"The Longest Story Ever Told"
Today I will tell you a story which is the most interesting story that I have ever known. It is also, as you know by now, the longest story ever told. And in this story you will find all the questions you could ever think of as well as those that you could never imagine. You will also find all the answers to these questions, and more answers than the questions that you can imagine.
But this story is so long that if someone were to narrate it in all its details then it would go on for ever – if at all he knew all the details. Today we have less than an hour, and so we will limit ourselves to a brief outline of the story.
The story begins long ago before you and I were born, long before humanity appeared upon earth, long long ago before the earth, the sun and the stars were created, even before the universe was born. The story begins in that condition before the universe. The story begins with God – call Him the Absolute Brahman, call Him by whatever name you like – in that condition of Eternity, of Infinity, Absolute, complete in Himself. It is a state difficult to imagine. There is no Time, no concept of before and after, there is no Space, no idea of distance, there is only Oneness, sheer Awareness, which is complete in itself because there can be nothing more and there need be nothing more.
In that state of Absolute Divinity, there is suddenly a spontaneous movement of delight. This movement ripples through that Absolute consciousness as an impulsion to manifest all that glorious Infinity and Eternity into conditions of self-limitation. His Eternity, he chooses to manifest in limited time, his Infinity in limited space, and his Absolute condition he chooses to manifest in relative terms; his completeness, unity and autarchy he chooses to manifest in conditions of limitation and incompleteness. And that movement starts off the whole process of the creation of the universe, which appears through successive layers of self-limitation, the consciousness rolling within itself, losing its awareness of the whole.
From its highest state, a movement of self-limitation creates a series of states each "lower" than the one before until that immensity of absolute Consciousness is reduced to absolute Inconscience – a hard inconscience wherein that original identity and state is completely forgotten. The consciousness is rolled up within itself, hardly even aware of its own finite limitation. That condition we call Inconscience.
Yet secret within that Inconscience is still the same divine consciousness. And that consciousness hidden within its self-limitations of Time, Space, fragmentation and relativity yearns to come out and reveal itself and grow towards its original completeness in God-consciousness. This aspiration, which is present even in the densest Inconscience is the driving force of a process of evolution. The descent into self-limitation was a process of involution, and now we see the beginning of evolution – the return to the original state of consciousness while still remaining within the framework of the universe that has thus been created.
We are taught by those who are aware of the higher states of consciousness that the process of involution creates seven major gradations of consciousness, each having its own laws, its own properties and rules; these we call planes of consciousness. There are seven major planes of consciousness. Within each, we are taught, there are seven sub-planes. Within each of these sub-planes there is a further division of seven sub-sub-planes. Though in principle there is a continuity of consciousness, the difference of laws and properties at various levels defines a natural categorisation. This is the organisation along which the whole universe has been created.
Now, when the process of evolution starts from absolute inconscience, the consciousness, which is rolled up within itself, which we experience in a sub-atomic particle, yearns to return towards its original unity. This yearning or aspiration induces a movement of spontaneous organisation. The sub-atomic particles of inconscience are drawn together, whirling in their relative motions, whirling in relative time and space and thus the atoms come into existence as if spontaneously. The yearning continues still further. Atoms begin to express relationships among themselves: some are drawn to others, some are repelled by others. Repeating themselves over and over again their habits become the grand "Laws" of Nature. The atoms come together, again in spontaneous movement of organisation. They too are attracted, repelled, they are bound strongly or loosely, they interchange particles among themselves: a whole new world is created with its own laws, its own properties, its own forms of communications – for the atoms talk to each other by exchanging particles.
