Read the book: «All Life Is Yoga: Creation and Creator»

Chapter 4
How Were Gods and Goddesses Born?

Sweet Mother, how were the gods and goddesses born?

But it is precisely... it is part of the creation. What we call “Aditi” here, that is, the Creative Consciousness, well, the Creative Consciousness...

I am going to tell you about this in an absolutely childish way:

She formed at first four beings; when she received the mission to create she put out four emanations from her being; and these four emanations were made and given the charge to develop the universe. And then – I think I have already spoken to you about this once – it turned out badly, we could put it like that; and so when things went wrong, she made another creation of all the beings who became the gods; and parallel to the disorder created by the first four emanations, there was the development in order, that is, under the guidance of the Supreme, the creation in order of all the worlds descending further and further towards Matter. And it is to this line that the gods belong who were manifested later, a formation, a greater and greater materialisation in the domain which Sri Aurobindo has termed the Overmind. And from there they presided over the creation of the material universe and the earth. And one of the proceedings was the formation of the earth as a symbolic creation representative of the whole universe, in order to condense and concentrate the problem so that it might be solved more easily. And this earth, though it may be from the astronomical point of view something infinitesimal and as unimportant as can be, from the occult point of view of the universal creation it is a symbol which represents the universe so perfectly that by transforming the earth one can through contagion or analogy transform the universe, because the earth is the symbol of the universe. This was the procedure adopted by the gods. And the place that’s the seat of existence of these gods Sri Aurobindo has called the Overmind.

Of course things are not like that. Don’t think that I have just told you the story as it really happened. Things are not like that, but it’s a way of speaking, a way of making them understandable to the brain. It appears to have occurred like that.

But the four beings I first spoke to you about are sexless, they were neither man nor woman; and in the vital world there is an entire part of the vital creation which is the result of these beings, an entire part which has no sex. Besides, the gods too made a world which was sexless. It is the world of angels, what are called angels, what in occultism are called fashioners. But these are sexless spirits; they are represented with wings, you know, they are sexless spirits.

There are in the universe, already, beings who have no sex, who are neither men nor women, and there are many of them in the vital world. There are entities with sex in the vital world but in its most material part, the one closest to the earth, and not in its most important part; the most important part is sexless. This does not make them any better, however, since they are all beings hostile to the divine Will and divine realisation, but it gives them a terrific force. And so in return the gods too have created a whole set of beings who have no sex and whom men speak of as angels; how does one call it? “Your guardian angel”, or what else? It is especially “angel”.

(Pavitra) Cherubim, seraphim.

Yes, yes, that’s it. They have given many names. There, then.

Sweet Mother, in the old traditions they always speak of the wives of the gods who are troubled by the asuras.

What, the wives of the gods who were troubled by the asuras? Yes!

They too are closer to the material world? Is it in the vital world or in...

It is in the vital world.

(Pavitra) Mother, in the mind also, there are beings of the mind...

There are beings of the mental world which are also sexless, not all, but many. There are many of them. There are some of these mental formations which are persistent, you see, which are very well made, very well harmonised, persistent, some kind of mental constructions, mental formations which are living beings, but which pass indifferently from a masculine to a feminine body when they incarnate. It is all the same to them, to them it makes no difference.

That’s all, or you still have something?

Mother, what is the real reason for the appearance of sex? Because in the study of biology we see that first the unicellular animals were sexless; sex appeared later.

That – it is Nature, my child, who has tried all kinds of methods. These are all means employed by Nature; she wanted... It would seem that for the perfection of the species the dividing was necessary from the point of view of the material evolution; it seems so because obviously it was adopted later. This... Nature... I think she has tried every possible thing, everything.

But you say that even the gods have a sex.

Yes. Well, perhaps it is under their inspiration that Nature made it. It is certainly not because it appeared on earth that it is like that with the gods. So logically we can think that because it was like that among the gods it has become like that on earth. But Nature doesn’t seem to have received direct inspirations; she seems to have followed her own path in her own fashion. Yet she has tried all possible things; I don’t think there’s anything she hasn’t tried, and she goes on. But Nature too has created sexless beings, even in human form; it has happened. I have even seen a Greek statue like that. The Greeks knew this.

Everything that one can imagine and much more, Nature has imagined. Only, she doesn’t want to be hurried. I think it amuses her. So she wants to go in her own way: trying, demolishing, re-starting, demolishing again. She can destroy an entire species by doing just this (gesture), it is quite the same to her; she would simply say, “No, it was not good.” And then, there, it is finished. And she doesn’t want to be hurried. If she is told that we find it has lasted long enough like this, that it could come to a slightly more harmonious conclusion, she revolts, she is not at all pleased. This is what she always says: “But why are you in a hurry? All that you want to do will happen, but it is not necessary that it should happen so fast. Why are you in such a hurry?” That’s what she always answers. She likes to roam about.

What is Nature? That is, what is her relation with the Supreme Mother?

I think that Nature is the most material part of the creative force which is concerned with the creation specially of the earth, of the material world as we know it upon earth.

*

Do the gods of the Puranas and the gods of Greek and Egyptian mythology have any real existence?

Between the gods of the Puranas and the gods of Greek and Egyptian mythology, all kinds of similarities are found; it could be an interesting subject for study. To the modern Western world, all these divinities – the Greek gods and other “pagan” gods, as they call them – are simply a product of human imagination and correspond to nothing real in the universe. But this is a gross error.

To understand the mechanism of universal life, even that of terrestrial life, one has indeed to know that all these are real and living beings, each in its own realm, and have an independent reality. They would exist even if men did not exist. The majority of these gods existed before man existed.

*

From where do the gods come?

That means?... “From where” means what? What is their origin? Who has formed them?... But everything, everything comes from the one Origin, from the Supreme, the gods also.

There is a very old tradition which narrates this. I am going to tell you the story as one does to children, for in this way you will understand:

One day “God” decided to exteriorise himself, objectivise himself, in order to have the joy of knowing himself in detail. So, first of all, he emanated his consciousness (that is to say, he manifested his consciousness) by ordering this consciousness to realise a universe. This consciousness began by emanating four beings, four individualities which were indeed altogether very high beings, of the highest Reality. They were the being of consciousness, the being of love (of Ananda rather), the being of life and the being of light and knowledge – but consciousness and light are the same thing. There we are then: consciousness, love and Ananda, life and truth – truth, that’s the exact word. And naturally, they were supremely powerful beings, you understand. They were what are called in that tradition the first emanations, that is, the first formations. And each one became very conscious of its qualities, its power, its capacities, its possibilities, and, suddenly forgot each in its own way that it was only an emanation and an incarnation of the Supreme. And so this is what happened: when light or Consciousness separated from the divine Consciousness, that is, when it began to think it was the divine Consciousness and that there was nothing other than itself, it suddenly became obscurity and inconscience. And when Life thought that all life was in itself and that there was nothing else but its life and that it did not depend at all upon the Supreme, then its life became death. And when Truth thought that it contained all truth, and that there was no other truth than itself, this Truth became falsehood. And when love or Ananda was convinced that it was the supreme Ananda and that there was no other than itself and its felicity, it became suffering. And that is how the world, which was to have been so beautiful, became so ugly. Now, that consciousness (if you like to call it the Divine Mother, the Supreme Consciousness), when she saw this she was very disturbed, you may be sure, she said to herself: “This has really not succeeded.” So she turned back to the Divine, to God, the Supreme, and she asked him to come to her aid. She said to him: “This is what has happened. Now what is to be done?” He said: “Begin again, but try to manage in such a way that the beings do not become so independent! ... They must remain in contact with you, and through you with me.” And it was thus that she created the gods, who were quite docile and not so proud, and who began the creation of the world. But as the others had come before them, at every step the gods met the others. And it was in this way that the world changed into a battlefield, a place of war, strife, suffering, darkness and all the rest, and for each new creation the gods had to fight with the others who had gone ahead: they had preceded them, they had plunged headlong into matter; and they had created all this disorder and the gods had to put straight all this confusion. That is where the gods came from. They are the second emanations.

Mother, the first four who changed, was it by chance or was it deliberately?

No. What is chance?

It is said also – that is the continuation of the story or rather its beginning – that the Divine wanted his creation to be a free creation. He wanted all that went forth from him to be absolutely independent and free in order to be able to unite with him in freedom, not through compulsion. He did not want that they should be compelled to be faithful, compelled to be conscious, compelled to be obedient. They had to do it spontaneously, through the knowledge and conviction that that was much better. So this world was created as a world of total freedom, freedom of choice. And it is in this way that at every moment everyone has the freedom of choice – but with all the consequences. If one chooses well, it is good, but if one chooses ill, ah well, what’s to happen happens – that is what has happened!

The story may be understood in a much more occult and spiritual sense. But it is like all the stories of the universe: if you want to narrate them so that people may understand, they become stories for children. But if one knows how to see the truth behind the symbols, one understands everything. Even with what I have told you, which seems like a little story for children, even like that, if you understand what I have told you and the meaning of what I have told you, you can have the secret of things.

There are traditions which say that it is an “accident”, in the sense that it could have been otherwise. But it happened like that. It is true, it came about like that. Only, it was quite understandable that, every one of these elements having its origin in the Supreme, being quite close to the Emanation at that moment, quite close to the Origin, carried in itself the consciousness of its divinity and superiority, necessarily, since this is not a creation made with something foreign to the Divine: it is simply the Divine who has emanated himself, as though he were looking at himself – he objectivises himself in order to become aware of all that he is; instead of being in an inner static state of concentration in which all is unmanifested, he projects that outside himself “in order to see”, as though he wanted to see all that is within him, that is, all the infinity of possibilities. So, all was possible. It happened like that – it could have happened otherwise. Besides, nothing tells you that alongside our universe such as it is, there do not exist others which are so different that there cannot be any relation between one universe and another. It can very well be that our universe is not the only exteriorisation of the Divine. Ours is such as we know it; there may be others which are in much less sorry a state than this one! Besides, it is lamentable only in its appearance. If you go behind the appearance, you become aware that it is not lamentable at all. It is only one way of seeing.