

form of communion between a human ego and the supreme, Sovereign Ego,

the Supreme Monad. Man starts experiencing this awareness of the Mother as

the Immanent Reality vaguely as a hazy distant vision even during the life of

delusion.’ With many men, it is a spontaneous feeling – instinctively self

generated. The vague awareness strengthens itself through many births, deaths

and re-births and finally ripens into radiant supra-mental knowledge. This is the

Mother’s greatest gift and blessing to man, symbolically conveyed through the

vision of Lord Brahmaa at the beginning of the new cycle of creation.

{ II } – But Lord Brahmaa the first seer sees the Mother both as

the Immanent and the transcendent Reality. If the awareness of Her all

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pervasive Immanence produces a sense of consciousness and bring an

inspired man perilously close to a sense of equality with Her, an awareness of

Her Transcendance carries with it a corrective force which restores the balance

Such an inspired man on the supra-mental plane does indeed step into the

blessed life but he carries a perilous blessing on his head; he has to start

walking on the razor’s edge and a false step may lead him into psychic and

spiritual megalomania. The sense of One-ness with the Mother may create a

sense of equality which may in its turn, create a spirit of challenge. It may

colossalise his ego and prompt him to challenge the authority of the Mother and

even to deny it altogether as it did prompt Sumbha in the third Hymn. Lord

Brahmaa, standing on the vantage ground of the summit, between one cycle of

creation which has disappeared into the vast, unfathomable matrix of time after

billions and billions of years, and a new cycle of creation just beginning to unfold

itself and destined to extend over billions and billions of years, again, pauses to

envision the Mother’s inter-linked transcendence and Immanence – trying to

envision the Mother in inter-linked status and kinesis. A cycle of creation,

seemingly endless and eternal – extending over apparently measureless time –

evolves itself out of the Mother’s impulse of Delight blending with a current of

Her consciousness force as they stream down simultaneously from Her

transcendence. The current of Delight,, moving tumultuously downward, creates

countless finites – both living and non-living – and multiplies itself into countless

currents of delight to create a lively set-up for the cosmic game in the lower

hemisphere of the being. The current of consciousness force, descending at the

same time, charged with an upward pull which links it eternally with Mother’s

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transcendence and seeks, from the very beginning of every cycle of creation, to

restrain the downward movement of Delight and to call it back to the Ultimate

static source – the Mother’s transcendence. Delight and consciousness blend

together to constitute the cosmic consciousness force but the struggle between

the two within the cosmic consciousness as a whole is eternally on. It

continually reflects itself in life. The longings, generated by the Impulse of

Delight, focuses themselves initially on earthy – earth-based delights but the

upward pull imperceptively refines them into purer hungers and finally climaxes

the process with pure, sacred joys on the summit of the being. We see this

process even in the lives of the commonest men and women although the

climax may be seen only in the lives of the rare few. The conflict between the

gravitational pull of delight drawing us down into coarser common joys and the

upward pull leading us up into purer and rarer delights in the upper hemisphere

of the being is the most fundamental cosmic phenomenon. The cycle of creation

lasts as long as this conflict lasts. But the ultimate victory is always won by the

consciousness force activated by the Mother’s upward pull. Deep within it, the

upward pull sets the ‘process of becoming’ in motion from the very start

throughout the Universe; it causes common appetites to refine themselves into

sacred, immortal longings; course, common hungers which trap individual men

and women in meshes and forge fetters round their soul suddenly uncoil and

purify themselves into hidden, dormant hungers for emancipation and

redemption. The ‘process of becoming’ is the eternal process of Catharsis. It

operates until the downward current of delight is finally and irrevocably

reversed; it continues over billions and billions of years until the downward

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current completely spreads itself itself out, dries up and ceases to flow. The

‘process of becoming’ can complete itself only when the upward current takes

the cosmic impulse of Delight back to the summit of the being – to the source

for merger in the Mother’s transcendence. And then the Mother withdraws Her

Immanent Reality from the cosmos into Her Transcendence and the Trinity of

Brahmaa, Vishnu and Shiva – created and sustained by the Mother’ Immanence

fall asleep like children on Her lap. One cycle of creation comes to an end; it lies

dormant in the Mother like a seed in the soil until the Mother causes another

space-time continuum to evolve itself and awakens another cycle of creation

into being with an Impulse of Delight drawing down another stream of

consciousness force from Her Transcendence for the cosmic purpose of

creation, preservation and dissolution.

This cosmic process of upward striving – of ignorance striving

towards knowledge, of darkness towards light, of common, course feelings and

hungers striving towards finer and finer emotions and longings, of mortal beings

striving towards immortality – reflects itself in births, deaths and rebirths of finite

egos. Every ego or self, gripped by the Mother’s upward pull, ceaselessly

strives upward. It is what is commonly called a soul governing a particular body

and mind of which it is the master. Sustained by the Mother’s Immanence which

inheres both in the soul [ ego ] on the one hand and the body and mind on the

other, the ego uses the body and mind as an instrument for upward striving. And

a body and mind really exists as long as it serves the purpose. When death

comes, the Mother withdraws Her Immanence from the body [ as a separate

entity ] which then returns to the elements with which it was originally

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constituted – earth, water, heat, air and ether. But the psychic influences which

derive themselves from the activities of the life just ended – from desires fulfilled

and delights experienced, from unfulfilled yearnings, course, common appetites

from high aspirations for the grand life, from low, selfish pursuits of pleasure and

from imaginative visions of a life of sacrifice on the grand scale, from low

mundane life and from high thinking and super-mundane meditation thoughts –

pass into a subtle – physical body – as our sages have said. There in this body,

a finite ego has to make penance and enjoy happiness and bliss for what he did

in his previous life under the compulsive influence of cosmic laws and then must

trans-migrate into another earthly body and existence trailing the consequences

of his actions in previous births to continue the process of upward striving.

The Seer returns to the subject of prayer. Prayer postulates

duality; One cannot offer prayers until he stands aloof from the being to whom

prayers are offered. In the preceding verse, the Seer, profoundly aware of the

Mother’s all-pervasive Immanence and overwhelmed by the sense of one-ness

with Her, could only wonder as to how She should be worshipped. But he now

steadies himself by striving to see and understand the Mother as the

Transcendent Reality. She does indeed release a part of Herself to inhere in the

cosmos and to create the cosmic forces of creation, preservation and

dissolution. But She does withdraw Her Immanent Reality with all cosmic forces

at the appointed hour into Her Transcendence. He therefore, bows down in

humility to acknowledge that no finite being can equate himself with the Infinite

– that the content can never equate itself with the continent, -- and humbly

submit that no one can even offer prayers to the Mother until She gives him the

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necessary knowledge and strength.

[ III ]-- Lord Brahma could no longer keep on looking backward at the

mysteries surrounding the final phase and disappearance of the preceding cycle

of creation. The Impulse of Delight, tumultuously bubbling up and down in the

matrix of the newly evolved space-time continuum has already drawn down

from the Mother’s Eternal consciousness force, a current charged with the

cosmic creative urge and symbolically identified as Lord Brahma. It has already

blended with the Impulse of Delight and initiated the process of New Creation.

Striving to introduce the cosmic laws, rhythms and harmonies which will cause

the cosmos to evolve itself But over-whelmed by the Impulse of Delight, it was

being continuously swept off the course and finding itself unable to cope with

the task. Lord Brahma was therefore appealing to the Mother to release the

fullest and strongest current of the Cosmic Consciousness force, designated in

this Hymn as Vishnu, and could feel at last that His prayer was going to be

immediately granted. He could sense to descent from the Mother’s

Transcendence and could envision it as one cosmic force which accommodate

the Creator, the Preserver and the Destroyer and create laws and rhythms inter-

linking the three in indissoluble and unbreakable harmony. He could say now

that the Forces of Creation, Preservation and Dissolution had already notionally

come into being and that the cosmos would soon be on an even keel with the

Impulse of Delight tuning up with the cosmic laws and rhythms in a spirit of self-

surrender under the compulsive influence of the Cosmic Consciousness Force.

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Lord Brahma could now clearly fore-see how the cosmic forces of Creation,

Preservation and Dissolution were destined to perform their cosmic functions,

inter-linking themselves in immutable rhythm which conserve all energies in the

Universe – both psychic and physical – in countless varying forms and shapes

and in countless ways and directions through a perpetual process of creation

and renewal, evolving itself out of dissolution and death. Lord Brahma is over-

awed for a moment by the vastness, complexity and subtlety of the rhythms and

harmonies which will shape the cosmos and by the awareness of the Mother’s

pre-determined Cosmic Ideas of Creation, preservation and Dissolution

comparing on them their eternal identities as Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. He

therefore returns to the subject of prayer in a spirit of humility and

acknowledges that no one can offer real prayer to the Mother unless She grants

him the necessary knowledge which alone can give a devotee the strength he

needs.

In all these three verses, Lord Brahma as the first Seer, fore-sees man offering

prayers to the Ultimate Divinity. Prayers which common men and women, will

offer throughout ages and ages very much in the manner of beggars seeking

alms are beneath notice. But the one great merit which redeems even such

prayers is the profound deep-routed faith of the common multitude in the

existence of the Supreme Being and in Divine Mercy and Omnipotence. With

them, prayer is a simple matter and does not lead to any self-questioning. But it

becomes a problem with the select few who are gripped by a sense of one-ness

with the Ultimate Reality. They may ask themselves as to how and why prayers

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should be offered to the Mother when such prayers amount, in final analysis to

self-worship. From that point, they or one of them may start colossalising the

ego and lapse into undivine paranoia by equating themselves or himself with the

Supreme Being { forgetting that such prayers offered are not offered to the ego

of the devotee } and sleeping into the grip of undivine megalomania. The Sage

warns us all against undivine aberrations of this kind. One must remind himself

even on the Summit of the Being that the Mother not only pervades the cosmos

but transcends it as well and that She can dissolve a cosmos to re-create

another No one can offer his prayers to the Supreme being without this

knowledge and no one can have this knowledge without Her grace. And no one

can seek Her grace and mercy without faith.

Verse 66 and Verse 67 :-----

“ You have been invoked, O’ Mother, “ says Lord Brahma “ with

words which are mine but which are lofty and inspired { because they flow from

knowledge mercifully granted by you } and my appeal to you is to awaken

immediately Lord Vishnu, the sovereign master of the Universe { made

Supreme and Sovereign with the fullest and strongest current of cosmic

consciousness force } and instill into Him an urge to annihilate the mighty

undivines, Madhu and Kaitava,-- the two indomitable ones – when they are

bewitched by You { into self – surrender } .”

Lord Brahma concludes His prayer with an appeal for immediate release of Lord

Vishnu from the cosmic slumber which marked the disintegration and the end of

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the previous cycle of creation. Vishnu represents symbolically the strongest and

fullest current of the Cosmic Consciousness Force, charged with a psychic urge

which must strengthen and preserve the laws and the restraints – the rhythms

and harmonies – sustaining the Universe and must restrain and smoothen down

where necessary, the wild spurts and upsurges of delight, threatening to upset

and subvert the cosmic laws and harmonies. But more fundamental than the

power – inherent in the Cosmic Consciousness Force – to preserve the laws

and rhythms, are the urge for self-surrender implanted into the core of the

Impulse of Delight and the fact of its sudden emergence even when it is most

militantly intense. It may appear to subvert and sweep away the laws and

rhythms but such is the power of the Mother’s Upward Pull that it finds itself

compelled at last to tune up and bring itself into harmony with them. We witness,

in the life around us, dramatic spectacles of self-renunciation welling up from

within greeds and hungers for possession – of ascaticisim streaking upward

from the recesses of carnal profligacy and a sense of rhythm and beauty

coming out of common course desires. The words like ‘bewitched’ and

‘enchanted’ used in the context are no pejoratives; they are strangely

appropriate.

Three dynamic ideas dominate these Verses. First comes the

idea of awakening. Lord Vishnu, the Cosmic Consciousness Force, charged

with the psychic urge - as distinct from Lord Brahma, the Cosmic

Consciousness Force, charged with the Creative Urge and now merging in Lord

Vishnu – was not awakened all at once. His delayed awakening reflects the

process of cosmic awakening which fulfils itself – slowly with many delays and

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interruptions --- throughout the whole cycle of creation, drawing life out of non-

living matter and instilling consciousness and mind into life. Next comes the

idea of eternal struggle. The process of awakening is really a process of striving

towards knowledge and must go together with a continuous struggle between

divine and undivine forces as the Cosmic Impulse of Delight lapses into

undivine, unprincipled excesses which strengthen the forces of somnambulism

and ignorance. And finally comes the idea of surrender and self-sacrifice. Both

the Cosmic Consciousness Force and the Cosmic Impulse of Delight stream

down from the Mother’s super- cosmic Transcendence and are equally potent.

The fight and struggle between them must therefore be a perpetual draw and

can end only when the Impulse of Delight, acting in response to the Mother’s

Upward Pull and in harmony with Her pre-designed cosmic scheme allows the

Urge for surrender, self-extinction and catharsis, lying deep within its inmost

recesses, to surface and thus redeem itself through surrender and renunciation

Verse 68 and Verse 69

“ Thus was the Mother prayerfully invoked by Lord Brahma

“ says the Sage Vedas “ And the Mother “ continues the Sage “ withdrew Herself

from the eyes, the face, the nose, the arms, the heart and the chest of Lord

Vishnu in order that He could wake up and destroy Madhu and Kaitava and then.

Manifested Herself as a Revelation before the eyes of Lord Brahma whose

origin and emergence has not been and cannot be described in human

language.”

Creation has no beginning and no end. During the cosmic

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stand-still spanning the gap between one cycle of creation and the next, the

Seeds of Creation and of the Cosmos yet to emerge stay hibernating within

the Mother – the Ultimate Reality – to sprout out under the impact of the

Mother’s omnipotent Will at the appointed hour. The seeds start flowing out as

the Cosmic Impulse of Delight throbs into action and draws out the initial current

of the Cosmic Consciousness Force charged with the creative urge. Creation

immediately starts and it imposes on Delight certain rhythms, harmonies and

restraints without which Creation cannot progress and the cosmos cannot

emerge. But Delight defiantly seeks to throw off these restraints and the Mother

releases the fullest and the strongest current of the Cosmic Consciousness

Force to re-enforce the initial current and to blend with it, in response to the

prayers of the Lord Brahma. The great battle between the forces of the cosmic

consciousness force and the forces of Cosmic Delight begins thereafter. These

conflicting forces, seeking to play their pre-destined roles and struggling for

expression within the hibernating seeds, start streaming out from matrix of the

Mother’s omnipotent Will which held them as though in a reservoir and begin

participating in cosmic creation simultaneously with the release of the Cosmic

Consciousness Force. The Pause between two cycles of creation does not

mean the end of creation itself. It means continuation of the cosmic creative

process with the hibernating seeds. The great Pause – the cosmic standstill –

the Slumber which stalled and immobilized the Cosmic Conscious ness force –

is a part of the cosmic design which enables the seeds to germinate and the

residual forces coming out of the old cycle and the newly emerging forces to

blend together, to group, to adjust, refine, inter-twine and spin themselves out

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as cause-and-effect chains into the new cosmos. The vast creative processes

moving towards the point of emergence stay veiled within the dark, mysterious

recesses of the Mother’s Will with the channels of Cosmic Consciousness and

Emergence blocked by the Mother. And the Seer, over-awed and over-whelmed

by an overpowering sense of wonder, call Her ‘TAMASEE’ – the Dark and

Mysterious One – stalling the advent of the New Creation and Cosmos and

holding them within Herself during the Great Pause.

And now that the moment of birth and awakening had at last

arrived, the Mother removed the blocks which totally obstructed the channels of

Cosmic Consciousness and of Cosmic Emergence symbolized by eyes, faces,

noses, arms, hearts and chests and –before the main current of cosmic

consciousness could flow out – revealed Herself to Lord Brahma for a brief

moment. Lord Brahma does not say a word about the revelation but other sages

have speculated about what revelation was like in later times and have tried to

visualize it as an Image immeasurably vast – as vast as the cosmos – draped in

ashen powdery grey- with ten legs designed to block the channels of

emergence of the cosmic consciousness force from all directions – with many

hands carrying weapons designed to protect the cosmos – both phenomenal

and noamenal – trembling on the brink of a new birth – and with the head

draped in divine mysterious blue symbolizing hopes and assurances and

heralding the emergence of rhythms, laws and harmonies which will regulate

the evolution of the new-born cosmos, blue, radiant and divine, does always

carry a message of good cheer and the Image, as envisioned by our Seers

remains enigmatic but cheerful. An attitude of cheerfulness is not indeed

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irrelevant in the context of the battle between Lord Vishnu and Madhu Kaitava.

It is less a grim battle than a cosmic game staged on the Surface of the Space –

Time Continuum. It is a clash between two currents of thought and emotion

which streamed out of the Mother’s Super-Cosmic- Transcendence with the

beginning of Creation and will keep on running into the most intimate recesses

of the Cosmos in a state of conflict,- to blend together in reconciliation and

harmony in the end.. The Impulse of Delight, Superlatively possessive and ego-

based at the start, refines itself and detaches itself from the ego continuously as

the battle progresses; it reverses its direction under the compulsion of the

Mother’s will and moves upward as the battle continues, diversifying and

beautifying life and divinizing itself. The Mother reveals Herself both as the’

Ultimate Cause and as the Process of Becoming’. Lord Brahma glimpsed this

vision in a brief, sudden moment of illumination in all at once – and we are to

see it by and by.

Verse 70 ---- “ Up rose Lord Vishnu – the Master of the Universe, now

released by the Mother from slumber,- and from His bed laid on the vast ocean

which covered the whole Cosmos, saw the two undivines, Madhu and Kaitava.”

The Revelation of the Mother as the Ultimate Cause must remain very distant

and very vague to people, not blessed with the intuitive vision of Sages and

Seers but the ‘process of becoming’, now uncovering itself with the emergence

of Lord Vishnu – the Cosmic Consciousness Force – may be mirrored in the

mind of man. The ocean, referred to in the verse – vast and boundless – as vast

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as the cosmos itself with amorphous sub-atomic particles filling the great void

and spinning furiously round and round is the Space-Time-continuum. It evolved

itself out of the forces which the Mother had released simultaneously with the

descent of Lord Brahma – The Creative Urge – and of Madhu and Kaitava – the

Impulse Delight – into Kinesis. These forces, stalled and held in slumber with

the Cosmic Consciousness Force during the Great Pause by the Mother, were

now freed to evolve into a new Time-Space-Continuum to contain the new-born

universe – expanding when the Universe expands and shrinking when it shrinks.

It had to provide a bed for Lord Vishnu { the Cosmic Consciousness Force },

brought out of the Mother’s Static Transcendence while, still gripped by cosmic

slumber, - because it { Space – time continuum } had to exist as a reality in the

awareness of the Supreme Being who is to pervade both it and the new-born

cosmos – both the container and the contained. The Consciousness force and

the Space – Time Continuum are inter-related eternal realities but it {the

Space-time Continuum } can not effectively exist until it reflects itself first in the

Cosmic Consciousness and later in the consciousness of the intelligent finite

beings. This is the significance of the symbolic representation of Lord Vishnu

sleeping on the surface of the Time-space Continuum. His awakening

immediately brings Him into the awareness of two realities – the Time-Space

Continuum and the defiant Impulse of Delight { Madhu and Kaitava } and

immediately marks the beginning of the Process of Becoming. That process

must chart its course and blaze its path through the battle between Lord Vishnu

and Madhu and Kaitava and its progress must be assessed and understood in

the light of the Concepts of Time and Space.

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Verse 71 and Verse 72

“ The two Undivines – defiant and untamed with angry, blood-

red eyes unimaginably powerful and indomitable – were seen preparing to

overwhelm devour Lord Brahma. “

“ And Lord Vishnu, - the Possessor and Given all powers and

attributes and the Destroyer,- jumped up and fighting with them as the

Omnipotent and Unchallengeable One and kept on fighting for countless years,

using only His bare arms as weapons.”

Now begins the great battle which initiates and completes the ‘Process of

Becoming’ on the cosmic battlefield and which must renew itself within the

consciousness of finite beings and complete itself through births, deaths and re-

births all through the Cycle of Creation.

Madhu is the Impulse of Delight pervading the Cosmos and

Kaitava is Delight manifesting itself in finite many. They are indissolubly linked

together and are really one. They were having an exciting cosmic game at the

beginning of the Creation as the Universe was evolving itself within the new-

born Space- Time Continuum. The Indian way of looking at the Cosmos at this

stage is to envision it as a vast ocean filled with swirling, spinning atoms,

unillumined by any stars and luminaries and without any earth and water. But

the atoms held inconceivably huge quantities of heat and energy and earth and

water – to be gathered together to build up mighty stars and vast oceans and

continental blocks of land much later. They were not there at that dim misty

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beginning. There was only the great void – the Space-Time-Continuum – and

furious cataclysmic winds compared with which the fiercest hurricanes and

typhoons of to-day one like gentle summer breeze. And throughout the cosmos,

these winds were sweeping through vast masses of amorphous atoms in which

hot and luminous ones fraternized with others which carried cores of earth and

water. There were indeed no stars and luminaries but it seems possible to

visualize a perpetual twilight created lustrous atoms. One striving to visualize it

must indeed see it as a frighteningly grand and awesome spectacle. And the

Mother was the only spectator of the bewilderingly fascinating scene. She was

looking beyond this phenomenon and watching delightedly the inner conflict –

the confrontation between the Impulse of Delight –Madhu and Kaitava – and the

Cosmic Consciousness Force represented by Lord Brahma. The Mother had

designed the seemingly hostile confrontation to camouflage the cosmic game

and intended it to set the pattern which was to determine and shape the course

of cosmic evolution. Delight is the most potent and the most fundamental force

in the Universe. Both Madhu and Kaitava at one end and Lord Brahma at the

other have been trying to seek and find delight in their own ways – in opposite

directions. Madhu and Kaitava always looked outward and found delight in

abundance in the phenomenal cosmos – in the whirling atoms and their mad

dance in perennial twilight as they were scattered about by the tumultuous

winds. They wanted to stall themselves endlessly in that whirl. But Lord Brahma

looked inward – inward into yhe stupendous delight of structuring the Cosmos

with those vast masses of atoms – the delight of using the mighty winds as

instruments for separating and massing together the hot, luminous atoms in

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order to build up stars and luminaries and for blending hot, luminous atoms with

the others in order to create water and earth. And He had a vision of the

Mother’s pre-designed laws and rhythms which were emerging all the time and

were causing the cosmos to assume its pre-destined form and to grow and

expand. Lord Brahma found immense delight in these creative thoughts and

strove to quicken the cosmic tectonic processes and the process of emergence

of the cosmic laws and harmonies. And He immediately antagonized Madhu

and Kaitava who felt profoundly disturbed by the cosmic tectonics and the

emerging laws and threatened to defeat and devour Lord Brahma.. This was the

first and the most significant battle – on the cosmic scene and on a cosmic

scale – between Delight looking outward and Delight looking inward and it has

been reproducing itself in finites ever since.

Our Seers had grand-stand visions of this battle from the

Summit of their Supra-mental Consciousness but even we – lesser men

standing far below the Summit – can view the eternal battle notionally in the

light of the same conflict being ceaselessly staged within the finite

Consciousness of man. Man has been more often an extrovert, always looking

outward for delights but he has also been – admittedly less often – an introvert

carrying the impressions of these delights into his inner being and purifying and

refining them into creative delights which have produced poetry, philosophy, the

arts and the highest spiritual thoughts and aspirations. The battle between

delights drawing us outward and delights drawing us into ourselves is still

continuing. But delights responding to the lower gravitational pull for fulfillment

are being slowly and inexorably drawn up into the higher hemisphere of the

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being by the Mother’s Upward and Inward Pull for refinement and sublimation.

The initial current of the Consciousness Force, carrying

within it the scheme of Creation and Evolution of the Cosmic laws and

harmonies has now blended with the main current of the Consciousness Force,

released by the Mother and Lord Vishnu emerges out of this sacred, blessed

union to carry on the fight. Fortified and impelled by Her Will, Vishnu becomes

the Supreme Possessor and Giver of all powers and attributes and the

Destroyer of all forces which obstract the process of refinement and

beautification and stall the ‘Process of Becoming’ . And to fulfil this great cosmic

mission, He fought on as the omnipotent and unchangeable . one. All the time

the fight is on, Madhu and Kaitava strive to move downward in pursuit of

delights and Lord Vishnu strives to restrain them and to turn them round on to

the path that leads upward through the inner being. The fight must continue all

through the Cycle Of Creation – for thousands of billions of years.

The battle initiates the process of becoming which spans

the whole gap between the divine and undivine. It sets in motion the process of

divinizing the undivine – the process of divinizing undivine delights. The battle

between Madhu and Kaitava and Brahma and Vishnu sets the cosmic pattern

but it is not the last battle. It must renew itself on the cosmic scene at the

beginning of every new cycle of creation, and it reproduces itself endlessly in

the minds and hearts of finite beings. It is through these conflicts that the

process of becoming manifests and fulfils itself in finites.

Apart from this cosmic significance, these verses have a

special message for human beings. The words ‘ PANCHA BARSHA

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SAHASRAM ‘ do not only convey the idea of countless years; they

simultaneously convey the idea of the five major senses { the eyes, the ears,

the nose, the tongue and the skin } carrying in countless impressions into the

inner being in order that they may be processed by the corresponding inner

senses and then refined by the mind – and later by the super-mind – into the

highest thoughts and ideas to assist the process of divinization through births,

deaths and re-births.

The fact that no weapons have even been mentioned in

connection with the cosmic battle has a special meaning. It was not I fight

between two forces irreconcilably opposed to each other. Both have come out

of the Mother and are bound together by invisible links of kinship. The Mother

has implanted a hunger for light into the core of darkness; there is a craving for

knowledge deep within the recesses of ignorance. There is a divine hunger for

renunciation and self-sacrifice deep with greed itself. Divinity lies hidden in the

undivine; it keeps on responding ceaselessly to the Mother’s Upward Pull and

divinizing undivine forces. For the human race as a whole, this process of

refinement and purification grips every human ego and keep on divinizing it

through countless years – through a series of births, deaths and re-births – until

the inherent divine force reveals and unmasks itself with explosive suddenness

very much in the same way as Madhu and Kaitava surrendered themselves to

the divine just when they deemed themselves triumphant and victorious. There

is a soul of divinity even in Evil which causes it slowly and inexorably to

progress towards the divine. Evil is not irredeemably bad as the moralist thinks

nor are good and evil irreconcilably opposed to each other. Satan does indeed

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crave for his brief hour of bliss at the gate of Paradise and because he can have

it only when a sinner escapes his trap, he secretly desires his victim to be able

to escape. This is the Mother’s scheme of things. The distinction between good

and evil is to be understood in a strictly limited sense. Evil is a part of the

Mother’s Cosmic game. Madhu and Kaitava, the prototypes of all extroverts are

therefore restrained only with hands – not with weapons – by Lord Vishnu, as

the Cosmic archetypal Introvert and the battle has therefore been renewing

itself within every human ego – and perhaps in many sub-human egos – ever

since.

Verse 73 . “ And then { at the height of the battle which had been going

on for a long, long time } Madhu and Kaitava, maddened by the awareness of

their unbeatable might and bewitched by the Mother, asked Lord Vishnu

{ triumphantly like a Victor } to beg for a favour from them.”

This strange cosmic battle had been going on almost interminably between two

equal forces – one desperately moving downward and the other striking to

restrain it and to turn it round in order to make it reverse its movements and

steer to course upward. Madhu and Kaitava were having a cosmic dance of

delight with the furiously whirling and swirling atoms; the delight of participating

in the tempestuous, tumultuous cosmic rhythms with the countless many,

different tuning themselves up with different rhythms and harmonies was

overwhelming. And all the time, the hidden divine in them acted in alliance with

Lord Vishnu to make them turn round and steer an upward course and to create

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in them an awareness of the One from whom the countless many have come –

an awareness of the One Rhythm from which all other rhythms have streamed

down.. They were being divinized without being consciously aware of what was

happening within them. And then the divine slowly spiraling upward within them

became articulate with explosive suddenness and voiced through them a

strange command, peremptorily asking Lord Vishnu to beg a favour from them.

It certainly sounds ridiculously arrogant; Madhu and Kaitava had not won the

battle though they might have felt that the hour of triumph was near at hand.

They were indeed intoxicated with a sense of unbeatable power but they were

really ‘bewitched’ into divinity by the Mother. As seekers of delight perpetually

looking outward for them, they were super-possessive in spirit, striving to seek,

find and gather in pleasurable sensations and experiences. They craved to shut

themselves in within the prison walls of their own ego-based delights. And now

the divine in them impelled them to break down the prison walls and come out

with what sounds like a gratuitously generous offer to their enemy. A divine

impulse has odd ways of manifesting itself; in the particular case, it may

indeed sound more arrogant than divine. But there can be no doubt that the

inner being had broadened out to make an extravagant offer to their opponent.

And it was a generous offer because they wanted to offer Lord Vishnu all they

had only if He would climb down to ask for it. Even if they thought, the enemy

would sue for peace, what prompted them was compassion and good will. They

had started looking inward and upward. The divine had surfaced.

The divine intervened indeed to create compulsions which forced Madhu and

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Kaitava to commune with Lord Vishnu and to speak out. They were grateful to

Him for having revealed that the rhythms of the mighty winds with which they

were having tempestuous joys came out of one fundamental Cosmic Rhythm

and that the multitudes of finites – the whirling atoms – with which they were

playing with unrestrained glee came out of the One and were pervaded by His

presence. They felt perhaps that the winds and atoms were expectantly waiting

for the great Tectonic Process to start and to bring them round to the fulfillment

of their cosmic role and they offered to co-operate as a matter of favour to Lord

Vishnu.

Verse 74 . --- “ If you two are pleased with me and propose to grant me a

favour “ Says Lord Vishnu “ then surrender yourselves to me and allow me to be

your killer. This is the only favour I want and am not interested in any other “

Thus did the battle work its way up to the climax. The Mother’s Upward Pull

which draw Madhu and Kaitava into communion with Lord Vishnu now fashions

itself into the Begging Boul and demands total self-sacrifice and renunciation. It

must not be a mere fragment of what you have, your whole being must be

surrendered into the Begging Bow. It must be the total annihilation – the total

effacement of your self.

This is the eternal pattern on which the lives of monks and saints have been

modeled. It is not enough to offer your prayer to your God, you must offer your

whole being~ your self and soul – totally and unconditionally. There can be no

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stalling yourself in a half-way house when the moment of climax arrives at last.

And because the journey is very long and arduous and can not be completed

without half – way houses and because the duration of even the longest human

life is far too short for it, the Seers had the vision of human egos or souls

moving upward through a long series of births, deaths and re-births, each new

birth offering – generally speaking – a half-way house nearer the goal than the

one available during the previous birth. And this process must continue until the

last half-way house is reached. Then comes the moment of final renunciation

when the whole being has to be surrendered into the Begging Bowl and the

goal of supreme knowledge which is to divinize the whole being is to be

reached by one determined hop. That moment of climax which is a moment of

simultaneous defeat and triumph had come at last for Madhu and Kaitava and

they did not falter as they put their whole being within the Begging Bowl in total

and unconditional surrender and blazed the trail which leads to final deliverance

from the bondage of finite life.

Verse 75 and Verse 76 .---“ Thus bewitched and cheated, Madhu and Kaitava

saw waters rushing in and flooding the whole Universe and spoke out to lotus-

eyed Vishnu, expressing their happiness at the way the battle had been fought

and acknowledging that it was their duty to offer Him homage. And then finally

affirming that their death was indeed eminently desirable, they directed Lord

Vishnu to kill them on the spot which was not yet saturated by the waters of the

flood.

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This concluding part of the dialogue between Lord Vishnu and Madhu-Kaitava

climaxes the brief and intense communion between the Cosmic Consciousness

Force and the Cosmic Impulse of Delight. It causes Delight to merge in and

become one with the Consciousness Force, which is inseparable from Delight

although it has a broader base and unifies diverse ideas and emotions of which

Delight is one. But Delight is primordial as it spear-headed the Consciousness

force into Kinesis and the Cosmos. Delight however bifurcated itself into two

streams – the one absorbed by the consciousness force ran inward while the

other, initially stronger, ran outward to pervade the whole Universe. But Delight

must remain the fundamental and the all-pervasive force as the Cosmos itself

came out of the Mother’s Delight. It inspired Lord Brahma to create the many

out of the One and it has been shaping the Cosmos and governing the process

of evolution of life and finite consciousness ever since. It is leading the whole

creation on, directly or indirectly and however disguised or camouflaged, it must

always remain the prime motive. But at that dim, distant beginning, it sought to

look only outward, playing with the whirling atoms and raging winds and mighty

gravitational forces. And the Cosmic Consciousness Force strove to make it

look inward into the Mother’s Cosmic Design and to re-inforce and string then

the current of delight seeking to fulfil itself – through the Consciousness force –

in evolution of life and mind and in the tectonic processes out of which the

Universe evolved itself. This was the Cosmic strife – between Delight looking

outward and Delight looking inward – and the conflict continued for billions of

years. And during these countless years, luminous, hot and shining atoms were

massed together into countless suns and hot luminous ones were massed

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together with others carrying water and earth to build up billions of planets of

which our Earth is one. The battle was therefore going in favour of the Cosmic

Consciousness Force and that particular current of Delight which led it on. They

built up the physical universe, orbited the Suns and planets and evolved the

laws and harmonies which kept them moving in tune with the Cosmic rhythms.

The stars, the planets, the different winds creating diverse currents in different

regions of the Cosmos, the different gravitational pulls differently stabilizing the

elements at different levels and the laws and rhythms which bound them

together became the Mother’s companions. But the Mother had designed the

cosmos to generate life out of seemingly non-living matter and to evolve finite

living beings who could see the wonderful Universe, understand its laws and

harmonies and commune with Her as intelligent companions. So life evolved out

of non-living matter – as it has done on this earth – and Delight looking outward

– Madhu and Kaitava – had to look both inward outward through living beings. It

was a painfully slow process. Delight strove to look outward and to play with the

gross and the obvious as long as it could. It played for ages with the simplest

life-forms- nearly all – matter enlivened by the tiniest psychic spark. It framed up

colossal life – forms to provide large platforms of matter, illumined by tiny

candles of consciousness. And they all died out because life is so constituted

that it can not survive unless there is an adequate psychic directive force to

guide and control it. And thus did the Consciousness Force and Delight battle

on experiments with countless life-forms of which only a few survive to-day and

of which man happens to be one on this Earth But with the advent of man,

Madhu and Kaitava had a prophetic vision of the shape of things to come. They

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had a sudden insight into the Mother’s Cosmic Design and Her Cosmic game.

They realized that while Delight must look outward in search of fulfillment, it

must look inward and upward to refine and divinise. the common hungers,

desires and appetites. For ages and ages, this was a vague experience with

Madhu and Kaitava and then it defined and intensified itself. Its range vastly

expanded. It was no longer fettered and chained to the body – to the sights and

sounds which the body could perceive and to the pleasures and hungers which

the body could enjoy and appease. The mind stepped in to diversify and

heighten these delights and evolved new rhythms and harmonies which

became the vehicles. And then the super-mind emerged out of the mind to

heighten them into glorious ideas and emotions which could divinize the whole

of life..

The Seer had a vision of the grand evolution of the body and mind when he saw

Madhu and Kaitava on the brink of surrender to Lord Vishnu. Madhu and

Kaitava saw this vision within them and finally the vision of One pervading,

unifying, beautifying and divinizing the many the vision of the many merging in

the one of ineffable beauty. They felt over-whelmed by a passion for divinity.

They felt that the undivine forces which they wielded as their weapons during

the battle with Lord Vishnu had to play their cosmic roles in the Mother’s cosmic

game in tune with the mighty universal rhythm which had worked its way at last

to this final crisis and climax. The vision simultaneously stimulated their sense

of beauty and they could now discover beauty in Lord Vishnu, - this enemy –

whom they called endearingly the ‘Lotus-eyed’ one. They were now striving to

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chase the undivine out of them altogether and they had again a prophetic vision

of the waters of holy and sanctified consciousness surging up and flooding the

whole universe and causing all that was undivine in them to melt away, dissolve

and lose itself in the all-embracing flood. They boldly affirmed that they were

happy at the way the battle had gone; they offered Him homage and cheerfully

announced that their death was eminently desirable. They warned Him that if

there was any undivine residual element left in them, it must have retreated into

where the waters of pure and purifying consciousness had not yet penetrated

and challenged Him to kill them on the spot which had yet been saturated by

the waters of the sanctifying flood. They challenged Lord Vishnu to destroy

them and to liquidate simultaneously the spot into which the fugitive undivine

had escaped and to complete the process of divinization of both.

The stronger stream of the Cosmic Impulse of Delight which had been looking

outward for ages and ages was thus absorbed by the Cosmic Consciousness

Force and the two fully and finally blended into one. It opened the way for

Delight to move out into the phenomenal world and then to come inward freely

into the world of psychic and super-psychic noumenal realities to evolve the

process of refinement and sublimation. It taught itself the way to play and frolick

at the bottom and then spiral slowly upward into the supra-mental region. It

learnt how to span the gap between what moralists call Hell and what they call

Heaven, picking up experiences and emotions from the lower end and divinizing

them enroute to the summit. The battle that the Consciousness Force and the

Impulse of Delight fought at the beginning of the new Cycle of Creation on the

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cosmic scene has indeed been renewing and repeating itself in every finite

mind. A finite ego can not however complete the process of refinement and

transformation – the process of becoming – during one life-term but the visions

and revelations granted to our Seers hold out the assurance that there is no

ground for despair. The Mother offers the human ego the boon of immortality in

order that it may transmigrate into many and different bodies along the course

charted by its own actions through many deaths and re-births and finally

complete the process, - progressively renewing the pattern of the cosmic battle

between the Consciousness Force and the Impulse of Delight within finite

consciousness. progressively renewing the pattern of the cosmic battle between

the Consciousness Force and the Impulse of Delight within finite consciousness.

The words ‘bewitched’ and ‘cheated’ used in this context are not pejoratives.

They carry ‘loaded’ meaning. We sometimes discover suddenly a new way of

looking at familiar sights, seeing in them a new beauty, a new harmony and

cohesion. And then we feel as though we have been ‘bewitched’. We feel

profoundly moved and gripped by a sense of wonder never experienced before.

Madhu and Kaitava were ‘bewitched’ by the Mother into a new revelation of

cosmic beauty and harmony. They discovered a new rhythm which was going to

round itself off and reach the climax of delight and harmony through the

voluntary offering of their lives. They were ‘cheated’ one way because Lord

Vishnu demanded their surrender and death as a favour but they felt ‘cheated’

in a deeper sense because they did not discover this beauty and harmony –

before.

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Verse 77 --- “ Let it then be as you desire “ said Lord Vishnu, holding

couch-shell, the disc and the mace “ and decapitated both of them after laying

their on His thigh with the disc. “*

This was the supreme moment when the whole Cosmic Design and Purpose

completed itself in a blaze of transcendent glory. The Cosmic Consciousness

Force which could not grasp and possess the full and entire Impulse of Delight

heretofore had now completely absorbed it and blended with it. It had now the

Cosmic Motive force of Delight which it lacked before and became the

Sovereign Force of the Universe. Deriving Itself from the Mother who is the

Ultimate Reality and the Ultimate Cause. It had the Mother’s Command to

operate as the first cause from which all cosmic developments and

manifestations are to flow out during whole Current Cycle of Creation. The

Sonic Boom ~ the Big Bang as some people rather irreverently call it but which

the Seer symbolically describes in this verse as the booming sound of the

couch-shell – was now to multiply itself into a multitude of sounds which will

include all human and sub-human languages, the various harmonies and

melodies of nature and the mighty booms caused by the movements of billions

of stars and planets in the great void, creating countless sound-currents and

reverberating .endlessly through boundless space But the Sounds and the

Currents they create, the countless diverse sights and the vast and complicated

psychic forces destined emerge wherever life appears in the Universe were and

are effortlessly but inexorably bound together and guided by rhythms of which

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the disc is the symbol. Their infinite varieties and diversities may make them

look chaotic but they are everywhere held together by unbreakable by physical

and psychic laws which can never be ignored. The disc is the symbol of this all-

pervading rhythm and harmony. And the Mace which can hit and smash is the

symbol of the Omnipotence with which the Cosmic Consciousness Force now

fully endowed with the Mother’s delight and impelled by Her Will, is to guide

cosmos on to its pre-destined end.

At the supreme moment, Madhu and Kaitava immolated themselves on the

thigh of Lord Vishnu. “Lord Vishnu laid their heads on His thigh’ is what the

verse literally says but it may as well be said that they laid their heads on His

thigh voluntarily in a spirit of total surrender, led by a passion for becoming one

with the Cosmic Consciousness Force. They had already warned Vishnu that

the holy waters of sanctified consciousness which they saw surging up and

submerging the whole universe had not yet penetrated into the peripheral

regions and Lord Vishnu chose His thigh for their execution because the thigh

may well be regarded as a symbol of all that is peripheral, gross and insensitive

and all that repels the inflow of consciousness and understanding. It stands for

the last refuge of the undivine and by striking off the heads of Madhu and

Kaitava on His thigh as though it was an altar Lord Vishnu performs the last act

of redemption and finally rescues Delight from the grip of undivine forces. In this

moment of supreme illumination, all that is insensitive, remote, peripheral and

gross receives and draws in the full light of consciousness and thus deserves to

become the altar on which the undivine is finally annihilated

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The severence of the heads of Madhu and Kaitava from the bodies signifies that

the final act of redemption must itself as the last phase of the being in which the

lower and upper hemisphere must stand irrevocably separate and distinct The

lower and the upper hemispheres must stand inter-linked until the very last

moment. All urges and impulses which keep life going must emerge in the lower

hemisphere and are to be refined, purified, divinized and finally drawn up into

the upper hemisphere by the Mother’s Upward Pull for the final merger in Her

Consciousness Force, The act of decapitation means the final separation of the

parts of the body below and above the jugular region which is the frontier

between the lower and upper hemispheres of the being in the physical sense

and symbolizes the final liberation of the ego from the gravitational pull of the

lower being. It symbolizes the ultimate blending of Delight with the

Consciousness Force on the Cosmic scene at the end of a long dual; it stands

for a fusion which is destined to reproduce itself infinites and to impel finite

beings to move up to higher and higher summits where delight and

consciousness blend more and more intimately until they become one on the

highest pinnacle of the being....

Verse 78 .--- “ This is how the Eternal Mother – the Ultimate Reality – the

Ultimate It – originated and manifested Herself in response to the prayers of

Lord Brahma Himself. And now “ says the Sage “ listen to what I narrate about

the other revelations of Her omnipotence “ *

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The Seer has given us his vision of the beginning of the Creation and the

Cosmos in the first Hymn. He saw, in the light of his vision, the dual between

Delight and Cosmic Consciousness and saw Delight purifying and refining itself

progressively through strife and conflict and simultaneously unifying itself with

the Consciousness Force. The Mother designed Delight to be the prime motive

force in the cosmos. Articulate or inarticulate, common and vulgar or refined,

coarse or sublime, Delight must lead on and spear-head the Mother’s cosmic

game with the Consciousness Force evolving rhythms, harmonies and laws

which must determine the way the game is to be played and conducted. And the

Cosmic Design is so ordered that Delight must always move upward from the

lower hemisphere of the being to the higher – from common, familiar pleasures

to the rare, refined and subtle delights, from the delights of ignorance to the

delights of knowledge, from darkness to light and transcendent glory. And the

upward movement must always be in tune with the harmonies and rhythms by

the Consciousness Force. For the Cosmos as a whole, this upward journey

must cover billions of years and for every finite being, stabilized and

perpetuated into an immortal identity, it must take countless births, deaths and

re-births to complete the pilgrimage to the summit where delight and

consciousness must become one and where the merger in the Mother’s eternal

Consciousness is a rhythmic movement of ineffable bliss.

The Seer has briefly and suggestively described the dual between the Impulse

of Delight and the Consciousness Force on the cosmic plane and their final

rhythmic fusion. The dual will now renew itself on the plane of finite

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consciousness and will move upwards into fusion in an identical manner in

harmony with the Mother’s pre-designed cosmic scheme. The Seer gives us his

vision of the renewed duel, fought out on the stage of finite consciousness in

the two Hymns that follow and reveals the Mother’s Omnipotence in the light of

pre-designed compulsions which initiate and complete the ‘process of

becoming’ in finites

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 THE EPILOGUE

I
It is truly a wonder that the Holy Chandee which embodies the Hindu concept of

man’s spiritual destiny and charts the path of his spiritual ascent more fully than

any other single book or scripture should have received so scant attention from

the Hindu world. Its representation of life as a cosmic clash between the divine

and the undivine, its ringing battle-cries, its tumultuous eloquence and rhythm

and its militant imagery throbbing with super-martial emotion might have

frightened or repelled those who dreamt of the forces of life tuning up into a

softer and quieter harmony. On the other hand, there are men of faith who

devoutly believe that the highly esoteric truths which the magnificent symbolism

of the Chandee and its verses of unequalled explosive power and matchless

charm partly reveal and partly disguise are not meant for popular consumption..

They hold on to the belief that occult truths and cosmic mysteries which they

enshrine should not be exposed to the view of men and women who lack both

faith and reverence and will therefore either reject them with supercilious

disrespect or vulgarise them with ridicule and laughter.. They firmly maintain

that the ban traditionally imposed on open and uncritical circulation of the

Chandee should continue.

There is indeed a lot to be said for the ban. Throughout the ages_-from the very

ancient times to the middle ages- these immortal, esoteric truths have been

improperly brought into and blended with mythologies and legends which have

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focused the popular mind and imagination on the symbolical narratives and

have , in this process, wholly obfuscated their real meaning. During recent and

current times, they have seldom received the reverence they are entitled to and

have sometimes been irrationally lampooned. As an enthusiastic member of a

doctrinaire Neo-Hindu sect, Rabindra Nath Tagore used the words “Hing, Ting,

Chhot” in a satirical poem to mimic ancient, sacred words which embody the

essence of Hindu monism and drawled it out as a message from the dreamland.

The fun of it is that at the time he was wasting his energy on the satire, he was

busy writing out poems on the monotheistic theme, then very much in fashion

among members of his sect and he knew or should have known that viewed

from a certain angle, both monism and mono-theism may be said to belong to

the realm of fancies and dreams.

It is not necessary to dwell on this theme much longer. The point to be

emphasized is that the highest Hindu philosophical thought had had more than

its fair share of hostile and unfavourable reception both from inside and outside

and it seems to explain the attitude of those orthodox Hindus who feel that the

highest esoteric truths should be guarded as secrets against uncritical

circulation. They forget, alas, that there are no secrets in this age and there are

no safeguards against irreverence.

This is not, however, a correct attitude. It is certainly not in keeping with the

spirit of the Holy Chandee which is one of militant confrontation with the

undivine. On the top of it, the ban which intended and intends to maintain it as a

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close preserve for the select and exclusive few is no longer effective. High-

brows, so-called intellectuals and plain mischief-makers are free to read

Chandee, to mis-interpret it with unfettered freedom and to circulate freely

whatever misconceived ideas and notions they may choose to entertain about it.

In a situation of this kind, it seems entirely proper that an attempt should offer a

frank uninhibited exegesis and to create an awareness of the eternal truths

which the Chandee enshrines and which generate an upward impulse to self-

knowledge and self-realisation in those who address themselves to them in a

spirit of faith and reverence.

II

The human mind is a multi-phase instrument. In its primary phase, it is almost

wholly concerned with the common needs and hungers of mankind, the perils

which endanger its existence, the amenities and comforts necessary for

preservation and propagation and broad social systems calculated to sustain

communal life. In its near-secondary and secondary phases, it creates psychic

compulsions which stimulate the growth of sciences and philosophies and refine

ideas and emotions which express themselves in poetry, music, painting and

different forms of literature and generate longings and yearnings, vaguely

described as spiritual. These longings and yearnings mark the frontier between

the lower and the upper psychic spheres and gradually but inevitably create in

human beings at a certain mental level, an awareness of an inherent

schizophrenia. The Hindu philosophical thought regards every human life as a

‘process of becoming’, running through a long series births, deaths and re-births.

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For every human soul, the process does not begin with the current life but is a

continuation through previous births and deaths, of a process of ascension from

lower to higher psychic and spiritual levels. It is destined to complete itself only

during the particular life-term in which a blessed soul completes his or her

ascension with divinity. But the ultimate point is a long long way off and until it is

reached, schizophrenia will continue through births, deaths, and rebirths-

manifesting itself in conflicts between the divine and then undivine in man in

countless ways and in countless divine forms with the divine slowly and painfully

but inevitably winning inspite of set-backs, disappointments and defeats. The

‘process of becoming’, as envisioned by our seers and Sages, is a continuous,

ceaseless response by the individual human soul to the cosmic upward pull,

perennially in conflict with the cosmic lower gravitational pull which seeks to stall

human nature in the meshes of a purely mundane life.

This may sound unreal to those who believe only in mundane realities but the

vision does not repel logical thinking and logical assumptions about the

mundane. One trying to visualize the cosmos at the very beginning in terms of

time and space may see it as a vast boundless blend of spinning atoms- of

monads as Leibnitz chose to call them, emitting vast masses of misty vapour,

transforming themselves here and there into heavy blends earth and water,

madly racing and spinning through space in search of shapes and forms they

are destined to assume as planets and planetary satellites-throwing up and

dispersing from the vast, unfathomable depths of primeval darkness hot,

luminous atoms gripped by a colossal force which causes them to spin round

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and round with incredible speed and to organize themselves into un imaginably

vast masses destined to illumine the cosmos as countless stars and to spread

heat and light- and generating winds of diverse strengths and speeds in

different regions of cosmos under the impact of a cosmic force which wield them

as instruments to assist the process of formation of stars and planets in an ever-

expanding space destined to accommodate not only the countless stars and

planets, then gripped by the ‘ process of becoming’ but countless planets and

stars yet to be born. Different people are free to have different ideas and

concepts about cosmic beginning. They must remain always speculative and

unverifiable. But several assumptions must be held to be valid in this context.

The spinning atoms which filled the cosmos and the planets and steller bodies

which evolved themselves out of them were, at the initial point, non-living matter.

But they were firmly in the grip of the cosmic force which manifested itself as the

cosmic ‘ process of becoming’ and created laws and compulsions which forced

this non-living matter to convert itself into stars and planets and to build up the

Universe we see around us in accordance with a pre-destined plan. The

assumptions of a cosmic mind generating the cosmic force becomes therefore

ineluctable in the same way as we must inescapably assume the existence of a

human mind when we see a machine, designed and built by it, performing its

functions in accordance with its pre-planned behaviour pattern. These laws—

these compulsions and rhythms- which governed and are governing the cosmic

tectonic process in the physical universe and which the human mind has been

trying to understand, interpret and exploit from the beginning of human

civilization to evolve the sciences and the methods of scientific thinking

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indisputably reveal therefore a super-cosmic psychic force capable not only of

designing the cosmos but of moving and manipulating the stars and planets-big

and small—in the course of building it up in the same way as a workman

handles his tools. To deny it seems utterly futile; to argue that these laws and

rhythms evolved out of blind aimless chaos seems totally unintelligent.

But a bolder assumption must now force itself on a man of vision. In moments of

the deepest solitude and silence—speculating on the mysteries of life—he must

question himself as to why the super-cosmic psychic force created this vast and

ever expanding physical universe and must fasten, for an answer, on the idea

that the physical universe was designed and structured to provide stages and

platforms for emergence of life and for living beings capable of both vital and

psychic activities. Man has not yet been able to find out precisely how and when

life originated for the first time but there is no doubt that it evolved out of non-

living matter. Consciousness- inchoate and rudimentary- is inseparable from life

and from the very beginning, it has been life’s first and, to the end, its most

potent instrument for self-preservation. Even an earth worm which represents

one of the simplest forms of life does its best to sense dangers ahead and to

shy away from them. It ceaselessly helps life to adjust itself to environments for

comfortable survival and to extract delight from its existence. The instinct of

delight is indeed primordial and gives the consciousness force in every living

being its direction and aim. The impulse of self-preservation is indeed vitally

necessary but it is important only in so far as it provides the base for fulfillment

of the impulse of delight. The pursuit of delight brings in however special

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complications. It leads to fulfillment on occasion but more frequently, it leads to

disappointments and agonies which have come to be known comprehensively

in human language as sorrow. The clash and conflict between delight and

sorrow is the most fundamental fact in the context of the growth of

consciousness in finite beings- both human and sub-human. The consciousness

force in every finite creature is driven outward by hungers—in the widest sense-

experienced within itself and sorrow drives it back inward. Driven inward, it

revolves round and round unfulfilled longings and hungers in its own depths and

starts discovering new longings and emotions which continuously twist and

untwist themselves, strengthens themselves and deepen their own grooves.

This process has been continuing over millions of years on this earth and has

produced a psychic development which approximates to what we call mind even

in many sub-human forms of life. And with this growth of consciousness, there

is simultaneously a growth of the sense of self-hood and the two streams blend

ceaselessly with each other and become one in the end.

The process has since ripened into the mind in human beings. For the vast

majority of humans, it is however only the vital mind wedded to the ego and

interested only in pursuit of selfish interests—in self-preservation and in

avoidance of dangers which create difficulties and discomforts and threaten life.

But the ancient conflict between delight and sorrow keeps on refining and

purifying known ideas and emotions, unmasking new strengths and

weaknesses and creating new, unfamiliar and hitherto unknown longings and

emotions. And out of the clash of these feelings and emotions, new and old,

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emerge urges which create poetry, art and literature and generate philosophical

and scientific thinking which in their turn express themselves in social and

transcendental philosophies and in various sciences. They have shaped man’s

personal and family life; they have helped him to evolve communal and social

organizations which keep him fairly busy throughout his waking hours and

provide for appeasement of his common hungers. They originate ideas and

systems of thought on which his roving spirit may perch for rest and

recuperation. But he has never been really at ease- has never been free from

obstinate questionings which must always agitate his inner mind. His joys, his

moments of happiness, the emotions of love, friendship and compassion, which

sustain and diversify his inner life, the hates and jealousies which distort it and

disfigure his social behaviour and the consolations he derives from material

success and various and various social contacts are just about sufficient to keep

him going as long as he chooses to remain an extrovert. But whenever he looks

into himself in moments of introspection and tries to review the progress of life

from its dim and misty beginnings, seeking to figure out and look forward to its

ultimate destiny, he must regard the whole business of life as futile, unsatisfying

and unrewarding. A man of vision-of refined emotions and sensibilities-cannot

simply let his life stall itself in the meshes of this mundane existence for ever

and forever. He must yearn for a vision of the ultimate aims and purpose of

life; he must passionately strive to understand and interpret to himself the whole

process of becoming from the dim, misty, psychic base of life to the

resplendent summit of knowledge which he can and must scale and conquer.

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This yearning is the response of a man of vision to the cosmic upward pull. It

activates the inner mind which had so long hidden and dormant in the vital mind

of ours and calls it up from the depths of the sub-conscious into the conscious.

The inner mind, thus awakened, seeks to discover the meaning and purpose

running through and governing the phenomenal world and in the first flash of

the new dawn, identifies the whole process of becoming as a process of

awakening. The word ‘AWAKENING’ sounds indeed the most dominant note of

the Triune Hymn. The awakened inner mind readily responds to the cosmic

upward pull and thrusts itself up like a periscope above the common pursuits,

hungers and emotions to open up the field of cosmic evolution to the vision of

the awakened man. And in that first flash of the awakening, he experiences the

shock of the discovery that he has been, in many ways, in a state of semi-

somnambulism before he woke up with a new sense of realities. He discovers

seeds of life and consciousness in non-living matter, held in seemingly

perennial cosmic somnambulism at the beginning of creation; he sees non-

living matter whirling in space as vast bodies of atoms, grouping and re-

grouping, spinning round and round with incredible speed in apparent confusion

but orbiting all the time fixed, pre-determined courses in response to new and

developing rhythms under the impact and influence of the cosmic will. And then

he discovers life sprouting out of non-living matter, carrying with it the inherent

force of consciousness to guide and pilot itself in an unfamiliar world. The

emergence of life, equipped with inherent consciousness is the beginning of a

long, long process of release and awakening from the primeval spell of

universal somnambulism.

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We can only say that this process began on the earth billions of years ago and

may reasonably assume that it has been in progress- earlier, later or

simultaneously-on some other planets within this and some other solar systems

where conditions approximate to the conditions we find around us on this earthy

planet of ours. It is not unreasonable even to assume that strange and

unfamiliar forms of life may exist on other planets where conditions are

markedly or even totally different. It will be however, fanciful to speculate about

how life exists and functions elsewhere outside the earth. But here on this

familiar planet, every life unit in which life blends itself with inherent

consciousness is charged, by destiny, with the task of discovering itself through

varied experiences. From the simplest form of life to the most complex, the ego

or the self which is always there and is propelled by the instinct of self-

preservation keeps on trying to discover and image itself without being

consciously aware of its own existence without any idea of what it is doing for a

long spell. It is like the rider-less horse of the legend, trotting on and on in

search of the rider, only to look back all on a sudden and discover that the rider

(which is none other than itself) is already firmly on the saddle. Life and

consciousness keeps on experimenting with countless forms of life to work its

way up to this point of discovering, discarding and annihilating many forms and

species and reach the point at last in a developed human being on the earth.

Before this discovery comes round to complete the first stage of awakening, life

remains very largely in the grip of cosmic somnambulism which uses instincts,

reflexes and involuntary responses as its instrument. But with the first real

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awakening, the ego comes to regard itself as a self- sufficient, self-activating

entity—almost a sovereign entity, within its own limited field,- using the mind,

now a potent instrument, for the purpose of assessing and interpreting life and

phenomenon within its range through inductive and deductive process, using

simultaneously the mind’s capacity for generating feelings, emotions and

longings and , above all, using the mind as an instrument for exercise of its will-

power. If we look back now at life and consciousness, imprisoned at the

beginning in non-living matter in the deepest pool of cosmic somnambulism, this

surfacing of the ego { the soul }, equipped with the mind, must be regarded as

an absolute miracle, achieved silently and slowly but inexorably by the cosmic

upward pull. The ego which had, heretofore been held on the saddle largely by

the force of cosmic somnambulism becomes a rider- or if we choose to call life

and consciousness a chariot, a charioteer- in its own right although

circumscribed by the mind and the senses which mainly determine its range and

capacity; it must play a very limited role for a very long, long spell. But the

miracle which registers itself with the conscious emergence of the ego streaks

upward along the path of pre- destined ascent, deepening broadening itself. The

ego ceaselessly strikes upward and the mind keeps on progressively

transforming itself into a finer and a more potent instrument. Experiences

gained from study of life and nature provides the basis for formulation of

luminous thoughts and ideas which evolve into philosophies and sciences.

Feelings and emotions refine themselves, to be picked up inevitably by the

inherent urge for articulation and to be fashioned into art, poetry and literature

and all through this adventure, life shows itself capable of exercising a will

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power which fortifies and sustains this urge and spirit of ascent. An individual

being, blessed with an awakened ego, participates in the adventure more fully

and experiences the delight of ascent more intensely than another who is tied

down to the lower hemisphere of the being by the instinct of self- preservation,

the common hungers and emotions universally shared wherever life exists. He

suddenly feels and discovers with a shock which thrills his whole being into a

new life—that the vital mind, floating on the surface of life and rippling with

common hungers and emotions signifies a mere beginning. He senses the

stirrings of vast reserves of psychic power beneath the surface, welling up from

inexhaustible source in response to the cosmic upward pull and seeking to

emerge on the surface to overwhelm and possess the superficial consciousness

force created by the vital mind, disturbed and shaken by this upward movement

from within itself does its best to resist and defeat it and is assisted by the

forces of Tamas or cosmic somnambulism (the downward pull of the ideas and

notions already formed) deeply embedded within itself. It does not want to be

dislodged from the milieu in which it has stalled itself with the knowledge gained

from its assessment of life and nature and the awakened ego becomes, for a

time, a battle ground where conflicting forces and impulses clash. The

confrontation begins between two sets of forces, one determined to tie it down

to where it is and the other, in tune with the cosmic upward pull, strives to give it

the strength and the will-power to release itself from the grip of cosmic

somnambulism for a complete awakening. Words are inadequate but the forces

and impulses which seek to keep an individual tied down to perennial life in the

lower hemisphere may well be called undivine The forces and impulses which

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help him to cut himself free from his moorings at the lower level of the being and

encourage and embolden him to ascend into a higher state of life are certainly

divine. For every individual being who has worked his way up to this fateful

struggle between the divine and undivine, the moment of liberation has come.

He has awakened to the reality of the inner mind. He was a mere charioteer,

largely in the grip of cosmic somnambulism, when the vital mind was his chariot

but now with his inner mind as his chariot, he has become the good and

enlightened charioteer (shurath in Bengali), able at last to sever the chains

which may held him back and to steer himself and his vehicle into the summit of

the ‘super-mind’ and divinity.

The Holy Chandee reveals the miracle of the cosmic kinesis and creation to

Surath (the good, enlightened charioteer) who figures in the Triune Hymn as the

representative of enlightened and awakened men and uncovers the whole

process of ascent from the point of awakening and enlightenment to the point

from where the summit may be envisioned and scaled. There are two

fundamental assumptions which are among the basic doctrines sustaining the

Hindu thought and philosophy. They have to be briefly discussed and explained.

The first is the immortality of the soul—the soul being the ego of an individual

living being. Every life-unit has its immortal ego. It exists either by itself or is

integrated. With a composite ego—and in the case of a composite ego, with a

more complex and composite ego—as the life cum consciousness force

experiments with and evolves higher and higher forms of life. This process of

integration and renewal of old egos into stronger and more complex ones is

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accomplished by growing awareness of the self as a dominant reality until the

whole process reaches its culmination in the human ego- the most complex and

the most powerful individual ego yet evolved by the cosmic consciousness force.

It is a stupendous miracle. The progress from some rudimentary form of life

which is almost as much in the grip of cosmic somnambulism as non-living

matter to such advanced forms of life as those of dogs and horses where life

has moved a long way off from the initial point towards an ever-growing sense

of selfhood is certainly a wonder. Through sympathies and antipathies, through

fulfillment and frustration, through discords and harmonies, the cosmic upward

pull has slowly effected this transformation just as it once slowly caused life to

germinate out of non-living matter. And it completed this particular round of the

continuing miracle with the emergence of the human ego and the human mind.

The concept of immortality of the soul applies only to the human ego on the

earth. The cosmic consciousness force has, by occult and mysterious

processes, gathered into it the essence and the forces inherent in lower forms

of life and granted it the freedom to strive and progress towards the fulfillment of

its destiny. The force of cosmic somnambulism, initially held the entire cosmos

in its grip and started loosening the grip only where life emerged ...The process

of loosening gathered speed and momentum as the cosmic consciousness

force (call it the Demi urge or god, if you prefer ) evolved higher and higher

forms of life. And the process completed its first phase when the human ego,

impelled by its urge for self-expression had the well developed mind as its

instrument. It has since built up with this instrument an elaborate social life and

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created a world of its own with many systems of thought and ideas. But the vast

majority of men and women still not consciously interested in the concept of

immortality of the soul or in the idea of life after death. Many of our best

equipped intellectuals have no faith in it and disown it as pure moonshine. But

the cosmic upward pull is prodding us all the time and trying to create an

awareness of truths which we either usually ignore or cannot comprehend. It

forces us to look beyond the mundane and strengthens our belief in a hereafter

about which our ideas are admittedly vague. Common men and women

intuitively believe however in the immortality of the soul and all the

institutionalized religions of the world have retained it as a matter of basic faith.

Opinions differ however as to how the disembodied souls exist after death and

here our ancient seers and sages inextricably inter-link immortality and

transmigration of souls as inseparable constituents of the same truth. .

From the moment the human ego had limited freedom to go its own way, it felt

itself instinctively charged with the task of moving from lower to higher planes of

thought and life- from gross hungers, emotions and feelings into a rarer and

purer psychic atmosphere. It immediately recognized the perennial

confrontation between the higher and the lower as a fact of life. This is a fact

which is clearly recognizable in the light of the ethical principles which we have

formulated to regulate our social life and our social behaviour, at all levels

presents ample evidence to prove it. If we look at it as a matter of semantics,

the confrontation may as well be described as a conflict between the cosmic

upward pull on the one hand and the cosmic downward pull—the gravitational

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pull which we all know and recognize both as a physical and psychic reality- on

the other. And many people will get the message more clearly if it is described

as a confrontation between the divine and the undivine. The confrontation is a

realty of which man has always been aware both in his individual and collective

life. But it can be best studied and understood in the life of a seer or saint rather

than in the collective life of a community or Nation. The collective life of a nation

or a community tightly bound and unified by religious and dogmatic ideas beliefs

or by irrational adherence to national and territorial ideas and prejudices distorts

the whole concept of man’s upward ascent into divinity. The powerful, malignant

force which does it is the gang mind, inevitably created and fostered by such

ideas, beliefs and prejudices and sustained and nourished by the undivine

forces of hates, jealousies, ignorance and meanness. Our ancient sages and

seers recommend therefore loose free association of men and women rather

than their participation in tight- bound religious, social or national groups and

communities. They knew that deliverance from the forces of cosmic

somnambulism and fuller awakening must come through the visions of seers

and through the purifying psychic process which they initiate and stimulate.

They detach themselves from the massive collective life of this group or that to

pilot their own chariots along the path of ascent, blazing the path as they move

upward and drawing the massive wagons they leave behind along it by the

negative pull of their ideas visions-some times, a long way and sometimes only

a few steps. The believer in immortality of the soul anchors his faith to the

concept divinization (completion of the process of becoming by every human

ego) of every human ego through a long series of births, deaths and re-births,

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and devoutly believes that every human being, however unsaintly he may be in

this life, will in some distant future birth,, detach himself or herself from the

crowd to pilot a chariot ahead of it along the oath of ascent and assist the

process of divinization of the collective life he leaves behind. This is a painfully

long and slow process—long and painful for the individual human ego and

much longer and infinitely more agonizing for man’s collective life. But this is

the cosmic process of entelechy—the process of becoming—and the seer

envisions a divine life on earth at the end of it. The end is however far away in

unforeseeable future and the seer focuses his vision on rolling waves of

inconceivably long cycles of time on which the process of becoming must

extends itself for fulfillment, in the penultimate canto of the triune Hymn

Every human soul feels itself instinctively entrusted with the task of divinizing

itself under a cosmic compulsion. It makes a humble beginning on the moral

plane as a sense of right and wrong with the idea of a Lemi urge or god super-

imposed on it. Some individuals have, a strong preference, for what they

consider morally right; others, more self centered, and less inclined to attach

much importance to moral principles, steadfastly pursues their own interests

and do not mind being morally wrong. But even these wrong- doers .indirectly

offer their homage to moral principles, by trying to escape detection and by

going through diverse forms of ceremonial worship of gods whom they revere

as the upholder of these principles. This completes the first stage of awakening

for the vast majority of men and women and there they must stall themselves for

a long long time without showing any marked desire to move further upward.

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But it is only in comparatively few men and women that the intuitive faith in a

divine life develops into a passionate urge and they strive to fulfil it through

introspection and self analysis. The sense of right and wrong goes deep into the

recesses of their mind, trying to unmask the complex of instincts, urges,

suppressed trends, involuntary responses and submerged experiences of

diverse kinds which generate psychic energy in the crucible of the mind and

originate motives for action...And as they go deep into themselves, they

discover forces and compulsions which divide their mind and soul—their ego.

This schizophrenia marks a definite stage in the process of awakening of the

self into a higher state of being for ages and ages extending over many births

and re-berths, the process is difficult confusing but in the end, the ego splits

itself up into a lower ego which seeks to adhere to the lower hemisphere of the

being militantly distrustful of anything higher and the higher ego which strives

to detach itself from the lower self and ascent to a summit not yet clearly visible.

The inner tensions and conflicts broaden strengthen the capacity for vision,

widen the horizons of thoughts and ideas and generate new emotions and

sympathies. And soon the awakened man finds himself detached from the

crowd and ahead of it. But he does not yet know what to do with the unfamiliar

psychic upsurge. The inner mind has surfaced out of the depths of vital mind

and is lending itself to the cosmic upward pull to draw the ego upward, away

from the lower self which the vital mind { the matrix of the inner mind but now

functionally different from and opposed to it } continues to sustain and nourish

with all its hungers, desires and emotions. The awakened man vaguely realises

that the inner mind is a very potent instrument in his hands but does not yet

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know how to use it. He find himself locked in battle with his lower self and

suffers defeats and disappointments. He is in pain. The emergence of the inner

mind has beamed a flood of light into the recess of his heart but he cannot yet

understand and identify the truths. He desperately rides the inner mind as

though it were a steed and runs into the depths of the phenomenal and

nonmenal worlds to discover in the end that the psychic and spiritual force

generated by the inner mind, has brought him round to the Gnostic within

himself. And it then stands revealed to the awakened man that his ego

accommodates three personalities- the higher ego, the lower ego and the

Gnostic.

Our seers have assured us that this revelation will be vouchsafed to every

human soul after it has worked its way up to a certain stage through a series

births, deaths and re- berths. But there is still a long way to go through another

series. The lower ego must be disciplined and subdued into submission and

surrender to the higher ego and the liberated higher ego must one day

surrender to the Gnostic who will ultimately de-ego the ego, causing it to merge

in the cosmic soul and break down the barriers which impenetrably surround

every unit of finite consciousness in order to enable it to stream out and merge

in the cosmic consciousness force. This is broadly speaking, the whole process

of becoming for every human soul. The duration of a life—term is much too

short for it and every human soul must therefore go through a long, long series

of births, deaths and re-births to complete it under a cosmic compulsion. The

soul, once it evolves itself, is immortal. It stays immortal through births, deaths

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and re-births to fulfil the process of becoming; and it stays immortal when it

merges with its finite consciousness, in the cosmic consciousness force as a

de-egoed ego—as a pulse separately throbbing but in such perfect harmony

with the cosmic throb that it becomes one with it.

The cosmos which billows over count less billions of years, sometimes

continuously expanding and sometimes shrinking--- even shrinking, into the

Nihil-streams out of the Impulse of Delight released by the Ultimate reality. Our

seers did not use such words as God or Demi urge or Iswar to indicate and

suggest the nature and ways of the ultimate Suoer—cosmic Reality because

these words are totally inadequate and can be used only as symbols of forces

much lower down in the context of life and cosmos. They primarily focus light on

the antithesis between God and Satun, between Good and Evil or between

Divine and Undivine. But there is nothing perpetually satanic or perpetually evil

or perpetually undivine. The whole creation and cosmos are in a flux. Both good

and evil both divine and undivine are emanations from the ultimate Reality and

are pervaded by it. And because they are linked together by the pervasive

presence of the ultimate supra—cosmic Reality, ignorance is forever striving

towards knowledge, darkness is for ever trying to struggle out of itself and move

towards light and all that is undivine in human nature is seeking to move upward

to fulfil itself in divinity. And because there is no real gap, in this sense, between

good and evil and divine and undivine and because one is continuously

streaming upward into the other under a cosmic compulsion created by an

eternal upward pull, our seers avoided using words like god, so suggestive of

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religious and moral dogmas, and used the cryptic, esoteric word ‘THAT’ or ‘It’ to

describe the UltimateReality.

The ultimate Reality is Eternal Existence with the eternal consciousness force

holding itself within it in perfect { static} equilibrium. Our seers have envisioned

It as the Ultimate Reality in status. But it becomes the Ultimate Reality in kinesis

when a part of the Eternal consciousness force throbs into an impulse of delight

detaches itself from the source and the fountain head to descend with the

impulse of delight, now generating a downward pull, and to initiate the process

of genesis and creation. The seers have imaged it as the dissipation of

darkness and the return of the core of light obfuscated by darkness to the

luminous source. The Hindu has always regarded it as the cosmic game. The

downward pull, generated by the impulse of delight and recognized by man as

an obvious physical and psychic reality, is resisted by the eternal upward pull

which is initially weak but is destined to win in the end.

III

The Triune Hymn is based on the spiritual adventure of a ‘good charioteer’- of

one whose inner mind has emerged out of the vital mind and has lent him the

strength to haul himself out of the common crowd up on to a new height on the

path of ascent. Installed there on the vantage point of this new and unfamiliar

height, he surveys himself and his relationship with the new realities which have

just revealed themselves against the background of the old realities which

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governed his life heretofore. He insisted with all the will power at his command

that the old realities should tune up to merge harmoniously in the new but the

old fought him down in the conflicts which ensured and he found himself dis-

inherited and expelled. He therefore rode out, using the inner mind as his steed,

leaving behind his old kingdom and wandered far and wide in search the truth

which alone could restore him the lost kingdom of his mind and his sovereign

power over it. His wanderings brought him round at last to the hermitage of a

Gnostic who awakened the dormant Gnostic within his own self. The Hindu

believes that a Gnostic and spiritual guide from outside his being will blaze his

way into the consciousness of a man when the Gnostic lying dormant within the

crypt of his own being is awakening himself in response to the Mother’s upward

pull. It cannot be dogmatically asserted that this must always happen but it did

happen in this particular case and the ‘good charioteer surprised by the quiet

and harmony which prevailed at the hermitage and provided such a vivid

contrast to his own spiritual turmoil, roamed about, torn between his own sense

of wonder at what he saw and the magnetic force of his attachment to all that he

loved and cherished in the lower hemisphere of the being. As he brooded on his

past and present, he dipped into the recesses of his mind to discover himself as

a meditator who had used certain special processes of concentration to

crystallize the thoughts, ideas and beliefs which he treasured as dear

possessions. It was a renewal of the awareness that the higher self of a ‘good

charioteer’ accommodates at this stage two personalities—first, the man of

action who feels disinherited and deprived of his sovereign power over the

lower region and then, the meditator who feels exiled from the psychic

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realities—ideas, beliefs and faiths—which he had strenuously evolved through a

long process of concentration. The old rebelliously refuses to yield place to the

new; the man of action and the meditator, struggling for new vision and a new

life within the heightened consciousness of the ‘good charioteer’, come together,

blend into and become one more intimately than ever before under the impact

of a shared sense of inadequacy. The old is no longer acceptable but the new,

vaguely envisioned, is not yet potent enough to attract it upward and heighten it

into the new. And then the passionate striving for strength and for a more

clear—eyed vision forces a third force—the Gnostic-out of the depths of the

heightened consciousness for a fleeting moment and the ‘good charioteer ‘ has

a glimpse of it in the light of unfulfilled yearning. It will take a long, long time for

this nascent Gnostic to become a vivid and sovereign reality in the personal

sense but the glimpse is sufficient to create a potent urge which impels him to

go back to the Gnostic presiding over this hermitage. It establishes immediately

relations of psychic and spiritual affinity and reciprocity between them. And

when he goes back to the Gnostic, he is prepared to receive, accommodate and

absorb the truth which is going to be revealed to him

Knowledge, at all levels, comes from yearning for it and yearnings, generated

by knowledge gained through many deaths and births, throw the whole psychic

forward—into the unknown, creating irrepressible exploratory urges which are

rewarded by the Mother with visions of new truths. The cosmic upward pull

has so ordered the behaviour of finite minds that, even in the lower region of the

being, they must always respond to these upward urges. A man of science, with

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nothing higher than mundane knowledge in view, must work himself up into a

vision of the natural law on which his mind has been focusing itself, before he

descends to the task of applying his inductive cum deductive. Processes to

concrete facts. The hunger for new truths and for visions which illumine the

paths to these truths grows out of an inborn impulse planted into the root of our

being and envisioned by our seers as a powerful snake—like force coiling itself

round and round the root in slumber with the head thrust deep into the coil. It

thrilled and shivered into action with the first sprouting of life from matter as

countless multitude of tiny little forces which flickered and died out but were not

lost. For under the Mother’s cosmic scheme of genesis they were gathered, tied

together and blended into progressively more potent and more complicated

impulses to match more and more complex life—forms while life itself, borne

upward by instincts expressing themselves as common hungers and appetites

and loves and hates traveled into complexer forms to absorb and accommodate

this growing and expanding consciousness force. This process of gradual and

parallel vital and mental developments continued until it culminated in the

human body on the other. It may perhaps be visualized that while man was

moving unsteadily between the human and sub—human, the upward impulse

nestling at the root of his being was awakening itself under the impact of the

cosmic will, slowly uncoiling itself and offering the human ego a rudimentary

mind, destined to develop later into what we call the fully articulate mind of man.

But both as the rudimentary human mind and later as the fully developed mind

of man, it was fundamentally the vital mind in the sense that it could be and can

be used by the human ego only as an instrument for preservation and

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continuation of life in the most comfortable manner—and only incidentally under

the urge created by the upward impulse, for its beautification with poetry, art and

literature and for its purification with philosophical thought of of different kinds.

But in course of being used by the human ego for these diverse activities which

have certainly built up the human society and civilization of to-day, the mind in

the process of evolving its methods of cognition, had to impose on itself many

restraints and inhibitions which have largely enmeshed it and and have created

within it an inbuilt distrust of visions and truths mainly because its inductive cum

deductive processes, sanctified by phenomenal success in the field of science,

cannot apply to them in the established manner. Today, many men, gifted with

first class minds, are firmly of the opinion that this mind—the vital mind as we

have tried to characterize it—is the Crown of man’s Upward Impulse and that it

is a futile fancy to strive to aim at anything higher or brighter. Yet this cannot

surely be the end culmination of the cosmic ‘process of becoming’, The idea of

man’s upward movement stalling itself at the level of the vital mind with brief

cycles of joys and sorrows, of fugitive visions of glory and far more enduring

miseries and futilities—the idea of reconciling oneself to this concept of the

realities of life with nothing higher in view—must repel even a man of

imagination who cacnot see anything beyond the arc of light cast by the ‘brief’

candle of his vital mind. He cannot help going deep into himself in search of

light which may reveal his internal relationship with life’s Ultimate Reality. He

disowns temples and churches at one moment, consoling himself with thoughts

of the great achievements of art, literature and science and dulling his mind and

heart into somnolence with brief joys and comforts to soften the sense of futility

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and frustration and spiritual anguish. But at the next moment, he finds himself

groping around the ideas and visions on which temples and churches are

founded. There is indeed no respite for the finite mind until it transcends itself

This ceaseless, inherent and compulsive urge for refinement and ascent

revealed itself to our seers and saints as a tri—linear course of which the central

{ psychic } line is ‘Sushumna’—the path of the Mother’s upward pull along which

every human ego must climb upward and must keep on climbing through a

series of births, deaths and rebirths to reach the goal of gnosis.

The central line is flanked by two psychic lines {Ira and Pingla}, one activating

itself under the impact of man’s psychic ‘aspirations’ and the other sustaining

itself with a continuous and ceaseless process of ideation generated by the

sister psychic line The two lines inter-act on each other, reciprocating the

impulse they create, blending their functions and finally evolving together an

urge which moves into the central line to assist a human ego, already being

drawn upward by the Mother’s Invisible pull along that path. In the symbolic

sense, it is perfectly correct to say that men, specially poets, thinkers,

philosophers and scientists among them, have moved up along this course to

discover and create beauties, to discover and create laws and norms and to

discover, both in the psychic and material worlds==laws and rhythms which

have been abundantly exploited to provide comforts and consolations for men

and women, inescapably afflicted with a sense of bondage..They have certainly

their bright moments; many of them have long spells of success and pleasure;

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many fulfil their ambitions- even extravagant ambitions—and are flushed with

pride and an overwhelming sense of victory. But all these prove tragically

ephemeral; life itself is a very ‘brief candle’ and memories, reminding us of days

that will never return and of delights and triumphs which can never be renewed

are a source of never-ending agony. We do indeed strut and fret on the stage

but we remain bond-slave to an inexorable fate.

Yet the human ego, acting knowingly or unknowingly under the Mother’s upward

pull, has an indomitable, unconquerable spirit which seeks to defy and subdue

fate. It has an irrepressible urge for sovereignty. This urge is obscured and

concealed by the hard and relentless struggle for physical survival in the vast

majority of men and women but even there it has its odd manifestations in dark

half hidden nooks and corners of life. A village musician, abjectly poor and

unhappy, wriggles out of his miserable existence as often as possible, to play a

sovereign role with his one-string instrument And higher up, the desires and

ambitions—spiritual, artistic, political, social and military—of the luckier ones are

dominated by this urge one way or the other. They are not daunted by the fact

that these desires and ambitions degenerate inevitably into painful memories

and futilities; they are not daunted by the records of lives and experiences of

great kings, able and distinguished politicians and brave and victorious

Generals, smothering themselves with self-pity and feebly crawling on to

disgrace and death. Viewed as a whole this spectacle of human life is a

spectacle of tragic sorrow which can only evoke measureless compassion. And

out of compassion has indeed grown up a system of thought and philosophy

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which aims at sober and stoic acceptance of fate as man’s inevitable destiny. It

aims at smoothening the rough and sharp edges and angularities, it seeks to

beautify life with art and poetry; it aims at introducing rhythm and harmony into

the conflicts and discords of human life. It does not rule out sorrows and

tragedies, it bows to fate but it still maintains that within the limits of what man

has got and gained and what man can regulate and control, the human ego

should and must play a sovereign role. The course is a very short one for

individual men and women but it is a long, long one for the human race. .And

that is at least a consolation Men and Women who have pensively reconciled

themselves to this way of looking at life have sometimes appeared to triumph

over fate with heroic feats of courage and endurance but that is only an

appearance. Some of our great seers who believed in the near—immortality of

the ego while adhering to this doctrine of sorrow, could view life only as a long—

very long—process of purification and catharsis through births, deaths and re-

births before a peaceful end in final extinction. They accepted sorrow and agony

as the primordial fact of life and life as a ceaseless pursuit of relief through self

control and moderation. Compassion is therefore the fundamental note of this

philosophy.

This does not, however, satisfy the human urge for sovereignty. It is no answer

to it. But what is it then? Is it a mere pathological aberration? This question

profoundly disturbed the mind of the ‘good charioteer’, He was already a King—

an king in the sense that he held sway over the impressions which his mind and

senses gathered in from the phenomenal world and that he created, controlled

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and regulated the ideas and concepts which he framed out of these impressions

within himself. He had a psychic empire as he looked, beyond himself, upon the

phenomenal world and he had a psychic kingdom of ideas concepts within his

own being. He felt complacent and self assured. He was both a man of action

and a philosopher and, through action and philosophy had come to terms with

life as it is with all its limitations and sorrows. As a thinker and meditator, he

delved into the depths of his mind making the most of his limited—extremely

limited—psychic sovereignty, he discovered vast reservoirs of hidden power

within himself and started drawing upon it.-He polished and strengthened the

ideas and thoughts which he had already grasped; he refined his own feelings,

emotions and sentiments. His imagination blazed up to illumine the farthest

depths and recesses of his own mind and heart, to open up new horizons of

thought and to reveal vast expanses of visions and visionary ideas. Without

being fully aware of it, ha had moved into the direct line—the direct path—of the

Mother’s upward pull. He passionately strove to break the barriers of his own

being. He strove to move upward and expand himself. Thoughts and ideas,

startlingly new and audacious, stirred within him; he started evolving vast,

measureless ideas about the genesis of the cosmos and the laws rhythms

which sustain it and keep it going; he tried to find his own place in the cosmos

and envision his own destiny. As our sages and seers have said, his inner mind

had just then emerged and with it had hesitatingly and fleetingly surfaced the

Gnostic within him. The Gnostic appeared one moment and disappeared in the

next but the visions spurted forward, leaving behind a trail of glory which

imperiously draw the whole being on and on. There was no longer any turning

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back to the old position for him. He could no longer stall himself in the old

familiar world.

Every developed human ego has a trinity within itself. First comes the man of

action who is saddled with the responsibility of piloting his life. He is the king

who takes all decisions makes all moves. Then comes the thinker,--the

philosopher who arranges, clarifies and classifies impressions, thoughts and

ideas to assist the king And finally comes the man of vision—the prophet, the

Gnostic- who knows the whole being ahead of itself- ahead of the familiar world

with familiar ideas and familiar surroundings. The Gnostic remains normally

dormant but when he wakes up—even for a short spell--, the whole being is

rocked into a revolutionary upsurge. The old settled order becomes unsettled;

old values peel off; a new beginning becomes inevitable.

This trinity does, in a sense, operate and function in every human ego. Every

man has to be a man of action one way or the other. Within the circle of his

activities, big or small, he has to be regarded as a king. However humble his

station and however limited the range of his mind, he has to be simultaneously

a thinker although he may not be able to create any significant thought or idea

and may have to use commonplace thoughts and ideas already afloat on the

surface of human consciousness. And in the sudden flash of a heightened

moral sense or of a heightened sense of beauty, one may even discover in him

the man of vision at the far end of the tunnel, stirring and striving toward light—

groping and striving-in semi-darkness. Our sages have said that such flashes of

heightened consciousness carry the assurance that the man of vision,

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sometime trying to soar-up into light with one day emerge, at the end of a series

of births, deaths and re-births, as the prophet and Gnostic to complete the man.

And the day on which the man of vision surfaces from the depths of the being to

initiate a new process of cognition which leads to gnosis will stand out as the

Day of fulfillment.

Now the day of fulfillment which marks the penultimate a stage of the ‘process

of becoming’ had already dawned for the ‘good charioteer’ of the Triune Hymn.

It brought in a torrential flood of light which blinded him to the old familiar

realities. It brought in an overwhelming, bewildering tempestuous sense of

blessedness which impelled him forward to what he vaguely felt to be the truth

He deeply but vaguely felt that it could reveal the mysteries surrounding the

cosmos and piercing and penetrating it at countless points. He felt it could

reveal the secret of the genesis and creation and could solve the mysteries of

life and death. But he could not work his way into it. He looked round to bring

his new experience into harmony with his ideas of the external, phenomenal

world. The phenomenal world repudiated it trying to arrest the upward

movement and to pull him down into the familiar set-up. He went down into

himself to find if the new experience could be reconciled to the laws, the rules

and the norms he had formulated for himself. They repelled the new experience

as fiercely as it had been thrown out by the phenomenal world. Then feeling

baffled, humiliated and defeated, he mounted the spirited, fiery steed of his own

inner mind and rode out in search of the Truth.

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The search led him into a vast and expanding vision, dimly seen and dimly

understood. It may extend over births, deaths and re-births before the truth

enshrined in the vision can be gripped and held by the seeker. But our ‘good

charioteer’ was lucky. His search lead him into the hermitage of the great sage

‘Vedas’ who had already had this vision and experience and had, through

strenuous pursuit and the ‘grace of the Mother found his way into the truth and

gained the Ultimate knowledge. The sage could immediately recognize him as a

true seeker and rewarded him with answers to his questions on Genesis

Creation—on life and death and on the divine undivine. He revealed to him the

fundamental truth behind the phenomenal world.

The Triune Hymn, embodying the vision and experience of the great Sage, is

intimately subjective but it is objective in manner and tone. It is a n objective

and highly condensed narration of the spiritual conflict between the divine and

the undivine which he experienced within himself. The divine and undivine are

words not to be understood in the context in the way in which a moralist will like

to interpret them. They both flow into kinesis from the Mother Ultimate Reality

and blend together; they twist and straighten each other and camouflage

themselves in a thousand ways. And the human ego is charged with the mission

of dis-entangling them and of divinizing the undivine. The divine is the hard core

of reality even in what appears to be undivine and the task set for man is to

extract it and to let it initiate the process of transformation. This is the sage’s

intimate personal experience but he rigorously excludes any subjective bias

from it because the vision and the truth it reveals belong to the human spirit

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rather than to any individual human being—rather than to the seer himself

The ‘Prathama Charita’—the first Hymn- embodies the fundamental revelation.

A man for whom time has rolled round to somewhere near the point of

awakening from cosmic somnambulism is deeply disturbed by vague and

immortal longings which point to a vaster life and consciousness outside the

cabined, cribbed existence which he can identify as his own. He feels impatient

of the restrictions, inhibitions and constraints of his familiar social life. This spell

of longing and impatience may extend over a number of births, deaths and re-

births but when the wheels of time bear him forward to the point of fulfillment-

the point of release from the grip of cosmic somnambulism-, the ‘Mother- the

Ultimate Reality-grants him a vision of herself pervading and transcending the

cosmos. She is unknowable in status; she is beyond the furthest and highest

reach of finite consciousness but she descends into finite consciousness in

Kinesis and enables the blessed few to see and feel the occult and mysterious

ways of her manifestations. This descent has been variously described as

descent from status into Kinesis,- a descent from the higher into the lower

hemisphere- as descent from light into darkness. These descriptions seem

adequate but it seems impossible to evolve a more adequate symbol with

human words. But what the seer sees and feels strikes him as a vast

measureless flow of cosmic delight, streaming down in countless different ways,

endlessly digging new and new channels for itself and endlessly diversifying

itself through them. It is a vision of cosmic consciousness, throbbing and

vibrating with cosmic delight and manifesting itself in the diversities of the

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phenomenal world. It is the vision of one, diversifying itself into many.

Our ‘good charioteer’ had had this vision and it illumined his inner being. It

revealed the futility of the impressions and ideas- the rules and the norms-

which had governed his life so long. They had served a purpose; they provided

a platform from where he had this vision in a sudden flash. But for him, they

had outlived their purpose and usefulness. But while he saw all this, he did not

know where the light which flooded his mind and heart was going to lead him to.

He wandered about, looking round for the new path and in course of this path-

finding adventure found the hermitage of VEDAS, and met the great sage.. The

Sage had the vision long before; he had discovered the new path and

strenuously worked his way into the new transcendental knowledge. He

immediately recognized the ‘good charioteer’ as a true seeker, he graciously

welcomed him and rewarded him with an account of his own search, discovery

and fulfillment.

This is how the Triune Hymn begins. The first Hymn shows the seeker and the

seer against the cosmic background. It shows the cosmic purpose in Kinesis; it

reveals the cosmic delight and the descent; it uncovers the clash and conflict of

cosmic forces, moving down and moving up, on the cosmic stage. It unveils the

downward movement of delight, resisted by the upward current of purified

consciousness. It unmasks the cosmic process of catharsis; it shows how

descent is reversed and is followed by ascent along the upward stream of the

consciousness force activated by the Mother’s upward pull. The second Hymn

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enacts this drama on the stage of a human ego which is acutely aware of the

Mother’s upward pull and struggles for supremacy over the un- divine forces

dominating a part of itself. It triumps over the un-divine in the end The third and

the final Hymn enacts the drama of. Confrontation between the divine and the

undivine at the highest level where the human ego, already triumphant and

sovereign, finds its forces, enfeebled and overwhelmed for a while by undivine

megalomania- by self- worship and self exaltation which destroys its sense of

cosmic rhythm. The divine finally triumphs but the struggle is cataclysmic while

it is on. When it needs, the human ego finally liberates itself and the ascent

thenceforward is a blissful experience.

The End

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166
 APPENDIX A

The DEVEE SUKTA

The Sukta [ group of Verses ] from the Rig- Veda, freely translated and briefly

commented upon below, is traditionally acknowledged as the Source from which

the SHAKTA Cult , - a variant of the transcendental idealism [ monism ] of the

Upanishads – has emerged. To the SHAKTA, the Ultimate Reality from which

the whole Cosmos has come out manifests Itself as the Mother, eternally

existent, omniscient and omnipotent. Her Impulse of delight and Her Creative

Urge created the Universe and Her Consciousness Force has been sustaining

and preserving it through a ceaseless process of dissolution and renewal. She

pervades the Cosmos as a Immanent Reality through the force which She has

released for the purpose but the Force is only a part of Herself which streamed

out of Her Static Transcendence under the impact of Her Will and Delight.

Delight has indeed been fulfilling itself through countless rhythms and

harmonies and through an endless process of diversification and beautification

of the whole universe from its dim, distant beginning. It drew life out of non-living

matter and it instilled mind into finite lives in order that finite consciousness

forces, governing and guiding finite living beings, may participate in the cosmic

game and purify and beautify the cosmos in their own humble ways in

partnership with the Cosmic Consciousness Force.

Man who has been developing and using his finite Consciousness Force as a

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potent instrument for understanding and interpreting the Secrets of his life and

destiny can become a conscious partner in the cosmic game. Gnostics,

Saints .and Seers in India have felt and realized that the Mother’s Cosmic

Consciousness Force, indeterminate and all-pervasive, can and does

personalize Itself as Supreme Beings in various ways; they have felt and

realized that the indeterminate, all pervasive Cosmic Consciousness pervading

all finite psychic forces inheres in every human ego and casts itself in the

mould of that ego to become one with it as its divine self and to immortalize it in

this process. The awareness of this spontaneous and inevitable integration with

the divine cosmic consciousness enables a human ego to transcend its limits

and to commune with the Mother Herself. Our transcendental thinkers have

frankly admitted that the human mind can not reach the Ultimate Reality except

on the summit of inspired thought where It can be envisioned by Man’s super-

mind and intensely experienced deep within its inmost Crypt. It can not be

expressed in human words and the Seers standing on the razor edge of the

Summit of their being could only humbly describe it as the Ineffable That. But

Man, constituted as he is, can not over-ride his anthropomorphic compulsions

which have impelled Saints and Seers throughout the ages to conceive the

Ultimate Reality envisioned by them in terms of human relationship as the

Father, the Mother, the Brother, the Friend or the Commander on the battlefront.

This SUKTA reveals ‘BUKK’, a female Seer of the Vedic Age, on the Summit of

her vision where the anthropomorphic pull tunes up with the creative delight and

the glory and luster streaming out of that vision and transforms the vision into

the Mother Idea. She is wholly possessed by it and the Idea articulates itself

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thereafter through her as an oracle.

This SUKTA is indeed an Oracle, voiced by the Mother Herself through the

mouth, the heart and the super-mind of the Seer who envisions the Mother and

becomes absolutely one with Her for a glorious moment on the Summit of her

being and stands poised as a medium of articulation, the ‘I’ in the SUKTA stands

for the Herself speaking out through a blessed Seer.

Verse I

“ I pervade and reveal Myself through the Rudras 1, the Basus 2, the Adityas 3

and Viswadevas 4,

I reveal myself as Mitra 5 and Baruna 6, as Indra 7 and Agni 8 and as both the

Aswinis.9 “

The Mother proclaims that She pervades both the phenomenal and noumenal

Universe and reveals Herself as the Special manifestations which have entered

into the experience of finite beings through their finite consciousness.

The first to be referred to are the Rudras, consisting of the mind, the five senses

of perception, and the five organs of action. They are eleven in number and

must be counted by as among the most precious possessions of man. They

carry in both joys and sorrows but they have still been called ‘rudras’ or Sources

of Sorrows because what they bring in can lead to our happiness only if they

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are refined and purified and will inevitably lead to sorrows if they are not.

The ‘Basus’, referred to next, are eight in number and have been differently

defined in different contexts. In this particular context, they stand for the special

powers and qualities which a man may acquire by disciplining his mind and

senses – such as intuition, a capacity for intuitive synthesis, compassion and

courage.

The ‘adityas’ which come in next are twelve in number and stand for the twelve

psychic phases produced by Sattwa – a preference for the highest ideal in view

– Tamas – a preference for stalling oneself in what exists around him – and

Rajas – an impulse of dynamism which perpetually seeks to move up from

Tamas to Sattwa –operating through the media of the mind, the heart, the

higher mind [ intellect ] and the ego. They emerge out of man’s inherent nature,

the word ‘aditya’ deriving itself out of ‘adit’ – the nature into which man finds

himself born.

The ‘viswadevas’, referred to next, are the divine manifestations of the Cosmic

Consciousness Force through man’s finite consciousness.

‘Mitra’ is the brightest of the twelve psychic phases referred to in [3]above. It

illumines the highest thoughts and aspirations of mankind as they emerge

man’ssuper-mind.

‘Barna’ means the vast sea of life- the vast reservoir of elemental forces which

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have to be disciplined and co-ordinated into the cosmic rhythm.

‘Indra’ means happiness in this context.

‘Agni’ means sorrows

the Aswinis’ refer to the twin process of breathing in and out and therefore to the

Whole scheme and system of life.

Freely rendered, the Verse may therefore read as follows:-

“ I pervade the mind and the senses I generate the powers and qualities which

may be acquired by disciplining the senses and the mind; I create the twelve

psychic phases as they emerge out of the inter-action of the three psychic

modes of Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas and of the mind, the heart, the super-mind

and the ego and I reveal myself as divine manifestations of the Cosmic

Consciousness Force. I am the most luminous of the twelve psychic phases and

I am the vast sea of life. I am both Happiness and Sorrow and I am the Whole

Scheme of life, manifesting itself through the twin process of breathing in and

out, “

Verse 2.

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 “ I activate the Moon1, the slayer of enemies (chastener and purifier of sins and

evil passions) and the Cosmic architect (structuring and re-structuring the

universe); I govern the forces which nourish both the body and the mind and the

forces which beautify the world (creating both beauties and the sense beauty)

I amply reward those who offer adequate sacrifices in the prescribed manner in

a truly prayerful spirit, “.

Verse 3

“ I am the absolute Sovereign of the Universe [ the creator, the preserver and

the destroyer ]; I am the giver of Wealth in all forms and I am the Primeval

Curiosity which inspired and impels them [ the Seers ] to seek knowledge [ of

the Ultimate Reality ] through Vedic Sacrifices. These divine Gnostic and ---the

spiritual leaders of men – offer me therefore their prayers as they see me

manifested in every thing and discover my all-pervasive presence everywhere.”

2

Verse 4 .

“Whoever absorbs food does it through Me; whoever sees does it through Me;

whoever breathes in and out does it through Me whoever hears does it through

1
The Moon has always been associated, in Indian thought, with chaste and pure thoughts
and ideas. It is the Symbol of the Mind when it strives to subdue evil passions.

2
The Mother reveals Herself in this verse as the Immanent Reality.

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 Me. These truths which I am conveying to you can be grasped only in a spirit

of patience and reverence. Only the irreverent may ignore them (at their peril)”3

Verse 5

“ I am speaking out this Sovereign truth myself as the Supreme

Ultimate One, to be served and worshipped by both gods and men. Whoever

strives towards this truth is granted the necessary strength. Such striving is

rewarded with the awakening of the super-mind [ which may grasp and

accommodate the great truth ]; it is rewarded with a capacity for vision in which

the truth may reflect itself as a luminous Image and formulate itself in inspired

words; and it may enable a blessed seer to be re-born into the light of supreme

knowledge as an equal of Lord Brahma Himself.” [1]

[1] This is the promise of final deliverance and emancipation. This

is the promise that if one moves up in pursuit of the Truth with unfailing devotion

and faith and knocks at the door, it will be opened For an enlightened finite soul,

3
The Mother governs the Senses and the mind. They draw upon the cosmic laws and
forces to be able to eat, see, hear and breath and the bodies and selves of all living beings
have been so constituted that they spontaneously respond to and tune up with these forces
and laws in the most effortless manner. This is a profound mystery but we let it pass
unnoticed because we are born into it and live with it as a common, familiar phenomenon.
We experience sense of power in diverse ways by freely using our mind and sense,
without being aware of our dependence on the cosmic laws and rhythms which enable
them to function. An unawareness of this kind must lead to an unawareness of the
Mother’s all—pervasive Immanent Reality and the verse sounds a warning against it and
against the danger of self-glorification which may emerge out of it.
The accent is on the Mother’s all-pervasive Immanence both in this and the preceding verse.

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the super-mind emerges to mirror the Vision and the Vision blazes a path which

leads to the merger in Cosmic Consciousness.

Verse 6

“I aim my arrows at Rudra to destroy it when it obstructs the

ascent of an individual soul into knowledge of the Ultimate Reality. Pervading

the physical world and the world of supreme knowledge and all that lies

between them, I shall fight for every individual soul to make the ascent possible.

“ [1]

[1] The truth that the Mother is always with us wherever we may

be, is now being proclaimed with renewed emphasis. She is with us irrespective

of whether we are placed high or low. We are so conditioned by Her all-

pervasive Immanence that we can never be away from Her. And She is always

drawing us Upward and is therefore continuously fighting down forces which

impede or obstruct the ascent.

‘Rudra’ stands, in this context, for the mind and the senses, serving

and strengthening the ego and then tending to isolate it and to dissociate it from

the Cosmic Consciousness Force which links together the finite consciousness

forces animating and governing finite egos. They seek to deaden our

awareness of our unsevereble links with the Mother’s Immanent Reality and to

impede and delay the upward march. The Mother assures us therefore that the

mind and senses which tend to stall us in our ego-based delights, hungers and

sorrows will be effectively subdued at the appropriate moment.

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 The idea of ‘bow and arrow’ suggests the sharp tingling sound and

the sonic ‘Om’ which remains our eternal symbol for the ‘Inspired

Words’[mantras]. The Inspired Words embody and convey the great ideas

which liberate on souls from the prisons of ego-based hungers and desires.

Verse 7 .

“ I create [ give birth to ] the Father of the Universe – the Force

which creates, preserves and sustains the Cosmos – and my Creative Impulse

and Power which lies hidden everywhere in the Sea of life, [ transforming it into

a sea of delight ], is both in and above it. I exist everywhere, pervading the

Worlds – the phenomenal worlds and the high and distant noumenal worlds

which are the worlds of knowledge and gnosis – and I pervade and protect them

both like an armour. “ [1]

[1] The verse re-states with renewed emphasis that the Mother

is the Creatrix of Cosmic forces which create, preserve and sustain the

Universe and that these forces are powered and spearheaded by Her Impulse

of Creative Delight, permeating the whole Universe. The Cosmos itself is

armoured and protected by Her all-pervasive presence, carrying within it the

eternal cosmic laws and rhythms.

Verse 8

“ The whole cosmos with countless worlds come into being as

‘I’ start flowing out of Myself like the wind. But the physical worlds of Gnostics

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can not contain Me because I transcend them and exist beyond and above

them in status as the Transcendent Reality. “ [1]

[1] The Mother pervades the Cosmos as the Immanent

Reality and transcends it and remains above it in status. She is the Ultimate

Reality and should therefore be conceived as both Immanent and Transcendent.

-----------*------------

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 APPENDIX B

[A] It is conceded that the assumption that the Triune Hymn

appeared contemporaneously with the Upanishads --- at least with some of the

later Upanishads --- during the post-Vedic age is speculative. But in the

absence of chronological data, there should be no objection if we accept an

assumption which is logically valid.. The belief, traditionally held by many

eminent Indians, points to the emergence of the Vedas at a point of time,

located some six thousand years’ before Christ. The Mahabharata is placed

somewhere between thousand and fifteen hundred years before the Christian

Era while the events narrated in the Ramayana are believed to have occurred

some two thousand years before the Mahabharata age. The Upanishads came

during the long period intervening between the Vedic age and the age of the

Ramayana – and we feel convinced that the Triune Hymn came simultaneously

at least with the later Upanishads.

The Sankhya and Yoga Systems of philosophy must be logically

viewed as serious deviations from the Transcendental Idealism of the

Upanishads. They are presumed to have evolved themselves early during the

post-vedic age with the earlier Upanishads, seeking to be boldly and sturdily

independent of the Vedas and Upanishads and trying to put new ideas into

circulation. Those ideas had definitely an anti-vedic thrust and conflicted with

the monistic doctrine of the Upanishads. The Sankhya invented an elaborate

fiction with countless, uncreated Souls, getting trapped within the meshes of a

blindly dynamic Prakriti and producing empirical Selves in living beings destined

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to suffer agonies through long series of births and re-births. But they remain

indifferent and unconcerned while all this happen and it is left to the empirical

selves to try and strive, through births, deaths and re-births, to end their agonies

in final extinction and simultaneously to provide ways out for the trapped eternal,

uncreated Souls from the meshes of Prakriti. The Sankhya embellished this

central concept by categorizing twenty-four entities and the Yoga system which

adopted the Sankhya philosophy as its base later added the idea of God to

these entities to bring the number up to twenty-five The Sankhya System was

frankly atheistic but the yoga system apparently held that it would be illogical to

let so many eternal uncreated souls roam about in the void without a Supreme

Soul round which they could herd together if and when occasions arose.

The Sankhya must have produced two important results. It must

have thrown a smoke – screen round the Monistic Idealism. of the Upanishads

and created wide-spread delusion in contemporary philosophical thought.

Secondly, it must have produced spates of ego-based megalomania in bold

men, capable of thinking boldly and evolving original ideas. The monists of the

Upanishads had already proclaimed “ Thou [ the finite soul of man ] art That

[ the Ultimate Reality ] “ but always warned that the finite Soul is only an

emanation from the Supreme Soul and that emancipation and salvation must

always mean a merger of the finite in the Supreme and the Infinite. But the

Sankhya Concept of eternal, uncreated souls super-imposed itself on this

Monistic doctrine to create an idea of absolute Sovereignity for the finite ego.

The feeling that a so called ‘Empirical self’ carried within it an eternal uncreated

Soul must have stimulated a spirit of excessive self-glorification in some highly

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advanced philosophers and devotees --- as it did in Shumbha in the Third Hymn

– and distorted and disfigured their Monistic Concept of the Ultimate Reality. It

may well be assumed that the inter-locked Sankhya and Yoga Systems brought

in a dark age in Indian Philosophical Thought and that the Triune Hymn

delivered the most devastating blow to knock down the Sankhya fiction to

restore the Monistic Idealism of the Vedanta.

The First Hymn proclaims the futility by the Yoga technique until it

integrates itself with a positive spiritual and philosophical concept. The Third

Hymn introduces Shumbha with his colossalised ego – absurdly magnified by

the delusion that it carries within it an eternal, uncreated soul and may therefore

compete and claim equality with the Supreme Soul -- and stages the final

battle in the Void to show that the eternal, uncreated soul of the Sankhya

System is a fiction which must vanish away as soon as it is brought into contact

with the realities of life and thought. This internal evidence seems clearly to

point to the fact that while the inter-locked Sankhya and Yoga Systems

appeared early during the Upanishad era, the Triune Hymn came later during

the same era to knock them off the stage of India’s spiritual and philosophical

thought.

[ B ]. The traditional System of numbering the verses in the Triune

Hymn calls for a word of explanation. The number of these verses is believed to

have been seven hundred but some of these verses must have been lost in

course of time. The number [ seven hundred ] has however been considered

sacred by traditionalists and orthodox devotees and the total number [ seven

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hundred ] has been reached and maintained by equating narrative links such as

“ said the Sages “ with verses and numbering them accordingly and by splitting

same verses. For instance, the number of verses in the First Hymn is 103

according to this system but as we have not adopted it, it comes here only to –

78 [ seventy eight ]. .

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