Sachchidananda 'The Life Divine' Book I,Ch.9, 10, 11, 12 - Track 703

Now extension means an act of energy where ever there is extension you cannot extend anything without an act of energy. If there is a rubber band and if you want to pull it and extend it you have to apply force of energy and when you apply force of energy there will be a point from where it will extended further. There must be a base on which you can stretch therefore now the third point is the pure reason sees that for extension there is an act of stretching and no stretching is possible without a stable ground and this is the important perception. If there is no ground you can’t stretch anything. Every act of stretching implies a ground or a base. Now that ground or base itself cannot be a stretching itself because if we did the stretching again it would require another ground or base until you come to the point which is not itself a stretching which is not itself extension, therefore it must be non- extended. Now that which is non-extended is what you call the pure Existence, is a stable one. So you have now three steps in the perception of the pure reason – first you perceive the successive movement of space and time and you perceive that it is a psychological way of dealing with extension. Second, you perceive that behind the successive movement of time and space there must be a non-successive time and space. That non-successive time and space can be described as all-containing point without magnitude and all-containing ever new moment. The third step is to see that even this non-successive space and time are however extensions, but all extensions presupposes a ground or base, therefore there must be a ground or base which is itself not extension, that which is not extension and yet which is the ground is what is called the pure Existence and such a thing must be, it must be because without that all that we are seeing would not be possible that we are seeing is a fact and what we are seeing implies the existence of a non-successive movement and behind that we perceive that there must be even non-extension, non- extensive reality, so successive movement of time and space supported by non-successive time and space which is further supported by something that is not extension itself. Sometimes it is said it is what may be called intense reality, not extensive reality but intense reality is called intension that which is intense, it is no extension, it doesn’t move forward. It is intense. So, this is the perception of the pure reason. Having perceived this and having made our reason convinced about it we can still allow a question. We say that one can grant that pure reason certainly affirms this but pure reason has to be supported again by experience. This is the only a conceptual reality, its conceptual conception or perception or conviction but it has to be further supported by experience, so here again the argument could be that in experience we don’t find anywhere the stable reality and it is true that in our ordinary experience we do not come across anything that is stable. But it is not true of a higher and the highest experience that is why Vedanta says that there is a mode of experience into which you can enter and when you enter into it there is a complete experience of silence, a complete immobility, such is the affirmation of the Vedanta.  So, on that basis therefore we conclude that there is a pure existent which is stable, which is non-extensive and yet which is the cause of extension, cause of the non-successive space and time which again is tha cause of the successive time and space. This is the conclusion to which we arrive. Now the question that remains to be answered is and that is the substance of the next chapter. What is the relationship between that immobility and this mobility? Both have been affirmed as facts, although we have said that successive time and space and non-successive space and time are rooted in non-extensive reality or intensive reality. Just as the different forms of the clay – various kinds of toys, you can make small toys; you can make big toys according to your psychological need. A small child may need a small toy and a bigger one may need a bigger toy and as a maker of toys it is up to you. The clay is such an extension that you can make any kind of pieces that you like. The clay by itself may be compared to something like non- successive space. It is one block of space as it were which you can then divide according to your need, then you have a larger canvas of the clay and again you can make that canvas

You can conceive of this larger canvas which is non-successive as originating from what we call clay-ness. There is something like essence of clay of which this larger canvas of clay is the manifestation. The clay-ness is the intensive reality. It is that which makes all the pieces of clay whether it is here or in America whatever is clay, it is like the same cattiness which is responsible for or which explains to us numerous cats in the world this is then the perception of the pure reason and the only question is about experience. Do we really experience this immobility and we have said that Vedanta confirms that there is such an experience of immobility, but this an experience which can be repeated by anybody. Infact this is the claim of the Vedanta. It is not simply written in the scripture once and for all and therefore somebody has to except because it is in the Vedanta. The entire process of yoga is a process by which what is stated in the Vedanta can be experienced by anybody for anyone of us who wants to experience that immobility can be experienced. And this experience in its completeness is not only of pure immobility, but immobility in which the mobility also is contained. So that mobility is not something different from the immobility, it’s not as if a juxtaposition – mobility here immobility there such is the relationship between immobility and mobility. Mobility is rooted in the immobility and it can be rooted only if there is some kind of an identity between the two that is why Shiva and Kali as conceived in India they are two which are one such is the concept because if the immobility is one and that is the real reality of everything then movement could not have been emerging from somewhere else.