January 20, 2009 – He Who Chooses the Infinite

That good is not our ethical virtue
which is a relative and erring light in the world;
it is supra-ethical and divine.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 547)

He Who Chooses the Infinite

The lotus of the eternal knowledge and the eternal perfection is a bud closed and folded up within us. It opens swiftly or gradually, petal by petal, through successive realisations, once the mind of man begins to turn towards the Eternal, once his heart, no longer compressed and confined by attachment to finite appearances, becomes enamoured, in whatever degree, of the Infinite. All life, all thought, all energising of the faculties, all experiences passive or active, become thenceforward so many shocks which disintegrate the teguments of the soul and remove the obstacles to the inevitable efflorescence. He who chooses the Infinite has been chosen by the Infinite. He has received the divine touch without which there is no awakening, no opening of the spirit; but once it is received, attainment is sure, whether conquered swiftly in the course of one human life or pursued patiently through many stadia of the cycle of existence in the manifested universe.

– Sri Aurobindo
SABCL Vol. 20 Page 47

*From “Living words compiled by A.S.Dalal