The fundamental sincerity and perseverance should guarantee the correctness of a decision

Re: 10: Across the Silence of the Ultimate Calm by RY Deshpande on Sun 06 May 2007 09:17 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link His Prajna-Consciousness

There are powers and powers, belonging to different planes of consciousness and with different efficacies. There are transcendental powers, there are cosmic powers, and there are dubious powers also, calamitous powers. Each one carries its own dynamism in the working of the Time’s processes, and each one offers its own gifts to the seeker of the reward. If so, how does one recognise that one is really invoking the right one and that the right one is responding to the invocation? Aswapati was carrying the world’s desire with him and he was keen to get the right answer for it, but he must be certain that he was praying to the right power and that the right power was going to respond to him.

In the complexities in the workings of this world, there are far too many factors which enter into the play. The dangers are multifold, of selling the soul to the Lord of the Nation, or to Mephistopheles, of being misled by the ‘small voices’, of getting lost for ever in the valley of the wandering gleam.

• Or else, how does the pilgrim know that he has reached the sacred river on the bank of which is standing the temple of his god whom he had never seen earlier?
• Even when he stands face to face with the deity, how does he make sure that it is the god of his seeking and not some impersonation, that he is not being taken for a ride, that he is not being misled?
• How does the philosopher know that he has the hold of the universal truth from which all truths ensue, the scientist assert he has the theory of everything, something which one has been hearing at least for a hundred years now?
• How does a nation know that it is pursuing the right ideals, that it is not imposing them on others howsoever noble those might be?
• That capitalism or democracy of one country or society might be beneficial or injurious to other?
• That in one’s faith there is no fanaticism?

On the genuine spiritual path also one can stop with the realisation of the Passive Brahman, Brahman as the sole Reality and the rest an illusion, stop at Time-infinity or else Timeless-infinity, at the dynamic Brahman without the supporting quiescence, at pure Being or the ceaseless Becoming, stop looking at the multiple faces of the Void, of numerous Purushas being governed by one single Prakriti, at the experience of Nirvana, of one kind or the other, and so on, and so forth.

• Where in them all is the finality of the quest, the conclusiveness, the certainty, the assurance of the search?
• What criteria does one apply that one is on the right path?
• But perhaps the answer is determined by the quality of the quest itself. But what is it that which will determine the quality of the quest?

Yes, in the ultimate reckoning, the quality of the quest is entirely determined by the quality of the soul pursuing it. The test is within oneself only. The fundamental sincerity and perseverance should guarantee the correctness of a decision. As one grows more and more in that fundamental sincerity, as it becomes more and more psychic-spiritual, it also does increasingly take charge of the quest, making it yet purer and purer. The more the outer nature falls quiet, the more assured becomes the progress. In the absolute dependence, like the Mother’s, it is “what thou willest, what thou willest.” It is the supreme Bhakti, the total surrender that ultimately triumphs.

But none of these questions arise in the case of Aswapati. He has already the secret knowledge about this triple manifestation—Individual-Universal-Transcendental. His perception is full of truth, it is Ritambhara Prajna. He moves in it and sees things in it, acts in it. It is that awareness, the supramental knowledge and awareness, by which Sachchidananda becomes aware of himself, knows himself. In fact, it goes even beyond it. It goes into the utter Unknowable. It knows whatever is, is from it. It is the first Nothingness from which everything comes, the Void supreme, beyond form and person and being, beyond soul and oversoul and psychic being; it is the utter Unmanifest.

Its first manifestation in the Transcendent is Sachchidananda, the manifest Spirit or Brahman brought about by the mute Force of the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone. There is “the Mighty Spirit, and higher than the Mighty One is the Unmanifested,” says Katha Upanishad, mahānātmā mahato vyaktamuttamam. Its culmination for another creative process is in the last Nothingness, the Non-Manifest, bearing the triple mystic Cross. Aswapati’s present rendezvous is with the one who was summoned into action at the beginning of creative Eternity by the Absolute, the Perfect, the Alone. His prayer is to her.

Aswapati is presently on the verge of such a total surrender. In fact, it is by the Prajna Consciousness that he is guided everywhere and he has at once the knowledge of the truth of the things. He knows by it everything, at once. Yet his full identity has to be in the purity of that interior light. As one carrying the world’s desire with him, this is what he achieves: (Savitri, pp. 294-96)