Chapter 22May 6, 1960

At times I sense there’s an extraordinary secret to discover, just there at my finger tips; I feel that I am going to catch the Thing, to know ...

Sometimes, for a second, I see the Secret; there is an opening, and again it closes. Then once again it is unveiled for a second and I come to know a little more. Yesterday the Secret was there completely clear, wide open. But it’s not something that can be explained: words are silly, it must be experienced.

Sri Aurobindo speaks of this Secret almost everywhere, especially in his Essays on the Gita. He tells us that in the Gita itself one gets glimpses of this thing which is beyond the Impersonal, beyond even the Personal behind the Impersonal, beyond the Transcendent.

Well, I saw this Secret – I saw that the Supreme only becomes perfect in terrestrial matter, on earth.

‘Becomes’ is just a way of speaking, of course, for everything already is, and the Supreme is what He is. But we live in time, in a successive unfoldment, and it would be absurd to say that at present Matter is the expression of a perfect Divine.

clear), I saw it in the everyday, outer life, precisely in this very physical life which all spirituality rejects ... a kind of accuracy or exactitude right down to the atom.

that THE SUPREME becomes perfect in Matter.

If there is one fundamental necessity, it is humility. To be humble. Not humble as it is normally understood, such as merely saying, ‘I am so small, I’m nothing at all’ – no, something else ... Because the pitfalls are innumerable, and the further you progress in yoga, the more subtle they become, and the more the ego masks itself behind marvelous and saintly appearances. So when somebody says, ‘I no longer want to rely on anything but Him. I want to close my eyes and rest in Him alone,’ this comfortable ‘Him,’ which is exactly what you want him to be, is the ego – or a formidable Asura, or a Titan (depending on each one’s capacity). They’re all over the earth, the earth is their domain. So the first thing to do is to pocket your ego – not preserve it, but get rid of it as soon as possible!

You can be sure that the God you’ve created is a God of the ego whenever something within you insists, ‘This is what I feel, this is what I think, this is what I see; it’s my way, my very own – it’s my way of being, my way of understanding, my relationship with the Divine, etc.’