Re: Derrida, Death and Forgiveness by Andrew J. McKenna by rakesh on Wed 15 Nov 2006 12:14 AM PST Profile Permanent Link I am writing from what I can understand about the great sacrifice of the purusha and the holocaust of the Divine mother. The soul is usually regarded as the purusha embedded in obscure matter which through several births realises its divinity, power of Ishwara and freedom from lower nature. But in reality the soul is the purushottama, the transcendental Mother herself trying to uplift the obscurity of matter or the unenlightened manifestation. So this way the mother herself bears the suffering of darkness and ignorance of matter. I donot think there is any reference to avatar in that specific paragraph.
by RY Deshpande on Wed 15 Nov 2006 02:50 AM PST Profile Permanent Link In response to Debashish in this posting let me talk specifically about the Holocaust of Prakriti, the Sacrifice of the Divine Mother. (The query about “portals of the birth that is a death” can be taken up if we are to pursue the discussion, which I am not sure is appropriate under the present blog seized with some other issues. Please decide.)The Mother’s powers and personalities are for a cosmic work. Sri Aurobindo described four of them in his letter to Kapali Shastri which was included afterwards in the book The Mother. These are: Maheshwari (Wisdom), Mahakali (Strength), Mahalakshmi (Harmony), and Mahasaraswati (Perfection). These four powers of the Mother are the fourfold soul-forces and they operate variously in the cosmic scheme of things. Corresponding to these four aspects of the Mother we have the Vedic fourfold personality of the Cosmic Being, Virata Purusha; four parts of his body are: Head, Arms, Heart, and Feet. The names given to them are: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra, and correspond to the thinker, the warrior, the man of commerce, and man as the doer of works. These are present everywhere, in all the societies and during all the periods of time. Plato and Kant and Einstein were Brahmins, Julius Caesar and Eisenhower and Alexander the Great were Kshatriyas, Henri Ford and DuPont or the present-day Bill Gates make the Vaishyas, the factory worker and the smith and the bank employees and the government servants including the highest secretaries are Shudras. That is the eternal Chaturvarna. In that sense it is indestructible and cannot be wished away. The Gita proclaims it—I have created this fourfold order— and we have codes based on it. The Synthesis of Yoga explains the spiritual basis of this division. In the Indian social organisation, however, Chaturvarna later became four castes. That is the Great Fall which is unfortunate, speaking of the decadent nature of the society; it is much maligned, and rightly so. It has to be redeemed by breathing the spiritual fire in it. Its justification does not lie in the dead society but in the breathing spirit of the universal being. That should be recovered. “… human nature bounded, egoistic and obscure,” writes Sri Aurobindo, “is inapt to receive these great Presences or to support their mighty action. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed mind and life and body, can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth movement and the supramental action becomes possible. For when her Personalities are all gathered in her and manifested and their separate working has been turned into a harmonious unity and they rise in her to the supramental godheads, then is the Mother revealed as the supramental Mahashakti and brings pouring down her luminous transcendences from their ineffable ether. Then can human nature change because all the elemental lines of the supramental Truth-consciousness and Truth-force are strung together and the harp of life is fitted for the rhythms of the Eternal.” The need is the harmonious working of the four powers. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom can the higher powers of the Mother descend. The aspect of well-organised collective life for the higher creation, preparing for the race of the gnostic beings is greatly dependent upon it. The Purusha Sukta of the Veda, the Hymn of Creation, celebrates triumphantly the Sacrifice of the Purusha. He has given up his royalty of the transcendental existence and accepted the travail of the lower working. That is the Sacrifice. In the Vedic terminology it is the Purusha who has made the sacrifice. But, as Sri Aurobindo says, “this is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” She has left her royalty, aishwarya, glory, majesty and accepted the conditions of Ignorance. Para Prakriti has become Apara Prakriti, Consciousness-Force the lower Nature under the governance of the Inconscient Self and the Somnambulist Force. As one particular incarnation call her the Mother, call her Savitri, call her a fit intermediary, a beautiful slave of God, the incarnate who came here in the ancient past, the embodied Word or a living Scripture, a spirit who arrived from the immortal spaces to set her conquering foot on Time, the divine Consciousness-Force, or Mahashakti born on earth,—she has ever been engaged in the work of the Lord. Her yoga-tapasya progresses in the Will of the Lord, her power grows in the Will of the Lord, her action in the Will of the Lord. A prayer of the Mother speaks of amplitude and majesty, nobility and grace, charm and grandeur, variety and strength, “for it is the will of the Lord to manifest.” For that purpose she is ready to suffer, she is ready to accept “lamentable limitations”, climb up the Calvary of deep-rooted frustration, bear ignominy of human births. Thus: “O My Lord, my sweet Master, for the accomplishment of Thy work I have sunk down into the unfathomable depths of Matter, I have touched with my finger the horror of the falsehood and the inconscience, I have reached the seat of oblivion and a supreme obscurity. But in my heart was the Remembrance, from my heart there leaped the call which could arrive to Thee: ‘Lord, Lord, everywhere Thy enemies appear triumphant; falsehood is the monarch of the world… Lord, give the command to conquer and victory will be there. I know we are unworthy, I know the world is not yet ready. But I cry to Thee with an absolute faith in Thy Grace and I know that Thy Grace will save.’ Thus, my prayer rushed up towards Thee…” (24 November 1931)
by Debashish on Wed 15 Nov 2006 09:32 AM PST Profile Permanent Link The Vedic sacrifice of the Purusha in the Purusha Sukta is undoubtedly the basis of the "holocaust of the Purusha", the "original" or "originary" holocaust, but in Time this is enacted through repetions of the Symbol in the form of each instance (individual purusha) that enters into the Ignorance and Falsehood through processes of prakriti and each evolutionary avatar that consciously accepts this entry and utilizes his own Shakti to enter. Similarly, for the Paraprakriti, the Mother and more so because it is her substance and force that is "the many-patterned ground of all we are." Here also, of the "holocaust" is in its "originary" form it can be said, as you have put it - "She has left her royalty, aishwarya, glory, majesty and accepted the conditions of Ignorance. Para Prakriti has become Apara Prakriti, Consciousness-Force the lower Nature under the governance of the Inconscient Self and the Somnambulist Force." But Sri Aurobindo goes further in the passage from The Mother in question. Preceeding the statement about the "holocaust of Prakriti" he mentions both the impersonal and personal aspects of the Sacrifice: "Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda." It is the personal aspect that constitues the avatar(s) of the Mother. What you have written at the end of your posting, I understand as the Mother's avatars and a part of the sense of the "holocaust of prakriti":"As one particular incarnation call her the Mother, call her Savitri, call her a fit intermediary, a beautiful slave of God, the incarnate who came here in the ancient past, the embodied Word or a living Scripture, a spirit who arrived from the immortal spaces to set her conquering foot on Time, the divine Consciousness-Force, or Mahashakti born on earth,—she has ever been engaged in the work of the Lord. ..... . For that purpose she is ready to suffer, she is ready to accept “lamentable limitations”, climb up the Calvary of deep-rooted frustration, bear ignominy of human births."
by RY Deshpande on Wed 15 Nov 2006 02:50 AM PST Profile Permanent Link In response to Debashish in this posting let me talk specifically about the Holocaust of Prakriti, the Sacrifice of the Divine Mother. (The query about “portals of the birth that is a death” can be taken up if we are to pursue the discussion, which I am not sure is appropriate under the present blog seized with some other issues. Please decide.)The Mother’s powers and personalities are for a cosmic work. Sri Aurobindo described four of them in his letter to Kapali Shastri which was included afterwards in the book The Mother. These are: Maheshwari (Wisdom), Mahakali (Strength), Mahalakshmi (Harmony), and Mahasaraswati (Perfection). These four powers of the Mother are the fourfold soul-forces and they operate variously in the cosmic scheme of things. Corresponding to these four aspects of the Mother we have the Vedic fourfold personality of the Cosmic Being, Virata Purusha; four parts of his body are: Head, Arms, Heart, and Feet. The names given to them are: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra, and correspond to the thinker, the warrior, the man of commerce, and man as the doer of works. These are present everywhere, in all the societies and during all the periods of time. Plato and Kant and Einstein were Brahmins, Julius Caesar and Eisenhower and Alexander the Great were Kshatriyas, Henri Ford and DuPont or the present-day Bill Gates make the Vaishyas, the factory worker and the smith and the bank employees and the government servants including the highest secretaries are Shudras. That is the eternal Chaturvarna. In that sense it is indestructible and cannot be wished away. The Gita proclaims it—I have created this fourfold order— and we have codes based on it. The Synthesis of Yoga explains the spiritual basis of this division. In the Indian social organisation, however, Chaturvarna later became four castes. That is the Great Fall which is unfortunate, speaking of the decadent nature of the society; it is much maligned, and rightly so. It has to be redeemed by breathing the spiritual fire in it. Its justification does not lie in the dead society but in the breathing spirit of the universal being. That should be recovered. “… human nature bounded, egoistic and obscure,” writes Sri Aurobindo, “is inapt to receive these great Presences or to support their mighty action. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom of movement in the transformed mind and life and body, can those other rarer Powers manifest in the earth movement and the supramental action becomes possible. For when her Personalities are all gathered in her and manifested and their separate working has been turned into a harmonious unity and they rise in her to the supramental godheads, then is the Mother revealed as the supramental Mahashakti and brings pouring down her luminous transcendences from their ineffable ether. Then can human nature change because all the elemental lines of the supramental Truth-consciousness and Truth-force are strung together and the harp of life is fitted for the rhythms of the Eternal.” The need is the harmonious working of the four powers. Only when the Four have founded their harmony and freedom can the higher powers of the Mother descend. The aspect of well-organised collective life for the higher creation, preparing for the race of the gnostic beings is greatly dependent upon it. The Purusha Sukta of the Veda, the Hymn of Creation, celebrates triumphantly the Sacrifice of the Purusha. He has given up his royalty of the transcendental existence and accepted the travail of the lower working. That is the Sacrifice. In the Vedic terminology it is the Purusha who has made the sacrifice. But, as Sri Aurobindo says, “this is the great sacrifice called sometimes the sacrifice of the Purusha, but much more deeply the holocaust of Prakriti, the sacrifice of the Divine Mother.” She has left her royalty, aishwarya, glory, majesty and accepted the conditions of Ignorance. Para Prakriti has become Apara Prakriti, Consciousness-Force the lower Nature under the governance of the Inconscient Self and the Somnambulist Force. As one particular incarnation call her the Mother, call her Savitri, call her a fit intermediary, a beautiful slave of God, the incarnate who came here in the ancient past, the embodied Word or a living Scripture, a spirit who arrived from the immortal spaces to set her conquering foot on Time, the divine Consciousness-Force, or Mahashakti born on earth,—she has ever been engaged in the work of the Lord. Her yoga-tapasya progresses in the Will of the Lord, her power grows in the Will of the Lord, her action in the Will of the Lord. A prayer of the Mother speaks of amplitude and majesty, nobility and grace, charm and grandeur, variety and strength, “for it is the will of the Lord to manifest.” For that purpose she is ready to suffer, she is ready to accept “lamentable limitations”, climb up the Calvary of deep-rooted frustration, bear ignominy of human births. Thus: “O My Lord, my sweet Master, for the accomplishment of Thy work I have sunk down into the unfathomable depths of Matter, I have touched with my finger the horror of the falsehood and the inconscience, I have reached the seat of oblivion and a supreme obscurity. But in my heart was the Remembrance, from my heart there leaped the call which could arrive to Thee: ‘Lord, Lord, everywhere Thy enemies appear triumphant; falsehood is the monarch of the world… Lord, give the command to conquer and victory will be there. I know we are unworthy, I know the world is not yet ready. But I cry to Thee with an absolute faith in Thy Grace and I know that Thy Grace will save.’ Thus, my prayer rushed up towards Thee…” (24 November 1931)
by Debashish on Wed 15 Nov 2006 09:32 AM PST Profile Permanent Link The Vedic sacrifice of the Purusha in the Purusha Sukta is undoubtedly the basis of the "holocaust of the Purusha", the "original" or "originary" holocaust, but in Time this is enacted through repetions of the Symbol in the form of each instance (individual purusha) that enters into the Ignorance and Falsehood through processes of prakriti and each evolutionary avatar that consciously accepts this entry and utilizes his own Shakti to enter. Similarly, for the Paraprakriti, the Mother and more so because it is her substance and force that is "the many-patterned ground of all we are." Here also, of the "holocaust" is in its "originary" form it can be said, as you have put it - "She has left her royalty, aishwarya, glory, majesty and accepted the conditions of Ignorance. Para Prakriti has become Apara Prakriti, Consciousness-Force the lower Nature under the governance of the Inconscient Self and the Somnambulist Force." But Sri Aurobindo goes further in the passage from The Mother in question. Preceeding the statement about the "holocaust of Prakriti" he mentions both the impersonal and personal aspects of the Sacrifice: "Impersonally, all things here, even the movements of the Ignorance, are herself in veiled power and her creations in diminished substance, her Nature-body and Nature-force, and they exist because, moved by the mysterious fiat of the Supreme to work out something that was there in the possibilities of the Infinite, she has consented to the great sacrifice and has put on like a mask the soul and forms of the Ignorance. But personally too she has stooped to descend here into the Darkness that she may lead it to the Light, into the Falsehood and Error that she may convert it to the Truth, into this Death that she may turn it to godlike Life, into this world-pain and its obstinate sorrow and suffering that she may end it in the transforming ecstasy of her sublime Ananda." It is the personal aspect that constitues the avatar(s) of the Mother. What you have written at the end of your posting, I understand as the Mother's avatars and a part of the sense of the "holocaust of prakriti":"As one particular incarnation call her the Mother, call her Savitri, call her a fit intermediary, a beautiful slave of God, the incarnate who came here in the ancient past, the embodied Word or a living Scripture, a spirit who arrived from the immortal spaces to set her conquering foot on Time, the divine Consciousness-Force, or Mahashakti born on earth,—she has ever been engaged in the work of the Lord. ..... . For that purpose she is ready to suffer, she is ready to accept “lamentable limitations”, climb up the Calvary of deep-rooted frustration, bear ignominy of human births."
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