The expressible middle 'Vyaktamadhya' of Individual and collective life and consciousness

Man is a curious combination of Light and Darkness, Truth and untruth, loftiness and earthiness, feet in the mud but head high in the sky. And when he /she becomes part of different groups, having different relations with different people at different times, it becomes a complex network of this 'Samsara/ Prapancha/ Maya.’ Individual is trapped hopelessly, suffocating and yet justifying, eating sweet and bitter fruits of this tree and slowly moving up. Thus anyone who got the kicks, naturally visualized the whole thing as 'colliding billiard balls.’ Thus the solution advocated is competition, struggle, might is right, the law of jungle, survival of the fittest, domination of one group by other and it led to Colonization & the myth of globalization. Destruction of anything small, local and week is justified and those who are below the prevalent stereotypes of beauty, intelligence and strength have to bear the sufferings as their fate, and even be ready for getting destroyed if they cannot pass through the channels of uniformity, as decided by the cream of such mechanized society. For their exploitation if not destruction is a necessity for the survival of many. This mentality produced the self-appointed 'saviors' of Mankind, because whatever ray of truth the few got they thought it to be the only truth and ridiculed, humiliated and confused others who were closer to the truth , but through a different route. And this is not surprising, because as Sri Aurobindo has explained it in his ‘The Ideal of Human Unity’: 'The surfaces of life are easy to understand, their laws, characteristics movements, particular utilities can be seized rapidly. But they do not carry us very far. Knowledge of life's profundities, potent secrets is very difficult for us. We have not found any plummet to fathom these depths. Nothing is more obscure to humanity or less seized by understanding, whether in the power that moves it or the sense of aim towards which it moves, than its own communal and collective life. Sociology, History do not help us. (They are) facile generalizations, partial ideas, absolute systems and 'isms' are positively announced today & abandoned tomorrow. One century struggles to achieve it and the next century enjoys the fruits and turns away from ideal. Because our whole thought and action about the collective life is shallow and empirical. Seeking for firm, profound complete knowledge- wiser larger patient search is needed. And it was the wish of the Almighty that India should do this, India should be different, India should remain India, therefore there came the great revelation, 'Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti' : all that exists is one and Sages call it by different names, (remember it is Vipra: the wise men, not the fools.) And as said earlier the whole history of India, all her 'Ideas governing life', her every 'Expression of the consciousness of life', her 'massive principles and curious details which were at once robust and minute, tough and delicate’ 'Her abundant and lavish and inexhaustibly many-sided creations in all the fields of life: Religion, Philosophy, Science, Technology, Paintings, Sculptures, Literature, Dances and Dramas, Sociology, Psychology, Economics, Politics---- all her experiments of human perfection at all the layers of existence and then all her dreams of the possible perfection at all the human groups, culminating into perfection of humanity as a whole-- in short the entire Ashwamedha Yajna of lndian Culture is nothing but the infinite manifestations, ramifications of that one mahavakya…’Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti' India said that the many and the one are really the same. The extremes look alike and yet they are not same. Tamas and Sattwa, child and Sri Ramakrishna, subconscious and superconscious, stone and idol, Vali and Hanuman, Sura and Asura, sleep and Samadhi, instinct and intuition, mudha and mugdha … may look same but they are not same. Infinite and inexpressible in the beginning, infinite and inexpressible in the end, but there is as vast a difference in these extremes as it is in the infinite sky above and fathomless ocean below. Then is man a tiny boat destined to toss up and down at the mercy of the waves of the ocean? This is the eternal question which Swami Vivekananda also mentioned in one of his Chicago lectures. He answered in same language of Shwetashwetar Upanishad and said that man is not a helpless victim in the hands of destiny. He is son of immortal bliss, Amrutasya putraha. The entire problem of existence, its diversity, struggles and eventual pains are only in the in between dimensions. If we go little higher or lower, the usual calculations of linear thinking fail and the western paradigm of determinism, materialism, survival of the fittest and Newtonian science falls on face. For there is something like a luminous seed within us which does not allow us to lie low in the dust, it does not allow us to live like a beast for long time, and forces us to seek for something higher, to follow at least some ray of Light through a path suitable to an individual. The confusion is in the in between portion, which is called Vyaktamadhya in the words in Bhagvad Gita. It is neither cosmic, nor subatomic, it is the range of practicality, the range of senses, of Maya, Prapancha, Samsara, the range in which Science and its consumerist applications thrive. It is notable that though Indian scriptures have used several images for existence, the images are never mechanistic, They are in fact leading to pattern, a hierarchy of wholes, organic, it is this Brihadaranya which has trapped and supported us, the web of spider, the spokes of chariot wheel, the shikhara of temple, … it is Ashwattha tree with roots of infinite unity above and branches of infinite diversity below. Srishti or creation is in fact manifestation and projection of One who felt that he should be many.