The Birth Place of Formulas, p. 269

Opening Remarks
The Divine is Infinite but in the spiritual Mind His Freedom is fixed into formulas and rules through which He acts.

Audacious lines
The unseen grew visible to student eyes,
Explained was the immense Inconscient’s scheme,
Audacious lines were traced upon the Void;
The Infinite was reduced to square and cube.

Mediating between God’s infinite Truth and the finite mind they reduced all things to formulas and philosophy that sought to explain the Creator and the Creation. They brought knowledge hidden in the higher states of consciousness nearer to the student mind.

Cabbala of the cosmic Law
Arranging symbol and significance,
Tracing the curve of a transcendent Power,
They framed the cabbala of the cosmic Law,
The balancing line discovered of Life’s technique
And structured her magic and her mystery.

Thus they hoped to crack the secret formulas hidden in folds of the higher worlds. Symbol and significance were brought together to trace the lines through which the Transcendent acts. The occult laws that govern life, her magic and her mysteries were unravelled.

Schemes of Knowledge
Imposing schemes of knowledge on the Vast
They clamped to syllogisms of finite thought
The free logic of an infinite Consciousness,
Grammared the hidden rhythms of Nature’s dance,
Critiqued the plot of the drama of the worlds,
Made figure and number a key to all that is:
The psycho-analysis of cosmic Self
Was traced, its secrets hunted down, and read
The unknown pathology of the Unique.

This is the birth place of high philosophies and structured thoughts that hoped to unravel the scheme of knowledge on the freedom of the Infinity. It measured the rhythms of nature’s dance and discovered the plot of the drama of the world. It found the magic formulas of number and figures with their occult significance. They opened the doors of knowledge through the keys of number and figures and formulas and laws.

The triple act of the One
Assessed was the system of the probable,
The hazard of fleeing possibilities,
To account for the Actual’s unaccountable sum,
Necessity’s logarithmic tables drawn,
Cast into a scheme the triple act of the One.

The higher Mathematics has its birth place here. Its seemingly abstract formulas with a logical understanding of the actual and the probable, its method of predicting the play of chance and necessity seemed to cast all things into a scheme that separated the triple acts of creation, preservation and destruction and all other aspects of the One into distinct though interconnected movements. It tries to discover the Divine Unity through formulas and magic of numbers. The beings of this world thus formulate creation and cast it into the mould of the Divine Will transmitted from Beyond.

Invisible multitude
Unveiled, the abrupt invisible multitude
Of forces whirling from the hands of Chance
Seemed to obey some vast imperative:
Their tangled motives worked out unity.

These godheads release many forces that work out the steps of creation as it moves through incessant cycles of creation, preservation and destruction. Though the play looks as if moved by Chance due to its immense complexity which our human mind is unable to comprehend or handle. Yet a vast imperative Divine Will moves them all whom these forces obey. Yet there is a little deflection given by each force that sums up to a great deviation from the original Divine Impulsion. The result is this Chaos that we experience here. Still through all this anarchy and complex tangle of energies, the intended Unity in diversity is being worked out.

Closing Remarks
Layer by layer Sri Aurobindo is revealing to us the Divine Working in this lower triplicity of creation where truth is being worked out through ignorance, error and Chance.