{"id":4045,"date":"2013-07-13T01:53:03","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=4045"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:53:03","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:53:03","slug":"09-2-june-1929-vol-03-questions-and-answers-volume-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/02-works-of-the-mother\/01-cwmce\/03-questions-and-answers-volume-03\/09-2-june-1929-vol-03-questions-and-answers-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-09_2 June 1929.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n


\n2 June
\n 1929<\/font><\/span><\/i><\/b>
\n<\/font>
\n<\/i>
\n<\/b>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

What
\nis the relation of human love to Divine love? Is the human an obstacle to the
\nDivine love? Or is not rather the capacity for human love an index to the
\ncapacity for Divine love? Have not great spiritual figures, such as Christ,
\nRamakrishna and Vivekananda, been remarkably loving and affectionate by nature?
\n<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Love is one of the great universal forces; it exists by itself and
\nits movement is free and independent of the objects in which and through which
\nit manifests. It manifests wherever it finds a possibility for manifestation,
\nwherever there is receptivity, wherever there is some opening for it. What you
\ncall love and think of as a personal or individual thing is only your capacity
\nto receive and manifest this universal force. But because it is universal, it
\nis not therefore an unconscious force; it is a supremely conscious Power.
\nConsciously it seeks for its manifestation and realisation upon earth;
\nconsciously it chooses its instruments, awakens to its vibrations those who are
\ncapable of an answer, endeavours to realise in them that which is its eternal
\naim, and when the instrument is not fit, drops it and turns to look for others.
\nMen think that they have suddenly fallen in love; they see their love come and
\ngrow and then it fades \u2013 or, it may be, endures a little longer in some who are
\nmore specially fitted for its more lasting movement. But their sense in this of
\na personal experience all their own was an illusion. It was a wave from the
\neverlasting sea of universal love. <\/span><\/p>\n

Love is universal and eternal; it is
\nalways manifesting itself and always identical in its essence. And it is a
\nDivine Force; for the distortions we see in its apparent workings belong to its
\ninstruments. Love does not manifest in human beings alone; it is everywhere.
\nIts movement is there in plants, perhaps in the <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 69<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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very stones; in the animals it is easy to detect its presence. All
\nthe deformations of this great and divine Power come from the obscurity and
\nignorance and selfishness of the limited instrument. Love, the eternal force,
\nhas no clinging, no desire, no hunger for possession, no self-regarding
\nattachment; it is, in its pure movement, the seeking for union of the self with
\nthe Divine, a seeking absolute and regardless of all other things. Love divine
\ngives itself and asks for nothing. What human beings have made of it, we do not
\nneed to say; they have turned it into an ugly and repulsive thing. And yet even
\nin human beings the first contact of love does bring down something of its
\npurer substance; they become capable for a moment of forgetting themselves, for
\na moment its divine touch awakens and magnifies all that is fine and beautiful.
\nBut afterwards there comes to the surface the human nature, full of its impure
\ndemands, asking for something in exchange, bartering what it gives, clamouring
\nfor its own inferior satisfactions, distorting and soiling what was divine. <\/span><\/p>\n

To manifest the Divine love you must be
\ncapable of receiving the Divine love. For only those can manifest it who are by
\ntheir nature open to its native movement. The wider and clearer the opening in
\nthem, the more they manifest love divine in its original purity; the more it is
\nmixed with the lower human feelings, the greater is the deformation. One who is
\nnot open to love in its essence and in its truth cannot approach the Divine.
\nEven the seekers through knowledge come to a point beyond which if they want to
\ngo farther, they are bound to find themselves entering at the same time into
\nlove and to feel the two as one, knowledge the light of the divine union, love
\nthe very heart of knowledge. There is a place in the soul’s progress where they
\nmeet and you cannot distinguish one from the other. The division, the
\ndistinction between the two that you make in the beginning are a creation of the
\nmind: once you rise to a higher level, they disappear. <\/span><\/p>\n

Among those who have come into this world
\nseeking to reveal the Divine here and transform earthly life, there are some <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 70<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

who have manifested the Divine love in a greater fullness. In some
\nthe purity of the manifestation is so great that they are misunderstood by the
\nwhole of humanity and are even accused of being hard and unloving, although the
\nDivine love is there. But it is in them divine and not human in its form as in
\nits substance. For when man speaks of love, he associates it with an emotional
\nand sentimental weakness. But the divine intensity of self-forgetfulness, the
\ncapacity of throwing oneself out entirely, making no restriction and no
\nreservation, as a gift, asking nothing in exchange, this is little known to
\nhuman beings. And when it is there unmixed with weak and sentimental emotions,
\nthey find it hard and cold; they cannot recognise in it the very highest and
\nintensest power of love. <\/span><\/p>\n

The manifestation of the love of the Divine
\nin the world was the great holocaust, the supreme self-giving. The Perfect
\nConsciousness accepted to be merged and absorbed into the unconsciousness of
\nmatter, so that consciousness might be awakened in the depths of its obscurity
\nand little by little a Divine Power might rise in it and make the whole of this
\nmanifested universe a highest expression of the Divine Consciousness and the
\nDivine love. This was the supreme love, to accept the loss of the perfect
\ncondition of supreme divinity, its absolute consciousness, its infinite
\nknowledge, to unite with unconsciousness, to dwell in the world with ignorance
\nand darkness. And yet none perhaps would call it love; for it does not clothe
\nitself in a superficial sentiment, it makes no demand in exchange for what it
\nhas done, no show of its sacrifice. The force of love in the world is trying to
\nfind consciousnesses that are capable of receiving this divine movement in its
\npurity and expressing it. This race of all beings towards love, this
\nirresistible push and seeking out in the world’s heart and in all hearts, is
\nthe impulse given by a Divine love behind the human longing and seeking. It
\ntouches millions of instruments, trying always, always failing; but this
\nconstant touch prepares these instruments and suddenly one day there will awake
\nin them the capacity of self-giving, the capacity of loving.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 71<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

The movement of love is not limited to
\nhuman beings and it is perhaps less distorted in other worlds than in the
\nhuman. Look at the flowers and trees. When the sun sets and all becomes silent,
\nsit down for a moment and put yourself into communion with Nature: you will
\nfeel rising from the earth, from below the roots of the trees and mounting
\nupward and coursing through their fibres up to the highest outstretching
\nbranches, the aspiration of an intense love and longing, \u2013 a longing for
\nsomething that brings light and gives happiness, for the light that is gone and
\nthey wish to have back again. There is a yearning so pure and intense that if you
\ncan feel the movement in the trees, your own being too will go up in an ardent
\nprayer for the peace and light and love that are unmanifested here. Once you
\nhave come in contact with this large, pure and true Divine love, if you have
\nfelt it even for a short time and in its smallest form, you will realise what
\nan abject thing human desire has made of it. It has become in human nature
\nsomething low, brutal, selfish, violent, ugly, or else it is something weak and
\nsentimental, made up of the pettiest feeling, brittle, superficial, exacting.
\nAnd this baseness and brutality or this self-regarding weakness they call love!
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Is
\nour vital being to take part in the Divine love? If it does, what is the right
\nand correct form of participation it should take? <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Where is the manifestation of Divine love intended to stop? Is it
\nto be confined to some unreal or immaterial region? Divine love plunges its
\nmanifestation upon earth down into the most material matter. It does not indeed
\nfind itself in the selfish distortions of the human consciousness; but the
\nvital in itself is as important an element in Divine love as it is in the whole
\nof the manifested universe. There is no possibility of movement and progress
\nwithout the mediation of the vital; but because this Power of Nature has been
\nso badly distorted, some prefer to
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 72<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

believe that it has to be pulled out altogether and thrown away.
\nBut it is only through the vital that matter can be touched by the transforming
\npower of the Spirit. If the vital is not there to infuse its dynamism and
\nliving force, matter will remain dead; for the higher parts of the being will
\nnot come into contact with earth, will not be concretised in life, and they
\nwill depart unsatisfied and disappear. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Divine love of which I speak is a Love
\nthat manifests here upon this physical earth, in matter, but it must be pure of
\nits human distortions, if it is to incarnate. The vital is an indispensable
\nagent in this as in all manifestation. But as has happened always, the adverse
\npowers have put their hold on this most precious thing. It is the energy of the
\nvital that enters into dull and insensitive matter and makes it responsive and
\nalive. But the adverse forces have distorted it; they have turned it into a
\nfield of violence and selfishness and desire and every kind of ugliness and
\nprevented it from taking part in the divine work. The one thing to be done is
\nto change it, not to suppress its movement or destroy it. For without it no
\nintensity is possible anywhere. The vital is in its very nature that in us
\nwhich can give itself away. Just because it is that which has always the
\nimpulse and the strength to take, it is also that which is capable of giving
\nitself to the utmost; because it knows how to possess, it knows also how to
\nabandon itself without reserve. The true vital movement is the most beautiful
\nand magnificent of movements; but it has been twisted and turned into the most
\nugly, the most distorted, the most repulsive. Wherever into a human story of
\nlove, there has entered even an atom of pure love and it has been allowed to
\nmanifest without too much distortion, we find a true and beautiful thing. And
\nif the movement does not last, it is because it is not conscious of its own aim
\nand seeking; it has not the knowledge that it is not the union of one being
\nwith another that it is seeking after but the union of all beings with the
\nDivine. <\/span><\/p>\n

Love is a supreme force which the Eternal
\nConsciousness <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 73<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

sent down from itself into an obscure and darkened world that it
\nmight bring back that world and its beings to the Divine. The material world in
\nits darkness and ignorance had forgotten the Divine. Love came into the
\ndarkness; it awakened all that lay there asleep; it whispered, opening the ears
\nthat were sealed, \u201cThere is something that is worth waking to, worth living
\nfor, and it is love!\u201d And with the awakening to love there entered into the
\nworld the possibility of coming back to the Divine. The creation moves upward
\nthrough love towards the Divine and in answer there leans downward to meet the
\ncreation the Divine Love and Grace. Love cannot exist in its pure beauty, love
\ncannot put on its native power and intense joy of fullness until there is this
\ninterchange, this fusion between the earth and the Supreme, this movement of
\nLove from the Divine to the creation and from the creation to the Divine. This
\nworld was a world of dead matter, till Divine love descended into it and
\nawakened it to life. Ever since it has gone in search of this divine source of
\nlife, but it has taken in its search every kind of wrong turn and mistaken way,
\nit has wandered hither and thither in the dark. The mass of this creation has
\nmoved on its road like the blind seeking for the unknown, seeking but ignorant
\nof what it sought. The maximum it has reached is what seems to human beings
\nlove in its highest form, its purest and most disinterested kind, like the love
\nof the mother for the child. This human movement of love is secretly seeking
\nfor something else than what it has yet found; but it does not know where to find
\nit, it does not even know what it is. The moment man’s consciousness awakens to
\nthe Divine love, pure, independent of all manifestation in human forms, he
\nknows for what his heart has all the time been truly longing. That is the
\nbeginning of the Soul’s aspiration, that brings the awakening of the
\nconsciousness and its yearning for union with the Divine. All the forms that
\nare of the ignorance, all the deformations it has imposed must from that moment
\nfade and disappear and give place to one single movement of the creation
\nanswering to the Divine love by its
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 74<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

love for the Divine. Once the creation is conscious, awakened,
\nopened to love for the Divine, the Divine love pours itself without limit back
\ninto the creation. The circle of the movement turns back upon itself and the
\nends meet; there is the joining of the extremes, supreme Spirit and manifesting
\nMatter, and their divine union becomes constant and complete. <\/span><\/p>\n

Great beings have taken birth in this
\nworld who came to bring down here something of the sovereign purity and power
\nof Divine love. The Divine love has thrown itself into a personal form in them
\nthat its realisation upon earth may be at once more easy and more perfect.
\nDivine love, when manifested in a personal being, is easier to realise; it is
\nmore difficult when it is unmanifested or impersonal in its movement. A human
\nbeing, awakened by this personal touch, with this personal intensity, to the
\nconsciousness of the Divine love, will find his work and change made more easy;
\nthe union for which he seeks becomes more natural and close. And the union, the
\nrealisation will become for him, too, more full, more perfect; for the wide
\nuniformity of a universal and impersonal Love will be lit up and vivified with
\nthe colour and beauty of all possible relations with the Divine.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 75<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t<\/font><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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