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Unity of the Three Aspects of Reality

 

December 10,  2001

  • These three aspects - Brahman, Purusha, Ishwara - are understood to be different aspects. They are ONE and their powers too-Maya, Prakriti, Lila-are one. All the six aspects and powers are ONE and only ONE as the father, officer and MLA are one and the same person.
  • In the office, they see an officer and it is not their concern or interest that he is a father at home and an MLA in the party. The intellect need not feel baffled when we draw the attention of one to the fact that these functionaries are not three different people but one and the SAME person. The analogy can be clear and effective up to this point. The truth goes beyond to include in that ONE person his work as an officer, his own relationship with the children and the family and his party activities. This analogy cannot be stretched to include that.
  • Sri Aurobindo presents this UNITY to us through several ways:-

1. The spiritual entity in us knows this unity as a self-evident Reality.

2. Should a language of massive tonality be developed, that language can express this Reality.

3. HE takes 36 statements of the tradition about this Reality and says, when we take all those statements together we may glimpse that Reality and its totality.

4. By understanding Infinity, Formlessness, Silence, Impersonality, Immutability and other qualities of this Reality with higher reason, again one can reach It.

5. Assuming the Self in us and the transcendent Self to be one and the same self, the Reality does reveal itself.

6. When we accept the argument of Sankya about Purusha and Prakriti, HE says we can reach the soul of Prakriti to sense this unity there.

  • Sri Aurobindo shows that the Ishwara is after all the unification of eternal Being with the eternal Consciousness-Force. It is the status of the supreme Ishwara.
  • The unity of the One with the Many does exist, He says, but is veiled by the ego.
  • Finally, He explains the same argument in the manifest and the unmanifest by describing the three different statuses of Time, viz.

Time

Timelessness

Simultaneous Integrality of Time and Timelessness.

  • The Being extends itself as Becoming, but Becoming exists on the spiritual strength of the Being hidden in it and is evolving.
  • The Being has these three statuses of

Being

Becoming

Being of the Become.

  • In Time the Sprit takes all the three poises described above.
  • Being is Purusha, a part of the Reality; Becoming is Nature another part of the same Reality; but the Being of the Becoming is not another part like them but that poise which includes the Being and the Becoming.
  • Showing Time too takes the three corresponding poises. The totality of the Reality resides, says Sri Aurobindo, in the third poise of Time where its unity is palpable.
  • Of course, this unity of Reality or united whole of the Reality can be seen, rather can only be seen, by the spiritual entity within us, not by the mind.
  • To the mind, it will be self-evident.
  • Sri Aurobindo not only explains the Reality is a unity but shows how it can be perceived. To accept Him unreservedly is to realise the Reality by His Grace.



story | by Dr. Radut