But the great obstinate world resists my Word,
And the crookedness and evil in man’s heart
Is stronger than Reason, profounder than the Pit,
And the malignancy of hostile Powers
Puts craftily back the clock of destiny
And mightier seems than the eternal Will.
The cosmic evil is too deep to unroot,
The cosmic suffering is too vast to heal.
A few I guide who pass me towards the Light;
A few I save, the mass falls back unsaved;
A few I help, the many strive and fail.
But my heart I have hardened and I do my work:
Slowly the light grows greater in the East,
Slowly the world progresses on God’s road.
His seal is on my task, it cannot fail:
I shall hear the silver swing of heaven’s gates
When God comes out to meet the soul of the world.
Sri Aurobindo
Savitri, Book VII, Canto IV, page 510.
Have no ambition
Mother, are sports competitions essential to our progress?
From the point of view of moral education they are rather essential, for if one can take part in them in the right spirit, it is a very good opportunity for mastering one’s ego. If one does it without trying to overcome one’s weaknesses and lower movements, one obviously doesn’t know how to profit by them, and it does no good; but if one has the will to play in the right spirit, without any movement of a lower kind, without jealousy or ambition, keeping an attitude which could be called “fair play”, that is, doing one’s best and not caring about the result; if one can put in the utmost effort without being upset because one has not met with success or things have not turned out in one’s favour, then it is very useful. One can come out of all these competitions with a greater self-control and a detachment from results which are a great help to the formation of an exceptional character. Naturally, if you do it in the ordinary way and with all the ordinary reactions and ugly movements, it doesn’t help anything at all; but that holds good in no matter what one does; whether in the field of sports or the intellectual field, anywhere, if one acts in the ordinary way, well, one wastes one’s time. But if when playing or taking part in tournaments and competitions, you keep the right spirit, it is a very good education, for it compels you to make a special effort and to exceed your ordinary limits a little. It is certainly an opportunity to make conscious many of your movements which otherwise would always remain unconscious.
But naturally, you must not forget that this must be an opportunity and a means for progress. If you just let yourselves go and play in an altogether ordinary manner, you are wasting your time; but it is the same for everything, not only for this: for studies and for anything at all. Everything always depends on the way in which things are done, not so much on what one does but on the spirit in which one does it.
If you were all yogis and did everything you do with your utmost effort and to your utmost possibilities, as well as you can do it and always with the idea of doing it better still, then, obviously, there would be no need of competitions, prizes, rewards; but, as Sri Aurobindo writes, little children cannot be expected to be yogis, and during the period of preparation a stimulus is necessary for the most material consciousness to make an effort for progress…. And this period of childhood may last for many years!
The ideal would be exactly what I have written in the last Bulletin, I don’t know if you have read it, but I have written something like this:
Have no ambition,
above all pretend nothing,
but be at every moment
the utmost that you can be.
That is the ideal state in the integral life — whatever one does. And if one realises that, well, one is certainly very far on the path of perfection…. But it is obvious that a certain inner maturity is needed to do this in all sincerity. You may set this as a programme for yourselves.
The Mother, Questions and Answers 1957 – 1958, CWM Vol. 9, pages 97 – 98.