The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

The Doctrine of the Mystics 375
feeling are man’s sky, his heaven; this whole vitalistic existence of
emotion, passions, affections of which desire is the pivot, forms
for him a mid-world; body and material living are his earth.
But pure thought and pure psychic state are not the highest
height of the human ascension. The home of the Gods is an
absolute Truth which lives in solar glories beyond mind. Man ascending
thither strives no longer as the thinker but is victoriously
the seer; he is no longer this mental creature but a divine being.
His will, life, thought, emotion, sense, act are all transformed
into values of an all-puissant Truth and remain no longer an
embarrassed or a helpless tangle of mixed truth and falsehood.
He moves lamely no more in our narrow and grudging limits
but ranges in the unobstructed Vast; toils and zigzags no longer
amid these crookednesses, but follows a swift and conquering
straightness; feeds no longer on broken fragments, but is suckled
by the teats of Infinity. Therefore he has to break through and
out beyond these firmaments of earth and heaven; conquering
firm possession of the solar worlds, entering on to his highest
Height he has to learn how to dwell in the triple principle of
Immortality.
This contrast of the mortality we are and the immortal condition
to which we can aspire is the key of the Vedic thought and
practice. Veda is the earliest gospel we have of man’s immortality
and these ancient stanzas conceal the primitive discipline of its
inspired discoverers.
Substance of being, light of consciousness, active force and
possessive delight are the constituent principles of existence; but
their combination in us may be either limited, divided, hurt,
broken and obscure or infinite, enlightened, vast, whole and unhurt.
Limited and divided being is ignorance; it is darkness and
weakness, it is grief and pain; in the Vast, in the integral, in the
infinite we must seek for the desirable riches of substance, light,
force and joy. Limitation is mortality; immortality comes to us
as an accomplished self-possession in the infinite and the power
to live and move in firm vastnesses. Therefore it is in proportion
as he widens and on condition that he increases constantly in