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154 – Hell and Heaven exist only in the soul's consciousness. Ay, but so does the earth and its lands and seas and fields and deserts and mountains and rivers. All world is nothing but arrangement of the Soul's seeing.
155 – There is only one soul and one existence; therefore we all see one objectivity only; but there are many knots of mind and ego in the one soul-existence, therefore we all see the one Object in different lights and shadows.
156 – The Idealist errs; it is not Mind which created the worlds, but that which created mind has created them. Mind only mis-sees, because it sees partially and by details, what is created.
How can idealism help us in our life here?
Sri Aurobindo seems to be referring here to a school of philosophy which holds that the Idea has created the worlds. Naturally, this is wrong. Idealists who refuse to be the slaves of Matter need not be proponents of this philosophy and can, by their idealism, help men to be no more the slaves of material desires. 22 September 1969 157 – Thus said Ramakrishna and thus said Vivekananda. Yes, but let me know also the truths which Page - 254 the Avatar cast not forth into speech and the prophet has omitted from his teachings. There will always be more in God than the thought of man has ever conceived or the tongue of man has ever uttered.
158 – What was Ramakrishna? God manifest in a human being; but behind there is God in His infinite impersonality and His universal Personality. And what was Vivekananda? A radiant glance from the eye of Shiva; but behind him is the divine gaze from which he came and Shiva himself and Brahma and Vishnu and OM all-exceeding.
Will the Avatars still need to take birth on earth once the supramental consciousness is firmly established?
This question will be easier to answer when the supermind is manifested in living beings on earth. I had always heard that Sri Aurobindo was “the last Avatar”; but he is probably the last Avatar in a human body – afterwards, we do not know....
23 September 1969
159 – He who recognises not Krishna, the God in man, knows not God entirely; he who knows Krishna only, knows not even Krishna. Yet is the opposite truth also wholly true that if thou canst see all God in a little pale unsightly and scentless flower, then hast thou hold of His supreme reality.
Once one has taken the path of Sri Aurobindo's yoga, should not one stop worshipping all other gods and goddesses? Page - 255 One who truly follows the path given by Sri Aurobindo, as soon as he begins to have the experience of this path, will find it impossible to confine his consciousness to the worship of any god or goddess or even of all of them together. 26 September 1969
160 – Shun the barren snare of an empty metaphysics and the dry dust of an unfertile intellectuality. Only that knowledge is worth having which can be made use of for a living delight and put out into temperament, action, creation and being.
161 – Become and live the knowledge thou hast; then is thy knowledge the living God within thee.
How far can intellectual culture help us on our path?
If intellectual culture is carried to its furthest limit, it leads the mind to the unsatisfactory acknowledgement that it is incapable of knowing the Truth and, in those who aspire sincerely, to the necessity of being quiet and opening in silence to the higher regions which can give you knowledge. 27 September 1969
162 – Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges.
I would like to see the English to know which tense Sri Aurobindo used for the verb émerge – whether it is present or future? If it is in the future, it is a promise we all know and for Page - 256 whose realisation we are working. If it is in the present… I have nothing to add. 29 September 1969
163 – The power to observe law rigidly is the basis of freedom; therefore in most disciplines the soul has to endure and fulfil the law in its lower members before it can rise to the perfect freedom of its divine being. Those disciplines which begin with freedom are only for the mighty ones who are naturally free or in former lives have founded their freedom.
164 – Those who are deficient in the free, full and intelligent observation of a self-imposed law, must be placed in subjection to the will of others. This is one principal cause of the subjection of nations. After their disturbing egoism has been trampled under the feet of a master, they are given or, if they have force in them, attain a fresh chance of deserving liberty by liberty.
What are these disciplines which “begin with freedom” that Sri Aurobindo speaks of here?
I suppose that Sri Aurobindo is referring to the various disciplines of initiation practised in the various initiatory schools in the days when they had some importance and authority. Our age has become very materialistic and no longer gives the same importance and authority to these schools. 30 September 1969
165 – To observe the law we have imposed on ourselves rather than the law of others is what is meant by liberty in our unregenerate condition. Only in God and Page - 257 by the supremacy of the spirit can we enjoy a perfect freedom.
True liberty is to be in constant union with the Divine and to do only what the Divine wants us to do. But until then, it is better to impose on ourselves a higher law of action and conduct and to observe it scrupulously rather than to obey the law of other men or of moral and social conventions. 1 October 1969
When one lives in a community, does it not often become necessary to obey laws imposed by others instead of following the disciplines one would wish for oneself?
It is obvious that if you have chosen or accepted to live in a community, you must observe the laws of that community, otherwise you become an element of disorder and confusion. But a discipline willingly accepted cannot be harmful to the inner development and the growth of the higher consciousness. 3 October 1969
166 – The double law of sin and virtue is imposed on us because we have not that ideal life and knowledge within which guides the soul spontaneously and infallibly to its self-fulfilment. The law of sin and virtue ceases for us when the sun of God shines upon the soul in truth and love with its unveiled splendour. Moses is replaced by Christ, the Shastra by the Veda.¹
Do you think this idea of sin and virtue has done humanity any good?
¹ Shastra: Scriptures; Veda: Knowledge. Page - 258 As Sri Aurobindo says, the law of sin and virtue was certainly necessary for the progress of humanity when it was given several thousand years ago. But today it no longer has any meaning or usefulness and should no longer be heeded. It belongs to a past which should no longer have any authority. But for this to be possible, it must be replaced by a more luminous and truer law and not by disorder and corruption. 4 October 1969 And what is this more luminous law?¹
Perfect and spontaneous obedience to the divine order that must replace all law. 26 September 1970 Is it good to break all moral and social conventions as the new generation is doing? Don't these things have any value?
What has value at one period no longer has any at another as human consciousness goes on progressing. But one must take great care to replace a law one no longer obeys by a higher and truer law that fosters progress towards the future realisation. One has no right to abandon a law until one is capable of knowing and following a higher and better law.
P.S. Read again what I wrote yesterday, I had already explained this to you. 5 October 1969 ¹ This question was asked when these commentaries were first published in 1970. Page - 259 How can one follow this higher law? ¹
At every moment, do what God wants. 26 September 1970
167 – God within is leading us always aright even when we are in the bonds of the ignorance; but then, though the goal is sure, it is attained by circlings and deviations.
The goal foreseen by the Divine is always attained, but only those whose consciousness is united with the Divine Consciousness attain it directly and knowingly; the others – the vast majority of those who are conscious only of their external being – attain this goal only after having made many detours, which often seemed to be going in the opposite direction. 6 October 1969
168 – The Cross is in Yoga the symbol of the soul and nature in their strong and perfect union, but because of our fall into the impurities of ignorance it has become the symbol of suffering and purification.
169 – Christ came into the world to purify, not to fulfil. He himself foreknew the failure of his mission and the necessity of his return with the sword of God into a world that had rejected him.
In this Aphorism what does the sword of God represent?
¹ This question was asked when these commentaries were first published in 1970. Page - 260 The sword of God is the power that nothing can resist. 7 October 1969
170 – Mahomed's mission was necessary, else we might have ended by thinking, in the exaggeration of our efforts at self-purification, that earth was meant only for the monk and the city created as a vestibule for the desert.
171 – When all is said, Love and Force together can save the world eventually, but not Love only or Force only. Therefore Christ had to look forward to a second advent and Mahomed's religion, where it is not stagnant, looks forward through the Imams to a Mahdi.
Love alone as preached by Christ failed to transform man. Force alone as preached by Mahomed did not transform man, far from it. That is why the consciousness which is at work to transform mankind, unites Force with Love, and the One who must realise this transformation will come on earth with the Power of Divine Love. 10 October 1969
172 – Law cannot save the world, therefore Moses' ordinances are dead for humanity and the Shastra of the Brahmins is corrupt and dying. Law released into freedom is the liberator. Not the Pundit, but the Yogin; not monasticism, but the inner renunciation of desire and ignorance and egoism.
This is irrefutably clear and it is exactly what we are trying to do. But human nature is rebellious and finds it difficult to win Page - 261 freedom at the price of renouncing desire and ignorance and egoism. Most human beings prefer the slavery of desire and ignorance and egoism to freedom without them. 13 October 1969
173 – Even Vivekananda once in the stress of emotion admitted the fallacy that a personal God would be too immoral to be suffered and it would be the duty of all good men to resist Him. But if an omnipotent supra-moral Will and Intelligence governs the world, it is surely impossible to resist Him; our resistance would only serve His ends and really be dictated by Him. Is it not better then, instead of condemning or denying, to study and understand Him?
174 – If we would understand God, we must renounce our egoistic and ignorant human standards or else ennoble and universalise them.
To the human way of understanding, the world is terribly immoral, full of suffering and ugliness, especially since the appearance of the human race. So it is difficult for the human consciousness to accept that this world could be the work of a personal God, because for man it seems to be the work of an omnipotent monster. But Sri Aurobindo adds that it is better to try to understand instead of condemning. And surely the best way to understand is to unite with this Supreme Consciousness so as to see as It sees and understand as It understands. This is certainly the only true wisdom. And Yoga is the true way of uniting with the Supreme. 15 October 1969 Page - 262 |