Sri Aurobindo

Essays Divine and Human

Writings from Manuscripts. 1910 – 1950

God: The One Reality

The Divine Eternal and Infinite

7

One says “In the beginning was the Self, the Spirit, God, the Eternal.” But there was never a beginning, for the Eternal and its works are always and for ever.

“In the beginning” is a phrase that has no meaning unless we speak of sections of existence, sections of it in Time, sections of it in Space, sections of it in substance; for these have a beginning and an end. Existence in itself has no end even as it never had a beginning.

It is not of pure existence only that this [can be said], existence in its essence without any expressive motion or feature, but of existence with all it contains and reveals in its depths as on its surface. For pure existence is only a state of being and not being in its whole truth and integral significance.

And even this state, although it appears to the quiescent mind featureless, motionless, concentrated in bare uniqueness, is still not empty or without feature, — it contains enveloped in itself all truth of feature, all power of motion, all that ever was, is or shall be manifested in this or any universe.

But the supreme divine Being is beyond any distinction of pure existence and phenomenal existence, feature or no feature, form or no form, being or non-being, manifestation and the unmanifest — for these are distinctions, separate states, opposite ideas to the mind, separate experiences to the Soul on the mental level, manomaya purusha. But the Supreme is beyond Mind and has no need for these divisions and contradictions of its nature.

Circa 1928/29

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