Livings Words of the Masters Archives - Page 39 of 44

Our errors are his steps

‘One who has shaped this world is ever its lord:
Our errors are his steps upon the way;
He works through the fierce vicissitudes of our lives,
He works through the hard breath of battle and toil,
He works through our sins and sorrows and our tears,
His knowledge overrules our nescience;
Whatever the appearance we must bear,
Whatever our strong ills and present fate,
When nothing we can see but drift and bale,
A mighty Guidance leads us still through all.

After we have served this great divided world
God’s bliss and oneness are our inborn right.

A date is fixed in the calendar of the Unknown,
An anniversary of the Birth sublime:
Our soul shall justify its chequered walk,
All will come near that now is naught or far.’

Savitri

2024-09-01

Two Parallel Movements

There should be two parallel movements in the evolution of an individual; and it is because he generally neglects one or the other of these movements in order to concentrate on one alone, that his progress is so halting and so unbalanced.

One of these movements is to become conscious of all the constituent elements of the being, material and sensory as well as intellectual and spiritual; we must become acquainted with the mechanism of the life within us, with all its tendencies, qualities, faculties and varied activities, very impartially, that is, without any preconceived idea of good or evil, without any absolute or arbitrary judgment (for our judgments are inevitably lacking in clear-sightedness) about what should subsist and what should disappear, what should be encouraged and what should be suppressed. Our vision of what we are must be objective, without bias, if we want it to be sincere and integral: we are faced with a universe which we must explore down to its smallest details, know in its most obscure and infinitesimal elements, with a scientific attitude of perfect mental impersonality, that is, without any a priori judgments.

Whatever we may think, this work of observation, analysis and introspection is never completed. At all events, as long as we are on earth in a physical body, we should always study the immensely complex being that we are, so that no element may elude our knowledge and therefore our control: for we can only master what we know and command what we have mastered.

This brings us to the second movement which should exist parallel to and simultaneous with the first. It is the consecration, the constant and constantly repeated surrender of all the elements subject to our control to the Supreme and Divine Law.

Each element that has become conscious of itself, each tendency, each faculty, must surrender to the Sovereign Guidance of the Eternal Essence of Being, with the simple trust of a child; She will order, classify and utilise all these elements in the right way; She and She alone can separate what can be used from what cannot, what must be encouraged from what must be eliminated; and, no doubt, as before Her all is of equal value, all can be used, since by Her all is transformed, illumined, transfigured: all that becomes conscious of Her and gives itself to Her becomes Herself and thus escapes all notions of good and evil, which are purely external and human.

One of these movements, one of these attitudes without the other is incomplete and one-sided. To consecrate our being in one block to the Supreme Essence is not enough: all the elements that we do not know and have not mastered elude this consecration and therefore follow their own law instead of conforming to the Eternal Law, and become the source of every disturbance, every unexpected revolt in one who had yet thought himself to be entirely a servant of The Law. But he was forgetful of all the unknown nooks in his being which also have a claim to life and activity and which are manifested in their turn, but in an activity that is disorderly and disharmonious relative to the being as a whole, since they elude the central will.

On the other hand, to become conscious of ourselves in our smallest details is vain and sterile, even dangerous, if it is not done for the sake of order, so that the Divine Essence can be made the Omnipotent ruler of all these elements, if we do not secure their unreserved surrender to Her supreme guidance, to The Sovereign Law.

Only in the balanced union of these two attitudes can one truly, integrally, call oneself a Servant of the Eternal.

The Mother: CWM 2

2024-08-31

In Silence is the greatest reverence

January 6, 1914

Thou art the one and only goal of my life and the centre of my aspiration, the pivot of my thought, the key of the synthesis of my being. And as Thou art beyond all sensation, all feeling and all thought, Thou art the living but ineffable experience, the Reality lived in the depths of the being but untranslatable in our poor words; and it is because human intelligence is powerless to reduce Thee to a formula that some, a little disdainfully, label “sentiment” the knowledge that it is possible to have of Thee, but it is surely as far from sentiment as it is from thought. So long as one has not attained this supreme Knowledge, one has no solid basis or lasting centre for one’s mental and emotional synthesis, and all other intellectual constructions can only be arbitrary, artificial and vain.

Thou art eternal silence and perfect peace in what we are able to perceive of Thee.

Thou art all the perfection we must acquire, all the marvels to be realised, all the splendour to be manifested.

And all our words are but children’s babblings when we venture to speak of Thee.

In silence is the greatest reverence.

Prayers and Meditations

2024-08-31

A secret spiritual aid is there

Alive to the truth that dwells in God’s extremes,
Awake to a motion of all-seeing Force,
The slow outcome of the long ambiguous years
And the unexpected good from woeful deeds,
The immortal sees not as we vainly see.

He looks on hidden aspects and screened powers,
He knows the law and natural line of things.

Undriven by a brief life’s will to act,
Unharassed by the spur of pity and fear,
He makes no haste to untie the cosmic knot
Or the world’s torn jarring heart to reconcile.

In Time he waits for the Eternal’s hour.

Yet a spiritual secret aid is there;
While a tardy Evolution’s coils wind on
And Nature hews her way through adamant
A divine intervention thrones above.
Alive in a dead rotating universe
We whirl not here upon a casual globe
Abandoned to a task beyond our force;
Even through the tangled anarchy called Fate
And through the bitterness of death and fall
An outstretched Hand is felt upon our lives.

It is near us in unnumbered bodies and births;
In its unslackening grasp it keeps for us safe
The one inevitable supreme result
No will can take away and no doom change,
The crown of conscious Immortality,
The godhead promised to our struggling souls
When first man’s heart dared death and suffered life.

Savitri

2024-08-31

Goal and the Mission of Mankind

What then is this goal?

It is one with the purpose of man’s life and his mission in the universe.

The goal: “Call him what you will, for to the wise, he is the Possessor of all names.”….

The Tao of the Chinese—The Brahman of the Hindus—The Law of the Buddhists—The Good of Hermes—That which cannot be named, according to the ancient Jewish tradition—The God of the Christians—The Allah of the Muslims—The Justice, the Truth of the materialists.

The purpose of man’s life is to become conscious of That.

His mission is to manifest It.

All religions, all the teachings of all the sages are nothing other than methods to reach this goal.

They can be classified into three principal categories. First method ─ intellectual: The love of Truth, the search for the Absolute.

By discernment, study, reflection, analysis, control and concentration of the thought, one dispels the illusion of personality, a whirl of atoms in a single substance which is itself nothing but an appearance: a condensation of the ether.

When we say myself what do we speak of? The body? The sensations? The feelings? The thoughts? All has no stability. The appearance of continuity comes from a rigorous determinism obtaining in each of these realms of the being; and into this determinism there enter as many external as internal agents. Where then is the self, that is to say, something permanent, constant, ever the same? In order to find it, to find this absolute, we must proceed from depth to depth, from relativity to relativity—for all that is in form is relative—until we reach That which is Unthinkable to our reason, Unutterable to our language, but knowable by identification—for we carry That in ourselves, it is the very centre and life of our being.

Second method—the love of God. It is the method of those who have a developed religious sense.

Aspiration towards the Divine Essence of all things that we have perceived in a moment of integral illumination.

Then self-consecration to this Divine Essence, to this Eternal Law, integral self-giving, at every moment, in all one’s actions. Complete surrender: one is now only a docile instrument, a faithful servant before the Supreme Master. The Love is so complete that it causes a detachment from all that is not the Divine Absolute and perfect concentration on Him.

“Besides, it is not impossible to rise higher than that, for love itself is a veil between the lover and the Beloved.”

Identification.

Third method—the love of humanity.

As a consequence of a clear vision, an intense perception of the immense suffering of humanity, there arises the resolution to consecrate oneself entirely to making this suffering cease.

Self-oblivion in the giving of all one’s thoughts, all one’s energies, all one’s activities to succour others, in however small a degree.

“With your hearts overflowing with compassion, go forth into this world torn by pain, be instructors, and wherever the darkness of ignorance rules, there light a torch.”

This consecration to humanity manifests in four domains. One can give to others in four ways:

Material gifts. Intellectual gifts: knowledge. Spiritual gifts: harmony, beauty, rhythm. The integral gift, which can be made only by those who have followed the three paths, who have synthesised within themselves all the methods of development, of becoming conscious of That which is Eternal: the gift of example. The example which is not self-conscious and which one gives because one is, because one lives in the Eternal Divine Consciousness.

The Mother: CWM 2

2024-08-30

Master of our destinies

January 3, 1914

It is always good to look within oneself from time to time and see that one is nothing and can do nothing, but afterwards one must turn one’s eyes to Thee, knowing that Thou art all and Thou canst do all.

Thou art the life of our life
and the light of our being,
Thou art the master of our destinies.

Prayers and Meditations

2024-08-30

… Earth Grow Unexpectedly Divine

Thus will the masked Transcendent mount his throne.

When darkness deepens strangling the earth’s breast
And man’s corporeal mind is the only lamp,
As a thief’s in the night shall be the covert tread
Of one who steps unseen into his house.

A Voice ill-heard shall speak, the soul obey,
A Power into mind’s inner chamber steal,
A charm and sweetness open life’s closed doors
And beauty conquer the resisting world,
The Truth-Light capture Nature by surprise,
A stealth of God compel the heart to bliss
And earth grow unexpectedly divine.

In Matter shall be lit the spirit’s glow,
In body and body kindled the sacred birth;
Night shall awake to the anthem of the stars,
The days become a happy pilgrim march,
Our will a force of the Eternal’s power,
And thought the rays of a spiritual sun.

A few shall see what none yet understands;
God shall grow up while the wise men talk and sleep;
For man shall not know the coming till its hour
And belief shall be not till the work is done.

Savitri: Book One Canto 4

2024-08-30

To Know How to Renounce

To know how to renounce the satisfaction of the present moment for the sake of realising one’s ideal is the great art of those who want to make their transient, total existence yield its utmost.

There are innumerable categories of “successful” people; these categories are determined by the greater or lesser breadth, nobility, complexity, purity and luminosity of their ideal. One may “succeed” as a rag-picker or “succeed” as master of the world or even as a perfect ascetic; in all three cases, although on very different levels, it is one’s more or less integral and extensive self-mastery which makes the “success” possible.

On the other hand, there is only one way of being a “failure”; and that happens to the greatest, to the most sovereign intelligence, as well as to the smallest, the most limited, to all those who are unable to subordinate the sensation of the present moment to the ideal they wish to achieve, but without having the strength to take up the path—identical for all in nature if not in extent and complexity—that leads to this achievement.

Between the extreme of an individual who has fully and perfectly realised all he had conceived and that of one who has been incapable of realising anything at all, there is, of course, an almost unlimited range of intermediate cases; this range is remarkably complex, because not only is there a difference in the degree of realisation of the ideal, but there is also a difference between the varied qualities of the ideal itself. There are ambitions which pursue mere personal interests, material, sentimental or intellectual, others which have more general, more collective or higher aims, and yet others which are superhuman, so to say, and strive to scale the peaks that open on the splendours of eternal Truth, eternal Consciousness and eternal Peace. It is easy to understand that the power of one’s effort and renunciation must be commensurate with the breadth and height of the goal one has chosen.

At any level, from the most modest to the most transcendent, one rarely finds a perfect balance between the sum of self-control, the power of sacrifice available to the individual who has chosen a goal, and the sum of renunciations of every kind and nature which the goal requires.

When the constitution of an individual permits this perfect balance, then his earthly existence yields its utmost possible result.

[The Mother: CWM 2]

2024-08-29

The Silence Behind Life

January 2, 1914

This marvellous silence manifests Thee despite the mad human agitation—the immutable and constant silence so living in all things that one has but to listen to hear it, in contrast with all that is futile noise, vain agitation, useless dispersion of energies. Let it flower in our being as a source of light and peace; may its power radiate over all in beneficent streams.

Thou art the savour of all life and the reason for all activity, the goal of our thoughts.

[Prayers and Meditations of the M0ther]

***

The Silence behind Life

There is a silence behind life as well as within it and it is only in this more secret, sustaining silence that we can hear clearly the voice of God. In the noise of the world we hear only altered & disturbed echoes of it; for the Voice comes always—who else speaks to us on our journey?—but the gods of the heart, the gods of the mind, the gods of desire, the gods of sense take up the divine cry, intercept it and alter it for their purposes. Krishna calls to us, but the first note, even the opening power or sweetness, awakes a very brouhaha of these echoes. It is not the fault of these poor gods. The accent of power is so desirable, the note of sweetness is so captivating that they must seize it, they would be dull & soulless, there would be no hope of their redemption if they did not at once leap at it and make it their own. But in becoming their own, it ceases to be entirely his. How many who have the religious faith and the religious temperament, are following the impulses of their heart, the cravings of their desire, the urgency of their senses, the dictates of their opinion when they fully imagine that their God is leading them! And they do well, for God is leading them. It is the way He has chosen for them, & since He has chosen it, it is the best & wisest & most fruitful way for them. Still it is their God—not one they have made in their own image as the Atheist believes, but One who makes Himself in the image that they prefer, the image that best suits with their nature or their development. “In whatever way men come to me, in that way I love & cleave to them.” It is a saying of fathomless depth which contains the seed of the whole truth about God & religion. After all it is only in this way that the conditioned can meet the Absolute, that which has a nature or dharma of its own with that which is beyond all limit of nature or dharma. After the meeting of the soul with God,—well, that is a different matter. The secrets of His nuptial chamber cannot all be spoken.

Nevertheless, there is a higher way of meeting him than that which leads us through subjection to the Gods. By perfect Love, by perfect Joy, by perfect Satisfaction, by perfected mind one can hear what the Voice truly says if not the Voice itself,—catch the kernel of the message with a sort of ecstatic perfection, even if afterwards the Gods dilate on it & by attempting to amplify & complete, load it with false corollaries or prevent some greater fullness of truth from arriving to us. Therefore this way also, though it is high, cannot be the highest.

[Sri Aurobindo: CWSA 12]

2024-08-29