In your book the Veda of the Body – you have touched upon creation. I’m sure Sri Aurobindo would have answered this in great detail, but I’m going to ask anyway. It’s a big question. But when God manifested himself through creation, creation lost elements of its divine consciousness. But if the yoga aims to reunite with our origin, what was the purpose of separation in the first place ? Why come away from the origin if anyway we are going to return? And even if creation was to separate and reach a higher origin, that too doesn’t make sense to me because why would the Almighty need 7 pralayaas to progress – surely he can do that without the need for this much ?

Asked by 22 year old Female

It is a genuine question that any sensitive and awakened mind aught to ask especially when one looks at the many imperfections such as suffering and evil, wickedness and pain in this world. The traditional answer that all this is an illusion or else the explanation of a good God who created a beautiful world while some evil entity entered or man himself with his evil tendencies made the world bad feels inadequate as if something important was missing. But we need not get into this problem now and come straight to your question of creation.

To start with there are two kinds of creation that run parallel to each other. First is the creation of typal worlds that come into existence as the Infinite Divine Consciousness progressively veils itself and in the course worlds from the least veiled to the most veiled come into existence. They are known as Deva loka (the worlds of the gods) and the Asura loka (the worlds of the titans). These are typal worlds fixed in their scale and degree. The beings of these worlds cannot evolve higher than what they are.

One may feel that what is the need then to veil beyond the world of the gods? The reason is that the Divine seeks to manifest His fullness and even the world of gods is a limitation.

Hence the Divine Consciousness veiled so completely that it turned into its opposite with Light becoming darkness, Consciousness becoming unconsciousness, knowledge becoming ignorance, life became death and Bliss became suffering. Now a total oblivion creates the ground for infinite possibilities to emerge. This emergence is through a process of complex evolution. Its advantage is that this emergence will have no limits. It will shoot beyond the world of the gods. Thus the evolutionary beings and creatures came into existence. Through this process, certain finite aspects of creation can on the basis of their individuality become even as the Divine without losing the finite individuality. Thus the One formless Divine will become, through this process, many ‘Divines’ using name and form for expression. The form is needed to create the many and each centre of the individual many is inhabited by a portion of the Divine (the soul) to give it the evolutionary urge.

While the soul is indestructible and keeps evolving, the physical which is the basis of building a form is unable to keep pace with the inner evolution and hence falls back and collapses. Then the soul departs to rest and resume the evolutionary journey in another form. This is the reason for death. The same when applied to the cosmic level wherein the society and its institutions are unable to keep pace with the inner evolution of mankind then the outer world collapses leading to pralaya. This is meant to go on until the social moulds, the institutions and the material structures itself become fit and wide and plastic to express the Divine within. By its very nature it is a difficult and time taking process. If the individual soul or the world consciousness evolves too fast the material consciousness and physical bodies will collapse even earlier unable to keep pace. So the material body must be allowed to progress along with the inner progress. It is like a dancer dancing too fast looses the partner unable to keep the pace.

The good news is that matter and the human body has now reached that point wherein it could possibly go on evolving commensurate with the soul. If a few beings thus evolve harmoniously and escape the law of death then the need of pralaya will no longer be there as these fully evolved divinities in a physical body will automatically pull the rest.

The typal worlds come into existence without a struggle but are limited and fixed in their possibility of perfection. The evolutionary world as ours though full of struggle (because evolution implies going beyond the limits step by step) but also end up with limitless perfecf perfection.

The return therefore is with an enormous gain wherein every element becomes fully Divine and hence many Divines. It also implies a manifold Ananda that is impossible without the extreme plunge.

I just wrote a little list of these manifold Ananda yesterday which I am copying below once again.

‘By entering a state of complete oblivion and then releasing it gradually through a complex evolutionary process, step by step, means the emergence of extreme diversity thereby giving birth to different varieties of Ananda. So the Ananda of Oneness becomes a manifold Ananda. Apart from this the joy of taking the extreme challenge, attaining victory against near impossible conditions, the joy of walking on the edges of creation, the Joy of fighting against every odd, the Joy of rising after every fall and returning after every failure, the Joy of daring the daring the impossible, the Joy of a wounded narrow escape, the Joy of heeding to the Divine Call amidst the thousand voices and noises of the world, the Joy of sacrifice and renouncing all for walking alone in pursuit of the Alone, the Joy of aspiration and the joy of union, all these and many more forms of creative Ananda are the gains of this lapse into the Inconscience through which the One Infinite multiplies endlessly in a rapture’s endless sum or to put it in the words of Savitri, ‘the joy of a myriad myriads who are one.’

Affectionately,

Alok Da