Sachchidananda 'The Life Divine' Book I,Ch.9, 10, 11, 12 - Track 607

So, in the state of consciousness depending upon the state of consciousness you have successive movement of duration and extension or you have all containing duration and extension and then there is third which is timeless and spaceless. Now when you really have the full account of the universe you are bound to make these three propositions. Existence is timeless and spaceless from which beginningless and timeless endless time and space are grounded which are fundamentally all containing moment or all containing points on which you can inscribe according to your stand point successive moment of duration and successive moment of space. This is the nature of the existence the totality of existence, if you really want the real existence. I shall invite you to read after having explained all this, these three paragraphs on page no. 74 all the three statements that I have made can be seen at once. Shall we start

If this indefinable, infinite, timeless, spaceless Existence is, it is necessarily a pure absolute. It cannot be summed up in any quantity or quantities, it cannot be composed of any quality or combination of qualities. It is not an aggregate of forms or a formal substratum of forms. If all forms, quantities, qualities were to disappear, this would remain. Existence without quantity, without quality, without form is not only conceivable, but

“we see at once that if such an existence is it must be like the energy infinite? Neither reason, nor experience nor intuition nor imaginations bears witness to us of the possibility of a final terminus. All end and beginning is supposing something beyond the end or beginning. An absolute end, an absolute beginning is not only a contradiction in terms, but the contradiction of essence of things, a violence, a fiction. Infinity imposes itself upon the appearances of the finite by …. self existence , but this is infinity with regard to time and space and eternal duration, interminable extension. The pure reason goes farther and looking its own colorless and .. light at time and space points out that these two are categories of our consciousness, conditions under which we arrange our perception of phenomena. When you look at the existence in itself time and space disappear. If there is any extension it is not a special but a psychological extension if there is any duration it is not temporal but a psychological duration and it is then easy to see that this extension and duration are only symbols which represent to the mind something not translatable into intellectual terms. An eternity which seems to us the same, all containing ever knew moment and infinity which seems to us the same all containing, all pervading point without magnitude and this conflict of term so violent yet accurately expressive of something we do perceive shows that mind and speech have past beyond their natural limits and are striving to express the reality in which their own conventions and necessary oppositions disappear into ineffable identity, but is this a true record may it not be the time and space so disappear merely existence we are regarding is a fiction of the intellect, a fantastic …. Created by speech, which …into a conceptual reality. We regard a game that existence in itself and we say no. there is something behind the phenomena not only infinite but indefinable of no phenomenon of no totality of phenomena can we say that absolutely it is. Even if you release all phenomena to one fundamental, universal, irreducible phenomenon of movement or energy we get only an indefinable phenomena. The very conception of movement carries with it the potentiality of repose and betrays itself as an activity of some existence. The very idea of energy in action carries with the idea of energy abstaining from action and an absolute energy not in action is simply and purely absolute existence.”

I think we should stop here these are the things that I so far told you. If you want to now describe existence we have three statements to know – the existence that we see is successive movement of duration and expansion that is our ordinary experience. We find that this is our view depending upon our psychological condition in which what is before and what is after depends entire upon the standpoint that we take with regard to where were we are the given is present, it may be large, it may be small depending upon our state of consciousness, so successive movement of duration and of extension is our ordinary experience of space and time that seems to existing before us because this is all that we know about. When we enquire further we find that there is beginningless movement of space and time and there is a method by which we can see in which all this is nothing but all containing moment, all containing point without magnitude and beyond that we perceive existent which is beyond space and time. These are three things we have to make a statement about when we speak of existence this is all that we see. What do you mean by existence. Existence is all the three at once. The timeless and spaceless which manifest itself in beginningless and endless time and space which in our highest consciousness can be perceived as all containing ever knew moment, all containing point without magnitude which again depending upon our state of consciousness can be seen a successive movement of duration and successive movement of space. This is all that we see when we examine it properly.

The rest of the chapter is not much easier this was the main difficulty and very complex statement, the rest would be now much easier and that we shall do next time.