Dear All,
Let us keep the 4 stages of a painting explained in the previous post as the back drop and go through today’s post.
STAGE 1- Pure canvass - God beyond manifest/ unmanifest.
Just as a background of cloth is necessary for painting a picture, an eternal, unchangeable background is necessary for even the appearance of such a thing called the world.
An appearance cannot be there unless there is a reality behind it, and even falsity is so defined on account of its relationship with the truth from which it is distinguished.
We also learnt in one of the posts that we say that the train in which we are seated is moving, only with reference to a train stationed in the nearby platform, parked, not moving.
Behind all changing phenomenon in this world, there must be an unchanging factor which does not move but causes this creation to move.
There is an all-pervading, unchangeable background which, as we have studied earlier, is Pure Consciousness. That is the first stage in creation. It has to exist, as the cloth has to exist.
An appearance cannot be there unless there is a reality behind it, and even falsity is so defined on account of its relationship with the truth from which it is distinguished.
We also learnt in one of the posts that we say that the train in which we are seated is moving, only with reference to a train stationed in the nearby platform, parked, not moving.
Behind all changing phenomenon in this world, there must be an unchanging factor which does not move but causes this creation to move.
There is an all-pervading, unchangeable background which, as we have studied earlier, is Pure Consciousness. That is the first stage in creation. It has to exist, as the cloth has to exist.
Stage-2- Stiffened/ starched canvass- Unmanifest Iswara
The second stage here in this process of creation is the stiffening of the cloth, as it were.
The Consciousness that is universal gets stiffened, as it were, by the concentrated will of the Cosmic Being. The featureless transparency of the universality of Consciousness which existed alone, without any will, now gets concentrated with the willingness to create!!
The Consciousness that is universal gets stiffened, as it were, by the concentrated will of the Cosmic Being. The featureless transparency of the universality of Consciousness which existed alone, without any will, now gets concentrated with the willingness to create!!
In Pure Being, there is no question of will. It is just Existence as such. In the second stage, there is a determination in Consciousness as to the nature of the creation that is to take place in the future.
STAGE-3-Outline of an object painted- The picture of creation to be born in the Cosmic mind of Iswara
Thus, Brahman manifests itself as Ishvara. Ishvara becomes Hiranyagarbha, where the subtle cosmos can be faintly seen as an outline drawn to present the actual shape of the visible cosmos. The actual shape is not visible in Hiranyagarbha. Only a faint outline is seen.
STAGE 4- Inking the object whose outline was drawn earlier- The faint picture of creation in the cosmic mind now given a full shape by creating the universe.
The fourth stage is the gross manifestation of the universe with all the variety, the grandeur, the beauty and majesty.
All the colours and the phantasms that we see in this cosmos is God filling in the variety of ink, as it were, on this outline that He has drawn in the state of Hiranyagarbha—prior to which there was a will to do, prior to which there was the background of the Absolute.
So these are the four stages of creation, almost similar to the four stages of the painting of a picture.
All the colours and the phantasms that we see in this cosmos is God filling in the variety of ink, as it were, on this outline that He has drawn in the state of Hiranyagarbha—prior to which there was a will to do, prior to which there was the background of the Absolute.
So these are the four stages of creation, almost similar to the four stages of the painting of a picture.
More deeper on the subject in the next post.
Love.
