January 4, 2017 – Preconceived ideas

His brain was wrapped in overwhelming light,
An all-embracing knowledge seized his heart:
Thoughts rose in him no earthly mind can hold,
Mights played that never coursed through mortal nerves:
He scanned the secrets of the Overmind,
He bore the rapture of the Oversoul.
A borderer of the empire of the Sun,
Attuned to the supernal harmonies,
He linked creation to the Eternal’s sphere.
His finite parts approached their absolutes,
His actions framed the movements of the Gods,
His will took up the reins of cosmic Force.

Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book II, Canto XV, page 302

Preconceived ideas

The best one can do is not to take sides, not to have preconceived ideas or principles – Oh! The moral principles, the set rules of conduct, what one must do and what one must not and the preconceived ideas from the moral point of view, from the point of view of progress, and all the social and mental conventions… no worse obstacle than that. There are people, I know people who have lost decades in surmounting one such mental construction!…

If one can be like that, open — truly open in a simplicity, well, the simplicity that knows that it is ignorant — like that (gesture upward, of self-abandon), ready to receive whatever comes. Then something can happen.

And naturally, the thirst for progress, the thirst for knowledge, the thirst for transformation and, above all, the thirst for Love and Truth — if one keeps that, one goes quicker. Truly a thirst, a need, a need.

All the rest has no importance; it is that one has need of.

The Mother

The Sunlit Path, page 214