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Presidential Address
767
Afterwards in a note to his Romanes Lecture he adds: "Of course, strictly speaking, social life and ethical process in virtue of which it advances towards perfection are part and parcel of the general process of evolution." Let us turn next to the mythology of Creation, Ananta or Sesha is the Infinite or a Fragment of the Infinite in which rests the Supreme Spirit (Nārāyana) with all his glory (Lakshmi ) and it is from the centre (Nabhi) of this spirit that the Lotus of Creation springs, the Lotus which is the abode of the Cosmic Soul, the Logos ( Brahma), who is the Creator of this manifold Universe. Have we not here the transcendence and the immanence of God expressed in the language of Art ? Next, the Great Dance of Nateśvara is the most powerful expression of the real nature of the Divine Energy which is at once rest and motion. The Divine Mother with eight arms (ashtabhujā devi) is not a grotesque figure signifying nothing; its simplest explanation is that it is an artistic representation of the presence of the Divine Energy in all the eight directions. But it is no less probable that it is a verse of the Bhagavadgītā "भूमिरापोऽनलो वायुः खं मनो बुद्धिरेव च। अहङ्कार इतीयं मे fat gafateyr II" written in Art. The powerful Goddess riding a lion or a tiger illustrates the control of the beast in us by our higher Reason. And similarly, the goddess standing on a human corpse originally worshipped by a savage tribe was adopted in the Tāntric pantheon as a representation of the law of Progress in which we have to rise on the stepping-stones of our dead selves". And the serene goddess of Learning (Sarasvati) is seated upon a fair
