A New Vision and a First Change pp 42-44

Opening remarks
What is this reversal, this new vision acquired by the seer; how does he view the world? This is being described now.

The ceaseless miracle
A spirit hid in forces and in forms
Was the spectator of the mobile scene:
The beauty and the ceaseless miracle
Let in a glow of the Unmanifest:
The formless Everlasting moved in it
Seeking its own perfect form in souls and things.    (p 43 begins)

As we awaken to the New Light and our being begins to grow it, suddenly everything becomes alive. Inanimate objects become so much living, animated with a consciousness that is hid in the forms and watches over as the Eternal Witness. All grows beautiful and soulful and divine. Then all life becomes a ceaseless miracle of the Divine unfolding in creation.

The wonder called life
Life kept no more a dull and meaningless shape.

Then all becomes a wonder and  joy, a constant discovery of the Divine Presence behind life.

The labour of a godhead’s birth
In the struggle and upheaval of the world
He saw the labour of a godhead’s birth.

All creation labours to manifest the Divine Reality hidden at its centre and core. But the work is incomplete, growing step by step through the various stages of evolution. Therefore it gives us the sense of imperfection and assumes the aspect of struggle and pain.

A secret knowledge masked as Ignorance
A secret knowledge masked as Ignorance;
Fate covered with an unseen necessity
The game of chance of an omnipotent Will.

Sri Aurobindo reveals to us that behind the anomalies of life, there is a wisdom that uses everything to carry us forward on our evolutionary journey. Fate and chance are words we use in our Ignorance. When knowledge comes, we see the tremendous workings of a Conscious Force at play in creation. Fate and Chance are words we use in our Ignorance. When Wisdom comes we see it as the choice of the hidden Spirit in matter struggling to emerge under the circumstances of and on the basis of material existence.

Delight imprisoned in Earth
A glory and a rapture and a charm,
The All-Blissful sat unknown within the heart;
Earth’s pains were the ransom of its prisoned delight.

Behind all things, even the most painful, there is the secret delight. All our suffering and pain is only a means to uncover this hidden bliss. If in the face of suffering, instead of being overwhelmed by it, we learn to dive deep into our heart we shall discover there the Wonderful Presence and even a momentary contact with IT can dissolve all suffering and bring peace.

A glad communion
A glad communion tinged the passing hours;
The days were travellers on a destined road,
The nights companions of his musing spirit.

The more we become conscious of the Divine, the more we live in the Divine, the more our life becomes a wonderful journey, a pilgrimage of the soul. Such is the beautiful transmutation of life that takes place when we become conscious of the Divine hidden in our own depths and in the heart of creation as well.

A splendid march
A heavenly impetus quickened all his breast;
The trudge of Time changed to a splendid march;
The divine Dwarf towered to unconquered worlds,
Earth grew too narrow for his victory.

The Divine dwarf is the psychic being in man, an in-dweller in man’s house of clay, now becomes a candidate for reign over heavens of light and peace and bliss. He is no more limited by earthly joys and its dull terrestrial powers.

Once only registering the heavy tread
Of a blind Power on human littleness,
Life now became a sure approach to God,
Existence a divine experiment
And cosmos the soul’s opportunity.

What appears to us now as blind Fate and adverse Destiny is then seen with the soul’s regard. In this new vision life appears as a river or a stream ceaselessly flowing towards its Divine origin, using everything, even the most adverse for its Godward growth.

The world was a conception and a birth
Of Spirit in Matter into living forms,
And Nature bore the Immortal in her womb,
That she might climb through him to eternal life.

This is the true meaning and significance of our life. This is the real reason for the soul’s acceptance of bondage and death. Tied to Nature it shares in her struggles and suffering. But Nature is enriched by the soul’s presence which opens the doors to the Divine Touch. As the soul recovers its true stature, our Nature too is uplifted and redeemed.

His being lay down in bright immobile peace
And bathed in wells of pure spiritual light;
It wandered in wide fields of wisdom-self
Lit by the rays of an everlasting sun.

To find one’s soul and to live in it and by it is to find and live in peace and light and wisdom and bliss.

A breath of heavenlier air
Even his body’s subtle self within
Could raise the earthly parts towards higher things
And feel on it the breath of heavenlier air.

Though the gross body is the last to feel the touch of the Divine, the bliss and peace extend right upto the subtle physical. Even the body begins to feel the touch Divine and is uplifted by the transforming Force.

Wings of Joy and Light
Already it journeyed towards divinity:
Upbuoyed upon winged winds of rapid joy,
Upheld to a Light it could not always hold,
It left mind’s distance from the Truth supreme   (p 44 begins)
And lost life’s incapacity for bliss.

Then all becomes beautiful and blissful, even the body receives the touch of higher light; even the body tastes the bliss that built the world. The trail of sorrow and suffering leaves our hearts and life becomes full of a glad communion and wide uplift upon wings of Joy and Light.

All now suppressed began to emerge
All now suppressed in us began to emerge.

The divinity held back within now began to grow and take charge of the fields of Nature.

Closing remarks
The touch of the Divine, the discovery of the Divine within us begins to remould our perception and understanding; our life and senses and even our physical body shares in the Glory and the Bliss.