The Divine Presence Within, pp. 169-170

Opening Remarks
The Divine Presence dwells in all things. It is His touch that makes all things alive and conscious. It is His secret Breath that drives creation unknowingly towards its great goal. It is His bliss that supports all things from behind. It is His Love that leans down to save this universe.

The awaited hour
An Infant nursed on Nature’s covert breast,
An Infant playing in the magic woods,
Fluting to rapture by the spirit’s streams,
Awaits the hour when we shall turn to his call.

In a beautiful image of Sri Krishna playing the flute by the stream Sri Aurobindo reminds us of the Divine Call that is there within us. It is there in the very meshes and entanglements of nature and calls us to His joy and delight.

A spark of God
In this investiture of fleshly life
A soul that is a spark of God survives
And sometimes it breaks through the sordid screen
And kindles a fire that makes us half-divine.

All is not matter and mind and the force of life. Behind this screen of nature there stands the secret soul. It is the immortal portion that survives death and defeat. It is the flame of god that kindles our life and guides the unknowing world from within. Time to time during some exceptional moments our soul shines out from within and uplifts our life towards diviner heights.

The inner deity
In our body’s cells there sits a hidden Power
That sees the unseen and plans eternity,
Our smallest parts have room for deepest needs;
There too the golden Messengers can come:
A door is cut in the mud wall of self;
Across the lowly threshold with bowed heads
Angels of ecstasy and self-giving pass,
And lodged in an inner sanctuary of dream
The makers of the image of deity live.

Our very body is a temple of the Lord and each cell holds within it the sacred flame. Even our most obscure parts can open to this flame and make our life anew. Even now, in our fallen and ignorant state we have visitations from divine forces that fill us with the rush of an unearthly love and joy and reshape our life. These gods dwell within us in our subliminal depths and build our inner being in an image of divinity.

Heart’s secluded shrine
Pity is there and fire-winged sacrifice,
And flashes of sympathy and tenderness
Cast heaven-lights from the heart’s secluded shrine.

It is these occult gods hidden in our depths that fill us with sympathy, tenderness and other divine qualities. They reside in our heart’s shrine and cast their light from there upon our being. They move us towards sacrifice through whose flames we rise up to the Heavens.

A work is done
A work is done in the deep silences;
A glory and wonder of spiritual sense,
A laughter in beauty’s everlasting space
Transforming world-experience into joy,
Inhabit the mystery of the untouched gulfs;
Lulled by Time’s beats eternity sleeps in us.

This is the work, the work of a slow transfiguration of man into a diviner image that is going on in our depths, often unknown to us. It awakens us to the beauty and wonder through an inner spiritual sense. It transforms all experiences into their divine equivalents of joy. Though we remain unaware of their workings that go on in our unconsciousness in parts we have hardly encountered yet do they slowly shape our lives. Eternity sleeps in us hidden in the depths of the flow and flux of Time.

Closing Remarks
It is this Divine Presence that gives value to our lives. It is this secret Deity hidden in the temple of our heart that is our hope. The gods are His messengers who play their part at His bidding to shape our lives in the image of a diviner existence.