Page 105 - Wisdom Unfurled

Man His place and Destiny in the Cosmos
This Chapter deals with the unique position of man in the cosmos and the role he is destined to play in it. The Master begins by advising us to admire the Being who brought the universe into existence rather than speculate about how all this came about. We have set up, in parallel to God’s own creation, a tiny creation of our own individual existence having layers upon layers of grossness and opacity. Thus it will be necessary to shatter off those layers one by one so that we can assume our Absolute or original state once again.
We have seen earlier that the creation came about as the result of the latent motion near about the Centre. This latent motion or Stir may be called the First Mind of God. We owe our origin to that First Mind and in a sense our mind can be said to be the product of that Mind. Man is predominantly ‘man’ or mind (manas) whose chief characteristic is to think and imagine, hence the choice of the word ‘Man’ to denote the species; though it is another matter to decide whether the species deserves to be called as homo-sapiens, the species possessing wisdom! We all know that the kingly thing in man is thought which is nothing but mind in expression. The human mind being a product of the First Mind or Stir, an evolute from the God-Centre or the state of Tam, we can understand the import of the usual statement that man is made in the image of God. The above is the basis for the science of Rajayoga and also the manifestation of the principle of Parallelism which makes yoga itself possible.
Origin
At the time of creation, the soul or the innermost core of being, existed in its naked form as a separate entity. The Master says elsewhere that Jiva or individual soul became cognizant of its being when it assumed individuality. The activity of creation is said to follow the Mahapralaya or the cosmic dissolution after a pause whose length is subject to Divine will; in the state of Mahapralaya the identities of all beings coalesce into One Identity after losing their individualities. The re-emergence of manifestation from the above state of dissolution is a result of the desire arising in the Absolute causing a stir in the invisible motions around the Centre. Thus the souls exist in a state of pristine purity devoid of any covering at this juncture. When the idea of creation arises in the Absolute, the first covering of individuality or consciousness of being separate is produced. It is believed in tradition that while some souls decide to stay back enjoying the Divine company, many choose to participate in the drama of manifestation allowing themselves to be