Chapter 16Suffering: progress in the presence of Inconscience 76

being made through effort and struggle, will begin to be made harmoniously. That is what the human consciousness foresees as a divine creation upon earth — it will still be only one step. But for the present step, it is a kind of harmonious attainment that will change the universal progress (which is ceaseless) into a progress through joy and harmony instead of a progress through struggle and suffering.... But what was seen is that this feeling of insufficiency, of something that is not complete and is not perfect, that, one must foresee, will exist for a very long time — if the notion of time remains the same, that I do not know. But all change implies time, does it not? It may not be translated by time as we conceive it, but it does imply a succession.

All these so-called problems — all the while one receives, in this way, questions and questions and problems of the mind (all problems in the Ignorance, is it not so?) — problems for the earth-worm. As soon as you emerge up there, such problems do not exist any more. There are no more contradictions. Con-tradictions always come from the inadequacy of vision and the incapacity to see a thing from all points of view at the same time.

In any case, to bring the question down to earth, no sage at any time, I think, has ever said: “Be good, and all will go well with you externally” — because it is a stupidity. In a world of disorder, in a world of falsehood, to hope for that is not reasonable. But you can have, if you are sufficiently sincere and whole and entire in your way of being, you can have the inner joy, the full satisfaction, whatever the circumstances, and that nobody and nothing has the power to touch.