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<p class="paracenter">THE PERSONAL AND THE IMPERSONAL
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<p class="para"> As you go up in your 
consciousness towards the origin of things you come finally at the end of 
things: you are beyond the names and forms that make up the universe, beyond 
even the subtle names and forms at the topmost. You arrive at something 
formless, impersonal, unthinkable, unique, infinite and eternal. It is at best a 
vast force or a state of consciousness. When you come in contact with it, you 
lose your personal form, your separate individuality and become the featureless 
absolute. Many religions and philosophies consider this status to be the 
supreme, the highest and the origin of things. In reality, however, it is not 
the end of things nor the supreme status. You can rise further beyond. Your 
consciousness enters into the formless and impersonal and merges its separate 
existence there and then emerges again; it envisages a reality which is not 
formless but has a form, it is not impersonality but a Person, with which or 
with whom you can have a personal relation unlike the relation or lack of 
relation with the Impersonal. But this form beyond the formless is not like the 
forms of the inferior consciousness: it is the Form
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-73</p>
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<p class="para">of forms. And it is not a person like a human being or even a 
divine being or god, but an essential Personality, the Person of persons. It has 
not the limitation or exclusiveness of ego-bounded individuality (even the gods 
are ego-bounded); it has a kind of fluid boundedness or outline which is 
recognizable as that of a definite Person, but it has not the fixity or rigidity 
of lower forms.
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<p class="para"> And yet to arrive at this supreme 
Person, to come in contact with Him, it is necessary to pass through and have 
the experience of the formless impersonal infinity. For that breaks the inferior 
moulds, the narrow egoistic formations which are only aberrations or obscure 
images of the true Person.
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<p class="para"> Somewhat on the same line the 
vital too has to proceed to transform itself. It must get rid of its ignorant 
and violent impulses, its obscure formations: it must be thoroughly cleansed and 
purified. For that it must learn to be quiet and silent—absolutely still and 
passive; and in that quiet passivity to feel, to be conscious of the Divine 
Presence, to be saturated with it. When once that is done, it is called upon to 
come out and take part in active life. Normally, however, the tendency is, when 
one has withdrawn and lived an inward quieted life, on coming back to outer 
life, to turn to the old accustomed ways and reactions; one falls back into the 
old groove of the consciousness.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-74</p>
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<p class="para">The vital should then make the experience and the realisation of 
the Divine Presence dynamic so that it may be a living reality; the vital must 
be conscious of it in the midst of all activities, not merely in the indrawn 
state. The energy of the vital must be put out into a complete and perfected 
living, but it must not run into old moulds and take up the habitual modes; with 
the constant sense of the Divine, the everpresent truth and beauty of the 
Divine's consciousness, the vital will possess a new life and create a new 
pattern of living.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-75</p>
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