South-Indian landscapes are dotted with monumental towers, recognizable from far away and usually painted with bright colours. The striking architectural marvels are the entry towers around temple complexes. The gopurams resemble staircases, with staggered steps reaching upwards. Such temple building features have deeper symbolic meanings. ‘As climbs a storeyed temple-tower to heaven’.
Science has long been aware of the existence of invisible phenomena. There are sounds not audible by the human hearing range. Likewise, our world has a huge variety of colours, however, there are colours that our eyes can’t see. Ultrasounds, infrasound’s, ultraviolet, infrared, electromagnetic waves and so many more physical phenomena, were discovered, explored and exploited by science for practical usage in daily life.
Early civilizations chronicled the existence of another reality, existing and operating next to our material world but veiled and invisible. ‘It is a mistake to think that we live physically only, with the outer mind and life. We are all the time living and acting on other planes of consciousness, meeting others there and acting upon them, and what we do and feel and think there, the forces we gather, the results we prepare have an incalculable importance and effect, unknown to us upon our outer life. All that we become and do and bear in the physical life is prepared behind the veil within us.‘
Those invisible worlds beyond earth’s normal existence and perceptions are not scattered, they are orderly arranged in a world-pile, called the cosmos. This orderly universal scheme of the world-stair is reproduced in each human being, with the different planes and their principles acting subtly within. The temple staircase towers are an outward representation of this invisible inner reality, pointing to an undying human need for connecting earth to heaven. ‘To join the two together‘, as Mother says.
The unknown, the unseen in which all are participants, mostly unconsciously, rarely consciously, are veiled to our ordinary senses. For most humans that ‘other world reality’ is never explored, left aside as waste land, its potential, its power, rarely touched or explored. Sometimes, an intuitive moment presents itself, we receive glimpses of that truly extraordinary world. Mystics call it the Beyond, that other dimension existing and operating behind the veil, patiently waiting to be uncovered while residing within through our successive journeys upon earth.
‘Each natural individual is a receptacle of these cosmic forces and a dynamo for their propagation; this passes from each to each a constant stream of mental and vital energies, and these run too in the cosmic waves and currents no less than the forces of physical Nature. All this action is veiled from our surface mind’s direct sense and knowledge, but is known and felt by the inner being, though only through a direct contact.’
Ancient myths chronicle events about the cosmic cycles of creation and destruction. The first cycle started with Truth in its fullness, the Satya Yuga or the Golden Age. The next cycle was one where Truth and Falsehood are evenly distributed. Later followed by a cycle where Truth is absent, darkness reigns, the cycle closes with total dissolution, returning to its Origin, through an outcome called Pralaya. Out of this apocalypse a new creation can emerge.
The story of involution and evolution, the cosmic process of dissolution and re-emergence, can be retold with a child-like simplicity. During an early cosmic cycle, the creation was perfect, with total harmony and no tensions. After a while, a section of its participants became restless, started to complain about the fact that all was too perfect and nothing exciting ever happened. They started with organising strikes and revolts. The Highest Force tolerated this nuisance for a period, but after a while, got really upset and became ultimately fed up with the ongoing chaos. The omnipotent force decided that enough was enough, and finally pushed the red button, the entire creation imploded. The effect was somewhat similar like the great gig in the sky. The outcome was not an uncontrolled explosion but an orderly collapse and implosion of the existing world-staircase. The resulting fireworks must have been awesome.
All the harmonious existing planes ended up in the bottom layer, not destroyed, intact but immersed, kind of frozen in time, incapable of whatever action. This was not yet the end of the cosmic grand play. The bottom piece containing all the planes absorbed within itself, got kicked by an unseen force and glided down over an edge into the huge Inconscience vast, there it became surrounded by utter darkness, fitted with a straitjacket into full immobility.
Over time, the Highest showed compassion. The static powerless monobloc felt some desire, slowly, very slowly some part of the dark mass opened itself to a tiny ray of light. Evolution got kickstarted. The chosen planet for the re-booting of the evolutionary experiment received the first plane layer, the last one to tumble into the Vast, being the material plane. A new cycle prepared itself for the slow release of the multiple hidden planes on planet earth. The start-up phase harboured all the imprisoned domains in the physical plane.
To achieve the re-emergence of the planes, it required that during the downfall, there was an assured insertion of the Highest power in all the planes while disappearing into the absolute Void. This double process of involution and evolution is an act of self-creation through a self-inserted start-up mechanism. According to Sri Aurobindo, the higher principle evolves out of the lower simply because it is already present in the lower in a latent manner. The lower principles are the junior forms of the higher principles.
A staircase allows to go up and down different levels. Likewise, the world-staircase, operating behind the veil in the subtle domain, allows to walk up and down the different planes on the inner level. Individual and collective journeys, during countless lifetimes, are subtly impelled to achieve and integrate an ever-growing perfection, a movement whereby deficiencies become exposed and used as reminders to clean out the vast waste piles amassed within the inner domains. It is Nature that manages and drives that need, aiming to eliminate the clogging and persistent darkness, a sticky left-over legacy of our past evolutionary periods.
The plunging down of the cosmic world-staircase involved that during the descent there happened a progressive fragmentation of all the higher attributes, resulting in a diminishing power of intensity of being, of consciousness, of force, of delight in things and in existence. The moment we embark on the inner journey, these intensities start to expand again.
The journey happens within our body, including the ongoing reality of everyday life. ‘Heaven’s touch fulfils but cancels not our earth’. The up and downwards steps are synchronised, a higher plane is subtly connected to a similar one on the lower-level part. The perfection of the higher helps to clean out the duplicate lower. Moving forward happens when assignments within each corresponding plane are completed. The battle, the setbacks, the defeats, the wounds, the healings, the celebrations, all take place within the inner landscape. ‘The integral Yoga cannot reject the works of Life and be satisfied with an inward experience only; it has to go inward in order to change the outward.‘
‘To live this Mystery out our souls came here.‘ Assuming that a mystery is to be discovered, it involves a search, not in the outer physical reality, but an inner search through the planes and parts of our own being, which are also the planes and parts of Creation itself. This is the exploration of ‘the unseen paths‘, where one becomes ‘the traveller of the hidden worlds‘. It becomes a search for something else, for something greater, for a truer life, for finding a truer knowledge, for kindling and nourishing beauty, harmony and truth.
For this purpose, ‘our souls came here‘. Such a travel needs backup support, help, perseverance and resilience while invoking hope that never falls asleep. Traits not always available, often floundering. There is help and guidance for this inner journey that can be received from an invisible embedded entity within our body. It is ‘within as a child to be born’. It sees, it is calm, it is free, it is a spark of the Highest placed within. It is our soul. ‘He that is awake in those who sleep. It is like a fire without smoke that one must disengage patiently from one’s own body.‘
Sri Aurobindo’s timeless invitation for the soul search is as follows: ‘To find the soul you must withdraw from the surface, withdraw deep inside, enter far within, go deep, deep down, into a very deep silent and still cavity, and there is something warm, quiet, of a rich substance, very still and very full, and exceedingly soft – that is the soul. If you insist and are conscious yourself, you experience a feeling of plenitude and fullness, something with unfathomable depths’.
‘For man is precisely that term and symbol of a higher Existence descended into the material world in which it is possible for the lower to transfigure itself and put on the nature of the higher and the higher to reveal itself in the forms of the lower.‘
Once more, confronted with ongoing unmatched tsunamis of falsehoods, chaos and destruction, raiding the world, it requires a deep-seated faith and strength, to continue participating in an adventure for establishing and keep aiming to embody a living human unity somewhere on this earth. The ardent aspiration for seeking our deepest essence ‘that was the thing that saved me all through, I mean a perfect balance.’
There are long periods when nothing worthwhile seems to happen; only the slow grinding and difficult moving onwards. Then suddenly, during one instant moment, unexpected events happen with lightning speed.
‘It grouped the golden links that they had lost
And showed to them their divine unity,
Saving from the error of divided self
The deep spiritual cry in all that is.‘
That uttered cry, escaping and emerging from its hidden space, the deep cry for truthfulness, joy, change and freedom. Impelling us to find and follow the Fire within, the guiding star and the key for travelling up and down the world-staircase. Allowing to become conscious of the everlasting Light wave, connecting to the eternal play of She seeking Him for manifesting Him.
Tency,
25/12/2024