Philosophy and Religion / Arthur Avalon: Mahamaya

Sir John Woodroffe and Pramatha Natha Mukhyopadhyaya

Mahamaya. The World as Power: Power as Consciousness (Chit-Shakti)

Chapter III: Veiling of Consciousness

THOUGH the Supreme Reality is only realised in Yoga, the intellect gives, it is claimed, warrant in normal experience for the truth of the scriptural teaching. Let us then examine and reflect upon such experience. Recurring to the example already given let us suppose we have experience of a sound now. Commonly we think and say that our experience is, for the time being, of that sound only. This thought, though it does not represent to us the whole truth, is practically useful. But evidently our whole experience at this moment is not confined to that sound. Several other sounds besides sights, smells, touches, organic sensations, feelings, ideas, desires and so forth, are in that universe of experience, though unattended, unnoticed, and therefore veiled and confused. Disengaging our interest from the sound which happens to lie on the apex of the curve of the presentation, and extending the range of attention, it is possible to explore this given universe. If we do that we shall discover two circumstances connected with that universe. In the first place, it is indefinable, so that no positive bounds can be set to it: we shall never be able to say that it goes thus far and no further, that it includes so much and no more. Beyond what we have “explored” by the search-light of attention, outlying vistas of semi-attended or unattended, and therefore more or less veiled and confused, tracts of experience will always lie. In the second place, the veiled and confused zones are not exactly sub-conscious or subliminal; many of them are above “the threshold line”; they constitute actual feelings; they, together with the sound which happens for the time being to be the point of interest, constitute our actual total experience (or “Fact”) of the moment. But though they are above the threshold line, their curvature is low, the summit or apex of the curvature being represented by the sound now heard. When these two circumstances connected with the Fact have been discovered, the Veil drawn over the Fact has already been to some extent removed. Why not completely removed? We shall presently see.

Inspection of the Fact will further reveal to us two things. First, the whole “universe,” involving as it does change, is sustained, “lives, moves and has its being” in a boundless and changeless “Ether of Consciousness”.¹ In other words, the Fact is this boundless, changeless, quiescent background of Consciousness against which a Stress, infinitely various in its motions and forms, is at play. The Fact is thus both static and dynamic.² The dynamic, stressing, evolving aspect does not displace the static and unchanging aspect. They co-exist; they blend together into an inexpressible, alogical identity. Man is ever Consciousness as Power, though he commonly does not realize that he is so. He is commonly so much taken up with the “Fact-sections,” the Pragmatic “Facts”. When the veil of ignorance by which man ignores because of special interests in particular elements of Fact³ has been so far uplifted as to give him a glimpse of the Ether of Consciousness and Stress playing in it,⁴ then it is that he finds, in his own experience, a clue to the fundamental riddle of creative evolution, viz., how Reality⁵ evolves. as the world-order and yet, remains eternally what it is;⁶ how, in other words, in one aspect appearing as all change it does not in the other aspect change; how, thus, its creative energising involves for logical thinking a contradiction—change and no change side by side. When man does not ignore himself, he knows that he is Consciousness which as the illumining Power⁷ to be remains as placid, unchanging, sustaining and illuminating “Ether” of Consciousness, and as the becoming and illumined aspect⁸ changes and evolves as a world of varied names and forms⁹; that the latter aspect, though opposite in character to the former, does not prevail by suspending or suppressing it. Man has warrant for this unthinkable, alogical blending of contraries in his own normal experience. The veil of pragmatic thought, when uplifted, will, it is claimed, show this to him.

The second point is this. The Stress or Power has a triple disposition in man. In the symbolic language of the Scripture, the Supreme Bindu (lit. Point)¹⁰ which is fundamental, massive Potency to evolve ready for actual evolution, becomes a triangle¹¹ when it attains the condition of Primary manifestation.¹² Introspection will shew the “triangle” (the “Polar Triangle” as it may be called¹³) in the normal universe of experience. One fundamental disposition of experience shews the polarity of Centre (Aham or “I”), its co-ordinate (Idam or “This”) and their active correlation.¹⁴

Another fundamental of experience is this: There is the aspect of Pure Consciousness¹⁵ in which man’s universe appears, and by which it is revealed or manifested: and there is the aspect of Stress which evolves as that universe. The former is the aspect of Being-Consciousness;¹⁶ the latter¹⁷ is that of Stress-Becoming. By the former the universe is and is felt; by the latter it evolves and is determined. The former or revealing aspect is Prakasha; and the latter or determining, “informing” aspect is Vimarsha. In the experience of a sound, for example, our analysis shews three elements: the sound is; it is known; it is determined or “informed” as sound and as a particular sound. These elements are of course aspects of one undivided concrete experience, and should not be taken as separate principles or entities. The aspects which analytic thought yields compose one indivisible unity of being. Hence Being and Becoming¹⁸, the placid Spiritual Ether and the Point of Creative Stress,¹⁹ Power Holder and Power²⁰ Brahman and Maya are not two, but one: or rather they are aspects, sundered apart by our analytic thought, of an alogical, ultra-numerical, Fact. Now, since the immensity of Fact or Experience or Being becomes circumscribed, and therefore veiled, in being determined (e.g., when the total experience of a moment is represented as being that of a particular sensation or thought), it follows that the two aspects,²¹ though connected with each other, are yet opposed to each other: the former being the revealing aspect of Consciousness, and the latter the determining, and therefore veiling, aspect of Consciousness. But determining or “informing,” though it involves veiling, is not only that. When, for example, our experience is determined as that of a particular sound, the given, ineffaceable immensity of experience has undoubtedly been veiled or ignored, for the Universe in itself is still undefined and undetermined; and not only has that universe been veiled, but the emphasis of attention has moved from elsewhere to the place of the particular sound which, accordingly, now occupies the apex of the curve of presentation. The aspect of determining, or the Stress or Power by which Consciousness is self determined involves, therefore, Veiling, Movement and Presentation.²²

The two aspects of Revealing and Veiling²³ not only oppose each other but, as ordinary experience shows and illustrates, they tend towards each other. That is to say, what has been revealed tends naturally and gradually to be veiled, and what has been veiled tends naturally and gradually to be revealed; what is undefined and unformed tends naturally and gradually to be defined and determined as forms, and vice versa. This mutual play of Revealing and Veiling²⁴—which in the Scriptures is often symbolized as the mutual desire²⁵ of the “Divine Couple” Shiva and Shakti²⁶ is rhythmic, not only in the particular centres such as man, but in the life of the Cosmos, on account of which there is rhythmic cosmic evolution and involution, just as in man there is alternate waking²⁷ and sleeping.²⁸ This fundamental tendency shows itself on the physical plane as expansion and contraction of mass, on the vital plane as anabolism and katabolism and expiration and inspiration, and on the mental plane as knowing and ignoring, owning and disowning.²⁹ It is fundamental because it underlies the entire scheme of cosmic life, and because we fail to deduce this rhythm as a result or consequence from another law of operation more fundamental than, and therefore antecedent to, itself. It is a primordial law of the Fact to be rhythmically veiled and revealed, defined and undefined.³⁰ From homogeneity to heterogeneity evolution proceeds; but homogeneity is a condition of implicity³¹ which condition gradually changes into one of explicity,³² and this, back into implicity.³³

It follows that the Veil (that which reduces, contracts, defines, determines the universe of Experience) tends—or in view of the law of rhythm it may be said, swings, or oscillates—between two limits, viz., that of zero and that of infinity. In other words, the Veil tends to completely disappear, and it also tends to infinitely appear. In the former case, when it has completely disappeared, we have experience as the whole³⁴ or Perfect Experience. In the latter case, when it (i.e., the Veil) has infinitely appeared, we have that condition of experience which is called dissolution³⁵ or Cosmic Sleep.

Infinity, however, may be either of volume or of mass, either of extensity or of intensity. When Power becomes infinitely intensive or concentrated its condition is called Bindu or “Point” (of contraction).³⁶ Such intensification or concentration presupposes a condition of Power in movement which as “heard” by the Absolute Ear is called Nada or “Primordial Sound”.³⁷ Energy must constitute a “field,” and that field must be subject to an actual straining movement, before it can be supposed to be concentrated into a Point. This is true not merely of so-called physical energies, such as sound, heat or light. Heat or light, for example, can each be focussed, by means of a concave lens, from a more or less diffused condition. In each case, the field must be contracted, the diffused energy must be collected together. And this is true of Experience also—it is a law of Fact-operation which is the basis and model of all actual world-operations on the planes of mind, life and matter. Experience must be given as a continuum or universe, and that universe must be stressed and strained in a given manner, in order that attention may focus itself approximately in a point. If the placid, quiescent condition of the continuum be called Shiva, and Movement or Stress be called Shakti, then we see that the Continuum in Stress is the active union of the Power-Holder Shiva and Power or Shakti, and it is perceived why in the Shakta Tantras such active union (depicted, as often is the case, in “erotic” symbolism) is called Nada, and also why it is said (carrying out the same symbolism) that Bindu (here Seed) issues from such union.

As an impregnated ovum or germ-cell is the concentrated form of the energies of a male and a female, so Bindu is the concentrated form of the substance and energy—if we may speak of them separately—of the entire perfect universe of Experience. It is the Whole³⁸ whose “mass” has become concentrated into a point. The Point or Bindu is therefore a universe, and the Perfect Universe.³⁹ It is the Universe in a potential form—the Seed of the Universe. The scheme of the organism is given in the seed; the plan of the planetary systems is possibly given in the atoms, and this is because all evolution proceeds on the plan of an universe being given in, and evolving out of, Bindu.⁴⁰

In man’s experience, the Point of Power⁴¹ is given and is constantly active as “I”-ness. His whole experience has crystallized round the nucleus—“I". This is not to say that “I”-ness, above “the threshold line,” and the Point⁴² should in all cases be identified with each other; the latter is there even when and where the former has not actually appeared, but whenever the former has appeared, it serves as the manifestation and representative of the Point⁴³ in the growth of the experience of a given Centre. Besides, the “Self” as the representative of the Point⁴⁴ works “sub-consciously” too. Now, It is this “Point” which in man, as well as in other forms of existence, “swells”⁴⁵ as the Polar Triangle of the measurer, the measured and the measure or measuring,⁴⁶ or Knower, Knowing, Known, and also, as it may be said from another standpoint, as that of “Base,” “Index” and “Coefficient” of the Fact.⁴⁷ It further assumes the forms of other Polar Triangles such as Power as Knowing,⁴⁸ Power as Feeling-attitude and Interest,⁴⁹ and Power as Willing and Volition.⁵⁰

The second Triangle requires explanation. Whenever there is a given experience, analysis shows that it has a “Base” or substratum of immediate, intuitive feeling, an “Index” or superstructure of ideas and memories suggested by the “Base,” and a “Co-efficient” or a background or store of possibilities or tendencies⁵¹ which makes the fact change and grow like a crystal in appropriate solution. What is called Base and Index are commonly spoken of in Psychology as “presentative” and “representative” elements, as intuitive and ideational factors. Every perception is thus described as a presentative-representative complex. We hear a name (say Shangkara) uttered. The base of our experience is not only the immediate, direct cognition of the sound, but it is, as introspection will show, a wide and undefined mass of many other sounds, sights, smells, touches, organic sensations, intuition of being and self and so forth, though all this great mass of feeling is, for the time being, masked under the veil of inattention and ignorance. The sound Shangkara is the place of emphasis and concentration, but it is obviously not the whole of what we immediately feel or what is directly presented to us now, This whole body of actually given feeling is the Base. The sound Shangkara calls up certain memories and suggests certain ideas; which memories and ideas associated with the name Shangkara, constitute the “representative element,” and it is by them that the sound becomes intelligible, and conveys a meaning to us; what is a mere sensation becomes a perception to us. This halo or superstructure in,-and by, which sensations are supplemented and understood, is the Index. Then again, it is patent to inspection that this complex of impressions and ideas, presentative and representative elements, is not a statical, unmoving, unchanging fact. It is an incessantly changing and growing experience. It changes both at the Base and at the Index: neither the mass of sensations nor the halo of suggested ideas ordinarily remains the same for two consecutive moments. Now, the tissue of potentials,⁵² commonly lying below the threshold line of pragmatic consciousness, which makes a given experience change and grow like a crystal in a solution of the requisite kind and condition, is the “co-efficient” of the fact. The coefficient partly determines what the fact shall be at the next moment.

We shall not study here the mutual reactions of the Base, Index and Co-efficient, but note only this that the first refers to the present tense of Time, the second generally to the past, and the last generally to the future. The “triangle” is in this sense three-dimensional in Time.⁵³

The “triangle” involves, and is constituted by, veiling. This veiling process can be traced upwards and downwards starting from Perfect Consciousness. Perfect Consciousness veils itself when a Centre or Point of reference and operation appears in it. Consciousness is “partitioned” when it refers itself to and operates through a Centre. It seems to be no longer alogical, absolute and impartial when it so refers and operates. Ether no longer remains homogeneous, even and undivided when a strain-centre appears in it and constitutes a prime atom. By the appearance of such centre the mass as well as the energy of Ether becomes relative—assuming for one moment that they were homogeneous and uniform previously to the appearance of the strain-centres. Similarly, protoplasm becomes relative, both as regards mass and energy, when it assumes the nuclear form and becomes a cell. Lastly, experience becomes relative and partial by reason of the appearance of the ego or “I” in it. To be relative is to become partitioned or divided in a way. The strain-centre in Ether is distinct from, and, in a sense, separate from the rest of ether: it is a kind of hedging round. So in the case of the living cell, and in that of self-referring (either-consciously or sub-consciously) experience. Now, veiling or contraction is the name that is given to this principle of hedging round or differentiation.⁵⁴ It is that which gives us difference,⁵⁵ or duality⁵⁶ or separateness.⁵⁷ It does so by suppressing or concealing the sameness, unity and impartiality.⁵⁸ For veiling we must have therefore two circumstances. First, there must be difference, separateness and so on, But only this is not enough. Therefore, secondly, the whole in which the differences exist or appear must be suppressed or concealed in a manner. The whole must retire into a cave. The intrinsic strain-centre in Ether suppresses or conceals the Mother-Ether itself in this sense that it conserves itself, which means that it resists the encroachment of surrounding matter upon itself; resists the tendency to dissolution in the sea of ether out of which it has differentiated itself; and thereby maintains its own individuality as a prime atom of specific mass, constitution and energy. By resisting it maintains its separateness; and resistance is thus avoidance, rejection. The same reasoning applies to the nucleated cell of protoplasm. The nucleus is the physical seat and organ of a Principle of specific operation⁵⁹ and control, and such operation and control is possible not merely by acting upon the given mass of protoplasm and the energy contained in it, but also, to a large extent, by resisting the action of the portion of the protoplasm not made into a nucleus.⁶⁰

Lastly, in experience the Ego acts as a Principle of specific operation and control, by reason of which Perfect Experience, like physical ether, is “strained” about a given centre; becomes hedged round or circumscribed, and thereby becomes imperfect, finite individual experience—the experience of the limited embodied self.⁶¹ By being thus differentiated, such experience becomes the accepted and avowed segment of the Perfect Universe or Experience which has been pragmatically veiled, ignored or disowned. Like the nucleus of a cell of living matter, the Ego represents a system of countless tendencies,⁶² a system of partialities, of selections and rejections, at every moment of its experience, it selects and rejects. Pragmatically, its experience is not the Perfect Experience, firstly because it is a centre of special differentiation, and therefore of circumscription, in the latter; and secondly because it selects in, and therefore cuts up, even that undefinable universe of experience which is its own “Fact”. Thus a man may seem to hear a particular sound only in the midst of a given universe of experience comprising many sounds, sights, smells, touches, and so forth; and this given universe is the Perfect Experience strained and differentiated about a given Centre. Man’s acknowledged feelings and so forth are therefore doubly removed from the Whole.

A Centre, whether in “dead” Matter, or in “living” Matter, or in Experience represents the metaphysical point or Bindu: which means that it is a concentrated, potentialized universe (an infinite sphere whose radii have been infinitely reduced), and consequently that it is a seed out of which a diffused, distended, actual universe is to evolve again.⁶³

The Bindu is the Perfect Universe in a condition of maximum veiling but infinite potency. If we represent the Perfect Universe or experience by an infinite sphere whose radius stands for infinite presentation or manifestation, then this sphere can be made to represent the Bindu when its radius has been infinitely reduced—that is to say, when its manifestation has been completely veiled. Since the sphere is not merely a mathematical sphere, but is dynamic—is a field of operative Power, its infinite contraction means infinite concentration or compactness of Power; so that the Para Bindu⁶⁴ or “Supreme Point” may be conceived as infinitely massive Power or Potency,⁶⁵ which is also, Power ready to evolve the Universe because, as further explained later, all evolution must start from Energy massed into nuclei or centres. It is as if an infinite coil of wire or spring were compressed infinitely till, in the limit, it became a Point. The more it is compressed, the less become its dimensions and the greater the amount of condensed energy or potency. In the limit, imagined when it has become a Point, its dimensions become infinitely small, hut its potency infinitely great.

That such decrease of dimensions and increase of potency can go together, can be shown a posteriori from observed phenomena. Chemical action affecting the combination of atoms is, generally speaking, more powerful than physical or mechanical action affecting molar and molecular masses. In fact, the greater bulk of operative power in the physical universe is probably derived from chemical action. But even chemical energy, great as it is, is nothing compared with the energy which is stored up in, and sometimes given out, as in radio-activity, by the atom. The atom is small but its store of energy is vast. But neither the atom nor the electron is infinitely small. Hence the energy of the atom or electron is not infinitely great. Infinitely vast energy is reached when the metaphysical “Point” or Bindu⁶⁶ is reached.

It is so because Mass is really Energy. Extension of Mass means diffusion of Energy. When the Mass is small, the quantity of Energy per unit area is greater than what it would be per same unit area when the same Mass occupied a larger volume. Mass, in accordance with the highly suggestive pictorial thinking of Faraday, may stand for so many and such and such forms of “lines of force”. When Mass occupies a certain volume, we have so many lines of force packed together in a given area; when the volume contracts, the same number of lines of force becomes more closely packed together, so that, area for area, we now have force of a greater intensity. The Atom is matter in which lines of force are very closely conglomerated; in the Electron they must be still more closely packed, till we arrive at the dynamic “Point” in which they are infinitely closely packed, which means that in it force is infinitely intense. The dynamic Point is thus the “limit” in the mathematical sense of the “close packing” of lines of force ad infinitum.⁶⁷

Now, for one moment let us consider evolution as it should be understood in this system.⁶⁸ It is a condition of cosmic dis-equilibrium. The stresses of centres do not neutralize one another so long as creative movement goes on. Placed in such a field of disequilibrium or unequal tensions, a Dynamic Point or Bindu must tend to expand or swell.⁶⁹ That is to say, its infinitely closely packed, lines of force (to continue the analogy of Electrical Science) will tend to distend or spread. Which again means that its infinite potency must commence to distribute itself about it as a “field”. Such swelling of the Point is illustrated on the different planes of creation. In Matter it is represented by universal radio-activity. Every material particle allows its fount of energy to flow out in streams of radiation: and each material centre becomes surrounded by a field of force.⁷⁰ What Science now calls Atom is itself such a field—a little universe of revolving protons and electrons. Even these latter, being of finite magnitude, must be of the nature of “fields”. In the world of Life, the cell of protoplasm is a field round about a nucleus. In a nutritive solution the cell “swells” and then splits up, divides, sub-divides. In this way the cell multiplies itself, and then by integration and co-ordination creates organisms.⁷¹ The material atom also multiplies itself in this sense that, in radio-activity, it gives out radiations each of which is a centre of force ejected from the body of the parent atom. By ejecting such new centres, it creates its field of influence, and slowly recreates itself. In Mind, too, the Self, which represents the “Point,” swells and thereby evolves itself—in knowledge, feeling and action. Apart from such “swelling” or “field,” the Self is a point at which countless tendencies⁷² are, so to say, infinitely closely packed together. To use another physical analogy, it is the point at which the battery of infinitely condensed mentative energy can be discharged as well as that at which it can be charged again. By continuous discharge, it ejects lines of stress, (i.e., action and reaction) in all directions: and through and upon these lines of stress, its world of limited Experience evolves, starting from infancy. By these stresses again the battery or condenser is recharged—new tendencies are impressed. In its discharge upon the physical universe, the mentative force flows out at the point of the Self, and is converted into physical force by the mechanism of the brain centres which, accordingly, may be regarded as “converters”. However that be, the Self is like a tap which, pressed in and out, discharges and recharges the infinite condenser or resorvoir of Power or Shakti which every limited self essentially is. And not only is that self⁷³ so; organic matter is so; the atom of inorganic matter is so; the living cell of protoplasm is so; in fact, everything is so in which the Bindu or Dynamic Point of Power operates and tends to attain to the state of readiness for evolving action.⁷⁴ It should be noted further that this tendency, fundamental as it is, is rhythmic; that is to say, there is alternate expansion⁷⁵ and contraction⁷⁶ of the Bindu, in creation and dissolution, in life and death, in waking and slumber. And such rhythm ought on principle to be traceable in the “life-curve” of even the so-called “dead” atom of matter.

It has been already observed that in expansion the Dynamic Point tends to assume the form of the Dynamic Triangle⁷⁷—that is to say, a triangle whose lines and points are not mathematical lines and points only, but are lines and points of force—a circumstance which can be aptly described by calling the triangle a “Polar Triangle”.⁷⁸ A Triangle in comparison with the Point, is a condition of unveiling, manifestation. It becomes a Point again when the boundary lines or sides are made to shrink infinitely. The three poles are drawn infinitely close together, that is, are ultimately made to coincide. The Point or Bindu is, in one sense, the condition of maximum veiling or non-manifestation. It is infinitely condensed Power, but so long as it remains what it is, the lines of operation of Power are, so to say, packed up, that is, unmanifest. But if by manifestation we mean the condition of being given as Power, the Bindu is, as the Perfect Universe, the state of maximum manifestation. It is Complete Being-ness.⁷⁹ In it nothing is held back, nothing is incomplete, partial. Since again all operation, all movement, of whatever kind in the world, presupposes and starts from the Bindu, it really means infinite potency to move and evolve.

In the Upanishads Brahman has often been described as amaller than the smallest,⁸⁰ and larger than the largest.⁸¹ Now, if by Brahman we mean Perfect Experience or Universe, then we see how aptly the description applies to Brahman, particularly if we are careful to take the Bindu for what it really is.

Footnotes

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