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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495 − I used to hate and avoid pain and resent its infliction; but now I find that had I not so suffered, I would not now possess, trained and perfected, this infinitely and multitudinously sensible capacity of delight in my mind, heart and body. God justifies Himself in the end even when He has masked Himself as a bully and a tyrant.
496 − I swore that I would not suffer from the world's grief and the world's stupidity and cruelty and injustice and I made my heart as hard in endurance as the nether millstone and my mind as a polished surface of steel. I no longer suffered, but enjoyment had passed away from me. Then God broke my heart and ploughed up my mind. I rose through cruel and incessant anguish to a blissful painlessness and through sorrow and indignation and revolt to an infinite knowledge and a settled peace.
It is the same lesson that the Supreme Lord wants to teach the body which He is transforming. 23 April 1970
497 − When I found that pain was the reverse side and the training of delight, I sought to heap blows on myself and multiply suffering in all my members; for even God's tortures seemed to me slow and slight and inefficient. Then my Lover had to stay my hand and cry, “Cease; for my stripes are enough for thee.”
498 − The self-torture of the old monks and penitents was perverse and stupid; yet was there a secret soul of knowledge behind their perversities. Page - 351 499 − God is our wise and perfect Friend; because He knows when to smite as well as when to fondle, when to slay us no less than when to save and to succour.
There is only one true wisdom, the wisdom of the Supreme Lord. Thus, to surrender all personal will and to want only what the Divine wants, is the only way to be truly wise. 24 April 1970
500 − The divine Friend of all creatures conceals His friendliness in the mask of an enemy till He has made us ready for the highest heavens; then, as in Kurukshetra, the terrible form of the Master of strife, suffering and destruction is withdrawn and the sweet face, the tenderness, the oft-clasped body of Krishna shine out on the shaken soul and purified eyes of his eternal comrade and playmate.
501 − Suffering makes us capable of the full force of the Master of Delight; it makes us capable also to bear the other play of the Master of Power. Pain is the key that opens the gates of strength; it is the high-road that leads to the city of beatitude.
502 − Yet, O soul of man, seek not after pain, for that is not His will, seek after His joy only; as for suffering, it will come to thee surely in His providence as often and as much as is needed for thee. Then bear it that thou mayst find out at last its heart of rapture.
503 − Neither do thou inflict pain, O man, on thy fellow; God alone has the right to inflict pain; or those have it whom He has commissioned. But deem not fanatically, as did Torquemada, that thou art one of these. Page - 352 Never forget that so long as you are capable of preference in your relations with life and men, you cannot be a pure and perfect instrument of the Divine. 28 April 1970
504 − In former times there was a noble form of asseveration for souls compact merely of force and action, “As surely as God liveth.” But for our modern needs another asseveration would suit better, “As surely as God loveth.”
In our sorrowful age, almost withered by the excessive domination of the intellect, nothing can be at once more necessary and more precious than Divine Love. 29 April 1970
505 − Science is chiefly useful to the God-lover and the God-knower because it enables him to understand in detail and admire the curious wonders of His material workmanship. The one learns and cries, “Behold how the Spirit has manifested itself in matter;” the other, “Behold, the touch of my Lover and Master, the perfect Artist, the hand omnipotent.”
How can one be of service¹ to the Divine since we exist by Him aloneall we can do is to clumsily return to Him a little of all that He has given us. 30 April 1970 ¹ The translation used was based on a text which read Service instead of “Science.” Page - 353 506 − O Aristophanes of the universe, thou who watchest thy world and laughest sweetly to thyself, wilt thou not let me too see with divine eyes and share in thy worldwide laughters?
No doubt one must have a vision as total as the Divine Vision to be able to laugh at this world as it is. 1 May 1970
507 − Kalidasa says in a daring image that the snowrocks of Kailasa are Shiva's loud world-laughters piled up in utter whiteness and pureness on the mountain-tops. It is true; and when their image falls on the heart, then the world's cares melt away like the clouds below into their real nothingness.
Human science makes very exact observations; but the field is open to imagine the true causes − why not occult causes? 2 May 1970
508 − The strangest of the soul's experiences is this, that it finds, when it ceases to care for the image and threat of troubles, then the troubles themselves are nowhere to be found in one's neighbourhood. It is then that we hear from behind those unreal clouds God laughing at us.
Lord, and when You want the image to change into your likeness, what do You do? 4 May 1970 I did not understand what You wrote yesterday. Page - 354 What Sri Aurobindo calls “the image” is the physical body. So I asked the Lord what He does when He wants to transform the physical body, and last night He gave me two visions in answer. One concerned the liberation of the body consciousness from all the conventions regarding death; and in the other He showed me what the supramental body will be. You see that I did well to ask Him ! 9 May 1970
509 − Has thy effort succeeded, O thou Titan? Dost thou sit, like Ravana and Hiranyakashipou,¹ served by the gods and the world's master? But that which thy soul was really hunting after, has escaped from thee.
510 − Ravana's mind thought it was hungering after universal sovereignty and victory over Rama; but the aim his soul kept its vision fixed upon all the time was to get back to its heaven as soon as possible and be again God's menial. Therefore, as the shortest way, it hurled itself against God in a furious clasp of enmity.
511 − The greatest of joys is to be, like Narada, the slave of God; the worst of Hells being abandoned of God, to be the world's master. That which seems nearest to the ignorant conception of God, is the farthest from him.
512 − God's servant is something; God's slave is greater.
Sri Aurobindo gives us the true way to understand the Scriptures, which thus become universal symbols. 12 May 1970 ¹ Two demon kings. Page - 355 513 − To be master of the world would indeed be supreme felicity, if one were universally loved; but for that one would have to be at the same time the slave of all humanity.
514 − After all, when thou countest up thy long service to God, thou wilt find thy supreme work was the flawed and little good thou didst in love for humanity.
That is why, rather than to serve, it is better to belong totally, absolutely to the Divine. 13 May 1970 In order to belong absolutely and totally to the Divine, isn't it necessary to begin by serving the Divine?
Certainly, to place all one's work at the service of the Divine is a very good way of approach, but it doesn't go much further than what Sri Aurobindo describes, and for some it is not satisfying. 14 May 1970
515 − There are two works that are perfectly pleasing to God in his servant; to sweep in silent adoration His temple-floors and to fight in the world's battlefield for His divine consummation in humanity.
516 − He who has done even a little good to human beings, though he be the worst of sinners, is accepted by God in the ranks of His lovers and servants. He shall look upon the face of the Eternal. Page - 356 Sri Aurobindo's effort was always directed towards liberating his disciples or even his readers from all preconceptions, all conventional morality. 15 May 1970
517 − O fool of thy weakness, cover not God's face from thyself by a veil of awe, approach Him not with a suppliant weakness. Look! thou wilt see on His face not the solemnity of the King and Judge, but the smile of the Lover.
518 − Until thou canst learn to grapple with God as a wrestler with his comrade, thy soul's strength shall always be hid from thee.
Wouldn't it be good, once and for all, to get rid of all our limitations and weaknesses, if we truly want to draw close to the Divine? 16 May 1970
519 − Sumbha¹ first loved Kali with his heart and body, then was furious with her and fought her, at last prevailed against her, seized her by the hair and whirled her thrice round him in the heavens; the next moment he was slain by her. These are the Titan's four strides to immortality and of them all the last is the longest and mightiest.
I do not understand the meaning of the Titan's four strides to immortality.
Whatever the nature of an individual may be, ultimately, in one way or another, whether he fights him or loves him, the End is always the Divine. 17 May 1970 ¹ A demon king. Page - 357 520 − Kali is Krishna revealed as dreadful Power and wrathful Love. She slays with her furious blows the self in body, life and mind in order to liberate it as spirit eternal.
Shall we complain when we see this helpless little ego disappearing and giving way to a luminous spark capable of understanding the universe? 21 May 1970
521 − Our parents fell, in the deep Semitic apologue, because they tasted the fruit of the tree of good and evil. Had they taken at once of the tree of eternal life, they would have escaped the immediate consequence; but God's purpose in humanity would have been defeated. His wrath is our eternal advantage.
Sri Aurobindo is trying to make us understand how the limitations of our vision prevent us from perceiving the Divine Wisdom. 22 May 1970 522 − If Hell were possible, it would be the shortest cut to the highest heaven. For verily God loveth.
523 − God drives us out every Eden that we may be forced to travel through the desert to a diviner Paradise. If thou wonder why should that parched and Page - 358 fierce transit be necessary, then art thou befooled by thy mind and hast not studied thy soul behind and its dim desires and secret raptures.
When we no longer have any affinity with suffering and are cured of all perverse attachment to it, the Divine will help us to discover that it conceals the supreme bliss. 23 May 1970
524 − A healthy mind hates pain; for the desire of pain that men sometimes develop in their minds is morbid and contrary to Nature. But the soul cares not for the mind and its sufferings any more than the iron-master for the pain of the ore in the furnace; it follows its own necessities and its own hunger.
The Supreme Lord alone should be the Master and it is He, as a rule, whom the psychic being obeys. 24 May 1970
525 − Indiscriminate compassion is the noblest gift of temperament, not to do even the least hurt to one living thing is the highest of all human virtues; but God practises neither. Is man therefore nobler and better than the All-loving?
526 − To find that saving a man's body or mind from suffering is not always for the good of either soul, mind or body, is one of the bitterest of experiences for the humanly compassionate.
To be conscious of the Divine Consciousness is the supreme fulfilment offered to human realisation; all the rest are only inessentials. 25 May 1970 Page - 359 527 − Human pity is born of ignorance and weakness; it is the slave of emotional impressions. Divine compassion understands, discerns and saves.
528 − Pity is sometimes a good substitute for love; but it is always no more than a substitute.
To understand the divine intention and to work for its fulfillment − isn't this the surest way to help humanity? 28 May 1970
529 − Self-pity is always born of self-love; but pity for others is not always born of love for its object. It is sometimes a self-regarding shrinking from the sight of pain; sometimes the rich man's contemptuous dole to the pauper. Develop rather God's divine compassion than human pity.
530 − Not pity that bites the heart and weakens the inner members, but a divine masterful and untroubled compassion and helpfulness is the virtue that we should encourage.
Can there be any greater misfortune than to live without knowing the Supreme Lord? And yet this almost universal ill rarely excites any pity. Because one who knows that he is suffering from it also knows that the cure depends on him alone − for the Lord's compassion is infinite. 1 June 1970 531 − Love and serve men, but beware lest thou desire their approbation. Obey rather God within thee. Page - 360 532 − Not to have heard the voice of God and His angels is the world's idea of sanity.
533 − See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the making or truth in the breaking, all failure an effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself from its own vision, all pain a secret and violent ecstasy. If thou believest firmly and unweariedly, in the end thou wilt see and experience the All-true, Almighty and All-blissful.
By tireless constancy in effort and faith, we can unite with the Divine Consciousness which is constant and perfect beatitude. 2 June 1970
534 − Human love fails by its own ecstasy, human strength is exhausted by its own effort, human knowledge throws a shadow that conceals half the globe of truth from its own sunlight; but divine knowledge embraces opposite truths and reconciles them, divine strength grows by the prodigality of its self-expenditure, divine love can squander itself utterly, yet never waste or diminish.
Can human love change into divine love, human strength into divine strength and human knowledge into divine knowledge?
There is only one love. Human love is nothing but divine love perverted and distorted by the instrument through which it is expressed. The same holds true for strength and knowledge. In their essence they are eternal and unlimited. It is the limitations and deficiencies of human nature which distort them and alter them beyond recognition. 3 June 1970 Page - 361 535 − The rejection of falsehood by the mind seeking after truth is one of the chief causes why mind cannot attain to the settled, rounded and perfect truth; not to escape falsehood is the effort of divine mind, but to seize the truth which lies masked behind even the most grotesque or far-wandering error.
What is the “divine mind” ?
What Sri Aurobindo calls the divine mind is the prototype of the mental function which is totally and perfectly surrendered to the Divine and works only under divine inspiration. When a human being exists only by and for the Divine, his mind necessarily becomes a divine mind. 4 June 1970
536 − The whole truth about any object is a rounded and all-embracing globe which for ever circles around but never touches the one and only subject and object of knowledge, God.
537 − There are many profound truths which are like weapons dangerous to the unpractised wielder. Rightly handled, they are the most precious and potent in God's armoury.
One drop of true knowledge can create a revolution if it falls into a world of ignorance. 5 June 1970 Page - 362 538 − The obstinate pertinacity with which we cling to our meagre, fragmentary, night-besieged and grief-besieged individual existence even while the unbroken bliss of our universal life calls to us, is one of the most amazing of God's mysteries. It is only equalled by the infinite blindness with which we cast a shadow of our ego over the whole world and call that the universal being. These two darknesses are the very essence and potency of Maya.
Until, tired of the ignorance and stupidity of the ego, we lay ourselves at the feet of the Lord and ask Him to become the sole master. 6 June 1970
539 − Atheism is the shadow or dark side of the highest perception of God. Every formula we frame about God, though always true as a symbol, becomes false when we accept it as a sufficient formula. The Atheist and Agnostic come to remind us of our error.
540 − God's negations are as useful to us as His affirmations. It is He who as the Atheist denies His own existence for the better perfecting of human knowledge. It is not enough to see God in Christ and Ramakrishna and hear His words, we must see Him and hear Him also in Huxley and Haeckel.
All mental ways of knowing the Divine are incomplete and insufficient, even if we accept them all. Only a knowledge that is lived can give us a glimpse of the truth. 7 June 1970 Page - 363 541 − Canst thou see God in thy torturer and slayer even in thy moment of death or thy hours of torture? Canst thou see Him in that which thou art slaying, see and love even while thou slayest? Thou hast thy hand on the supreme knowledge. How shall he attain to Krishna who has never worshipped Kali?
All is the Divine and the Divine alone exists. 8 June 1970 Page - 364 |