The Divine and the Void

DThe contrast couldn't be stronger: Auroville is flat, hot on the coast, and wants to be a city, based on the teachings of Mirra Alfassa and Sri Aurobindo. At the core of their visions is the idea of bringing divine consciousness to Earth, a „download“ of the Supramental. Some seem to be able to claim access to it. And sometimes I feel I understand what they are talking about. The experience of deep spirituality in meditation, in work, in being, an awakening of all 7 levels of our existence: the material, the life force, the mind that understands the cosmos, bliss or rapture from self to soul, pure consciousness, and pure existence. There are many forces there, gods and demons, stories and worlds that the mind can travel, in which it can unfold, realize itself, and be mirrored.

And then there's Bodhi Zendo. Many Aurovillians spend the summer there. It's a meditation center in the mountains at an altitude of 1700 meters, cool and green, the birds are cheerful, the clouds temperamental, the stars clear. Zen is practiced there: concentration on emptiness, i.e., the ground of all existence which we cannot grasp, which we cannot speak of, where all concepts fall away, i.e., a level of being that we can glimpse a little, that we can let penetrate our empty mind, but which shows itself to us by being empty of language, cannot be seized. We can say that there is something there that precedes us, that contains everything, that is incomprehensible and only shows itself as that which is and cannot be described. Emptiness, a word that tries to describe something that exists by not containing being, a paradox, a contradiction, a word that pushes the power of language to its limits.

Sri Aurobindo attempts to capture the Divine in language; his Savitri journeys through worlds, making them tangible and bringing them into our existence. Buddha sits on a lotus flower whose stem is anchored in the roots submerged in the mud at the bottom of clear water. We can see clearly through the waters of consciousness, but we cannot discern the silt and the driving force of life.

I am oscillating between Auroville and Bodhi Zendo, the measurement of the divine and the silence before the void, that void which is different from nothingness. The void can encompass, surround, and bear both being and nothingness. Emptiness is between being; it is that in which nothingness is held. Emptiness is within being when it becomes aware of itself.