Men are still in love with grief;
when they see one who is too high for grief or joy,
they curse him and cry,
“O thou insensible!”
Therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 36)

Spiritual Life and Morality

The spiritual life, the life of Yoga, has for its object to grow into the divine consciousness and for its result to purify, intensify, glorify and perfect what is in you. It makes you a power for manifesting the Divine; it raises the character of each personality to its full value and brings it to its maximum expression; for this is part of the Divine plan. Morality proceeds by a mental construction and, with a few ideas of what is good and what is not, sets up an ideal type into which all must force themselves… The spiritual life reveals the one essence in all, but reveals too its infinite diversity; it works for diversity in oneness and for perfection in that diversity. Morality lifts up one artificial standard contrary to the variety of life and the freedom of the spirit. Creating something mental, fixed and limited, it asks all to conform to it. All must labour to acquire the same qualities and the same ideal nature. Morality is not divine or of the Divine; it is of man and human.

The Mother

The Great Adventure, P 27

The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Himself;
but is the Theist any other ? Well, perhaps;
for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 33)

Religion and True Spiritual Life

Religion exists almost exclusively in its forms, its cults, in a certain set of ideas, and it becomes great only through the spirituality of a few exceptional individuals, whereas true spiritual life, and above all what the supramental realisation will be, is independent of every precise, intellectual form, every limited form of life. It embraces all possibilities and manifestations and makes them the expression, the vehicle of a higher and more universal truth.

A new religion would not only be useless but very harmful. It is a new life which must be created; it is a new consciousness which must be expressed. This is something beyond intellectual limits and mental formulae. It is a living truth which must manifest.

Everything in its essence and its truth should be included in this realisation. This realisation must be an expression as total, as complete, as universal as possible of the divine reality. Only that can save humanity and the world.

The Mother

The Great Adventure, P 23

I have forgotten what vice is and what virtue;
I can only see God,
His play in the world and His will in humanity.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 30)

Yoga and Religion

Imagine someone who, in some way or other, has heard of something like the Divine or has a personal feeling that something of the kind exists, and begins to make all sorts of efforts: efforts of will, of discipline, efforts of concentration, all sorts of efforts to find this Divine, to discover what He is, to become acquainted with Him and unite with Him. Then this person is doing yoga.

Now, if this person has noted down all the processes he has used and constructs a fixed system, and sets up all that he has discovered as absolute laws,- for example, he says: the Divine is like this, to find the Divine you must do this, make this particular gesture, take this attitude, perform this ceremony, and you must admit that this is the truth, you must say, “I accept that this is the Truth and I fully adhere to it; and your method is the only right one, the only one which exists”- if all that is written down, organised, arranged into fixed laws and ceremonies, it becomes a religion.

The Mother

The Great Adventure, P 21

One called Napoleon a tyrant and imperial cut-throat;
but I saw God armed striding through Europe.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 29)

Keep the Will Firm

What is the way to establish unity and homogeneity in our being?

Keep the will firm. Treat the recalcitrant parts as disobedient children. Act upon them constantly and patiently. Convince them of their error.

In the depths of your consciousness is the psychic being, the temple of the Divine within you. This is the centre round which should come about the unification of all these divergent parts, all these contradictory movements of your being. Once you have got the consciousness of the psychic being and its aspiration, these doubts and difficulties can be destroyed. It takes more or less time, but you will surely succeed in the end. Once you have turned to the Divine, saying, “I want to be yours”, and the Divine has said, “Yes”, the whole world cannot keep you from it. When the central being has made its surrender, the chief difficulty has disappeared. The outer being is like a crust. In ordinary people the crust is so hard and thick that they are not conscious of the Divine within them. If once, even for a moment only, the inner being has said, “I am here and I am yours”, then it is as though a bridge has been built and little by little the crust becomes thinner and thinner until the two parts are wholly joined and the inner and the outer become one.

The Mother

CWM Vol 3, page 7

God is a great and cruel Torturer because He loves.
You do not understand this,
because you have not seen and played with Krishna.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 28)

The Greatest Obstacle: Hypocrisy

Now I am addressing parents and teachers, for it is very important to teach children that it is absolutely useless to ‘look’ as if they were good, to ‘look’ as if they were obedient, to ‘look’ as if they were studying well, etc. Very often, the course parents and teachers adopt with their children is to encourage them to ‘look as if’. It often happens that if a child spontaneously confesses his mistake, he is given a scolding. This is one of the greatest mistakes of parents. You must have sufficient control over yourself never to scold a child, even if he has broken a very valuable and cherished object. You should simply ask him, ‘How did you do that?’ ‘What happened?’ For the child ought to see why it happened, so that he can be more careful next time. But that is all. In this way you will get the child to be sincere with you instead of trying to deceive you.

The greatest obstacle to the transformation of one’s own character is hypocrisy. If you always keep this in mind when dealing with a child, you can do him a lot of good.

The Mother

The Great Adventure pg 14

Sir Philip Sidney said of the criminal led out to be hanged,
“There, but for the grace of God,
goes Sir Philip Sidney.” Wiser, had he said,
“There, by the grace of God,
goes Sir Philip Sidney.”

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 27)

A Very Difficult Art

If, when you were quite small, your parents or those who look after you, took the trouble to teach you how to do what you do, do it properly as it should be done, in the right way, then that would help you to avoid all- all these mistakes you make through the years. And not only do you make mistakes, but nobody tells you they are mistakes! And so you are surprised that you fall ill, are tired, don’t know how to do what you want to, and that you have never been taught. Some children are not taught anything, and so they need years and years and years to learn the simplest things, even the most elementary thing: to be clean…

To live in the right way is a very difficult art, and unless one begins to learn it when quite young and to make an effort, one never knows it very well. Simply the art of keeping one’s body in good health, one’s mind quiet and goodwill in one’s heart- things which are indispensable in order to live decently- I don’t say in comfort, I don’t say remarkably, I only say decently.

The Mother

The Great Adventure pg 7

When I see others suffer,
I feel that I am unfortunate,
but the wisdom that is not mine,
sees the good that is coming and approves

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 26)

We are here to learn

Essentially there is but one single true reason for living: it is to know oneself. We are here to learn- to learn what we are, why we are here, and what we have to do. And if we don’t know that, our life is altogether empty- for ourselves and for others.

And so, generally, it is better to begin early for there is much to learn. If one wants to learn about life as it is, the world as it is, and then really know the why and how of life, one can begin when very young, from the time one is very, very tiny- before the age of five. And then, when one is a hundred, he will still be able to learn. So it is interesting. And all the time one can have surprises, always learn something one didn’t know, meet with an experience one did not have before, find something one was ignorant of. It is surely very interesting. And the more one knows, the more aware does one become that one has everything to learn. Truly, I could say that only fools believe they know. That indeed is a sure sign, someone coming and telling you, “Oh! I know all that; oh! I know all that”; he is immediately sized up!

The Mother

The Great Adventure pg 5

When I had the dividing reason,
I shrank from many things;
after I had lost it in sight,
I hunted through the world for the ugly and the repellent,
but I could no longer find them.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 20)

An Exceptional Hour

People sleep, they forget, they take life easy – they forget, forget all the time….

But if we could remember…. That we are at an exceptional hour, a unique time, that we have this immense good fortune, this invaluable privilege of being present at the birth of a new world, we could easily get rid of everything that impedes and hinders our progress.

So, the most important thing, it seems, is to remember this fact; even when one doesn’t have the tangible experience, to have the certainty of it and faith in it; to remember always, to recall it constantly, to go to sleep with this idea, to wake up with this perception; to do all that one does with this great truth as the background, as a constant support, this great truth that we are witnessing the birth of a new world.

We can participate in it, we can become this new world. And truly, when one has such a marvellous opportunity, one should be ready to give up everything for its sake.

The Mother

The Great Adventure pg 4

When I had the dividing reason,
I shrank from many things;
after I had lost it in sight,
I hunted through the world for the ugly and the repellent,
but I could no longer find them.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 20)

The Silence behind Life

There is a silence behind life as well as within it and it is only in this more secret, sustaining silence that we can hear clearly the voice of God. In the noise of the world we hear only altered & disturbed echoes of it; for the Voice comes always who else speaks to us on our journey? -but the gods of the heart, the gods of the mind, the gods of desire, the gods of sense take up the divine cry, intercept it and alter it for their purposes. Krishna calls to us, but the first note, even the opening power or sweetness, awakes a very brouhaha of these echoes .It is not the fault of these poor gods. The accent of power is so desirable, the note of sweetness is so captivating that they must seize it, they would be dull & soulless, there would be no hope of their redemption if they did not at once leap at it and make it their own. But in becoming their own, it ceases to be entirely his. How many who have the religious faith and the religious temperament, are following the impulses of their heart, the cravings of their desire, the urgency of their senses, the dictates of their opinion when they fully imagine that their God is leading them! And they do well, for God is leading them. It is the way He has chosen for them, & since He has chosen it, it is the best & wisest & most fruitful way for them. Still it is their God not one they have made in their own image as the Atheist believes, but One who makes Himself in the image that they prefer, the image that best suits with their nature or their development. “In whatever way men come to me, in that way I love & cleave to them.” It is a saying of fathomless depth which contains the seed of the whole truth about God & religion. After all it is only in this way that the conditioned can meet the Absolute, that which has a nature or dharma of its own with that which is beyond all limit of nature or dharma. After the meeting of the soul with God, – well, that The Silence behind Life is a different matter. The secrets of His nuptial chamber cannot all be spoken. Nevertheless, there is a higher way of meeting him than that which leads us through subjection to the Gods. By perfect Love, by perfect Joy, by perfect Satisfaction, by perfected mind one can hear what the Voice truly says if not the Voice itself,-catch the kernel of the message with a sort of ecstatic perfection, even if afterwards the Gods dilate on it & by attempting to amplify & complete, load it with false corollaries or prevent some greater fullness of truth from arriving to us. Therefore this way also, though it is high, cannot be the highest.

Sri Aurobindo

SABCL Vol. 12 pages 88-89

Someone was laying it down that God must be this or
that or He would not be God.
But it seemed to me that I can only know what God is
and I do not see how I can tell Him what He ought to be.
For what is the standard by which we can judge Him?
These judgments are the follies of our egoism.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 18)

True Sincerity

When you are absolutely sincere, you make a constant effort to live in harmony with the highest ideal of your being, the truth of your being. At every moment, in all that you think, all that you feel and all that you do, you try as perfectly as possible, as completely as possible, to put yourself in harmony with the highest ideal or, if you are conscious of it, with the truth of your being—then you have reached true sincerity. And if you are like that, if truly you do not act from egoistic motives or for personal reasons, if you act guided by your inner truth, that is, if you are perfectly sincere, it is absolutely the same to you whether the whole world judges you in one way or another. In this state of perfect sincerity you do not need to appear good or to be approved by others, for the first thing you experience when you are in harmony with your true consciousness is that you do not care what you look like. Whether you look like this or like that, whether you seem indifferent, cold, distant, proud, all this is of no importance; provided, I repeat this, you are absolutely sincere, that is, you never forget that you live in order to realise your inner, central truth.

The Mother

CWM Vol. 4 Page 17