Integrality — I

Matthijs Cornelissen
last revision: 13 December 2024

why this text is called "infinity in a drop"

An ancient symbol re-visioned

In the Indian tradition, the image of the drop and the ocean is generally used in the opposite direction: it is the drop which enters the ocean where it then loses itself. This reunion of the drop with the ocean is taken as a symbol for liberation, for the end of suffering by the extinction of individual existence. It is in this image that the most prominent schools of Advaita Vedanta and Buddhism find each other.

Fairy tales tend to end with the killing of the dragon or the marriage of the prince and princess. After that satisfying moment, the child is supposed to fall asleep. But what if she stays hyper-alert and asks, with wide open eyes, "what then?"

We are not good at visualising the "happiness ever after", and so we let the story end at the impressive climax. But what if the killing of the dragon and the long and arduous road to liberation were not the whole story? What if it could be followed by an even more difficult but in the end more glorious process of transformation, a transformation that will help us to live in the (literally) infinite delight that liberation brings and act in harmony with the intention of the whole?

What if life was not an existentialist absurdity, not as science claims, a freak, chance-driven aberration in an otherwise mechanical universe? What if māyā, the power that created the universe, was not an inexplicable lie, not an imposition (adhyāropa) on the ineffable perfection of Brahman, as Shankara held it to be; what if the little self was false, as Buddha taught, but the big Self (and everything else) was not only real but also worth living for because there actually was, as the Ṛg Veda and Plato say, a "real idea" behind everything in existence? What if mokṣa and nirvāṇa were not the end, but just the beginning: crucial turning-points in our long journeys from the miseries of egoïc existence to the vast beatitudes of a physically manifest yet genuinely divine dynamic perfection?

In other words, what if the next stage in the ongoing evolution of consciousness would not be a return to a transcendence beyond the manifestation, but a further development towards an embodied harmony of love and oneness, an absolute delight in difference rooted in an infinite joy of being one? Most of us will find this hard to even imagine, but what if this is where the evolution is actually taking us? What if our basic understanding of ourselves and the universe in which we live is on track for a major upgrade?

The Divine as the stuff of everything

In the Vedic tradition the foundational understanding of reality is formulated roughly like this: Brahman, the Divine, is the absolute acme of being, of consciousness, and of delight; it is not only transcendent, entirely beyond the universe; it is not only there as the universe, as the cosmic totality; it is not only intimately present in the innermost heart of every sentient being; it simply is the very stuff of everything, however big or small.

There are several very short, yet very great sayings, mahāvākya, that express this beautifully:

Mystics from all times and cultures have felt this divine Presence, and they experienced it not only in the depths of their meditations but also in their everyday lives, in the people they met and the things they did.

The Pūrṇa Stotra

The presence of the Divine in each and everything is perhaps most trenchantly expressed in the Pūrṇa Stotra which runs like this :

It is a very short text in which the word pūrṇa occurs seven times. The word pūrṇa means something like "the Integral Whole" and in translations of the Pūrṇa Stotra it is often rendered as "the complete", or "the infinite", but it is the infinite in a very special, all-inclusive sense. The stotra starts with, "That is infinite", meaning, "The Divine is infinite." Then it says, "All This is infinite. This infinite comes from that infinite." And then it ends with a kind of mighty mathematics of the infinite. It says, "If you take away the infinite from the infinite, you still have the infinite."

It is rather significant that whenever the Upaniṣads are recited, this Pūrṇa Stotra is used almost like a refrain. It realigns the listener to the infinite, and to effect that realignment is the very reason why the Upaniṣads are recited. It is as if the Pūrṇa Stotra was put in between other texts to remind us that the real thing that matters is that completeness, that integrality, that totality that contains everything, and that is at the same time also the inmost essence of everything.

This Ineffable exists in the aspect of That, which is totally beyond everything, and also in the aspect of This, the nitty-gritty of daily life. One cannot be without the other, for if you try, if you remove one from the other, still the Infinite One remains.

With sufficient effort and a bit of "good luck" (or rather, Grace) we humans can understand all this not only as theory, not only as a mental insight into the way our human mind works, but also as "lived reality", because the presence of the Divine can be "realised": it can be made real to our experience. It can not only be understood as an idea, a logical conclusion, faith or hope, but it can be known directly: more real than the reality perceived by the senses and more intimate than our own heart.

Back to the drop and the ocean

In the four lines of Savitri quoted in the beginning, Sri Aurobindo reverses the story of the drop and the ocean as one encounters it most often in the Indian tradition: Sri Aurobindo celebrates the life of the drop. He starts from the same consciousness-centred understanding of reality on which the entire Indian tradition is based, and he uses the same imagery in which the drop stands for the individual and the ocean for the totality of being. He also accepts the need for individuals to realise that in their deepest essence they are still one with the infinite ocean of existence, but then he expands the story-line. And as we will see, doing this changes everything.

In this text, we'll have a look at how science would change if awareness of that infinite Presence in the centre of each individual being were made the basis of our understanding. We'd see how intimately we and the world are related, what it is that drives us, why we feel the way we feel, why there is pain and suffering and what we can do about them. In short, how life could suddenly begin to make sense.

In other words, Infinity in a Drop aims to help with the creation of a new foundation for science which will allow psychology to study ourselves as small creatures who are in the midst of an amazing and still ongoing "adventure of consciousness and joy"1. It is an adventure that can not only show us the essence of the ocean hidden deep within ourselves, but that can transform every aspect of our nature till we can express that essence, each in a different way, in every aspect of our being; till we can live, individually and collectively, a life that manifests the joy of love and the sense of oneness in total perfection.

It is a long journey, at times difficult and painful, but also beautiful, joyful, and always held high by an infinite love.

Before we can explore in more detail how all these poetic images work out in the nitty-gritty of psychology, we have to get a clear mental understanding of the concept of integrality as translation of the Sanskrit word purna.
 

Endnotes