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<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:center; line-height:150%;margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0"><b
style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'><font size="4">The Stress of the Spirit</font><o:p></o:p></b></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><i><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>THE universe is a
close-knit pattern in which each part, each point is inextricably linked with
every other part and point. Each element acts and reacts upon every other: the <i>karma
</i>of one is echoed and re-echoed in the <i>karma </i>of all others. An
inevitable, inescapable mutuality rules the behaviour of the constituent
entities of a whole; in other words, there is only one Force, one Presence that
permeates all, even constitutes the All.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.2pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The
material universe makes one single block of reality, homogeneous and
indivisible. Modern knowledge has proved the fact to the hilt. It is one
continuous extension like the ocean's rippling wet sheet. If you pull at one
point the tension is felt in the whole at every other point. That is Einstein's
gravitational field constituting the universe: a change of disposition at one
point changes the disposition of the whole universe. The very character of this
world is its rigorous determinism: the part is absolutely and completely a
portion and parcel of the whole. Somewhat paradoxically one might say that the
part is the whole, nothing but the whole, only on a reduced scale.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.0pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Viewed
in this light all human endeavour, its achievements and realisations form a
single collective activity: it is one force, one energy realising itself in and
through many vehicles and instruments. Not even man's mental activity that
seems so free and autonomous is outside the compass of the universal
gravitational field where everything is appointed and determined in a compact
tensile global unity.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.0pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Each
individual human effort is in effect the total human effort canalised at a
particular point through a particular receptacle. The unity of the whole does
not consist in the
<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 374<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0;text-align:justify;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-bottom:0'><span
class=GramE>combination</span>, a summation of separate or independent units:
the separate units on the surface are an illusion and valuation of individuals
in this viewpoint is an anomaly, for in reality there are no individuals: they
are but at the most the various limbs or functions of the same body, of the one
and single person. Life as consciousness is one single surge: contagion (also
in the good sense), permeation is its law.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.7pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>Vicarious
atonement, a phenomenon familiar and well known in the religious domain, finds
a very simple meaning in this view and almost becomes a very natural human
phenomenon. There is an inevitable interaction and interflow of psychological
forces among individuals, it is no more a riddle to say that the sins of the
fathers are visited upon the children, nor that the virtues of the sons wash
away the sins of the fathers; and that is how the Avatars automatically,
inevitably take upon themselves and have to take upon themselves and bear the
stigmata of suffering humanity. And that is how they embody and fulfil the
total aspiration of all human beings. An avatar is thus an outburst of the
earth's highest need of the hour. Indeed, however great an individual, his
greatness is in reality the greatness of the world-spirit in him, and also contrariwise
the smallness of an earthly being is the smallness of the universal being at a
point, under a particular condition. In other words, the individual represents
the weakest or the strongest link as the case may be, in the one single chain
constituting the whole human race.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:13.7pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>And
yet, at bottom, it is not such an absolute determinism, this cosmos, however
apparently it may prove itself to be so. It is found, actually, that behind and
in and through this ineluctable fatalism there are aberrations, freaks that do
not adhere to the common pattern. In the overall macrocosmic view the reign of
the fixed law is perhaps absolute but in the microcosm of infinitesimals
fissures appear, discrepancies show themselves. All strict calculations turn
out in the end to be mere approximations, only they tend to become more and
more approximate. It is like the asymptote or the race between the hare and
the tortoise in the famous story – a mathematical puzzle – where the hare
starting behind can never catch up with the tortoise however fast he may run.
With the discovery of new factors (sometimes only a new way of calculation) the
gap is<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 375<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
class=GramE>sought</span> to be reduced, but the approximation remains. For example,
the bending of a ray of light <i>from </i>a star passing by the solar sphere is
a subject <i>for </i>interesting calculation: between the figure as given by
the Einstein equation and the actual measurement there is a difference,
although slight, yet a difference. Such differences are usually explained by
some kind of intervention and if that intervention does not fully explain it,
another intervention is brought in, and still the hiatus continues. This is
just an example. The ultimate particles of matter, points of electric charge
(or no-charge), points of tension are <span class=SpellE>incalculables</span>;
their position or velocity is an indeterminate, not because of the
infinitesimal size of the quantum, their very nature is so; they are erratic in
their own essence. And one can justifiably ascribe a kind of <i>free </i>will
to these ultimate, almost immaterial material particles, although when they are
in bundles or groups they behave quite reasonably and are very obedient to the
law, but singly each <span class=SpellE>possessess</span> or is capable of
possessing a <i>free </i>independent movement. There is a basis here of the
spirit of independence that shows itself more clearly in the biological units,
and of course, very overtly and patently in the human mental consciousness.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.75pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>There
seems to be an entity lying at the other end away <i>from </i>Matter, it is the
Spirit, the individual Conscious Being. If Matter is Bondage, Law, Determinism,
Spirit is Freedom, <st1:City><st1:place>Liberty</st1:place></st1:City>, <span
class=GramE>Self</span>-choice. That is the well-known duality – Purusha and <span
class=GramE>Prakriti, that</span> divide existence between themselves. Purusha
is the conscient <span class=GramE>Being</span>, and Prakriti the inconscient
becoming. These dual realities are however not irrevocably distinct and
separate incommensurables. They are not unbridgeable units foreign to each
other. The conscient being infuses itself into the inconscient becoming and
initiates a conscious movement in the unconscious field. Thus where there was
the absolute determinism of matter, sparks <i>from </i>the <i>free </i>consciousness
intervene and modify the settled balance. That is the inner sense of the
aberrations that one observes in the play even of physical laws. It is just the
beginning of the stress of consciousness in unconscious matter. That stress
increases in the march of time, in the process of evolution; and the natural
freedom of the subject impinges on the rigid law of the object making it more
and more pliable and plastic, more and more malleable and<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 376<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0;text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-bottom:0'><span
class=GramE>even</span> reversible. In man a balance is struck between freedom
and bondage although apparently bondage overweighs freedom. In the higher evolved
status of being man arrives and can arrive at yet greater degrees of freedom
and in the end eliminate altogether the element of bondage and transmute it
into the self-expressed rhythm of the higher consciousness. The supreme Divine
Consciousness or Being is that where Nature's determinism is dissolved in the
self-law of the All Spirit, the Divine Will becoming the <span class=GramE>law</span>
of the being.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.5pt;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The
whole process of creation, the final goal of the Divine Lila is the liberation
of Nature, Prakriti. Prakriti is born in Bondage as inconscient Energy.
Prakriti itself is a prison-house made of, wholly made of unconsciousness. The
conscious Being is there involved, imprisoned and suffers and is miserable. For
the gloom of unconsciousness covers it and almost swallows it up. That is the
immanent Godhead in creation and is in man his soul, an emanation and
representative of the Godhead. As it is commonly understood, liberation means
the release of the Godhead out of the prison escaping into the Transcendent.
The riddle of this creation is therefore to be solved by this process of escape
of the Conscious Principle from out of the unconscious covering beyond into the
pure Consciousness <i>– laya </i>for the human being and <i>pralaya </i>for the
creation. Actually the Upanishad gives graphically the direction to the human
soul to pull <span class=GramE>himself</span> out, out of the containing form:
even as one draws the inner stem of a blade of grass out of its covering, for
that which is Pure, Stainless is not here but out there.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:.15in;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>But
we have set before us a different process. The immanent Godhead, the Conscious
Being imbedded, apparently lost in matter need not withdraw or depart elsewhere
to be free and to be itself. We have already said the force of its
consciousness has or can have a different function and is strong enough to
carry out that function. Its very presence is sufficient to infuse its own
light and freedom into the environing covering and gradually dissolve its dark
ignorance. Man through his soul and self can liberate his ordinary ignorant
nature: he not merely liberates himself from this nature but transmutes it into
an expression and <span class=SpellE>emanantion</span> of the Divine
Consciousness. Even so the cosmic Godhead buried in<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></p>

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mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 377<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%;mso-pagination:
none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span class=GramE>the</span>
universe grows, evolves and slowly spreads and establishes the radiance of its
consciousness in the cosmic nature, makes this also the expression and
embodiment of his conscious energy. That is the liberation or rebirth of
nature, not its dissolution and extinction. Not extraction, but infiltration is
the process.</p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:.15in;line-height:
150%;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>The
Divine Purusha descends into his own shadow and by his own light transmutes the
dark silhouette into a luminous image, his very self concretised upon earth.</p>

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mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;'>Page – 378<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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