Wednesday, September 10, 2008

World-existence is the ecstatic dance of Shiva; its sole absolute object is the joy of the dancing

[The Department of Atomic Energy gifted a two-metre bronze statue of the Nataraja to CERN on June 18, 2004 to celebrate the centre’s India connection... Author Fritjof Capra first drew a parallel between Shiva’s dance of creation and destruction and the dance of subatomic particles in The Tao of Physics.
A plaque next to the statue quotes Capra: “Modern physics has shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of living creatures, but is also the very essence of inorganic matter. For modern physicists... Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter.”
Shiva the destroyer presides over Big Bang mock-up - Hindustan Times 10 Sep 2008 ... Satyen Mohapatra, New Delhi]

It is unpardonable when veteran journalists like Satyen Mohapatra happen to misinform the younger generation. He should also have mentioned the scintillating words that flowed from the pen of Sri Aurobindo in The Life Divine regarding “the ecstatic dance of Shiva” much earlier than Capra. The Life Divine is the "Tau" of Physics as against Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics. [TNM]

[We have therefore two fundamental facts of pure existence and of world-existence, a fact of Being, a fact of Becoming. To deny one or the other is easy; to recognise the facts of consciousness and find out their relation is the true and fruitful wisdom.
Stability and movement, we must remember, are only our psychological representations of the Absolute, even as are oneness and multitude. The Absolute is beyond stability and movement as it is beyond unity and multiplicity. But it takes its eternal poise in the one and the stable and whirls round itself infinitely, inconceivably, securely in the moving and multitudinous. World-existence is the ecstatic dance of Shiva which multiplies the body of the God numberlessly to the view: it leaves that white existence precisely where and what it was, ever is and ever will be; its sole absolute object is the joy of the dancing.
But as we cannot describe or think out the Absolute in itself, beyond stability and movement, beyond unity and multitude,—nor is that at all our business,—we must accept the double fact, admit both Shiva and Kali and seek to know what is this measureless Movement in Time and Space with regard to that timeless and spaceless pure Existence, one and stable, to which measure and measurelessness are inapplicable. We have seen what pure Reason, intuition and experience have to say about pure Existence, about Sat; what have they to say about Force, about Movement, about Shakti?
And the first thing we have to ask ourselves is whether that Force is simply force, simply an unintelligent energy of movement or whether the consciousness which seems to emerge out of it in this material world we live in, is not merely one of its phenomenal results but rather its own true and secret nature. In Vedantic terms, is Force simply Prakriti, only a movement of action and process, or is Prakriti really power of Chit, in its nature force of creative self-conscience? On this essential problem all the rest hinges. Page-79
Home > E-Library > Works Of Sri Aurobindo > English > The Life Divine Volume-18 > The Pure Existent]

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