Creative Unity | Page 2

to some one of the joy we have in our personality. I said
it was because we were made conscious by it of a spirit of unity within
ourselves. He answered that he had no such feeling of joy about himself,
but I was sure he exaggerated. In all probability he had been suffering
from some break of harmony between his surroundings and the spirit of
unity within him, proving all the more strongly its truth. The meaning
of health comes home to us with painful force when disease disturbs it;
since health expresses the unity of the vital functions and is accordingly
joyful. Life's tragedies occur, not to demonstrate their own reality, but
to reveal that eternal principle of joy in life, to which they gave a rude
shaking. It is the object of this Oneness in us to realise its infinity by
perfect union of love with others. All obstacles to this union create
misery, giving rise to the baser passions that are expressions of finitude,
of that separateness which is negative and therefore máyá.
The joy of unity within ourselves, seeking expression, becomes
creative; whereas our desire for the fulfilment of our needs is
constructive. The water vessel, taken as a vessel only, raises the
question, "Why does it exist at all?" Through its fitness of construction,
it offers the apology for its existence. But where it is a work of beauty
it has no question to answer; it has nothing to do, but to be. It reveals in
its form a unity to which all that seems various in it is so related that, in
a mysterious manner, it strikes sympathetic chords to the music of unity
in our own being.
What is the truth of this world? It is not in the masses of substance, not
in the number of things, but in their relatedness, which neither can be
counted, nor measured, nor abstracted. It is not in the materials which
are many, but in the expression which is one. All our knowledge of
things is knowing them in their relation to the Universe, in that relation
which is truth. A drop of water is not a particular assortment of
elements; it is the miracle of a harmonious mutuality, in which the two

reveal the One. No amount of analysis can reveal to us this mystery of
unity. Matter is an abstraction; we shall never be able to realise what it
is, for our world of reality does not acknowledge it. Even the giant
forces of the world, centripetal and centrifugal, are kept out of our
recognition. They are the day-labourers not admitted into the
audience-hall of creation. But light and sound come to us in their gay
dresses as troubadours singing serenades before the windows of the
senses. What is constantly before us, claiming our attention, is not the
kitchen, but the feast; not the anatomy of the world, but its countenance.
There is the dancing ring of seasons; the elusive play of lights and
shadows, of wind and water; the many-coloured wings of erratic life
flitting between birth and death. The importance of these does not lie in
their existence as mere facts, but in their language of harmony, the
mother-tongue of our own soul, through which they are communicated
to us.
We grow out of touch with this great truth, we forget to accept its
invitation and its hospitality, when in quest of external success our
works become unspiritual and unexpressive. This is what Wordsworth
complained of when he said:
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we
lay waste our powers. Little we see in Nature that is ours.
But it is not because the world has grown too familiar to us; on the
contrary, it is because we do not see it in its aspect of unity, because we
are driven to distraction by our pursuit of the fragmentary.
Materials as materials are savage; they are solitary; they are ready to
hurt one another. They are like our individual impulses seeking the
unlimited freedom of wilfulness. Left to themselves they are
destructive. But directly an ideal of unity raises its banner in their
centre, it brings these rebellious forces under its sway and creation is
revealed--the creation which is peace, which is the unity of perfect
relationship. Our greed for eating is in itself ugly and selfish, it has no
sense of decorum; but when brought under the ideal of social
fellowship, it is regulated and made ornamental; it is changed into a
daily festivity of life. In human nature sexual passion is fiercely

individual and destructive, but dominated by the ideal of love, it has
been made to flower into a perfection of beauty, becoming in its best
expression symbolical of the spiritual truth in