.

The Nature of God and the Universe

All this is the Brahman; the Self is the Brahman...

Mandukya Upanishad v. 2.


  An ideal is beyond explanation.  
  To analyze God is to dethrown God. 
Hazrat Inayat Khan


  The realm of Ideals, or what Plato called Ideas, exists above the mind-mesh.
  The Divine Light striking the realm of Ideals is partly refracted, 
  and then reflected above the mind-mesh.  
  This produces the Ideas in the realm of Pure Light, 
  so that their Nature is Light; also they are purely God, 
  taking on what might be called the Intelligent Aspect of God.
  As human mind does not and cannot reach this plane, 
  it is impossible to express the condition there 
  in human thought and in human words. 
  These arise below the mind-mesh.  
  Besides, what we call exposition or analysis is of the nature of distinction;
  things are known by how and to what extent they differ. 
  The spiritual Ideas are *not* differentiated.  
  In the same way, all that is above the mental Akasha is God,
  whether it is explained, or described or referred to 
  in various manners and by different words.  
  Nevertheless, these words do not really bring one any knowledge; 
  they are symbols which indicate there are different conditions,
  but as all these conditions are above and beyond the human mind 
  and larger than the human mind in scope, 
  they are no more intelligible to it than the ocean would be to a cup.  
 

Harzat Samuel L. Lewis


  If one knows Him as Brahman the Non-Being,
  he become merely the non-existent.
  If one knows that Brahman Is,
  then he is known as the real in existence.
 

Taittiriya Upanishad II. 6.


     In the cosmic consciousness:
  Matter reveals itself 
     to the realising thought and to the subtilised senses 
  as the figure and body of Spirit, - 
  Spirit in its self-formative extension.
  Spirit reveals itself
     through the same consenting agents 
  as the soul, the truth, the essence of Matter.
  Both admit and confess each other 
  as divine, real, and essentially one.

  Mind and life are disclosed
     in that illumination
  as at once figures and instruments 
  of the Supreme Conscious Being
  by which It extends and houses Itself in material form
  and in that form unveils Itself 
  to Its multiple centers of consciousness.

  Mind attains its self-fulfilment 
  when it becomes a pure mirror of the Truth of Being 
  which expresses itself in the symbols of the universe;
  Life, when it consciously lends its energies 
  to the perfect self-figuration of the Divine 
  in ever-new forms and activities of the universal existence.  
 

Sri Aurobindo


Tom Maxwell
Last modified: Tue Jun 22 09:22:55 EDT 1999