As so he grew into his larger self,
Humanity framed his movements less and less;
A greater being saw a greater world.
A fearless will for knowledge dared to erase
The lines of safety Reason draws that bar
Mind’s soar, soul’s dive into the Infinite.
Even his first steps broke our small earth-bounds
And loitered in a vaster freer air.
In hands sustained by a transfiguring Might
He caught up lightly like a giant’s bow
Left slumbering in a sealed and secret cave
The powers that sleep unused in man within.
He made of miracle a normal act
And turned to a common part of divine works,
Magnificently natural at this height,
Efforts that would shatter the strength of mortal hearts,
Pursued in a royalty of mighty ease
Aims too sublime for Nature’s daily will:
The gifts of the spirit crowding came to him;
They were his life’s pattern and his privilege.
Sri Aurobindo
Savitri, Book I, Canto II, page 26.
Mother, this new force which is going to act, will it act through individual effort or independently of it?
Why this opposition? It acts independently of all individual effort, as if automatically in the world, but it creates individual effort and makes use of it. Individual effort is one of its means of action, and perhaps the most powerful. If one thinks that individual effort is due to the individual, it is an illusion, but if the individual under the pretext that there is a universal action independent of himself refuses to make an individual effort, he refuses to give his collaboration. The Force wants to use, and does in fact use individual effort as one of the most powerful means at its disposal. It is the Force itself, it is this Power which is your individual effort.
And so, you see, the first movement of vital self-conceit when it is told, “You don’t exist in yourself”, naturally it says, “All right, I won’t do anything any more! I am not the one who works, so I won’t work any longer” and “Very good, the Divine can do everything, it is his business, I won’t stir any more. If the credit does not go to me” — it comes to that — “I won’t do anything any more.” Well! But indeed there’s no word for such things. This is something I constantly hear, it is simply a way of venting one’s offended self-conceit, that’s all. But the true reaction, the pure reaction is an enthusiastic impulse of collaboration, to play the game with all the energy, the will-power at the disposal of one’s consciousness, in the state one is in, with the feeling of being supported, carried by something infinitely greater than oneself, which makes no mistakes, something which protects you and at the same time gives you all the necessary strength and uses you as the best instrument. And one feels that, and one feels one is working in security, that one can no longer make any mistakes, that what one does is done with the utmost result and — in delight. That is the true movement; to feel that one’s will is intensified to the utmost because it is no longer a tiny little microscopic person in infinity but an infinite universal Power which makes you act: the Force of Truth. This is the only true reaction.
The other one — miserable. “Ah! I am not the one who is doing things, ah! it is not my will being expressed, ah! it is not my power that is working… so I lie down flat, stretch myself out in inert passivity and I won’t move.” “Very well, then,” one tells the Divine, “do whatever you like, I don’t exist any longer.” That is poor indeed! There.
The Mother,
Questions and Answers 1957 – 1958, CWM volume 9, pages 5 – 6.