A System's Evaluation of Global History of Indian Architecture

Book excerpt: Deep within an inner cave (guhahitam) of our existence remains our potential Divinity. It is the place where our reflected sentient being (the First Bird) is trying to probe into to recover the hidden sun. The allegory is evident in the parable of the Cave once preached by the Upanishads and later by the Greek philosopher Plato. The probe is to push forward the First Bird to surge higher in the resplendent celestial blue under the full radiance of the Solar world, which is the Second, resulting in an explosion of an infinite all-pervading Divinity. Till the union and the rapture is attained, there are the two Birds – one, the psychic being, which is within us and the other one, which is the direct portion of the Divine. The direct portion is constantly trying to guide and work within us, so that evolution goes on and on. In the words of Sri Aurobindo, it is the Çhaitya Purusha, the direct portion of the Divine in the human, which is working incessantly till the rapture is activated. Ancient roots are evident in the ancient Swetaswatara Upanishad hailed by the primordial Sage Kapila and coded originally in a later text called the Bhagabat Purana, The Çhaitya Purusha is also the being that is behind the Chitta, Sri Aurobindo says. Millenniums later, the inspired Architects in the most ancient of all Buddhist ages had carved out the sacred idea in form of rock-cut expressions called the Chaitya hall. As the Mahayana Sutra of the foremost Shurangama at the Crown of the Great Buddha says: …the way of practicing the Samadhi is not singular and its actual method of cultivation depends upon the functioning of mind and mental concomitants (Citta-Chaitya pravritti) of each being and their interconnectedness (Mahat)… It is in the recovery or a re-tracing of the two as a DIVINITY that is originally ONE, an individual's journey called evolution and a collective journey called civilization itself are sustained. It is also from the deeper embedded patterns of this journey the gems of the system's foundation can be quarried.