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                                Thoughts and Glimpses
                                =====================
by Sri Aurobindo


Aphorisms
---------
The Goal
Delight of Being
Man, The Purusha
The End
The Chain

Thoughts and Glimpses
---------------------
Thoughts and Glimpses


                        The Goal
                        --------

    When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge.
    Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar.

    When we have passed beyond willings, then we shall have Power.
    Effort was the helper; Effort is the bar.

    When we have passed beyond enjoyings, then we shall have Bliss.
    Desire was the helper; Desire is the bar.

    When we have passed beyond individualising, then we shall be real
    persons. Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar.

    When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man. The
    Animal was the helper; Animal is the bar.

    Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light.
    This is thy goal.

    Transform effort into an even and sovereign overflowing of the
    soul-strength; let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy
    goal.

    Transform enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy; let all
    thyself be bliss. This is thy goal.

    Transform the divided individual into the world-personality; let
    all thyself be divine. This is thy goal.

    Transform the animal into the Driver of the herds; let all thyself
    be Krishna. This is thy goal.

                                *
                               * *

    What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. The
    sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities.
    Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility,
    therefore the Eternal created it out of His being.

    Impossibility is only the sum of greater unrealised possibilities.
    It veils an advanced stage and a yet unaccomplished journey.

    If thou wouldst have humanity advance, buffet all preconceived
    ideas. Thought thus smitten awakes and becomes creative. Otherwise
    it rests in a mechanical repetition and mistakes that for its
    right activity.

    To rotate on its own axis is not the one movement for the human
    soul. There is also its wheeling round the Sun of an inexhaustible
    illumination.

    Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. All
    living thought is a world in preparation; all real act is a
    thought manifested. The material world exists, because an Idea
    began to play in divine self-consciousness.

    Thought is not essential to existence nor its cause, but it is an
    instrument for becoming; I become what I see in myself. All that
    thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me,
    I can become. This should be man's unshakable faith in himself,
    because God dwells in him.

    Not to go on for ever repeating what man has already done is our
    work, but to arrive at new realisations and undreamed-of
    masteries. Time and soul and world are given us for our field,
    vision and hope and creative imagination stand for our prompters,
    will and thought and labour are our all-effective instruments.

    What is there that we have yet to accomplish? Love, for as yet we
    have only accomplished hatred and self-pleasing; Knowledge, for as
    yet we have only accomplished error and perception and conceiving;
    Bliss, for as yet we have only accomplished pleasure and pain and
    indifference; Power for as yet we have only accomplished weakness
    and effort and a defeated victory; Life, for as yet we have
    accomplished birth and growth and dying; Unity, for as yet we have
    accomplished war and association.

    In a word, godhead; to remake ourselves in the divine image.



                        Delight of Being
                        ----------------

    If Brahman were only an impersonal abstraction eternally contradicting
    the apparent fact of our concrete existence, cessation would be
    the right end of matter; but love and delight and self-awareness
    have also to be reckoned.

    The universe is not merely a mathematical formula for working out
    the relation of certain mental abstractions called numbers and
    principles to arrive in the end at a zero or a void unit, neither
    it is merely a physical operation embodying a certain equation of
    forces. It is the delight of a Self-lover, the play of a Child,
    the endless self-multiplication of a Poet intoxicated with the
    rapture of His own power of a endless creation.

    We may speak of the Supreme as if He were a mathematician working
    out a cosmic sum in numbers or a thinker resolving by experiment a
    problem in relations of principles and the balance of forces : but
    also we should speak of Him as if He were a lover, a musician of
    universal and particular harmonies, a child, a poet. The side of
    thought is not enough; the side of delight too must be entirely
    grasped : Ideas, Forces, Existences, Principles are hollow moulds
    unless they are filled with the breath of God's delight.

    These things are images, but all is an image. Abstractions give us
    the pure conception of God's truths; images give us their living
    reality.

    If Idea embracing Force begot the worlds, Delight of Being begot
    the Idea. Because the infinite conceived an innumerable delight in
    itself, therefore worlds and universes came into existence.

    Consciousness of being and Delight of being are the first
    parents. Also, they are the last transcendences. Unconsciousness
    is only an intermediate swoon of the conscious or its obscure
    sleep; pain and self-extinction are only delight of being running
    away from itself in order to find itself elsewhere or otherwise.

    Delight of being is not limited in Time; it is without end or
    beginning. God comes out from one form of things only to enter
    into another.

    What is God after all? An eternal child playing an eternal game in
    an eternal garden.


                        Man, The Purusha
                        ----------------

    God cannot cease from leaning down towards Nature, nor man from
    aspiring towards the Godhead. It is the eternal relation of the
    finite to the infinite. When they seem to turn from each other, it
    is to recoil for a more intimate meeting.

    In man nature of the world becomes again self-conscious so that it
    may take the greater leap towards its Enjoyer. This is the Enjoyer
    whom unknowingly it possesses, whom life and sensation possessing
    deny and denying seek. Nature of the world knows not God, only because
    it knows not itself; when it knows itself, it shall know unalloyed
    delight of being.

    Possession in oneness and not loss in oneness is the secret. God
    and Man, World and Beyond-world become one when they know each
    other. Their division is the cause of ignorance as ignorance is
    the cause of suffering.

    Man seeks at first blindly and does not even know that he is
    seeking his divine self; for he starts from the obscurity of
    material Nature and even when he begins to see, he is long blinded
    by the light that is increasing in him. God too answers obscurely
    to his search; He seeks and enjoys man's blindness like the hands
    of a little child that grope after its mother.

    God and Nature are like a boy and a girl at play and in love. They
    hide and run from each other when glimpsed so that they may be
    sought after and chased and captured.

    Man is God hiding in himself from Nature so that he may possess
    her by struggle, insistence, violence and surprise. God is
    universal and transcendent Man hiding himself from his own
    individuality in the human being.

    The animal is Man disguised in a hairy skin and upon four legs;
    the worm is Man writhing and crawling towards the evolution of his
    Manhood. Even crude forms of Matter are Man in his inchoate body.
    All things are Man, the Purusha.

    For what do we mean by Man? An uncreated and indestructible soul
    that has housed itself in a mind and body made of its own
    elements.


                          The End
                          -------

    The meeting of man and God must always mean a penetration and
    entry of the Divine into the human and a self-immergence of man
    in the divinity.

    But that immergence is not in the nature of an annihilation.
    Extinction is not the fulfilment of all this search and passion,
    suffering and rapture. The game would never have begun if that
    were to be its ending.

    Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn
    of God.

    What then was the commencement of the whole matter? Existence that
    multiplied itself for pure delight of being plunged into
    numberless trillions of forms so that it might find itself
    innumerably.

    And what is the middle? Division that strives towards a multiple
    unity, ignorance that labours towards a flood of varied light,
    pain that travails towards the touch of an unimaginable ecstasy.
    For all these things are dark figures and perverse vibrations.

    And what is the end of the whole matter? As if honey could taste
    itself and all its drops together and all its drops could taste
    each other and each the whole honeycomb as itself, so should the
    end be with God and the soul of man and the universe.

    Love is the key-note, Joy is the music, Power is the strain,
    Knowledge is the performer, the infinite the all composer and
    audience. We only know preliminary discords which are as fierce as
    the harmony shall be great; but we shall arrive surely at the
    fugue of the divine Beatitudes.


                        The Chain
                        ---------

    The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love
    with his chains;  this is the first paradox  and inextricable knot
    of our nature.

      Man is in  love with the bonds of birth;  therefore he is caught
    in the companion bonds of  death. In these chains he aspires after
    freedom of his being and mastery of his self-fulfilment.

      Man  is  in  love  with  power; therefore  he  is  subjected  to
    weakness.  For the world is a sea  of waves of force that meet and
    continually fling themselves  on each other; he who  would ride on
    the crest of one wave, must faint under the shock of hundreds.

      Man is in love with pleasure; therefore he must undergo the yoke
    of grief  and pain. For unmixed delight  is only for the  free and
    passionless soul; but that which  pursues after pleasure in man is
    a suffering and straining energy.

      Man hungers after calm, but  he thirsts also for the experiences
    of a restless mind and a  troubled heart. Enjoyment is to his mind
    a fever, calm an inertia and a monotony.

      Man is in  love with the limitations of his  physical being, yet
    he would have  also the freedom of his infinite  mind and immortal
    soul.

      And  in  these  contrasts  something  in  him  finds  a  curious
    attraction; they constitute  for his mental being  the artistry of
    life. It is not only the nectar  but the poison also that attracts
    his taste and his curiosity.

                                *
                               * *

      In  all these  things  there  is a  meaning  and  for all  these
    contradictions there  is a release. Nature  has a method  in every
    madness  of her  combinings and  for her  most inextricable  knots
    there is a solution.

      Death is  the question Nature  puts continually to Life  and her
    reminder to it that it has  not yet found itself. If there were no
    siege of death, the creature would be bound forever in the form of
    an imperfect  living. Pursued by  death he awakes  to the  idea of
    perfect life and seeks out its means and its possibility.

      Weakness puts  the same test  and question to the  strengths and
    energies and greatnesses  in which we glory. Power is  the play of
    life,  shows  its  degree,  finds the  value  of  its  expression;
    weakness is  the play of death  pursuing life in its  movement and
    stressing the limit of its acquired energy.

     Pain  and  grief are  Nature's  reminder  to  the soul  that  the
   pleasure it  enjoys is only  a feeble hint  of the real  delight of
   existence. In each pain and torture of our being is the secret of a
   flame of  rapture compared  with which  our greatest  pleasures are
   only  as  dim  flickerings. It  is  this  secret  which  forms  the
   attraction for the soul of the great ordeals, sufferings and fierce
   experiences of life which the nervous mind in us shuns and abhors.

     The restlessness and early exhaustion of our active being and its
   instruments are Nature's sign that  calm is our true foundation and
   excitement a  disease of  the soul; the  sterility and  monotony of
   mere calm  is her  hint that  play of the  activities on  that firm
   foundation is  what she requires of  us. God plays for ever  and is
   not troubled.

     The limitations  of the body are  a mould; soul and  mind have to
   pour themselves into  them, break them and  constantly remould them
   in wider limits till the formula of agreement is found between this
   finite and their own infinity.

     Freedom  is the  law of  being in  its illimitable  unity, secret
   master of  all Nature: servitude  is the law  of love in  the being
   voluntarily giving itself to serve the  play of its other selves in
   the multiplicity.

     It is when freedom works in chains and servitude becomes a law of
   Force, not of Love, that the true nature of things is distorted and
   a falsehood governs the soul's dealings with existence.

     Nature  starts  with  this  distortion and  plays  with  all  the
   combinations to  which it can lead  before she will allow  it to be
   righted.   Afterwards  she gathers  up  all  the essence  of  these
   combinations into a new and rich harmony of love and freedom.

     Freedom comes  by a unity  without limits;  for that is  our real
   being. We may gain  the essence of this unity in  ourselves; we may
   realise  the play  of it  in  oneness with  all others. The  double
   experience is the complete intention of the soul in Nature.

     Having  realised  infinite  unity  in  ourselves,  then  to  give
   ourselves to the world is utter freedom and absolute empire.

     Infinite, we are free from death; for life then becomes a play of
   our immortal existence. We  are free from weakness; for  we are the
   whole sea enjoying the myriad shock  of its waves. We are free from
   grief and  pain; for we learn  how to harmonise our  being with all
   that touches  it and to find  in all things action  and reaction of
   delight of  existence. We are  free from  limitation; for  the body
   becomes a  plaything of the  infinite mind  and learns to  obey the
   will  of the  immortal  soul. We are  free from  the  fever of  the
   nervous mind and the heart, yet are not bound to immobility.

     Immortality, unity and  freedom are in ourselves  and await there
   our discovery; but for the joy of  love God in us will still remain
   in the many.


                        Thoughts and Glimpses
                        ---------------------
        Some think it presumption to believe in a special Providence
    or to look upon oneself as an instrument in the hands of God, but I
    find that every man has a special Providence and I see that God
    uses the mattock of the labourer and babbles in the mouth of a
    little child.

         Providence is not only that which saves me from the shipwreck
    in which everybody else has foundered. Providence is also that
    which, while all others are saved, snatches away my last plank of
    safety and drowns me in the solitary ocean.

        The delight of victory is sometimes less than the attraction
    of struggle and suffering; nevertheless the laurel and not the
    cross  should be the aim of the conquering human soul.

        Souls that do not aspire are God's failures; but Nature is
    pleased and loves to multiply them because they assure her of
    stability and prolong her empire.

        Those who are poor, ignorant, ill-born or ill-bred are not the
    common herd; the common herd are all who are satisfied with
    pettiness and an average humanity.

        Help men, but do not pauperise them of their energy; lead and
    instruct men, but see that their initiative and originality remain
    intact; take others into thyself, but give them in return the full
    godhead of their nature. He who can do this is the leader and the
    *guru*.

        God has made the world a field of battle and filled it with
    the trampling of combatants and the cries of a great wrestle and
    struggle. Would you filch His peace without paying the price He
    has fixed for it?

        Distrust a perfect-seeming success, but when having succeeded
    thou findest still much to do, rejoice and go forward; for the
    labour is long before the real perfection.

        There is no more benumbing error that to mistake a stage for
    the goal or to linger too long in a resting place.

                                *


        Wherever thou seest a grand end, be sure of a great
    beginning. Where a monstrous and painful destruction appals thy
    mind, console it with the certainty of a large and great creation.
    God is there not only in the still small voice, but in the fire
    and in the whirlwind.

        The greater the destruction, the freer the chances of
    creation; but the destruction is often long, slow and oppressive,
    the creation tardy in its coming or interrupted in its triumph.
    The night returns again and again and the day lingers or seems
    even to have been a false dawning. Despair not therefore but watch
    and work. Those who hope violently, despair swiftly: neither hope
    nor fear, but be sure of God's purpose and thy will to accomplish.

        The hand of the divine Artist works often as if it were unsure
    of its genius and its material. It seems to touch and test and
    leave, to pick up and throw away and pick up again, to labour and
    fail and botch and re-piece together. Surprises and
    disappointments are the order of his work before all things are
    ready. What was selected, is cast away into the abyss of
    reprobation; what was rejected, becomes the cornerstone of mighty
    edifice. But behind all this is the sure eye of a knowledge which
    surpasses our reason and the slow smile of an infinite ability.

        God has all time before him and  does not need to be always in
    a hurry. He  is sure of  his aim and success  and cares not  if he
    break  his work  a hundred  times to  bring it  nearer perfection.
    Patience is our first necessary  lesson, but not the dull slowness
    to move of the timid, the  sceptical, the weary, the slothful, the
    unambitious  or  the weakling;  a  patience  full  of a  calm  and
    gathering strength which watches and  prepares itself for the hour
    of swift great strokes, few but enough to change destiny.

        Wherefore God hammers  so fiercely at his  world, tramples and
    kneads it  like dough, casts it  so often into the  blood-bath and
    the red hell-heat of the  furnace? Because humanity in the mass is
    still  a hard,  crude and  vile ore  which will  not otherwise  be
    smelted and shaped;  as is his material, so is  his method. Let it
    help to transmute  itself into a nobler and purer  metal, his ways
    with it will  be gentler and sweeter, much loftier  and fairer its
    uses.

        Wherefore he selected or made such a material, when he had all
    infinite possibility  to choose  from? Because of his  divine Idea
    which saw it  before it not only beauty and  sweetness and purity,
    but also force and will  and greatness. Despise not force, not hate
    it for the ugliness of some of its faces, nor think that love only
    is God. All  perfect perfection must  have something in it  of the
    stuff of the hero and even of the Titan. But the greatest force is
    born out of the greatest difficulty.

                                                 *
                                                * *

All would change if man could once consent to be spiritualised; but his
nature mental and vital and physical is rebellious to the higher law. He
loves his imperfections.

The Spirit is the truth of our being; mind and life and body in their
imperfection are its masks, but in their perfection should be its moulds.
To be spiritual only is not enough; that prepares a number of souls for
heaven, but leaves the earth very much where it was. Neither is a
compromise the way of salvation.

The world knows three kinds of revolution. The material has strong
results, the moral and intellectual are infinitely larger in their scope and
richer in their fruits, but the spiritual are the great sowings.

If the triple change could coincide in a perfect correspondence, a
faultless work would be done; but the mind and body of mankind
cannot hold perfectly a strong spiritual inrush: most is spilt, much of the
rest is corrupted. Many intellectual and physical upturnings of our soil
are needed to work out a little result from a large spiritual sowing.

Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light
of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided
perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and
charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler,
purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and
zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and
profoundest spiritual possibilities. A great thing would be done if all
these God-visions could embrace and cast themselves into each other;
but intellectual dogma and cult egoism stand in the way.

All religions have saved a number of souls, but none yet has been able
to spiritualise mankind. For that there is needed not cult and creed, but
a sustained and all-comprehending effort at spiritual self-evolution.

The changes we see in the world today are intellectual, moral, physical
in their ideal and intention: the spiritual revolution waits for its hour and
throws up meanwhile its waves here and there. Until it comes the
sense of the others cannot be understood and till then all interpretation
of present happening and forecast of man's future are vain things. For
its nature, power, event are that which will determine the next cycle of
our humanity.
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