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I feel we have entered the very heart of Thy sanctuary and grown aware of Thy very will. A great joy, a deep peace reign in me, and yet all my inner constructions have vanished like a vain dream and I find myself now, before Thy immensity, without a frame or system, like a being not yet individualised. All the past in its external form seems ridiculously arbitrary to me, and yet I know it was useful in its own time. But now all is changed: a new stage has begun. Page - 114
Every day, when I want to write, I am interrupted, as though the new period opening now before us were a period of expansion rather than of concentration. It is in the activity of each moment that we must serve Thee and identify ourselves with Thee rather than in deep and silent contemplation or in meditation, written or unwritten. But my heart does not tire of singing a hymn to Thee and my thought is constantly filled with Thee. Page - 115
It seems to me that I am being born to a new life and all the methods, the habits of the past can no longer be of any use. It seems to me that what I thought were results is nothing more than a preparation. I feel as though I have done nothing yet, as though I have not lived the spiritual life, only entered the path that leads to it, it seems to me that I know nothing, that I am incapable of formulating anything, that all experience is yet to begin. It is as though I were stripped of my entire past, of its errors as well as its conquests, as though all that has vanished and made room for a new-born child whose whole existence is yet to be lived, who has no Karma, no experience to learn from, but no error either which has to be set right. My head is empty of all knowledge and all certitude, but also of all vain thought. I feel that if I learn how to surrender without any resistance to this state, if I do not try to know or understand, if I consent to be completely like an ignorant and candid child, some new possibility will open before me. I know that I must now definitively give myself up and be like an absolutely blank page on which Thy thought, Thy will, O Lord, can be inscribed freely without danger of any deformation. An immense gratitude rises from my heart, it seems to me that I have at last reached the threshold I sought so much. Grant, O Lord, that I may be sufficiently pure, Page - 116 impersonal, animated with Thy divine love to be able to cross it definitively. Oh, to belong to Thee without any darkness, without any restriction! Page - 117
O Lord, my adoration rises ardently to Thee, all my being is an aspiration, a flame consecrated to Thee. Lord, Lord, my sweet Master, it is Thou who livest and willest in me! This body is Thy instrument; this will is Thy servant; this intelligence is Thy tool; and the whole being is only Thyself. Page - 118
What kind of courage is mine that I always try to avoid the fight? What kind of energy is mine, that I am instinctively frightened of the new effort to be made and try, without being aware of it, to go to sleep passively, relying upon the results of previous efforts? In order to act, I have to be compelled and my mute contemplation is partly made of laziness.... All this is becoming more and more clearly apparent to me. All that I have done till now seems to me to be nothing. The poverty and limitations of the instrument I put at Thy service, Lord, are evident to me, and I laugh a little sorrowfully at the idea that at times I could have a good opinion of my being, its efforts and their results. This threshold of the true life that I always think I have reached is like a hope bestowed upon me but never a tangible realisation; it is the toy promised to a child, the reward held out for a moment before the weak. When shall I become a truly strong being, made entirely of courage, energy, valour and calm perseverance; when shall I have forgotten my own person completely enough to be nothing but an instrument moulded solely by the forces it has to manifest? When will my consciousness of unity be no longer tinged with any inertia; when will my feeling of divine love be no longer mixed with any weakness? O Lord, all thought seems dead within me, now that I have asked these questions. I search for my conscious mind and I do not find it; I search for my individuality Page - 119 and I cannot discover it anywhere; I search for my personal will and it is not there. I search for Thee, and Thou art silent.... Silence, silence.... Now I seem to hear Thy voice: “Never hast thou known how to die integrally. Always something in thee has wanted to know, to witness, to understand. Surrender completely, learn how to disappear, break the last barrier that separates thee from me; accomplish unreservedly thy act of surrender.” Alas, O Lord, for a long time have I wanted it, but I could not. Now wilt Thou give me the power to do so? O Lord, my sweet eternal Master, break this resistance which fills me with anguish... deliver me from myself! Page - 120
Lord, my thought is calm and my heart ingathered; I turn towards Thee with a profound devotion and a boundless trust: I know that Thy love is all-powerful and that Thy justice will reign over the earth; I know that the hour is near when the last veil will be rent and all iniquity disappear to give place to an era of peace and harmonious effort. O Lord, with thought rapt within and the heart at peace, I approach Thee and all my being is filled with Thy divine Presence; grant that I may see Thee alone in all things and that all may be resplendent with Thy divine Light. Oh, may all hatred be appeased, all rancour effaced, all fears dispelled, all suspicions destroyed, all malevolence overcome, and in this city, in this country, upon this earth, may all hearts feel vibrating within them that sublime love, source of all transfiguration. O Lord, how ardently do I call and implore Thy love! Grant that my aspiration may be intense enough to awaken the same aspiration everywhere: oh, may goodness, justice and peace reign as supreme masters, may ignorant egoism be overcome, darkness be suddenly illuminated by Thy pure Light; may the blind see, the deaf hear, may Thy law be proclaimed in every place and, in a constantly progressive union, in an ever more perfect harmony, may all, like one single being, stretch out their arms towards Thee to identify themselves with Thee and manifest Thee upon earth. O Lord, with thought rapt within, the heart radiant with sunshine, I give myself to Thee without reservation, and the “self” disappears in Thee! Page - 121
Suddenly the veil was rent, the horizon was disclosed – and before the clear vision my whole being threw itself at Thy feet in a great outburst of gratitude. Yet in spite of this deep and integral joy all was calm, all was peaceful with the peace of eternity. I seem to have no more limits; there is no longer the perception of the body, no sensations, no feelings, no thoughts – a clear, pure, tranquil immensity penetrated with love and light, filled with an unspeakable beatitude is all that is there and that alone seems now to be myself, and this “myself” is so little the former “I”, selfish and limited, that I cannot tell if it is I or Thou, O Lord, sublime Master of our destinies. It is as though all were energy, courage, force, will, infinite sweetness, incomparable compassion.... Even more forcibly than during these last days the past is dead and as though buried under the rays of a new life. The last glance that I have just thrown backward as I read a few pages of this book definitely convinced me of this death, and lightened of a great weight I present myself before Thee, O my divine Master, with all the simplicity, all the nudity of a child.... And still the one only thing I perceive is that calm and pure immensity.... Lord, Thou hast answered my prayer, Thou hast granted me what I have asked from Thee; the “I” has disappeared, there is only a docile instrument put at Thy service, a centre of concentration and manifestation Page - 122 of Thy infinite and eternal rays; Thou hast taken my life and 124made it Thine; Thou hast taken my will and hast united it to Thine; Thou hast taken my love and identified it with Thine; Thou hast taken my thought and replaced it by Thy absolute consciousness. The body, marvelling, bows its forehead in the dust in mute and submissive adoration. And nothing else exists but Thou alone in the splendour of Thy immutable peace. Page - 123 Karikal, April 13, 1914
Everything works together to prevent me from remaining a creature of habits, and in this new state, in the midst of these circumstances, so complex and unstable, I have never before so completely lived Thy immutable peace or rather the “I” has never before disappeared so completely that Thy divine peace alone is alive there. All is beautiful, harmonious and calm, all is full of Thee. Thou shinest in the dazzling sun, Thou art felt in the gentle passing breeze, Thou dost manifest Thyself in all hearts and live in all beings. There is not an animal, a plant that does not speak to me of Thee and Thy name is written upon everything I see. O my sweet Lord, hast Thou at last granted that I may belong entirely to Thee and that my consciousness may be definitively united with Thine? What have I done to be worthy of so glorious a happiness? Nothing except to desire it, to want it with constancy – that is very little. But, O Lord, since now it is Thy will and not mine that lives in me, Thou wilt be able to make this happiness profitable to all; and its very purpose will be to enable the greatest possible number of beings to perceive Thee. Oh, may all know Thee, love Thee, serve Thee; may all receive the supreme consecration! O Love, divine Love, spread abroad in the world, regenerate life, enlighten the intelligence, break the barriers of egoism, scatter the obstacles of ignorance, shine resplendent as sovereign Master of the earth. Page - 124 Pondicherry, April 17, 1914 *
O Lord, O almighty Master, sole Reality, grant that no error, no obscurity, no fatal ignorance may creep into my heart and my thought. In action, the personality is the inevitable and indispensable intermediary of Thy will and Thy forces. The stronger, the more complex, powerful, individualised and conscious is the personality, the more powerfully and usefully can the instrument serve. But, by reason of the very character of personality, it easily tends to be drawn into the fatal illusion of its separate existence and become little by little a screen between Thee and that on which Thou willest to act. Not at the beginning, in the manifestation, but in the transmission of the return; that is to say, instead of being, as a faithful servant, an intermediary who brings back to Thee exactly what is Thy due – the forces sent forth in reply to Thy action, – there is a tendency in the personality to want to keep for itself a part of the forces, with this idea: “It is I who have done this or that, I who am thanked...” Pernicious illusion, obscure falsehood, now are you discovered and unmasked. That is the maleficent canker corroding the fruit of the action, falsifying all its results. O Lord, O my sweet Master, sole Reality, dispel this feeling of the “I”. I have now understood that so long as there will be a manifested universe, the “I” will remain necessary for Thy manifestation; to dissolve, or even to diminish or weaken the “I”, is to Page - 125 deprive Thee of the means of manifestation, in whole or part. But what must be radically and definitively suppressed is the illusory thought, the illusory feeling, the illusory sensation of the separate “I”. At no moment, in no circumstances must we forget that our “I” has no reality outside Thee. O my sweet Master, my divine Lord, tear out from my heart this illusion so that Thy servant may become pure and faithful and faithfully and integrally bring back to Thee all that is Thy due. In silence let me contemplate and understand this supreme ignorance and dispel it for ever. Chase the shadow from my heart, and let Thy light reign in it, its uncontested sovereign. Page - 126
Yesterday morning the last veil was almost rent, the last stronghold of the blind and ignorant personality seemed to be on the point of yielding; for the first time I thought I had understood what true impersonal service was, and the obstacle separating me from the integral realisation seemed very fragile to me, and on the point of disappearing definitively. But the necessity of my outer duties tore me away from this beneficent and happy contemplation, and when I was obliged to return to the outer consciousness the veil closed again and now seems to me darker than ever. Why this fall into the inconscience of night after so great a light?... O Lord, Lord, wilt Thou not then let me escape at last from ignorance and become one with Thee? Now that I have known and seen so well what the work upon the earth must be, could I not realise it? Am I then riveted to ignorance and illusion?... Why, why this night after so great and pure a light? All my being is tense in a call of anguish! O Lord, take pity on me! Page - 127
There is a great difference between being in the midst of active work, of external action, while keeping one's thought constantly fixed on Thee, and entering into that perfect union with Thee which leads to what I have called “absolute Consciousness, true Omniscience, Knowledge”. When one acts, though with the thought fixed on Thee, one is like a blind man walking on the road with a sense of direction, but knowing nothing about the path he is following and how, precisely, one must walk so as to neglect nothing. In the other case, on the contrary, there is the clear vision in full light, the utilisation of the least occasion, the plenitude of action, the maximum result. And if the first attitude is indispensable before acquiring the other, yet at no moment must one cease working, making an effort to attain perfect communion. But my heart is in peace, my thought free from impatience, and I entrust myself to Thy will with the smiling confidence of a child. May Thy peace reign over all.... Page - 128
After having hoped so much, after having believed that my outer being was at last to become an instrument adapted to Thy purpose, after feeling hopeful that I would at last be delivered from this obscure and cumbersome “self”, I feel I am as far from the goal as before, as ignorant, as egoistic as I was before this great expectation. And the path stretches out once again, interminable across the fields of inconscience. The sublime door has closed again and I find myself still on the threshold of the sanctuary without being able to enter within. But I have learnt to look at everything with a smile and a tranquil heart. I ask only this of Thee, O my divine Master, not to let me make any mistakes; even if the instrument is still condemned for a time to unconsciousness, grant that it may let itself be guided faithfully and docilely by Thy divine law. I bow to Thee, O Lord, with a deep and pure devotion. On! Be the sovereign Master of all hearts. Page - 129
All rules have vanished, the regularity of the discipline is gone, all effort has ceased; not by my own will nor, I believe, through negligence, but because circumstances are working together to bring this about. It seems that this inner will, always alert, like a steersman holding the rudder, has evaporated or fallen asleep, and my being is only something peacefully surrendered which lets itself be carried along by the stream. Till now, it seems to me, the course has always been in a straight line, and I would keep the hope that it is Thou, O Lord, who guidest the stream; but surely if I have erred at times through too great a rigidity, a lack of suppleness and spontaneity, it could very well be that now I err through the opposite excess. I have come to accept peacefully the state I am in and to tell myself that Thou wilt bestow upon me the true Consciousness, the absolute Consciousness when Thou thinkest it best. I look at all this changing world as a game unfolding itself, and I take part in this game with the same energy and conviction with which I would if I believed it real and important. All this is very new. But what is certain is that never before were my mind and heart in so complete a repose. What will come out of that, I do not know. But I trust in Thee, O Lord; Thou knowest the best way of using and developing Thy instrument.... Page - 130
Thou art the Master of the world; Thy law unfolds before us with precision, and as I thought or rather as Thou didst make me understand it before we left Paris, it is the best – what could best serve Thy work in the world – that has happened. In beatitude I communed with Thy puissance dominating over darkness and error, shining like a marvellous and eternal dawn above the mud of hypocritical force and its apparent success. Everything has been brought to light, we have taken one more step towards the full light of sincerity, and this full light will be the first stage of Thy reign upon earth. O Thou inconceivable splendour, Thou conqueror of all ignorance, victor over all egoism, Thou who dost illumine all hearts and enlighten all minds, Thou who art Knowledge and Love and Being, let me live constantly in the consciousness of Thy unity, let me always conform to Thy Will. With reverent and silent devotion I bow to Thee as the sovereign Lord of the world. Page - 131 |