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Thoughts and Glimpses
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by Sri Aurobindo
Aphorisms
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The Goal
Delight of Being
Man, The Purusha
The End
The Chain
Thoughts and Glimpses
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Thoughts and Glimpses
The Goal
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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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