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241

Jnana (Knowledge)

Fourth Period of Commentaries (1969)

125—Every law, however embracing or tyrannous, meets somewhere a contrary law by which its operation can be checked, modified, annulled or eluded.

126—The most binding Law of Nature is only a fixed process which the Lord of Nature has framed and uses constantly; the Spirit made it and the Spirit can exceed it, but we must first open the doors of our prison-house and learn to live less in Nature than in the Spirit.

There is no law of Nature that cannot be overcome and changed, if we have the faith that all is ruled by the Lord and that it is possible for us to come into direct contact with Him, if we know how to escape from the prison-house of age-old habits and give ourselves unreservedly to His will.

In truth, nothing is fixed, everything is in perpetual change; and this ascending transformation will lead this inconscient and mortal creation back step by step to the eternal and all-powerful consciousness of the Lord.

3 August 1969

127—Law is a process or a formula; but the soul is the user of processes and exceeds formulas.

The laws of Nature are imperative for the physical nature only so long as this nature is not under the influence of the psychic being (the soul); for the psychic being is in possession of the 242divine power which can, for its own ends, use all processes and formulas and transform them at will.

5 August 1969

128—Live according to Nature, runs the maxim of the West; but according to what nature, the nature of the body or the nature which exceeds the body? This first we ought to determine.

129—O son of Immortality, live not thou according to Nature, but according to God; and compel her also to live according to the deity within thee.

What does Sri Aurobindo mean here by “the nature which exceeds the body”?

The nature which exceeds the body is the nature which goes on living even after the disappearance of the body; it is the psychic nature which is immortal and divine in essence. The psychic can and must become conscious of the Divine at its centre and consciously unite with Him.

7 August 1969

130—Fate is God’s foreknowledge outside Space and Time of all that in Space and Time shall yet happen; what He has foreseen, Power and Necessity work out by the conflict of forces.

If everything is foreseen, what is the role of human aspiration and effort?

In each domain (physical, vital and mental) everything is foreseen; but the intrusion of a higher domain (overmental and 243beyond) introduces another determinism into events and can change the course of things. This is what aspiration can achieve.

As for human effort, it is one of the things that are determined and its role is foreseen in the overall play of forces.

9 August 1969

131—Because God has willed and foreseen everything, thou shouldst not therefore sit inactive and wait upon His providence, for thy action is one of His chief effective forces. Up then and be doing, not with egoism, but as the circumstance, instrument and apparent cause of the event that He has predetermined.

132—When I knew nothing, then I abhorred the criminal, sinful and impure, being myself full of crime, sin and impurity; but when I was cleansed and my eyes unsealed, then I bowed down in my spirit before the thief and the murderer and adored the feet of the harlot; for I saw that these souls had accepted the terrible burden of evil and drained for all of us the greater portion of the churned poison of the world-ocean.

For one who has fully realised that the world is nothing but the One Supreme in His manifestation, all human moral notions necessarily disappear to give way to a vision of the whole in which all values are changed—oh, how greatly changed!

14 August 1969

133—The Titans are stronger than the gods because they have agreed with God to front and bear the burden of His wrath and enmity; the gods were able to accept only the pleasant burden of His love and kindlier rapture.

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To understand rightly what Sri Aurobindo truly means, one must know the wonderful sense of humour in his way of thinking.

16 August 1969

So the gods are cowards! Then where is their greatness and splendour? Why do we worship inferior beings? And the Titans must be the most lovable sons of the Divine?

What Sri Aurobindo writes here is a paradox to awaken sluggish minds. But one must understand all the irony these phrases contain and above all the intention he puts behind the words. Besides, cowardly or not, I see no need for us to worship the gods, great or small. Our worship must go to the Supreme Lord alone, one in all things and beings.

6 November 1961 fnThis question was asked on an earlier occasion.

134—When thou art able to see how necessary is suffering to final delight, failure to utter effectiveness and retardation to the last rapidity, then thou mayst begin to understand something, however faintly and dimly, of God’s workings.

135—All disease is a means towards some new joy of health, all evil and pain a tuning of Nature for some more intense bliss and good, all death an opening on widest immortality. Why and how this should be so, is God’s secret which only the soul purified of egoism can penetrate.

136—Why is thy mind or thy body in pain? Because thy soul behind the veil wishes for the pain or takes delight in 245it; but if thou wilt—and perseverest in thy will—thou canst impose the spirit’s law of unmixed delight on thy lower members.

One has only to attempt the experience and to persevere in one’s effort, then one will find that what is stated here is perfectly true.

19 August 1969

137—There is no iron or ineffugable law that a given contact shall create pain or pleasure; it is the way the soul meets the rush or pressure of Brahman upon the members from outside them that determines either reaction.

It is obvious that the same event or the same contact causes pleasure in one and pain in another, depending on the inner attitude taken by each one.

And this observation leads towards a great realisation; for once one has not only understood but also felt that the Supreme Lord is the originator of all things and one remains constantly in contact with Him, all becomes the action of His Grace and is changed into calm and luminous bliss.

21 August 1969

138—The force of soul in thee meeting the same force from outside cannot harmonise the measures of the contact in values of mind-experience and body-experience; therefore thou hast pain, grief or uneasiness. If thou canst learn to adjust the replies of the force in thyself to the questions of world-force, thou shalt find pain becoming pleasurable or turning into pure delightfulness. Right relation is the condition of blissfulness, RitamfnRight; Truth of knowledge and action. the key of Ananda.fnDelight of existence.

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Human beings are in the habit of basing their relationships with others on physical, vital and mental contacts; that is why there is almost always discord and suffering. If, on the contrary, they based their relationships on psychic contacts (between soul and soul), they would find that behind the troubled appearances there is a profound and lasting harmony which can express itself in all the activities of life and cause disorder and suffering to be replaced by peace and bliss.

28 August 1969

139—Who is the superman? He who can rise above this matter-regarding broken mental human unit and possess himself universalised and deified in a divine force, a divine love and joy and a divine knowledge.

The superman is now in the making and a new consciousness has very recently manifested on earth to bring this process to perfection.

But it is unlikely that any human being has yet arrived at this fulfilment, especially since it must be accompanied by a transformation of the physical body, and this has not yet been accomplished.

30 August 1969

140—If thou keepest this limited human ego and thinkest thyself the superman, thou art but the fool of thy own pride, the plaything of thy own force and the instrument of thy own illusions.

This naturally implies that all the ambitious people who now declare themselves to be supermen can only be impostors or people 247full of pride who deceive themselves and try to deceive others.

30 August 1969

141—Nietzsche saw the superman as the lion-soul passing out of camel-hood, but the true heraldic device and token of the superman is the lion seated upon the camel which stands upon the cow of plenty. If thou canst not be the slave of all mankind, thou art not fit to be its master and if thou canst not make thy nature as Vasishtha’s cow of plenty with all mankind to draw its wish from her udders, what avails thy leonine supermanhood?

To be the slave of all mankind means to be ready to serve mankind; and to make oneself as the cow of plenty means to be able to pour forth abundantly all the force, the light, the power that mankind needs in order to emerge from its ignorance and incapacity; for if this were not so, a superhuman being would be a burden rather than a help to earth.

31 August 1969

142—Be to the world as the lion in fearlessness and lordship, as the camel in patience and service, as the cow in quiet, forbearing and maternal beneficence. Raven in all the joys of God as a lion over its prey, but bring also all humanity into that infinite field of luxurious ecstasy to wallow there and to pasture.

These are the qualities needed for the growth of the being until its divinisation; it is also a reminder that no transformation can be complete without the ascent of humanity.

1 September 1969

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143—If Art’s service is but to imitate Nature, then burn all the picture galleries and let us have instead photographic studios. It is because Art reveals what Nature hides that a small picture is worth more than all the jewels of the millionaires and the treasures of the princes.

144—If you only imitate visible Nature, you will perpetrate either a corpse, a dead sketch or a monstrosity; Truth lives in that which goes behind and beyond the visible and sensible.

Photography is said to be a medium of modern art. What is your opinion about this?

It all depends on the way in which photography is used. Its natural purpose and common use is documentary; the more exact and precise it is, the more useful it is.

But undeniably, there are artists who use photography as a medium of expression. But then what they do is no longer an exact copy of Nature, it is an arrangement of forms and colours intended to express something else which is usually hidden by physical appearances.

4 September 1969

145—O Poet, O Artist, if thou but holdest up the mirror to Nature, thinkest thou Nature will rejoice in thy work? Rather she will turn away her face. For what dost thou hold up to her there? Herself? No, but a lifeless outline and reflection, a shadowy mimicry. It is the secret soul of Nature thou hast to seize, thou hast to hunt eternally after the truth in the external symbol, and that no mirror will hold for thee, nor for her whom thou seekest.

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What is this “eternal symbol”fnThe translation used was based on a text which read “eternal symbol” instead of “external symbol”. which Sri Aurobindo speaks of here?

The eternal symbol is the secret soul of Nature and it is the Truth of this soul that the poet and the artist must seek and express.

7 September 1969

146—I find in Shakespeare a far greater and more consistent universalist than the Greeks. All his creatures are universal types from Lancelot Gobbo and his dog up to Lear and Hamlet.

147—The Greeks sought universality by omitting all finer individual touches; Shakespeare sought it more successfully by universalising the rarest individual details of character. That which Nature uses for concealing from us the Infinite, Shakespeare used for revealing the Ananta-guna in man to the eye of humanity.

148—Shakespeare, who invented the figure of holding up the mirror to Nature, was the one poet who never condescended to a copy, a photograph or a shadow. The reader who sees in Falstaff, Macbeth, Lear or Hamlet imitations of Nature, has either no inner eye of the soul or has been hypnotised by a formula.

149—Where in material Nature wilt thou find Falstaff, Macbeth or Lear? Shadows and hints of them she possesses, but they themselves tower over her.

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150—There are two for whom there is hope, the man who has felt God’s touch and been drawn to it and the sceptical seeker and self-convinced atheist; but for the formularists of all the religions and the parrots of free thought, they are dead souls who follow a death that they call living.

Don’t the “formularists” of the religions help the ordinary masses by giving them an image of God? Don’t you think that religion helps ordinary people?

Everything that happens, happens by the will of the Supreme Lord in order to lead the whole creation to the knowledge of the Supreme.

But by far the greatest part of this action works by contrast and negation. This is how religions work for most so-called believers, who follow their religion with no faith and even less experience.

14 September 1969

151—A man came to a scientist and wished to be instructed; his instructor showed him the revelations of the microscope and telescope, but the man laughed and said, “These are obviously hallucinations inflicted on the eye by the glass which you use as a medium; I will not believe till you show these wonders to my naked seeing.” Then the scientist proved to him by many collateral facts and experiments the reliability of his knowledge but the man laughed again and said, “What you term proofs, I term coincidences, the number of coincidences does not constitute proof; as for your experiments, they are obviously effected under abnormal conditions and constitute a sort of insanity of Nature.” When confronted with the results of mathematics, he 251was angry and cried out, “This is obviously imposture, gibberish and superstition; will you try to make me believe that these absurd cabalistic figures have any real force and meaning?” Then the scientist drove him out as a hopeless imbecile; for he did not recognise his own system of denials and his own method of negative reasoning. If we wish to refuse an impartial and open-minded enquiry, we can always find the most respectable polysyllables to cover our refusal or impose tests and conditions which stultify the inquiry.

Scientists, who are mostly materialists, use the same procedures to refute occult and spiritual knowledge as ignorant imbeciles use to refute science.

What is clear proof to a man of goodwill is imposture to one who refuses to learn.

17 September 1969

152—When our minds are involved in matter, they think matter the only reality; when we draw back into immaterial consciousness, then we see matter a mask and feel existence in consciousness alone as having the touch of reality. Which then of these two is the truth? Nay, God knoweth; but he who has had both experiences, can easily tell which condition is the more fertile in knowledge, the mightier and more blissful.

153—I believe immaterial consciousness to be truer than material consciousness, because I know in the first what in the second is hidden from me and also can command what the mind knows in matter.

How can one always remain in an immaterial consciousness?
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One cannot and it would not be good.

Sri Aurobindo does not mention here the consciousness that is higher than either of the two consciousnesses in question (material and immaterial), that is, the supramental consciousness which contains all the other consciousnesses in itself and can thus know everything on all planes of being. This is the consciousness we should aspire for, this is the consciousness which can teach us the total Truth.

18 September 1969

154—Hell and Heaven exist only in the soul’s consciousness. Ay, but so does the earth and its lands and seas and fields and deserts and mountains and rivers. All world is nothing but arrangement of the Soul’s seeing.

155—There is only one soul and one existence; therefore we all see one objectivity only; but there are many knots of mind and ego in the one soul-existence, therefore we all see the one Object in different lights and shadows.

156—The Idealist errs; it is not Mind which created the worlds, but that which created mind has created them. Mind only mis-sees, because it sees partially and by details, what is created.

How can idealism help us in our life here?

Sri Aurobindo seems to be referring here to a school of philosophy which holds that the Idea has created the worlds. Naturally, this is wrong.

Idealists who refuse to be the slaves of Matter need not be proponents of this philosophy and can, by their idealism, help 253men to be no more the slaves of material desires.

22 September 1969

157—Thus said Ramakrishna and thus said Vivekananda. Yes, but let me know also the truths which the Avatar cast not forth into speech and the prophet has omitted from his teachings. There will always be more in God than the thought of man has ever conceived or the tongue of man has ever uttered.

158—What was Ramakrishna? God manifest in a human being; but behind there is God in His infinite impersonality and His universal Personality. And what was Vivekananda? A radiant glance from the eye of Shiva; but behind him is the divine gaze from which he came and Shiva himself and Brahma and Vishnu and OM all-exceeding.

Will the Avatars still need to take birth on earth once the supramental consciousness is firmly established?

This question will be easier to answer when the supermind is manifested in living beings on earth.

I had always heard that Sri Aurobindo was “the last Avatar”; but he is probably the last Avatar in a human body—afterwards, we do not know.…

23 September 1969

159—He who recognises not Krishna, the God in man, knows not God entirely; he who knows Krishna only, knows not even Krishna. Yet is the opposite truth also wholly true that if thou canst see all God in a little pale 254unsightly and scentless flower, then hast thou hold of His supreme reality.

Once one has taken the path of Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, should not one stop worshipping all other gods and goddesses?

One who truly follows the path given by Sri Aurobindo, as soon as he begins to have the experience of this path, will find it impossible to confine his consciousness to the worship of any god or goddess or even of all of them together.

26 September 1969

160—Shun the barren snare of an empty metaphysics and the dry dust of an unfertile intellectuality. Only that knowledge is worth having which can be made use of for a living delight and put out into temperament, action, creation and being.

161—Become and live the knowledge thou hast; then is thy knowledge the living God within thee.

How far can “intellectual culture” help us on our path?

If intellectual culture is carried to its furthest limit, it leads the mind to the unsatisfactory acknowledgement that it is incapable of knowing the Truth and, in those who aspire sincerely, to the necessity of being quiet and opening in silence to the higher regions which can give you knowledge.

27 September 1969

162—Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. 255As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges.

I would like to see the English to know which tense Sri Aurobindo used for the verb émerge—whether it is present or future?

If it is in the future, it is a promise we all know and for whose realisation we are working. If it is in the present… I have nothing to add.

29 September 1969

163—The power to observe law rigidly is the basis of freedom; therefore in most disciplines the soul has to endure and fulfil the law in its lower members before it can rise to the perfect freedom of its divine being. Those disciplines which begin with freedom are only for the mighty ones who are naturally free or in former lives have founded their freedom.

164—Those who are deficient in the free, full and intelligent observation of a self-imposed law, must be placed in subjection to the will of others. This is one principal cause of the subjection of nations. After their disturbing egoism has been trampled under the feet of a master, they are given or, if they have force in them, attain a fresh chance of deserving liberty by liberty.

What are these disciplines which “begin with freedom” that Sri Aurobindo speaks of here?

I suppose that Sri Aurobindo is referring to the various disciplines of initiation practised in the various initiatory schools in the days when they had some importance and authority.

Our age has become very materialistic and no longer gives 256the same importance and authority to these schools.

30 September 1969

165—To observe the law we have imposed on ourselves rather than the law of others is what is meant by liberty in our unregenerate condition. Only in God and by the supremacy of the spirit can we enjoy a perfect freedom.

True liberty is to be in constant union with the Divine and to do only what the Divine wants us to do.

But until then, it is better to impose on ourselves a higher law of action and conduct and to observe it scrupulously rather than to obey the law of other men or of moral and social conventions.

1 October 1969

When one lives in a community, does it not often become necessary to obey laws imposed by others instead of following the disciplines one would wish for oneself?

It is obvious that if you have chosen or accepted to live in a community, you must observe the laws of that community, otherwise you become an element of disorder and confusion.

But a discipline willingly accepted cannot be harmful to the inner development and the growth of the higher consciousness.

3 October 1969

166—The double law of sin and virtue is imposed on us because we have not that ideal life and knowledge within which guides the soul spontaneously and infallibly to its self-fulfilment. The law of sin and virtue ceases for us when the sun of God shines upon the soul in truth 257and love with its unveiled splendour. Moses is replaced by Christ, the Shastra by the Veda.fnShastra: Scriptures; Veda: Knowledge.

Do you think this idea of sin and virtue has done humanity any good?

As Sri Aurobindo says, the law of sin and virtue was certainly necessary for the progress of humanity when it was given several thousand years ago. But today it no longer has any meaning or usefulness and should no longer be heeded.

It belongs to a past which should no longer have any authority.

But for this to be possible, it must be replaced by a more luminous and truer law and not by disorder and corruption.

4 October 1969

And what is this more luminous law?fnThis question was asked when these commentaries were first published in 1970.

Perfect and spontaneous obedience to the divine order that must replace all law.

26 September 1970

Is it good to break all moral and social conventions as the new generation is doing? Don’t these things have any value?

What has value at one period no longer has any at another as human consciousness goes on progressing. But one must take great care to replace a law one no longer obeys by a higher and truer law that fosters progress towards the future realisation. 258

One has no right to abandon a law until one is capable of knowing and following a higher and better law.

P.S. Read again what I wrote yesterday, I had already explained this to you.

5 October 1969

How can one follow this higher law?fnThis question was asked when these commentaries were first published in 1970.

At every moment, do what God wants.

26 September 1970

167—God within is leading us always aright even when we are in the bonds of the ignorance; but then, though the goal is sure, it is attained by circlings and deviations.

The goal foreseen by the Divine is always attained, but only those whose consciousness is united with the Divine Consciousness attain it directly and knowingly; the others—the vast majority of those who are conscious only of their external being—attain this goal only after having made many detours, which often seemed to be going in the opposite direction.

6 October 1969

168—The Cross is in Yoga the symbol of the soul and nature in their strong and perfect union, but because of our fall into the impurities of ignorance it has become the symbol of suffering and purification.

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169—Christ came into the world to purify, not to fulfil. He himself foreknew the failure of his mission and the necessity of his return with the sword of God into a world that had rejected him.

In this aphorism what does “the sword of God” represent?

The sword of God is the power that nothing can resist.

7 October 1969

170—Mahomed’s mission was necessary, else we might have ended by thinking, in the exaggeration of our efforts at self-purification, that earth was meant only for the monk and the city created as a vestibule for the desert.

171—When all is said, Love and Force together can save the world eventually, but not Love only or Force only. Therefore Christ had to look forward to a second advent and Mahomed’s religion, where it is not stagnant, looks forward through the Imams to a Mahdi.

Love alone as preached by Christ failed to transform man. Force alone as preached by Mahomed did not transform man, far from it.

That is why the consciousness which is at work to transform mankind, unites Force with Love, and the One who must realise this transformation will come on earth with the Power of Divine Love.

10 October 1969

172—Law cannot save the world, therefore Moses’ ordinances are dead for humanity and the Shastra of the 260Brahmins is corrupt and dying. Law released into freedom is the liberator. Not the Pundit, but the Yogin; not monasticism, but the inner renunciation of desire and ignorance and egoism.

This is irrefutably clear and it is exactly what we are trying to do. But human nature is rebellious and finds it difficult to win freedom at the price of renouncing desire and ignorance and egoism.

Most human beings prefer the slavery of desire and ignorance and egoism to freedom without them.

13 October 1969

173—Even Vivekananda once in the stress of emotion admitted the fallacy that a personal God would be too immoral to be suffered and it would be the duty of all good men to resist Him. But if an omnipotent supra-moral Will and Intelligence governs the world, it is surely impossible to resist Him; our resistance would only serve His ends and really be dictated by Him. Is it not better then, instead of condemning or denying, to study and understand Him?

174—If we would understand God, we must renounce our egoistic and ignorant human standards or else ennoble and universalise them.

To the human way of understanding, the world is terribly immoral, full of suffering and ugliness, especially since the appearance of the human race. So it is difficult for the human consciousness to accept that this world could be the work of a personal God, because for man it seems to be the work of an omnipotent monster.

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But Sri Aurobindo adds that it is better to try to understand instead of condemning.

And surely the best way to understand is to unite with this Supreme Consciousness so as to see as It sees and understand as It understands. This is certainly the only true wisdom.

And Yoga is the true way of uniting with the Supreme.

15 October 1969

175—Because a good man dies or fails and the evil live and triumph, is God therefore evil? I do not see the logic of the consequence. I must first be convinced that death and failure are evil; I sometimes think that when they come, they are our supreme momentary good. But we are the fools of our hearts and nerves and argue that what they do not like or desire, must of course be an evil!

But what about those who are unlucky and always fail in everything they do?

First, once and for all, you should know that luck, good or bad, does not exist.

What to our ignorance looks like luck is simply the result of causes we know nothing about.

It is certain that for someone who has desires, when his desires are not satisfied, it is a sign that the Divine Grace is with him and wants, through experience, to make him progress rapidly, by teaching him that a willing and spontaneous surrender to the Divine Will is a much surer way to be happy in peace and light than the satisfaction of any desire.

17 October 1969

176—When I look back on my past life, I see that if I had not 262failed and suffered, I would have lost my life’s supreme blessings; yet at the time of the suffering and failure, I was vexed with the sense of calamity. Because we cannot see anything but the one fact under our noses, therefore we indulge in all these snifflings and clamours. Be silent, ye foolish hearts! Slay the ego, learn to see and feel vastly and universally.

177—The perfect cosmic vision and cosmic sentiment is the cure of all error and suffering; but most men succeed only in enlarging the range of their ego.

What is “the cosmic vision and cosmic sentiment” and how can they be attained?

This simply means the vision of the whole earth at the same time and the sentiment which is the result of this vision of the whole. This whole contains all things at the same time, light and darkness, suffering and pleasure, happiness and unhappiness, and all together makes a vibration of adoration turned towards the Divine, just as all sounds heard together make the supreme invocation to the Divine: OM.

18 October 1969

178—Men say and think “For my country!”, “For humanity!”, “For the world!”, but they really mean “For myself seen in my country!”, “For myself seen in humanity!”, “For myself imaged to my fancy as the world!”. That may be an enlargement, but it is not liberation. To be at large and to be in a large prison are not one condition of freedom.

To be free, one must come out of the prison. The prison is the ego, the sense of separate personality. To be free, one 263must unite consciously and totally with the Supreme and through this identification break the limits of the ego and eradicate the very existence of the ego by universalising oneself, even though the individualisation of the consciousness is preserved.

19 October 1969

179—Live for God in thy neighbour, God in thyself, God in thy country and the country of thy foeman, God in humanity, God in tree and stone and animal, God in the world and outside the world, then art thou on the straight path to liberation.

There is nothing to add. It is true—very obviously true—and to be sure, you must experience it, for only experience is absolutely convincing.

21 October 1969

180—There are lesser and larger eternities; for eternity is a term of the soul and can exist in Time as well as exceeding it. When the Scriptures say “śāśvatīḥ samāḥ”, they mean for a long space and permanence of time or a hardly measurable aeon; only God Absolute has the absolute eternity. Yet when one goes within, one sees that all things are secretly eternal; there is no end, neither was there ever a beginning.

How can one experience eternity?

By uniting with the Eternal, that is to say, with the Divine.

23 October 1969

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181—When thou callest another a fool, as thou must, sometimes, yet do not forget that thou thyself hast been the supreme fool in humanity.

182—God loves to play the fool in season; man does it in season and out of season. It is the only difference.

For some years, almost all our children, big or small, have been in the habit of always using vulgar words in their everyday speech. For example, they punctuate every sentence with words like “idiot”, “fool”, etc… and other similar Indian terms, without any bad intention. How can we help them to get rid of this bad habit which has become so common?

The only remedy is to learn to think before you speak and to say only the words that are absolutely indispensable to express your thought.

The less you speak the better. And if it is indispensable to communicate something to anyone else, it would be wise to speak only the words that are indispensable, no more.

24 October 1969

183—In the Buddhists’ view to have saved an ant from drowning is a greater work than to have founded an empire. There is a truth in the idea, but a truth that can easily be exaggerated.

184—To exalt one virtue,—compassion even,—unduly above all others is to cover up with one’s hand the eyes of wisdom. God moves always towards a harmony.

Any exaggeration, any exclusiveness, is a lack of balance and a breach of harmony, and therefore an error in one who seeks 265perfection. For perfection can only exist in supreme harmony.

28 October 1969

185—Pity may be reserved, so long as thy soul makes distinctions, for the suffering animals; but humanity deserves from thee something nobler, it asks for love, for understanding, for comradeship, for the help of the equal and brother.

186—The contributions of evil to the good of the world and the harm sometimes done by the virtuous are distressing to the soul enamoured of good. Nevertheless be not distressed nor confounded, but study rather and calmly understand God’s ways with humanity.

Sri Aurobindo means that there is a height in the consciousness where the ordinary notions of good and bad lose all their value.fnThis sentence was in English in the original.

And he advises us, instead of being affected by the way things happen on earth, to rise in consciousness to communion with the Divine; then we shall understand why things are as they are.

29 October 1969

187—In God’s providence there is no evil, but only good or its preparation.

188—Virtue and vice were made for thy soul’s struggle and progress; but for results they belong to God, who fulfils himself beyond vice and virtue.

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Vice and virtue are inventions of human thought for the needs of evolution and progress—but in the Divine Consciousness, vice and virtue do not exist.

The whole universe is in a slow ascending evolution towards That which it must manifest.

30 October 1969

189—Live within; be not shaken by outward happenings.

190—Fling not thy alms abroad everywhere in an ostentation of charity; understand and love where thou helpest. Let thy soul grow within thee.

191—Help the poor while the poor are with thee; but study also and strive that there may be no poor for thy assistance.

To live within in a constant aspiration for the Divine enables us to look at life with a smile and to remain peaceful whatever the outer circumstances may be.

As for the poor, Sri Aurobindo says that to come to their help is good, provided that it is not a vain ostentation of charity, but that it is far nobler to seek a remedy for poverty so that there may be no poor left on earth.

31 October 1969

192—The old Indian social ideal demanded of the priest voluntary simplicity of life, purity, learning and the gratuitous instruction of the community, of the prince, war, government, protection of the weak and the giving up of his life in the battle-field, of the merchant, trade, gain and the return of his gains to the community by free giving, of the serf, labour for the rest and material havings. 267In atonement for his serfhood, it spared him the tax of self-denial, the tax of blood and the tax of his riches.

In the beginning, about six thousand years ago, this was absolutely true, and each individual was classed according to his nature. Afterwards it became a rigid and more and more arbitrary social convenience (according to birth), which completely ignored the true nature of the individual. It became a false conception and had to disappear.

But gradually, with human progress, human activities are being classified more and more in a similar, less rigid but much truer way (according to each one’s nature and capacity).

7 November 1969

193—The existence of poverty is the proof of an unjust and ill-organised society, and our public charities are but the first tardy awakening in the conscience of a robber.

194—Valmikie, our ancient epic poet, includes among the signs of a just and enlightened state of society not only universal education, morality and spirituality but this also that there shall be “none who is compelled to eat coarse food, none uncrowned and unanointed, or who lives a mean and petty slave of luxuries.”

195—The acceptance of poverty is noble and beneficial in a class or an individual, but it becomes fatal and pauperises life of its richness and expansion if it is perversely organised into a general or national ideal.

196—Poverty is no more a necessity of social life than disease of the natural body; false habits of life and an ignorance of our true organisation are in both cases the peccant causes of an avoidable disorder.

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Will a day come when there will be no more poor people and no more suffering in the world?

That is absolutely certain for all those who understand Sri Aurobindo’s teaching and have faith in him.

It is with the intention of creating a place where this can come about that we want to establish Auroville.

But for this realisation to be possible, each one of us must make an effort to transform himself, for most of the sufferings of men are the result of their own mistakes, both physical and moral.

8 November 1969

How can you believe that in Auroville there will be no more suffering so long as people who come to live there are men of the same world, born with the same weaknesses and faults?

I have never thought that there would no more be suffering in Auroville, because men, as they are, love suffering and call it to them even while they curse it.

But we shall try to teach them to truly love peace and to try to practise equality.

What I meant was involuntary poverty and begging.

Life in Auroville will be organised in such a way that this does not exist—and if beggars come from outside, either they will have to go away or they will be given shelter and taught the joy of work.

9 November 1969

What is the fundamental difference between the ideal of the Ashram and the ideal of Auroville?

There is no fundamental difference in the attitude towards the 269future and the service of the Divine.

But the people in the Ashram are considered to have consecrated their lives to Yoga (except, of course, the students who are here only for their studies and who are not expected to have made their choice in life).

Whereas in Auroville simply the goodwill to make a collective experiment for the progress of humanity is sufficient to gain admittance.

10 November 1969

197—Athens, not Sparta, is the progressive type for mankind. Ancient India with its ideal of vast riches and vast spending was the greatest of nations. Modern India with its trend towards national asceticism has fully become poor in life and sunk into weakness and degradation.

198—Do not dream that when thou hast got rid of material poverty, men will even so be happy or satisfied or society freed from ills, troubles and problems. This is only the first and lowest necessity. While the soul within remains defectively organised, there will always be outward unrest, disorder and revolution.

This is quite obvious and this is what we are trying to make people understand. A safe and quiet life is not enough to make people happy. Inner development is necessary, and the peace that comes from a conscious contact with the Divine.

13 November 1969

199—Disease will always return to the body if the soul is flawed; for the sins of the mind are the secret cause of the sins of the body. So too poverty and trouble will 270always return on man in society, so long as the mind of the race is subjected to egoism.

200—Religion and philosophy seek to rescue man from his ego; then the kingdom of heaven within will be spontaneously reflected in an external divine city.

Sri Aurobindo used the words philosophy and religion so that everyone could understand. But he knew very well that the effective remedy for human egoism lies beyond philosophy and religion, in a true spiritual life accepted and lived on earth by the physical consciousness itself—this makes it truly capable of getting rid of the ego once and for all.

15 November 1969

201—Mediaeval Christianity said to the race, “Man, thou art in thy earthly life an evil thing and a worm before God; renounce then egoism, live for a future state and submit thyself to God and His priest.” The results were not over-good for humanity. Modern knowledge says to the race, “Man, thou art an ephemeral animal and no more to Nature than the ant and the earthworm, a transitory speck only in the universe. Live then for the State and submit thyself antlike to the trained administrator and the scientific expert.” Will this gospel succeed any better than the other?

202—Vedanta says rather, “Man, thou art of one nature and substance with God, one soul with thy fellowmen. Awake and progress then to thy utter divinity, live for God in thyself and in others.” This gospel which was given only to the few, must now be offered to all mankind for its deliverance.

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There is nothing to add. Sri Aurobindo has clearly and masterfully stated first the evil and then its remedy. All we have to do is to put into practice what he has taught us.

16 November 1969

203—The human race always progresses most when most it asserts its importance to Nature, its freedom and its universality.

204—Animal man is the obscure starting-point, the present natural man the varied and tangled mid-road, but supernatural man the luminous and transcendent goal of our human journey.

Man finds his full power for progress when he no longer feels bound to Nature or limited by her laws.

Nature is only a limited expression of the Divine, whereas man was created to become the conscious expression of the Divine, with all the possibilities of power and light which that implies.

18 November 1969

205—Life and action culminate and are eternally crowned for thee when thou hast attained the power of symbolising and manifesting in every thought and act, in art, literature and life, in wealth-getting, wealth-having or wealth-spending, in home, government and society, the One Immortal in His lower mortal being.

No doubt, this is the description of man when he reaches the summit of his being. But it is only the first step of the superman.

24 November 1969