Page 20 - All India Magazine Sep-2024

Seven Grades of the Divine Consciousness
Descending from Pure being to Physical being

(An excerpt from Sri Aurobindo's Analysis of Isha Upanishad)

Brahman is the goal; for it is both the beginning and the end,
the cause and the result of all movement.
But the idea of a final goal in the movement of Nature itself
is illusory. For Brahman is Absolute and Infinite. The Gods, la-
1
bouring to reach him, find, at every goal that they realise, Brah-
man still moving forward in front to a farther realisation. Noth-
ing in the appearances of the universe can be entirely That to
the relative consciousness; all is only a symbolic representation
of the Unknowable.
All things are already realised in Brahman. The running
of the Others in the course of Nature is only a working out
2
(Prakriti), by Causality, in Time and Space, of something that
Brahman already possesses.
Even in Its universal being Brahman exceeds the Movement.
Exceeding Time, It contains in Itself past, present and future
simultaneously and has not to run to the end of conceivable
Time. Exceeding Space, It contains all formations in Itself co-
incidently and has not to run to the end of conceivable Space.
Exceeding Causality, It contains freely in Itself all eventualities
as well as all potentialities without being bound by the appar-
ent chain of causality by which they are linked in the universe.

1. The Gods are Brahman representing Itself in cosmic Personalities expres-
sive of the one Godhead who, in their impersonal action, appear as the vari-
ous play of the principles of Nature.

2. The “others” are sarv17i bh3t1ni of a later verse, all becomings, Brahman
representing itself in the separative consciousness of the Many.

20 All India Magazine, September 2024