Thursday, October 17, 2013

Additional commentaries to the symbols of the Vision


(follows to "The Arcane Symbolism etc.")

After the Vision, what most intrigued me was the blue-water cube surmounted by pyramids and a God-like living figure -Savitri- inside it.
But I was blank.

Evidently Sri Aurobindo attributed it an extraordinary importance (as anything would, coming from him), there was evidently a shift of his emblem from bi-dimensionality to three-dimensionality, but why was that?

I "knew" it was carrying a message, but could not grasp into it though I´d made some personal studies on religious-esoteric and alchemical symbolism.

I could have given the vision as it was, without explaining the symbols, but it wouldn´t have been a fair trick, it resulted evident to me that the Master 
wanted -me- to understand and to explain it, as much as I myself felt an imperious need to solve the mystery.
It took me a few years more to decipher the symbols.

The shift of the emblem (what we call the symbol of Sri Aurobindo) from two to three dimensions is not of secondary importance in the intention of the Master, and I assume, as evident from the tenor of the vision, that he meant it to reach every student for several reasons, that I was exploring.

The most important was that it acted to me as a mental egregor, it has never faded away, I could, and still can concentrate on it and fly over it to more subtle intuitive levels of perception where I still learn from the vision.
It is not meant for a rational mind to analyze it and forget it, it is a living message always able to open new doors to the understanding.

I used to visualize the tri-dimensional emblem in meditation, spreading my consciousness all over its sides within and without at the same time and see
it resulted a peculiar mental pattern, as the reciting of a mantram or visualization of a yantra would generate, after all, it -was- a yantra, a three-dimensional one.
That was the first thing I understood, the first of the presents coming from the Master to all of us.

In the post explaining the symbols of the vision, I have mentioned the (tendencially) descending Water rising and floating in the Air.
It is one of the most important elements of the Vision, because you know the water may only descend and lay down on earth, and if we change the proper place and direction of one of the Elements, then automatically all the other positions and movements drastically change into its contrary, so that we have too a descending Fire (though we know the fire has an ascending nature), and the same is valid for the Air and the Earth, which become Lower Air and Upper Earth.

Of course, you have certainly realized the vision is far from referring to material elements, or even better, not only materialand we have to assume rising Water is representing here the Mind or mental principle*, which raises at the same time that Fire descends, involving in their turn position and movement of the remaining two: Air and Earth. 

Ayurveda makes of Water-Earth but one only principle, kapha, so that whenever Water rises, it does it together with Earth, which I consider here representing the most material principle or even matter itself, and the rising of Earth at a place corresponding to Air, means per force a subtilization of the Earth principle, otherwise it cannot remain in that higher place.

I´m not sure of the meaning of the Air principle here, but I guess we may safely assume it refers to the living principle, because Life, material life, is absolutely impossible without air.

We have seen that Savitri enters the cube when this "revolution" of the elements has taken place, not before. And I "read" in the Vision, Sri Aurobindo is suggesting us to put in motion this "revolution".
The method? 
It is a peculiar one: to transform a settled "bi-dimensional "teaching (the Sri Aurobindo´s emblem) into a living Truth.

I do not pretend having solved any possible meaning, I only offer some lines of thought which can help any farther investigation on your side.
Giving the nature of the Vision to be of common property and its purpose, which was to render available it to the students, it is possible that other people may discern in it meanings I didn´t perceive or  developed at lenght.

* The "Spirit above the waters" of the Genesis should be read "the (perpetual) consciousness above the (yet) unconscious mind of Nature". The association of water (and the blue colour) with mind was a reknown symbol all along the trajectory of western esoteric. The mantle which covered Isis was blue-starred, showing the black naked body of the goddess only to the initiates, and there are traces everywhere that the mind was associated to a femenine principle via  moon/emotions, considered these probably the first nucleus of an instintive intelligence/reaction. Mind as a recipient for the fecundating (male principle of the) Spirit was else considered of a femenine polarity.
Mother sometime mentioned Satprem some blue-shaded being of the mental world she could see. We can extrapolate a -blue mental world-, anyway I could often confirm for my own understanding  such extreme , as in the post "The Hour of the Toiling Gods" (08/10/13).