Very interesting how Herbert Guenther translates or bridges this dynamic of Heidegger's 'system' and human access to it in being, thought (intuition) and act with Tibetan Mahayana/Vajrayana. Particuarly this passage could almost be a quote out of Heidegger's reflections on Schelling combined with a commentary on the false metaphysics of an objectivised ontotheology:

"It is this autopsies that differentiates the bodhisattva meditation from the attempts on the part of those who do not know better to control by fixation. Hence the difference between the two stabilizations procedures can be restated to show that bodhisattva meditation is the total system self-finding optimal stability.

The total systems’ self-stabilization as a holistic and self-optimizing process is intuitively felt by the contemplator , who is more of a visionary than a mere observer , to be a presence within himself. It is felt to be understandable only by becoming part of the process through directly experiencing it by tuning into it."

However, what I find lacking in this version is the centrality of freedom in the 'system' which leads away from the One into its fragmentation and its denial - the oblivion of Being and the fragmentation of Subject and also reversely, can lead to the willing of its total transfromation into integrality. This may be implied but not explicitly developed here (or in Tibetan or any Buddhism) as far as I can see it. Individual praxis finds itself in a position of building integrality not only as one faced with the many but as many faced with the many. Our multiple selves do not cohere except in and through separate practices of integrality. This is the implication of jointure. In this also is our throwness - inscribed as we are in multiple texts (discourses) of contested ontotheological histories of the objectified kind, each of which need both the adherence to the peace of the One and the dynamic violence of wresting the concealment of Being out of its genealogical forgetfullness through acts of deconstruction.

Moreover, this practice of a growing faithfullness to integrality through inner intuition can be translated in Aurobindonian terms as a bringing to the front of the psychic being; but Sri Aurobindo's "system" does not find fulfillment or closure thereby, because a sufficient possession of the root of universal integrality is not achieved thereby. The universal Avidya still awaits an act of individual free will powerful enough to to will its disappearance or utter transformation into the universal Integer. This can come about only through the possession of the root of integrality and its power - the Divine Maya of Supermind - the gnosis towards which the method of Heidegger or Schelling may be pointing but which involves entire realms of practice through transformed ontologies (the triple tranformation) to which we have no key at present and until the psychic transformation completes itself sufficiently.

DB

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Let me try to clarify my point a little further. Autopoesis implies that the "system" is self-manifesting its integrality and individual will is becoming a participant in this self-manifestation. But freedom of choice at the center of the "system" implies that if the "system" is trying to manifets its integrality on the one hand, it is also trying to deny its integrality on the (equal) other and the individual will is left free to choose the one or the other. In choosing to be faithful to integrality, the individual will is aligning itself with the first of the two cosmic wills, that of Deva as against that of Asura. In persisting in this faithfullness, it solidifies integrality in itself (systasis) leading to internal realization or stabilization of the intuition of integrality. This is tantamount to the coming to the front of the psychic being, where the individual becomes a consistently fatihful channel of the will to the self-becoming of 'system' as truth or integrality, or a perfect channel of Deva. This is the first of the three ontological changes according to Sri Aurobindo, the psychic transformation. In this ocndition, the individual finds itself pitted against the will to the denial of integrality and its engagement with this will remains incomprehensible to it except as "the Will of Deva." Aspiring to greater identity with the self-becoming of "system," it experiences a rupture, a discontinuity of being and recognizes itself as Deva itself, not just an instrument or channel of Deva. This is the second or overmental/spiritual transformation. At this point (and this is key) it realizes that the "system" has not offered it any privilege of power as will to integrality over its opposite, the denial of integrality. The cosmic Deva is pitted equally against the cosmic Asura and is destined to struggle eternally against its potential to deny the integrality of 'system.' Cosmic autopoesis does not prioritize the self-becoming of the 'system." Schemes which do not sufficiently accout for the equality of "good" and "evil" in the cosmos as Schelling does, prioritizing the operation of "system" as primordial freedom are missing something. What then is its utility of Deva in the universal economy? Its utility is only to keep the possibility of psychic idenitification alive. The realization by the psychic of identity with Deva (with Indra, if you will, the Lord of the Overmental Gods or Krishna, self-delegated from the Anandamaya plane to oversee the Cosmic Becoming), awakens it to (a) cosmic relativity and helplessness of "system" at the cosmic level to self-manifest and (b) its own freedom to transcend this helplessness and arrive at a power of "system" where its self-becoming it not relativized by its opposite - ie. Supermind. It is only here, in Supermind with its self-manifesting Power, the higher or Divine Maya that autopoesis as the self-becoming of truth can be spoken of in an effective way. At the cosmic level, it can be spoken of, but its equality with its opposite needs to be acknowledged along with it. It needs to be spoken of as a myth of Sisyphus, a doomed and compromized self-becoming unless the individual freedom to transcendence as psychic will at its center is activized beyond it.

DB

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Deb, I like how you are relating autopoiesis to the three ontological domains. It is necessary to remain sensitive to the ontological context one is referring to, and these distinctions are helpful to parse meaning. One must acquire a perspective which allows one to understand systems under the erasure of development.

And while realizing one should be sensitive to employing metaphors which work well in to biological domains to that of psychology and social systems, (in social systems especially the concept of autopoiesis poses challenges for in autopoetic systems the whole tends to dominate the parts).
 
Autopoiesis speaks to me of individual authenticity and if we conjure with Heidegger who often rambles around the issue of openness/authenticity and calls authenticity openness to B/being and the holism of the present moment, (GB). The relationship of beingness to Being, and opening of the spatio-/temporal horizon to the coming of the Other could also be taken as a feature of autopoiesis.

Although autopoiesis as defining system closure does not lend itself easily to this view, it is however a bit more complex because albeit autopoiesis is self-referential and defines the boundaries of organism it also enables coupling with its environment through self-mirroring (self-reference). It does this by internally tinkering with its own structure which allows it to make adjustments to ever increasing environmental demands. But it is paradoxically through the process of maintaining their differences (self-closure) that both organism and environment cohere in co-evolutionary relationship. Both organism and environment (order and chaos, deva and asura) cohere in this relationship through languaging and so are both enfolded in a “larger” shared semantic space of Worlding. So to the extent the Other and the autopoietic system, while maintaining individual authenticity, remain open to each other through languaging, they emerge together in the holism of the present moment.

Your comment here:
 
The cosmic Deva is pitted equally against the cosmic Asura and is destined to struggle eternally against its potential to deny the integrality of 'system.

reminds me of Maxwell’s demons and Wiener’s cybernetic angles who either create chaos (Maxwell) in the field or struggle to maintain the integrity of the system against entropy (Wiener) as here recounted by Stephen Pfhol in the Cybernetic Delirium of Norbert Wiener:

“Wiener's cybernetic story all these machines face a common enemy - entropy, chaotic disorganization, or noise - the villain of "the second law of thermodynamics." Against this enemy Wiener pits the informational effectivity of commanding communicative feedback. This facilitates the erection of a temporarily "closed system," a "local enclave" against chaos, "whose direction seems opposed to that of the universe at large and in which there is a limited and temporary tendency for organization to increase.
 
Wiener deliriously imagines cybernetics as a holy scientific weapon which uses the study of communicative feedback loops to both uncover and "exorcise" entropic noise. In this, he converts the little (counter-entropic) demons of Clerk Maxwell's nineteenth-century science into the informational angels guiding our own. As gatekeepers regulating the "useful" flow of otherwise ethereal energies, Maxwell's demons seemed to "overcome the tendency of entropy to increase" within defined communicative locales. But in sacrificially carving out protected pockets of organization these demons simultaneously threw the wider universe into disequilibrium. This is because neither humans nor other communicators ever truly exist in "isolated systems. We take in food, which generates energy, from the outside, and we are, as a result, parts of the larger world which contains those sources of our vitality."47
 
The same holds for Wiener's cybernetic angels, watching at the telelectronic doors of communicative feedback, securing the boundaries of some worlds against others, digitally transcoding energy into information (1991).”

Finally regards freedom, authenticity, and self-reflection I’ll offer another description from Guenther:

“As Martin Heidegger has shown in recent years Being (das Sein) is not a thing that can be located somewhere or even tyemporalized; but as Paul Haberlin has pointed out , it is always present in which is (das Seiende) which can be located and is temporal. Maitreye, the real author as the Uttaratantra, is well aware of the paradox and speaks of its (being’s) authenticity and elaborates as follows:

As to this (authenticity), there is nothing in it that has to be removed; There also is nothing that has to be installed (as if it were not yet present in it) The authenticity sees itself It is when one sees authentically that one is set free.

Inasmuch as this authenticity is , in terms of the experiencing individual, the individual’s own mind, not as a granular entity but as a sheer lucency and self-organizing dynamics , we can, in the second half of the quotation, recognize the minds self-reflexivity, through which the whole universe is related to the experiencer and the experiencer to the whole universe . This is also the minds and by implication, the individual’s freedom.” (1989)

rc

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This is the second or overmental/spiritual transformation. At this point (and this is key) it realizes that the "system" has not offered it any privilege of power as will to integrality over its opposite, the denial of integrality. The cosmic Deva is pitted equally against the cosmic Asura and is destined to struggle eternally against its potential to deny the integrality of 'system.'

I could not understand what you mean by the "system" has not offered it any privilage of power as will to integrality over its opposites. I thought that at this stage of purusha realisation (atman), it is the master of prakruti and has the power either to reject the prakruti or accept or transfrom it according to its will. It is the choice of the purusha that is free from prakruti at this stage to either want to transfrom
the lower prakruti with the help of supermind or leave it as it is. The purusha(atman) is free from the influence of the asura. It is a matter of integral realisation and knowledge of the man who realises the atman to also realise unity in prakruti.

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This response is to Rakesh's comment (it also applies to part of Rich's last comment - the part on freedom, but I will reply later to that posting). At the level of realization of the cosmic purusha (second transformation) yes, there is freedom from the influence of the Asura, but not the power to definitively dissolve or transform the Asura. Freedom from prakriti at this level means the ability to witness (saksi) or to give consent or withold consent (anumanta) to movements of cosmic force at the cosmic level but not to transform it. Thus the cosmos remains a field of battle between Deva and Asura. You are right in saying "it may want to transform the lower prakriti with the help of supermind or leave it as it is." And there too, it cannot do it as it is "with the help of Supermind" but only by rising to become identified with Suoermind (the third ontological change) and acting on the lower prakriti from that Being and Consciousness by bringing down the Paraprakriti into the lower Maya (the third transformation). This the cosmic purusha by itself cannot do, but the individual psychic idenitifed with the cosmic purusha can do it, since it is in essence transendental and can transcend cosmic being into identity with Supermind and return with its Power. This is part of the sense of the famous colloquy between Indra and Agastya in the Rig Veda, which Sri Aurobindo comments on in The Secret of the Veda.

DB

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This is my response to Rich, but I would like to preface it with a few words on the frame of the discussion re. freedom in the context of 'system' relative to Rakesh's comment also. The discussion at this point is about the cosmos as an autopoeitic system with the individual will as a constituent of it which can nevertheless identify intuitively with its integrality and its will to manifest intergality. In this context, freedom is only relative if the integrality of the 'system' is left compromized in the realization of the individual will. The question of freedom can be approached differently depending on one's frame and ultimately (in terms of yoga/praxis) one's central aspiration. Thus, Sri Aurobindo, who had the nirvanic realization without seeking it, could say afterwards that he was not seeking for nirvana or moksha but for power (initially to liberate the nation and later to liberate the cosmic condition of Ignorance). In his wrods, "a liberation which left the world as it is, was felt by me to be almost distasteful." Thus, from this frame, such a "freedom" is a compromized and relative freedom. not an absolute one. Also philosophically speaking, if he is positing a degree of freedom greater than this (freedom to accept cosmic bondage and transform it) then the lesser freedom cannot any more be called "true freedom."

This said, thanks, Rich for your introductory post on auropoeisis which serves to illuminate the present discussion and steer it towards greater clarity. The difficulties (and maybe inapprorpiateness or at least 'impurity') of looking at cosmos as an autopoeitic system with the individual will as a constituent is brought out there and by you in your comment. The principal difficulties, imo, seem to be the fundamental requirements for the properties of closure and self-stabilization. These are properties of "living machines" because such 'systems' are marked by the will to retain identity and survive. That they can be self-modifying through environmental pressure again has difficulties in application to cosmos, because cosmos contains all environments, no environment is external to it. The difficulty to closure comes due to the presence of individual freedom at its center. If individual will (as psychic being) can surpass the cosmic being (the universal intelligence and power of this intelligence to maintain itself) - this is where Sri Aurobindo tells us that the individual is greater than the cosmos because he can surpass it and transform it through powers not manifest in it - then the cosmic system cannot be seen as "closed." In terms of self-stabilizing, at the cosmic level, this can resonate with the earlier idea of ecosystem or biosphere and the more recent paradigm of Gaia, on which thanks also for your posting. Ecosystems (as subset of cosmos) may be seen as "living machines" in the autopoeitic sense, since constructive, preservative and destructive processes are ongoing there and all serve as parts of a self-conserving process. But we know how human will has ruptured all that. Biosphere should more properly be called psychoshpere now. So too the posting on Gaia mentioned above goes to show how close we are to the breakdown of earth as a "living machine" due to the disbalances introduced by human beings (embodying, I may say, the Asuric will of cosmos). Hindu mythos places a self-stabilizing 'system' at its center in the form of the Trimurti (Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva) but Sri Aurobindo has pointed out that these are properly supramental deities not cosmic ones (cosmos as bounded by Avidya with the Overmind as its peak). The cosmos is constantly in threat of Asuric takeover and it requires supramental intervention in the form of avatars of Vishnu or of transcendental acts of power by Shiva or Devi to stabilize it from beyond its boundaries (so long as the human will has not reached the proper stage in evolution to transcend and transform cosmos). Of course, all "living machines" that we know of are ultimately subject to dissolution - i.e. notwithstanding their self-stabilizing properties, what wins out at the end of the day is cascading instability and "death." In this sense, of course, cosmos, even if we atribute to it autopoeitic property can also be seen as compromized and individual will within it, so long as it is bound by it as a constituent at best identified with its "central intelligence" is similarly compromized (Deva pitted against Asura). It is only if we see the cosmos as a system with absolute freedom at its center in the form of one of its constituents being able to transcend its limitations, can it be not only autopoeitic in the limited sense of any "living machine" but truly effective in self-manifesting its integrality. But such a conception of 'system' leads beyond cosmos into gnosis.

DB

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I am reflecting further on the openness/closedness of cosmos in the context of your remark:

"...autopoiesis speaks to me of individual authenticity and if we conjures with Heidegger who often rambles around the issue of openness/authenticity and calls authenticity openness to B/being and the holism of the present moment, (GB) The relationship of beingness to Being, and opening of the spatio-/temporal horizon to the coming of the Other could also be taken as a feature of autopoiesis.

"Although autopoiesis as defining system closure does not lend itself easily to this view, it is however a bit more complex because albeit autopoiesis is self-referential and defines the boundaries of organism it also enables coupling with its environment through self-mirroring (self-reference). It does this by internally tinkering with its own structure which allows it to make adjustments to ever increasing environmental demands. But it is paradoxically through the process of maintaining their differences (self-closure) that both organism and environment cohere in co-evolutionary relationship. Both organism and environment (order and chaos, deva and asura) cohere in this relationship through languaging and so are both enfolded in a “larger” shared semantic space of Worlding. So to the extent the Other and the autopoietic system, while maintaining individual authenticity, remain open to each other through languaging, they emerge together in the holism of the present moment. "

Apart from the challenge to closure offered by the radical freedom of the inidividual, there is the problem of whether we are to consider the cosmos as finite or infinite in its being. By cosmos I am referring to whatever is manifest in its objectivity and whatever is available to forms of manifested subjectivity as experience. In our normal human condition, our experience is one of Avidya (Ignorance) as a multiplicity without unity. At the heights of cosmic experience (Overmind), we may experience unity in being with the cosmos or unity in consciousness with cosmic force, but the two are not united. This is the fundamental separativity of cosmos. Beyond this, there is the Supermind but this is not manifest here (or was not until 1956, if we are to take the Mother's words on faith) - the concealment of Being from which it may disclose itself unpredictably or which may respond to aspiration within cosmos and disclose new powers of itself there. The fundamental disunity in Overmind is one between opposite formulations of the One, for example, cosmic Purusha and Prakriti, as I wrote of in my response to Rakesh.
Here is Sri Aurobindo on this:

"Purusha and Prakriti, Conscious Soul and executive Force of Nature, are in the supramental harmony a two-aspected single truth, being and dynamis of the Reality; there can be no disequilibrium or predominance of one over the other. In Overmind we have the origin of the cleavage, the trenchant distinction made by the philosophy of the Sankhyas in which they appear as two independent entities, Prakriti able to dominate Purusha and cloud its freedom and power, reducing it to a witness and recipient of her forms and actions, Purusha able to return to its separate existence and abide in a free self-sovereignty by rejection of her original overclouding material principle. So with the other aspects or powers of the Divine Reality, One and Many, Divine Personality and Divine Impersonality, and the rest; each is still an aspect and power of the one Reality, but each is empowered to act as an independent entity in the whole, arrive at the fullness of the possibilities of its separate expression and develop the dynamic consequences of that separateness." (The Life Divine: "Supermind, Mind and the Overmind Maya")

Thus, there seems to be a boundedness to cosmic experience. Somewhere Sri Aurobindo speaks of cosmos as a bounded infinity. One may conceive of this as an evolving Ignorance, which has a ceiling at any point, but can keep growing in content of knowledge, without ever passing into the Knowledge (Vidya). Even astrophysically, this is the characterisation of the cosmos, since its expanding limits are seen to have an envelope. At the same time, Sri Aurobindo speaks of Being as radical and fundamental infinity. The experience of cosmos as this would propel us into a supramental manifestation. But even here, the "difference" between Overmind and Supermind, though practical to our experience, is not a hard line (or even a thin line) to Supermind's own experience (which rekindles the "under erasure" injunction of these dinstinctions). Sri Aurobindo's description of the dividing line between Overmind and Supermind reads somewhat like Derrida's indeterminacy of the "hymen" (the membrane that is an inside and an outside at once) or "fold":

"...Overmind is a delegate of the Supermind Consciousness, its delegate to the Ignorance. Or we might speak of it as a protective double, a screen of dissimilar similarity through which Supermind can act indirectly on an Ignorance whose darkness could not bear or receive the direct impact of a supreme Light."

Thus this bounded cosmos is also at once unbounded, translucently open to the mystery of Being.

Phenomenologically speaking (which is how this discussion began and continues through your reference to Heidegger's authenticity as an openness to Being as the Other), I think we have ended up deconstructing cosmos as autopoeitic system as bounded/unbounded or a system of vidya/avidya. In any case, we come back to the requirement for openness to the Other, the radically Unthought because Unthinkable. In Heidegger this is Being in its double status of disclosure and concealment. It is That which discloses itself as it chooses in Time and we partake of its disclosure as the ontology of our Age - what Hegel called the Zeitgeist, but whereas Hegel's Zeitgeist is Consciousness as the Reason of God proceeding in a predictable linearity, the phenomenological Zeitgeist is unpredictable though not unrelated to its constituents (human will) who through their openness to the Other (Unmanifest) call forth its disclosures. It is this that Foucault calls by the name of "episteme" - the specific way of knowing that characterizes an Age and changes unpredicatbly from Age to Age. To "think" (intuit) the dimensions of disclosure of Being in an Age opens us to our own limits as ontic beings and orients us to a future which is the hope of an intervention in Time of a new disclosure of Being, one which overcomes the insufficiencies of the past. Critical enquiry is the method of this thinking of limits which takes us to the edge and gives us a voice (without content, what we may call an "aspiration") to call the Other. Heidegger's entire life (including its "errors") was such a thinking of limits, which is why he could say in his last interview with Der Spiegel in 1966:

"Only a god can still save us." ("...If I may answer quickly and perhaps somewhat vehemently, but from long reflection: Philosophy will not be able to bring about a direct change of the present state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all merely human meditations and endeavors. Only a god can still save us. I think the only possibility of salvation left to us is to prepare readiness, through thinking and poetry, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god during the decline..." - Heidegger, Der Spiegel interview, 1966).

It is this preparation of the aspiration by "thinking" the limits or margins of our historicality and waiting there in readiness for the coming (or not) of the avatar that Derrida also refers to as l'avenir: "the coming of the Other when I am completely unable to see their arrival." This is the relationship of human and Being (both infinite) in Time, a relationship which you have rightly characterized as a "co-evolutionary relationship."

DB

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This the cosmic purusha by itself cannot do, but the individual psychic idenitifed with the cosmic purusha can do it, since it is in essence transendental and can transcend cosmic being into identity with Supermind and return with its Power. This is part of the sense of the famous colloquy between Indra and Agastya in the Rig Veda, which Sri Aurobindo comments on in The Secret of the Veda.

I liked the way you explained the involvement of the
psychic being in the third transformation. Since it is in essence the purushottama seated in the heart of all beings as is said in the Essays on the gita by Sri Aurobindo.

On the discussion of the bounded infinity of the cosmos,
the prakruti sacrifices its unbounded infinite freedom at the level of transcendental divine for the purpose of manifestation of the bounded infinite cosmos. Somewhere Sri Aurobindo says that the sacrifice of the prakruti is very great for the purpose of manifestation that humans do not understand. Humans consider prakruti as an obstacle, though it might seem to be as lower prakruti, but it is becuase of her sacrifice that
this manifestion was possible in the first place. This is the ignorance of the purusha about himself and prakruti at the lower level.

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Yes, quite true about the Purushottama seated in the heart of all creatures from the Gita and also about the sacrifice of the Supreme Shakti. Sri Aurobindo writes about it in his book, The Mother. He is talking about the Mother (Para-prakriti, Transcendntal Shakti) in/as the Ignorance (Avidya, lower prakriti) but also about the (repeated) avatarhood of the Mother. Here is the entire paragraph: "The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother." (Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, Chapter VI).

DB

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I am referring to Debashish's clarification apropos of a posting which I read just sometime ago. His comment is:

Yes, quite true about the Purushottama seated in the heart of all creatures from the Gita and also about the sacrifice of the Supreme Shakti. Sri Aurobindo writes about it in his book, The Mother.

He is talking about the Mother (Para-prakriti, Transcendntal Shakti) in/as the Ignorance (Avidya, lower prakriti) but also about the (repeated) avatarhood of the Mother.

Here is the entire paragraph: "The Mother not only governs all from above but she descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and great love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of the Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of the creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother." (Sri Aurobindo, The Mother, Chapter VI).


I do not get the sense of "repeated avatarhood of the Mother" from the above quotation, nor from anywhere from the chapter describing the Mother's Powers and Personalities. Here is the paraphrase of the relevant text.

…many are her powers and personalities, many her emanations and Vibhutis that do her work in the universe.
 
• Transcendent, the original supreme Shakti stands above the worlds and links the creation to the ever unmanifest mystery of the Supreme.-- Universal, the cosmic Mahashakti creates all these beings and contains and enters, supports and conducts all these million processes and forces. -- Individual, she embodies the power of these two vaster ways of her existence, makes them living and near to us and mediates between human personality and the divine Nature.

• The Mahashakti, the universal Mother works out whatever is transmitted by the Supreme. Each of the worlds is one play of the Mahashakti. At the summit of this manifestation there are worlds of infinite existence, consciousness, force and bliss over which the Mother stands unveiled eternal Power. Nearer to us are the worlds of the supramental creation in which the Mother is the supramental Mahashakti, a Power of divine omniscient Will and omnipotent Knowledge always apparent in its unfailing works and spontaneously perfect in every process. But here are the worlds of the Ignorance, worlds of mind and life and body separated in consciousness from her source, of which the earth is a significant centre and its evolution a crucial process. This too is upheld by the Universal Mother, guided to its secret aim by the Mahashakti.

• The Mother as the Mahashakti of this triple world of the Ignorance stands in an intermediate plane between the supramental Light, the Truth life, the Truth creation. She stands there above the Gods and all her Powers and Personalities are put in front of her for the action and she sends down emanations of them into these lower worlds. These Emanations are the various divine forms and personalities through which men have worshipped her under different names throughout the ages. But also she prepares and shapes through these Powers and their emanations the minds and bodies of her Vibhuthis, even as she prepares and shapes minds and bodies for the Vibhuthis of the Ishwara, that she may manifest in the physical world and in the disguise of the human consciousness some ray of her power and quality and presence.

• The Mother descends into this lesser triple universe. Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of Ignorance, are herself in veiled power. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda. In her deep and greater love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life. This is the great sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.

• There are other great Personalities of the Divine Mother, but they were more difficult to bring down. There are among them Presences indispensable for the supramental realisation, - most of all one who is her Personality of that mysterious and powerful ecstasy and Ananda. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth movement and the supramental action becomes possible.
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There is a difference between avatars and embodiments or permanent incarnations. But this could be for some other occasion.

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What is your explanation for "passing through the portals of a birth which is a death"? - viz. "In her deep and greater love for her children she has consented to put on herself the cloak of this obscurity, condescended to bear the attacks and torturing influences of the powers of Darkness and the Falsehood, borne to pass through the portals of the birth that is a death, taken upon herself the pangs and sorrows and sufferings of creation, since it seemed that thus alone could it be lifted to the Light and Joy and Truth and eternal Life."

Please explain the difference, as you understand it, between "avatars, embodiments or permanent incarnations."

DB

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Portals of the Birth that is a Death

The phrase “portals of the birth that is a death” is a beautiful description of this world of ours, of our mortal lot, our mortal state, of the conditions in which we make progress through them both together; in just few words we have here a good picture of this mortal world, mrityuloka. Its poetic enchantment is such that the obscurity and darkness and falsehood in which live become their opposites. What we have in this mortal world is “the birth that is a death”. We can perhaps best see its aspect from Savitri and the Mother. Here are some passages picked up hurriedly:

• In the slow process of the evolving spirit,
In the brief stade between a death and birth
A first perfection's stage is reached at last;
Out of the wood and stone of our nature's stuff
A temple is shaped where the high gods could live. p. 531

• …I know beyond all doubt,
The great stars burn with my unceasing fire
And life and death are both its fuel made. p. 638

• …intermediaries were needed to express… Joy and Freedom in forms. And at first four Beings were emanated to start this universal development which was to be the progressive objectivisation of all that is potentially contained in the Supreme. These Beings were, in the principle of their existence: Consciousness and Light, Life, Bliss and Love, and Truth. You can easily imagine that they had a sense of great power, great strength, of something tremendous, for they were essentially the very principle of these things. Besides, they had full freedom of choice, for this creation was to be Freedom itself.... As soon as they set to work—they had their own conception of how it had to be done—being totally free, they chose to do it independently.

Instead of taking the attitude of servant and instrument of which Sri Aurobindo speaks in what I have just read to you,2 they naturally took the attitude of the master, and this mistake—as I may call it—was the first cause, the essential cause of all the disorder in the universe. As soon as there was separation—for that is the essential cause, separation—as soon as there was separation between the Supreme and what had been emanated, Consciousness changed into inconscience, Light into darkness, Love into hatred, Bliss into suffering, Life into death and Truth into falsehood. And they proceeded with their creations independently, in separation and disorder. The result is the world as we see it. It was made progressively, stage by stage, and it would truly take a little too long to tell you all that, but finally, the consummation is Matter —obscure, inconscient, miserable.... The creative Force which had emanated these four Beings, essentially for the creation of the world, witnessed what was happening, and turning to the Supreme she prayed for the remedy and the cure of the evil that had been done. Then she was given the command to precipitate her onsciousness into this inconscience, her Love into this suffering, and her Truth into this falsehood. And a greater consciousness, a more total love, a more perfect truth than what had been emanated at first, plunged, so to say, into the horror of Matter in order to awaken in it consciousness, love and truth, and to begin the movement of Redemption which was to bring the material universe back to its supreme origin. So, there have been what might be called “successive involutions” in Matter, and a history of these involutions. The present result of these involutions is the appearance of the Supermind emerging from the inconscience; but there is nothing to indicate that after this appearance there will be no others... for the Supreme is inexhaustible and will always create new worlds.

• I have had days when I have lived truly all the horrors of creation (and in the consciousness of their horror), and then that has brought this experience, and... all the horror has disappeared.

• Oh, the horror of falsehood spread everywhere on earth, ruling the world with its law of darkness! I believe that its reign has lasted long enough; this is the master we must now refuse to serve. This is the great, the only remedy.

• MY Lord, my sweet Master, for the accomplishment of Thy work I have sunk down into the unfathomable depths of Matter, I have touched with my finger the horror of the falsehood and the inconscience, I have reached the seat of oblivion and a supreme obscurity. But in my heart was the Remembrance, from my heart there leaped the call which could arrive to Thee: “Lord, Lord, everywhere Thy enemies appear triumphant; falsehood is the monarch of the world; life without Thee is a death, a perpetual hell; doubt has usurped the place of Hope and revolt has pushed out Submission; Faith is spent, Gratitude is not born; blind passions and murderous instincts and a guilty weakness have covered and stifled Thy sweet law of love. Lord, wilt Thou permit Thy enemies to prevail, falsehood and ugliness and suffering to triumph? Lord, give the command to conquer and victory will be there. I know we are unworthy, I know the world is not yet ready. But I cry to Thee with an absolute faith in Thy Grace and I know that Thy Grace will save.” Thus, my prayer rushed up towards Thee; and, from the depths of the abyss, I beheld Thee in Thy radiant splendour; Thou didst appear and Thou saidst to me: “Lose not courage, be firm, be confident,—I COME.” November 24, 1931

RY Deshpande

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Sorry I did not clarify myself. I meant that "passing through the portals of the birth that is a death" in the context of "the holocaust of the Supreme" is what the avatar goes through, is it not, accept the mortal lot of the creature so that the creature may rise to divinity? I read the "holocaust of the Purusha" as the sacrifice of the avatar (usually seen as Male) and the holocaust of the Prakriti as the sacrifice of the Mother as avatar. But perhaps you are pointing out that this reading is not warranted - and Sri Aurobindo is speaking of the Mother's present incarnation alone, not some general train of incarnations? Or do you mean that he is not talking of incarnation at all, but the embodiment of the Mother in the heart of creatures (para prakritir jivabhuta)? And even if either of the above (or both) is/are the sense of the passage, the Mother's avatars would also be an image of the same, don't you think and thus part of its meaning? If on the other hand, you feel it is only the very specific present birth of the Mother he is referring to here, Ithat may be possible.

DB

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I am writing from what I can understand about the great sacrifice of the purusha and the holocaust of the Divine mother.

The soul is usually regarded as the purusha embedded in obscure matter which through several births realises its divinity, power of Ishwara and freedom from lower nature.

But in reality the soul is the purushottama, the transcendental Mother herself trying to uplift the obscurity of matter or the unenlightened manifestation. So this way the mother herself bears the suffering of darkness and ignorance of matter.

I donot think there is any reference to avatar in that specific paragraph.

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In response to Debashish in this posting let me talk specifically about the Holocaust of Prakriti, the Sacrifice of the Divine Mother.

(The query about “portals of the birth that is a death” can be taken up if we are to pursue the discussion, which I am not sure is appropriate under the present blog seized with some other issues. Please decide.)

The Mother’s powers and personalities are for a cosmic work. Sri Aurobindo described four of them in his letter to Kapali Shastri which was included afterwards in the book The Mother. These are: Maheshwari (Wisdom), Mahakali (Strength), Mahalakshmi (Harmony), and Mahasaraswati (Perfection). These four powers of the Mother are the fourfold soul-forces and they operate variously in the cosmic scheme of things.

Corresponding to these four aspects of the Mother we have the Vedic fourfold personality of the Cosmic Being, Virata Purusha; four parts of his body are: Head, Arms, Heart, and Feet. The names given to them are: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra, and correspond to the thinker, the warrior, the man of commerce, and man as the doer of works. These are present everywhere, in all the societies and during all the periods of time. Plato and Kant and Einstein were Brahmins, Julius Caesar and Eisenhower and Alexander the Great were Kshatriyas, Henri Ford and DuPont or the present-day Bill Gates make the Vaishyas, the factory worker and the smith and the bank employees and the government servants including the highest secretaries are Shudras. That is the eternal Chaturvarna. In that sense it is indestructible and cannot be wished away. The Gita proclaims it—I have created this fourfold order— and we have codes based on it. The Synthesis of Yoga explains the spiritual basis of this division.

In the Indian social organisation, however, Chaturvarna later became four castes. That is the Great Fall which is unfortunate, speaking of the decadent nature of the society; it is much maligned, and rightly so. It has to be redeemed by breathing the spiritual fire in it. Its justification does not lie in the dead society but in the breathing spirit of the universal being. That should be recovered.

“… human nature bounded, egoistic and obscure,” writes Sri Aurobindo, “is inapt to receive these great Presences or to support their mighty action. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed mind and life and body, can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth movement and the supramental action becomes possible. For when her Personalities are all gathered in her and manifested and their separate working has been turned into a harmonious unity and they rise in her to the supramental godheads, then is the Mother revealed as the supramental Mahashakti and brings pouring down her luminous transcendences from their ineffable ether. Then can human nature change because all the elemental lines of the supramental Truth-consciousness and Truth-force are strung together and the harp of life is fitted for the rhythms of the Eternal.”

The need is the harmonious working of the four powers.

Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom can the higher powers of the Mother descend. The aspect of well-organised collective life for the higher creation, preparing for the race of the gnostic beings is greatly dependent upon it.

The Purusha Sukta of the Veda, the Hymn of Creation, celebrates triumphantly the Sacrifice of the Purusha. He has given up his royalty of the transcendental existence and accepted the travail of the lower working. That is the Sacrifice. In the Vedic terminology it is the Purusha who has made the sacrifice. But, as Sri Aurobindo says, “this is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” She has left her royalty, aishwarya, glory, majesty and accepted the conditions of Ignorance. Para Prakriti has become Apara Prakriti, Consciousness-Force the lower Nature under the governance of the Inconscient Self and the Somnambulist Force.

As one particular incarnation call her the Mother, call her Savitri, call her a fit intermediary, a beautiful slave of God, the incarnate who came here in the ancient past, the embodied Word or a living Scripture, a spirit who arrived from the immortal spaces to set her conquering foot on Time, the divine Consciousness-Force, or Mahashakti born on earth,—she has ever been engaged in the work of the Lord. Her yoga-tapasya progresses in the Will of the Lord, her power grows in the Will of the Lord, her action in the Will of the Lord. A prayer of the Mother speaks of amplitude and majesty, nobility and grace, charm and grandeur, variety and strength, “for it is the will of the Lord to manifest.” For that purpose she is ready to suffer, she is ready to accept “lamentable limitations”, climb up the Calvary of deep-rooted frustration, bear ignominy of human births. Thus:

“O My Lord, my sweet Master, for the accomplishment of Thy work I have sunk down into the unfathomable depths of Matter, I have touched with my finger the horror of the falsehood and the inconscience, I have reached the seat of oblivion and a supreme obscurity. But in my heart was the Remembrance, from my heart there leaped the call which could arrive to Thee: ‘Lord, Lord, everywhere Thy enemies appear triumphant; falsehood is the monarch of the world… Lord, give the command to conquer and victory will be there. I know we are unworthy, I know the world is not yet ready. But I cry to Thee with an absolute faith in Thy Grace and I know that Thy Grace will save.’ Thus, my prayer rushed up towards Thee…” (24 November 1931)

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The Vedic sacrifice of the Purusha in the Purusha Sukta is undoubtedly the basis of the "holocaust of the Purusha", the "original" or "originary" holocaust, but in Time this is enacted through repetions of the Symbol in the form of each instance (individual purusha) that enters into the Ignorance and Falsehood through processes of prakriti and each evolutionary avatar that consciously accepts this entry and utilizes his own Shakti to enter. Similarly, for the Paraprakriti, the Mother and more so because it is her substance and force that is "the many-patterned ground of all we are." Here also, of the "holocaust" is in its "originary" form it can be said, as you have put it - "She has left her royalty, aishwarya, glory, majesty and accepted the conditions of Ignorance. Para Prakriti has become Apara Prakriti, Consciousness-Force the lower Nature under the governance of the Inconscient Self and the Somnambulist Force."

But Sri Aurobindo goes further in the passage from The Mother in question. Preceeding the statement about the "holocaust of Prakriti" he mentions both the impersonal and personal aspects of the Sacrifice: "Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda."

It is the personal aspect that constitues the avatar(s) of the Mother. What you have written at the end of your posting, I understand as the Mother's avatars and a part of the sense of the "holocaust of prakriti": "As one particular incarnation call her the Mother, call her Savitri, call her a fit intermediary, a beautiful slave of God, the incarnate who came here in the ancient past, the embodied Word or a living Scripture, a spirit who arrived from the immortal spaces to set her conquering foot on Time, the divine Consciousness-Force, or Mahashakti born on earth,—she has ever been engaged in the work of the Lord. ..... . For that purpose she is ready to suffer, she is ready to accept “lamentable limitations”, climb up the Calvary of deep-rooted frustration, bear ignominy of human births."

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Dear RY Deshpande, Rakesh, & Debashish -

Thank you for this inspiring dialogue. As I read through your last few posts describing the "holocaust of Prakriti, the Sacrifice of the Divine Mother" tears unexpectedly came to my eyes and I experienced a deep gratitude for the wonder of this opportunity She has given us to taste even a tiny bit of "the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda ..."

~ ron

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... she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda.

I have couple of questions to ask...

1. "she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance"

If soul is considered a representative of the transcendental purusha only then why in the above sentence does it say " put on like a mask the soul"?

2. "But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error"

What does it mean by "she has stooped to descend here into the darkness". What has stooped? Is it paraprakruti or the soul? If the
mother as paraprakruti comes here as an avatar than the purpose of avatarhood itself is defeated. Please correct me if I am wrong.

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To your question (1), on the passage "she....has put on like a mask the souls and forms of the Ignorance", I read it as - she has put on the soul of the Ignorance and the forms of the Ignorance. The soul of the Ignorance is not the soul of the jiva, the soul of the Ignorance is the lower prakriti, Apara Prakriti of Avidya. Para Prakriti of Vidya is masked as Apara Prakriti if Avidya, it is also masked as the forms of the Ignorance, the objectified manifestations and creatures. In terms of the soul of jiva, she has become the jiva as it is by process of her self-concentration that an aspect of Purushottama takes on individuality as the soul of jiva. Thus jiva is a self-becoming of Supreme Nature, paraprakritir jivabhuta. This is brought out in the Gita, Chapter 7, verse 5, where after talking about the apara prakriti, Krishna says to Arjuna: "...know my other nature... supreme, which becomes the jiva and by which this world is upheld."

Sri Aurobindo comments about this:

"The supreme Nature, para prakritih, is then the infinite timeless conscious power of the self-existent Being out of which all existences in the cosmos are manifested and come out of timelessness into Time. But in order to provide a spiritual basis for this manfold universal becoming in the cosmos the supreme Nature formulates itself as the jiva." Jiva becomes the basis of the Purushottama's self-manifestation, or in Sr Aurobindo's words "...the eternal multiple soul of the Purushottama appears as individual spiritual existence in all the forms of the cosmos."

To question (2), it is undoubtedly Paraprakriti, the Mother who has stooped. Why should her doing so defeat the purpose of avatarhood? Avatars do not come to transform the creation. They come to establish new principles of consciousness in times of evolutionary crisis. But if this consciousness is to be manifested here effectively, the Mother's power of occult process must execute the transformation in and as Herself. This is the purpose of her avatarhood.

We may indeed see this in the lives of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. Sri Aurobindo's "death" (Dec. 5, 1950) established (or resutled in the establishment of) the new consciousness. The Mother's "death" (17th November 1973) effected the transformation in Matter. One may question my reading or disbelieve it, but this is how I see it. Seen in this light, not only did the Mother "pass through the portals of the birth which is a death," which is the holocaust of the Prakriti, but effect its reversal, that is, she has passed through the portals of the death which is a birth - a new birth of eternal life in Matter. An elaboration of this reading may also be found in Georges' van Vreckem's "Beyond the Human Species."

DB

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If I may add to Rakesh's comment regards the stooping into creation of the paraprakriti and the defeat of the purpose of avatarhood. If I can rephrase it as follows: If Sri Aurobindo and Mother are Avatars and were not simply human beings, who by personal effort and the calling down of grace advanced to vanguard of the evolution of humanity, and opening it to the possibility of supramentalization, but in fact had to be partly divine (Avatars) from the start to do this, then this does call into serious question the whole project of the ability of humanity to evolve into super-humanity.

I guess we can entertain metaphysical discussions on the
subtle differences of avatarhood to solve this problem in that direction, but if we are dealing with the transformation of the physical and the evolution of humanity, which has to be accomplished by members of the humans species, then to my mind such considerations will skillfully manage to avoid the contradictions implied by deifying Sri Aurobindo and Mother

Rich

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one more question

We know that at the transendental level that there does not exist any separate purusha or prakruti but both are united as one. We cannot describe them as separate. That is the purushottama, the transcendental divine.

If that purushottama is in the heart of every human being as the soul does it also not mean that that purushottama has both the qualities of purusha and paraprakruti together and working in all beings to uplift them from obscure matter or lower prakruti?

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It is true that Purushottama and Paraprakriti are united at the Transcendental level but that does not mean they are not also separate. They are One and Two at the same time. The Supreme Transcendent is not just One, He/She/It is also Infinite at the same time. To manifest this inifinity, it appears as the Two-in-One. Or it may be more correct to say, they are One and can be seen as either Purushottama or Paraprakriti but if there is to be manifestation, then Being and Power of Being must separate themselves and enter into a play where Power of Being, chit-tapas manifests the inifinte possibilities of Being as a relational play. As the Mother says, "Without Him I exist not, without me He is unmanifest."

In the Gita, describing the process of avatarhood, Purushottama says, "...Establishing myself in my own Prakriti I come to birth by my self-Maya." (prakritim svaam adhisthaaya sambhavaami atma-maayaya (Gita, Ch. 4, verse 6). Sri Aurobindo paraphrases this: "... he assumes birth by a supreme resort to the action of his Nature and by force of his self-Maya."

Here we see that though Purushottama is one with his Prakriti (Paraprakriti) He has to take resort to it to manifest. He does not say simply, I come to birth, he has to invoke Paraprakriti. So too in the soul of jiva, purushottama and parapakriti are together represented in individualized form since without the prakriti, one may know identity with the Divine Presence but the process of qualititive transformation of nature into Divine nature is not possible. In the Tantric conception, this is represented by the dual presence of Ishwara and Shakti in each of the chakras.

DB

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According to Sri Aurobindo, Purusha is the transcendental Conscious Soul, who was sacrificed, plunged into material Inconscient, in order to uplift the fallen Self; Purushottama is a Supreme, though being one with the Transcendental, Universal or Individual, he exceeds them all. He is Transcendental to the Transcendental, beyond Para and Apara Prakriti, beyond Saguna and Nirguna Brahman, (purushah . . . aksharaat paratah parah)

That is why when Sri Krishna reveals his most secret Knowledge (raajaguhyam) to Arjuna it sounds incomprehensible:

Mayaa tatam idam sarvam jagad avyaktamuurtinaa/ matsthaani sarvabhuutaani na caaham teshv avasthitah/ 9.4
Na ca matsthaani bhuutaani pashya me yogam aishvaram/ bhuutabhrin na ca bhuutastho mamaatmaa bhuutabhaavanah/ 9.5
“All this world is extended by Me, who has no manifested form. All the beings stay in Me, but I do not stay in them; (defining the Transcendental character of Purusha)

even one can’t say that they stay in me, just see and wonder about My Supreme Yoga! My Self, Atman, is carrying and supporting them, as it were, but not even staying in them.” ( indicating the paraat parah purushah).

“Thus there are three, the Kshara, the Akshara, the Uttama.” – says Sri Aurobindo in the Essays on the Gita. -

“Kshara, the mobile, the mutable is Nature, svabhaava, it is the various becoming of the soul; the Purusha here is the multiplicity of the divine Being; it is the Purusha multiple not apart from, but in Prakriti.
Akshara, the immobile, the immutable, is the silent and inactive self, it is the unity of the divine Being, Witness of Nature, but not involved in its movement; it is the inactive Purusha free from Prakriti and her works.
The Uttama is the Lord, the supreme Brahman, the supreme Self, who possesses both the immutable unity and the mobile multiplicity. It is by a large mobility and action of His nature, His energy, His will and power, that He manifests Himself in the world and by a greater stillness and immobility of His being that He is aloof from it; yet is He as Purushottama above both the aloofness from Nature and the attachment to Nature.”
(Essays on the Gita, p. 79)

That’s how He can be our guide within our psychic being, as the Lord of the Sacrifice, adhiyajna, as Krishna calles himself in the Gita, for he is neither transcendental nor mutable only, but something greater them both. And that is Uttamam Rahasyam.

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The Akshara Purusha is beyond the mutations of Time in the cosmos (jagat) but it is not this which has sacrificed itself since it knows no becoming. Purushottama is beyond Akshara and Kshara Purushas but has become both of these - each of them is a poise or specific projection of Purushottama. The power through which it assumes these poises is its Nature, Paraprakriti. Thus it is Purushottama as Kshara Purusha that has sacrifced itself and that Sri Aurobindo is referring to when he speaks of the "holocaust of the Purusha." Similarly Paraprakriti remains united with Purushottama and beyond the cosmic being and becoming in Her Supreme poise, but also projects herself as the sleeping automatism of Apara Prakriti of Avidya and houses in this form the sleep of Purushottama as Kshara Purusha and bases Her cosmic changes in the stable though impotent poise of Akshara Purusha. This is the holocaust of Prakriti. This is true both at the cosmic and individual levels - i.e. the Paraprakriti puts on the masks of the soul and forms of the Ignorance or becomes the Avidya and the jivas and the Purushottama becomes the cosmic Purusha (in its Kshara and Akshara poises) and the individualization of chaitya purusha in the jiva.

DB

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