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<p class="paracenter">IV
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<p class="paracenter"><b>TRANSFIGURATION </b>
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<p class="para"> The Divine attributes—such as 
Peace and Joy, Consciousness and Power, Freedom, etc.—each and all of them are 
self-existent realities, existing by themselves in their fullness and 
perfection. They are not mere qualities that are acquired by effort through 
gradual culture and development, they are not acquired piecemeal as other human 
possessions, material or mental. They are there near us, about us in their 
fullness and wholeness. We do not see them or seize them as there happens to be 
a veil in between. We need not strain and struggle, labour and sweat, go through 
all the pains of the world in order to find them, realise them. It is, as I say, 
a veil interfering. Remove the veil or even shift it a little, you have a 
glimpse of them in their full glory.
</p>
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<p class="para"> Brahman, the supreme Reality, is 
said to be of the same nature and its relation to the world is also of the same 
kind. Brahman is not there because the world is there. Brahman is not realised 
through a long process of negating experiences; it is not the sum of all 
negations, it is an immediate and absolute realisation. When the vision of the 
world-maya is not there, Brahman stands self-revealed in its absoluteness, then 
one realises that Brahman only exists, has existed and will exist; there is no 
maya, it not only does not exist, it never existed. Brahman alone is
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-18</p>
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<p class="para">there always.
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<p class="para"> That is what the Upanishad also 
says. This experience cannot be acquired by mental knowledge and argumentation 
or study of books. Only when it reveals its own body then one stands before it 
face to face</p>
<p class="para">.
</p>
<p class="para"> As of the Brahman, even so of the 
Brahman's qualities. They are various aspects, living aspects or personalities 
of the One Divine. The Vedas therefore consider them as Gods and Goddesses and 
give each one a name and a form. They are adored and worshipped as such so that 
they may enter into the worshipper and transmute him into something of His 
image. The Gods bring riches to man. But these riches are they themselves. Vasu 
is the richness, of their substance, Ratna is the wealth of their delight.
</p>
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<p class="para"> Agni is the energy of 
consciousness, Varuna is the vast-ness of consciousness, Mitra is the harmony. 
Ila is the revelation, Saraswati inspiration, Bharati is the Goddess, of the 
Divine Word.
</p>
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<p class="para"> In the mental world we meet 
abstractions, lifeless ideas, forms without a soul. In reality, however, all 
movements in man, all forces in nature are more than mere movements and forces, 
they are personalities, embodiments of conscious beings. Indeed the Puranic 
tradition has elaborated this conception almost to its extreme limit. Those 
people crowded the world with an infinite number of Gods and Goddesses. They 
speak of 33 crores of Gods. The earth is the playfield of all godlings.
</p>
<p class="para"> In this way we come very far from 
the Supreme Brahman,</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-19</p>
<hr>
<p class="para">the Mayavadin's inane Unity. The Puranic multiplicity is perhaps 
a corrective of the Vedantin's empty Absolute.
</p>
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<p class="para"> The Vedantin's negation of the 
world for the realisation of the Brahman, the Supreme Consciousness, is an 
effective way so far as it goes but it does not really negate the world. One 
only turns one's back to the world and says, &quot;It is not there&quot;. We face the Sun 
and cast our shadow behind. The real solution is not to cut away or wipe off the 
shadow but instead of an obscure formulation, to make of it a luminous radiant 
image. The world is not abolished or eclipsed by the Sun but is made luminous, 
in every particle a radiant and glorious body.
</p>
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<p class="para"> This transfiguration is possible, 
nay, inevitable, because the higher realities, the truth-expressions of the 
Supreme Consciousness are there always self-existent in their total purity and 
pressing down upon earth and displacing the lower mayic shadow-realities. We 
need not seek to pull down what is already descending of itself. One must be 
open and receptive and welcoming in tranquillity the descending Godheads.
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-20</p>
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