Consciousness 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.
That is my story.
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1 “The sword has a joy in the battle-play, the arrow has a mirth in its hiss and its leaping, the earth has a rapture in its dizzy whirl through space, the sun has the royal ecstasy of its blazing splendours and its eternal motion. O thou self-conscious instrument, take thou too the delight of thy own appointed workings.” (The Supramental Manifestation, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 288)
Chapter 3
Descent of the Divine Love
and an Uninterrupted Ascent
...through the action of the forces of separation, Consciousness became inconscience and matter was created such as it is, on a basis of inconscience so total that no contact seemed possible between the Origin and what was created. And this total inconscience made a direct descent necessary, without sing through the intermediate regions, a direct descent of the divine Consciousness in its form of Love. And it is this descent of Divine Love into matter, penetrating it and adding a new element to its position, which has made possible the ascent, slow for us, but an uninterrupted ascent, from inconscience to consciousness and from darkness to light.
...this Divine Love which animates all things, penetrates all, upbears all and leads all towards progress and an ascent to the Divine, is not felt, not perceived by the human consciousness, and that even to the extent the human being does perceive it, he finds it difficult to bear – not only to contain it, but be able to tolerate it, I might say, for its power in its purity, its intensity in its purity, are of too strong a kind to be endured by human nature. It is only when it is diluted, deformed, attenuated and obscured, so to say, that it becomes acceptable to human nature. It is only when it moves away from its true nature and essential quality that man accepts it, and even (smiling) approves of it and glorifies it. This means that it must already be quite warped in order to be accepted by the human consciousness. And to accept it, bear it and receive it in its plenitude and purity, the human consciousness must become divine.
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You say, “Love is everywhere. Its movement is there in plants, perhaps in the very stones....” (CWM Vol. 3, pp. 69-70) If there is love in a stone, how can one see it?
Perhaps the different elements constituting the stone are coordinated by the spark of love. I am sure that when the Divine Love descended into Matter, this Matter was quite unconscious, it had absolutely no form; it may even be said that forms in general are the result of the effort of Love to bring consciousness into Matter. If one of you (I have my doubts, but still) went down into the Inconscient, what is called the pure Inconscient, you would realise what it is. A stone will seem to you a marvellously conscious object in comparison. You speak disdainfully of a stone because you have just a wee bit more consciousness than it has, but the difference between the consciousness of the stone and the total Inconscient is perhaps greater than that between the stone and you. And the coming out of the Inconscient is due exclusively to the sacrifice of the Divine, to this descent of Divine Love into the Inconscient. Consequently, when I said “perhaps in the stone”, I could have removed the “perhaps” – I can assert that even in the stone it is there. There would be nothing, neither stone nor metal nor any organisation of atoms without this presence of Divine Love.
Most people say there is “consciousness” when they begin to think – when one doesn’t think one is not conscious. But plants are perfectly conscious and yet they do not think. They have very precise sensations which are the expression of a consciousness, but they do not think. Animals begin to think and their reactions are much more complex. But both plants and animals are conscious. One can be conscious of a sensation without having the least thought.
Did material substance exist before the descent of Divine Love?
I don’t think it could be said that there was a material substance. The Inconscient... it is the Inconscient. I don’t know how to explain this to you. If there is a negation of something, it is truly the Inconscient, it is the negation of everything. It has not even the capacity of emptiness. One needs to have descended there to know what it is and explain it. Words cannot describe it. It is the negation of all things because everything begins with consciousness. Without consciousness there is nothing.
Were there any beings before this descent of Love? Were they conscious?
There were no terrestrial beings. The terrestrial world, the earth came into existence after the descent into the Inconscient, not before.
The gradual formation of the different stages of being, from the Supreme to the most material region, is subsequent to the Inconscient. When, precisely, the Consciousness “began” its creation (don’t take what I say quite literally as though it were a little history of another country, for it is not that, I am trying to make you understand, that’s all), the first manifestation of the creative Consciousness was just an emanation of consciousness – of conscious light – and when this emanation separated itself from its origin, the Inconscient was born, through opposition (how to put it?... yes, really through opposition. Consequently, the birth of the Inconscient is prior to the formation of the world, and it was only when the perception came that the whole universe was going to be created uselessly that there was a call and Divine Love plunged into the Inconscient to change it into consciousness. Therefore, it can be said that the formation of the material worlds as we know them is the result of the descent of the supreme Consciousness into the Inconscient. It cannot be said that there was something prior to that, things as we know them in the material world (I apologise for the ambiguity of my words, but you understand one cannot express these things in our usual words).
The formation of the earth as we know it, this infinitesimal point in the immense universe, was made precisely in order to concentrate the effort of transformation upon one point; it is like a symbolic point created in the universe to make it possible, while working directly upon one point, to radiate it over the entire universe.
If we want to make the problem a little more comprehensible, it is enough to limit ourselves to the creation and the history of the earth, for it is a good symbol of universal history.
From the astronomical point of view the earth is nothing, it is a very small accident. From the spiritual point of view, it is a symbolic willed formation. And as I have already said, it is only upon earth that this Presence is found, this direct contact with the supreme Origin, this presence of the divine Consciousness hidden in all things.
The other worlds have been organised more or less hierarchically, if one may say so, but the earth has a special formation due to the direct intervention, without any intermediary, of the supreme Consciousness in the Inconscient.
Have the solar fragments the same matter as the earth?
I have taken care to tell you that this radiation was a symbolic creation, and that all action on this special point had its
