December 12, 2018 – How can one understand the Divine?

The inconscient cosmos strove to learn its task;

An ignorant personal God was born in Mind

And to understand invented reason’s law,

The impersonal Vast throbbed back to man’s desire,

A trouble rocked the great world’s blind still heart

And Nature lost her wide immortal calm.

Thus came this warped incomprehensible scene

Of souls emmeshed in life’s delight and pain

And Matter’s sleep and Mind’s mortality,

Of beings in Nature’s prison waiting death

And consciousness left in seeking ignorance

And evolution’s slow arrested plan.

Sri Aurobindo

Savitri, Book X, Canto II, pages 617-618

How can one understand the Divine?

Sweet Mother, here it is written: “There is one fundamental perception indispensable towards any integral knowledge…. It is to realise the Divine in its essential self and truth….” Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 106

How can one understand the Divine?

By becoming Him, my child. And that is the only way: by identity. As Sri Aurobindo says, “We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature.” It is because He is the very essence of our being that we can become Him and, consequently, understand Him; otherwise it would be quite impossible.

How can we find the Divine within ourselves?

Well, it is precisely what I have just said.

What do you mean exactly?… By what method?

First of all, you must begin to seek Him, and then that must be the most important thing in life. The will must be constant, the aspiration constant, the preoccupation constant, and it must be the only thing you truly want. Then you will find Him.

But of course, if in one’s life one thinks of Him for five minutes and is busy with other things for three-quarters of an hour, there is not much chance of success. Anyway, it will take many lifetimes.

It must not be a pastime. It must be the exclusive preoccupation of one’s being, the very reason of one’s existence.

The Mother

Questions and Answers 1956, CWM vol 8, page 94.

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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