On Thoughts And Aphorisms
1958-70
Contents
Jnana (Knowledge)
(1958)
Jnana (Knowledge)
(1960-61)
Jnana (Knowledge)
(1960-61)
Jnana (Knowledge)
(1969-70)
Karma (Works)
(1969-70)
Disease and Medical Science
Bhakti (Devotion)
(1969-70)
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241 – Atheism is a necessary protest against the wickedness of the Churches and the narrowness of creeds. God uses it as a stone to smash these soiled card-houses.
242 – How much hatred and stupidity men succeed in packing up decorously and labelling “Religion”!
Which is better: religion or atheism?
So long as religions exist, atheism will be indispensable to counter-balance them. Both must disappear to make way for a sincere and disinterested search for Truth and a total consecration to the object of this search. 21 December 1969 243 – God guides best when He tempts worst, loves entirely when He punishes cruelly, helps perfectly when violently He opposes.
244 – If God did not take upon Himself the burden of tempting men, the world would very soon go to perdition.
245 – Suffer yourself to be tempted within so that you may exhaust in the struggle your downward propensities.
246 – If you leave it to God to purify, He will exhaust the evil in you subjectively; but if you insist on guiding yourself, you will fall into much outward sin and suffering.
247 – Call not everything evil which men call evil, but only that reject which God has rejected; call not Page - 286 everything good which men call good, but accept only what God has accepted.
If one gives oneself completely to the Divine, is it necessary to develop one's personal will, one's power of choice, etc.? Will these things not become obstacles?
Personal will and power of choice are necessary qualities for those who live in the ordinary ignorance and illusion. True self-giving to the Divine of course means their surrender. But unfortunately, many people live in the illusion that they have entirely given themselves to the Divine, and yet preserve in themselves a very active ego which prevents them from clearly perceiving the Divine Will; if these people abandon their personal will and discernment, they are in danger of becoming incoherent and erratic. You must first acquire a perfect sincerity in order to be sure of not deceiving yourself, and you must have clear evidence that it is truly the Divine Will which moves and guides you. 22 December 1969
248 – Men in the world have two lights, duty and principle; but he who has passed over to God, has done with both and replaced them by God's will. If men abuse thee for this, care not, O divine instrument, but go on thy way like the wind or the sun fostering and destroying.
249 – Not to cull the praises of men has God made thee His own, but to do fearlessly His bidding.
250 – Accept the world as God's theatre; be thou the mask of the Actor and let Him act through thee. Page - 287 If men praise or hiss thee, know that they too are masks; and take God within for thy only critic and audience.
The first thing needed is to become conscious of the Divine Will, and in order to do that one must no longer have any desires or personal will. The best way to achieve this is to direct one's whole aspiration towards the Divine Perfection, to give oneself to it without reserve and to rely on That alone for all satisfaction. All the rest will follow as a result. 23 December 1969
251 – If Krishna be alone on one side and the armed and organised world with its hosts and its shrapnel and its maxims on the other, yet prefer thy divine solitude. Care not if the world passes over thy body and its shrapnel tear thee to pieces and its cavalry trample thy limbs into shapeless mire by the wayside; for the mind was always a simulacrum and the body a carcass. The spirit liberated from its casings ranges and triumphs.
This is to tell us that the only choice to be made is to unite with the Divine in spite of everything, even the opposition of the whole world, because the world only has an apparent strength in the mental and the physical, whereas the Divine possesses the eternal power of Truth. 26 December 1969
252 – If thou think defeat is the end of thee, then go not forth to fight, even though thou be the stronger. For Fate is not purchased by any man nor is Power bound over to her possessors. But defeat is not the end, it is only a gate or a beginning. Page - 288 253 – I have failed, thou sayest. Say rather that God is circling about towards His object.
254 – Foiled by the world, thou turnest to seize upon God. If the world is stronger than thou, thinkest thou God is weaker? Turn to Him rather for His bidding and for strength to fulfil it.
Why does God need to “circle about towards His object?” He can easily reach it immediately if He wants to, and make everybody's work easier and more effective.
Surely Sri Aurobindo did not say that “God” needs to circle about, because he is all-powerful; but his power is not an arbitrary one as men understand it. To begin to understand anything about this, one must know and feel that in the whole universe there is nothing which is not an expression of his omnipotent and omnipresent will; and only by consciously uniting with Him can one begin to understand this, not mentally, but through an experience of consciousness and vision. In his ordinary consciousness, even with the widest intelligence, man can only grasp an infinitesimal part of creation and so he cannot understand it and still less judge it. And if we want to hasten the transformation of the world, the best we can do is to give ourselves without reserve or calculation to That which knows. 28 December 1969 255 – So long as a cause has on its side one soul that is intangible in faith, it cannot perish.
256 – Reason gives me no basis for this faith, thou murmurest. Fool! if it did, faith would not be needed or demanded of thee. Page - 289 257 – Faith in the heart is the obscure and often distorted reflection of a hidden knowledge. The believer is often more plagued by doubt than the most inveterate sceptic. He persists because there is something subconscient in him which knows. That tolerates both his blind faith and twilit doubts and drives towards the revelation of that which it knows.
Is it good to have a blind faith which neither questions nor reasons?
What men usually call blind faith is in fact what the Divine Grace sometimes gives to those whose intelligence is not developed enough to have true knowledge. So blind faith can be something very respectable, although it is of course clear that one who has true knowledge is in a far superior position. 29 December 1969 To which plane does faith belong – mental or psychic?
Faith is an exclusively psychic phenomenon. 30 December 1969 258 – The world thinks that it moves by the light of reason, but it is really impelled by its faiths and instincts.
259 – Reason adapts itself to the faith or argues out a justification of the instincts; but it receives the Page - 290 impulse subconsciously, therefore men think that they act rationally.
260 – The only business of reason is to arrange and criticise the perceptions. It has neither in itself any means of positive conclusion nor any command to action. When it pretends to originate or impel, it is masking other agencies.
261 – Until Wisdom comes to thee, use the reason for its God-given purposes and faith and instinct for theirs. Why shouldst thou set thy members to war upon each other?
What are the highest aims of reason, faith and instinct in ordinary life and in spiritual life?
Each one has his own aims according to his nature and the goal he wants to attain in ordinary life. As for spiritual life, it has only one goal: to know the Divine and to unite with Him, by every possible means and with the help of faith, which is certainly the most powerful motive-force for beginners. 31 December 1969
262 – Perceive always and act in the light of thy increasing perceptions, but not those of the reasoning brain only. God speaks to the heart when the brain cannot understand him.
263 – If thy heart tell thee, Thus and by such means and at such a time it will happen, believe it not. But if it gives thee the purity and wideness of God's command, hearken to it. Page - 291 264 – When thou hast the command, care only to fulfil it. The rest is God's will and arrangement which men call chance and luck and fortune.
It is obviously in the silence of the mind that it is possible to perceive the Divine Command. The true way of knowing is above words and thoughts. When this phenomenon occurs, it becomes very clear, because one knows the Divine Command first, and the words to describe it come later. 1 January 1970 265 – If thy aim be great and thy means small, still act; for by action alone these can increase to thee.
266 – Care not for time and success. Act out thy part, whether it be to fail or to prosper.
267 – There are three forms in which the command may come, the will and faith in thy nature, thy ideal on which heart and brain are agreed and the voice of Himself or His angels.
268 – There are times when action is unwise or impossible; then go into Tapasya¹ in some physical solitude or in the retreats of thy soul and await whatever divine word or manifestation.
269 – Leap not too quickly at all voices, for there are lying spirits ready to deceive thee; but let thy heart be pure and afterwards listen.
It is indeed of utmost importance not to accept each and every
¹Austerity, spiritual discipline. Page - 292 voice as coming from the Divine, because one is liable to obey the command of an imposter. There is only one guarantee which is a complete absence of all personal desire, even the desire of serving the Divine, and the fact of being immersed in a total peace. Only then can one be sure of one's discernment. 3 January 1970
270 – There are times when God seems to be sternly on the side of the past; then what has been and is, sits firm as on a throne and clothes itself with an irrevocable “I shall be.” Then persevere, though thou seem to be fighting the Master of all; for this is His sharpest trial.
271 – All is not settled when a cause is humanly lost and hopeless; all is settled, only when the soul renounces its effort.
This is to encourage us not to allow ourselves to be influenced by appearances and to persist in our effort even if it seems to have no result. In life, we must do what is revealed to us as the true thing to be done, even if others mock and criticise; for the opinion of men has no value, the Divine Will alone is true and will triumph. 4 January 1970
272 – He who would win high spiritual degrees, must pass endless tests and examinations. But most are anxious only to bribe the examiner.
273 – Fight, while thy hands are free, with thy hands and thy voice and thy brain and all manner of weapons. Art thou chained in the enemy's dungeons and Page - 293 have his gags silenced thee? Fight with thy silent all-besieging soul and thy wide-ranging will-power and when thou art dead, fight still with the world-encompassing force that went out from God within thee.
Truth is a difficult and strenuous conquest. One must be a true warrior to make this conquest, a warrior who fears nothing, neither enemies nor death, for, against the whole world, with or without a body, the struggle continues and will end in Victory. 6 January 1970
274 – Thou thinkest the ascetic in his cave or on his mountain-top a stone and a do-nothing. What dost thou know? He may be filling the world with the mighty currents of his will and changing it by the pressure of his soul-state.
275 – That which the liberated sees in his soul on its mountain-tops, heroes and prophets spring up in the material world to proclaim and accomplish.
276 – The Theosophists are wrong in their circumstances but right in the essential. If the French Revolution took place, it was because a soul on the Indian snows dreamed of God as freedom, brotherhood and equality.
This is simply to show us that the power of the spirit is far greater than all material powers. But both are indispensable for the realisation. 7 January 1970 277 – All speech and action comes prepared out of the eternal Silence. Page - 294 278 – There is no disturbance in the depths of the Ocean, but above there is the joyous thunder of its shouting and its racing shoreward; so is it with the liberated soul in the midst of violent action. The soul does not act; it only breathes out from itself overwhelming action.
This tells us again that That which causes action, the Consciousness and Power which are manifested in action, are quite different from the individuals who carry it out materially and who think in their ignorance that they are the originators of action. 8 January 1970
279 – O soldier and hero of God, where for thee is sorrow or shame or suffering? For thy life is a glory, thy deeds a consecration, victory thy apotheosis, defeat thy triumph.
For one who is totally consecrated to the Divine, there can be neither shame nor suffering, for the Divine is always with him and the Divine Presence changes all things into glory. 9 January 1970
280 – Do thy lower members still suffer the shock of sin and sorrow? But above, seen of thee or unseen, thy soul sits royal, calm, free and triumphant. Believe that the Mother will ere the end have done her work and made the very earth of thy being a joy and a purity.
281 – If thy heart is troubled within thee, if for long seasons thou makest no progress, if thy strength faint and repine, remember always the eternal word of our Lover and Master, “I will free thee from all sin and evil; do not grieve”
Page - 295 Here, what Sri Aurobindo calls the soul is the Divine Presence in each one of us; and the certitude of this constant Presence within us will alleviate all our sorrow by convincing us of the ultimate victory which is certain. 10 January 1970 282 – Purity is in thy soul; but for actions, where is their purity or impurity?
Sri Aurobindo does not use the word purity in the ordinary moral sense. For him, purity means exclusively under the influence of the Divine, expressing only the Divine. At present, no action on earth can be like this. 12 January 1970
283 – O Death, our masked friend and maker of opportunities, when thou wouldst open the gate, hesitate not to tell us beforehand; for we are not of those who are shaken by its iron jarring.
284 – Death is sometimes a rude valet; but when he changes this robe of earth for that brighter raiment, his horseplay and impertinences can be pardoned.
285 Who shall slay thee, O soul immortal? Who shall torture thee, O God ever-joyous?
Why has death been associated with sorrow ever since the beginning?
Human ignorance and egoism are the cause of sorrow. But this sorrow has also played its part in the evolution of humanity. 13 January 1970 Page - 296 What part has sorrow played in the evolution of humanity?
Sorrow, desire, suffering, ambition and every other similar reaction in the feelings and sensations have all contributed to make consciousness emerge from the inconscience and to awaken this consciousness to the will for progress. 14 January 1970
286 – Think this when thy members would fain make love with depression and weakness, “I am Bacchus and Ares and Apollo; I am Agni pure and invincible; I am Surya ever burning mightily.”
287 – Shrink not from the Dionysian cry and rapture within thee, but see that thou be not a straw upon those billows.
288 – Thou hast to learn to bear all the gods within thee and never stagger with their inrush or break under their burden. This is to teach man not to be dominated or frightened by the gods of the various religions; for, as a human being, man carries within himself the possibility of uniting with the Supreme Lord and becoming conscious of Him. 15 January 1970 Page - 297 |