July 19, 2017 – Activities should be an offering to the Divine

A being stood immortal in transience,
Deathless dallying with momentary things,
In whose wide eyes of tranquil happiness
Which pity and sorrow could not abrogate
Infinity turned its gaze on finite shapes:
Observer of the silent steps of the hours,
Eternity upheld the minute’s acts
And the passing scenes of the Everlasting’s play.
In the mystery of its selecting will,
In the Divine Comedy a participant,
The Spirit’s conscious representative,
God’s delegate in our humanity,
Comrade of the universe, the Transcendent’s ray,
She had come into the mortal body’s room
To play at ball with Time and Circumstance.
A joy in the world her master movement here,
The passion of the game lighted her eyes:
A smile on her lips welcomed earth’s bliss and grief,
A laugh was her return to pleasure and pain.

Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book VII, Canto V, page 526

Activities should be an offering to the Divine

Sweet Mother,

You have often told us that our activities should be an offering to the Divine. What does this mean exactly, and how can it be done? For instance, when we play tennis or basketball, how can we do it as an offering? Mental formations are not enough, of course!

It means that what you do should not be done with a personal, egoistic aim, for success, for glory, for gain, for material profit or out of pride, but as a service and an offering, in order to become more conscious of the divine will and to give yourself more entirely to it, until you have made enough progress to know and to feel that it is the Divine who acts in you, His force that impels you and His will that supports you — not just a mental knowledge, but the sincerity of a state of consciousness and the power of a living experience.

For that to be possible, all egoistic motives and all egoistic reactions must disappear.

The Mother

from Some Answers from the Mother, (vol. 16) pages 267 – 268

All extracts and quotations from the written works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are copyright Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry -605002 India
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