Chapter 169500–503

Never forget that so long as you are capable of preference in your relations with life and men, you cannot be a pure and perfect instrument of the Divine.

28 April 1970 504 – In former times there was a noble form of asseveration for souls compact merely of force and action, “As surely as God liveth.” But for our modern needs another asseveration would suit better, “As surely as God loveth.”

In our sorrowful age, almost withered by the excessive domination of the intellect, nothing can be at once more necessary and more precious than Divine Love.

29 April 1970 505 – Science is chiefly useful to the God-lover and the God-knower because it enables him to understand in detail and admire the curious wonders of His material workmanship. The one learns and cries, “Behold how the Spirit has manifested itself in matter”; the other, “Behold, the touch of my Lover and Master, the perfect Artist, the hand omnipotent.”

How can one be of service6 to the Divine since we exist by Him alone — all we can do is to clumsily return to Him a little of all that He has given us.

30 April 1970 506 – O Aristophanes of the universe, thou who watchest thy world and laughest sweetly to thyself, wilt thou not let 6 The translation used was based on a text which read “Service” instead of “Science”.

me too see with divine eyes and share in thy worldwide laughters?

No doubt one must have a vision as total as the Divine Vision to be able to laugh at this world as it is.

1 May 1970 507 – Kalidasa says in a daring image that the snowrocks of Kailasa are Shiva’s loud world-laughters piled up in utter whiteness and pureness on the mountain-tops. It is true; and when their image falls on the heart, then the world’s cares melt away like the clouds below into their real nothingness.

Human science makes very exact observations; but the field is open to imagine the true causes — why not occult causes?

2 May 1970 508 – The strangest of the soul’s experiences is this, that it finds, when it ceases to care for the image and threat of troubles, then the troubles themselves are nowhere to be found in one’s neighbourhood. It is then that we hear from behind those unreal clouds God laughing at us.

Lord, and when You want the image to change into your likeness, what do You do?

4 May 1970 I did not understand what You wrote yesterday.

What Sri Aurobindo calls “the image” is the physical body. So I asked the Lord what He does when He wants to transform the physical body, and last night He gave me two visions in answer.

One concerned the liberation of the body consciousness from all the conventions regarding death; and in the other He showed me what the supramental body will be. You see that I did well to ask Him!

9 May 1970 509 – Has thy effort succeeded, O thou Titan? Dost thou sit, like Ravana and Hiranyakashipou,7 served by the gods and the world’s master? But that which thy soul was really hunting after, has escaped from thee.

510 – Ravana’s mind thought it was hungering after universal sovereignty and victory over Rama; but the aim his soul kept its vision fixed upon all the time was to get back to its heaven as soon as possible and be again God’s menial. Therefore, as the shortest way, it hurled itself against God in a furious clasp of enmity.

511 – The greatest of joys is to be, like Narada, the slave of God; the worst of Hells being abandoned of God, to be the world’s master. That which seems nearest to the ignorant conception of God, is the farthest from him.

512 – God’s servant is something; God’s slave is greater.

Sri Aurobindo gives us the true way to understand the Scriptures, which thus become universal symbols.

12 May 1970 513 – To be master of the world would indeed be supreme felicity, if one were universally loved; but for that one 7 Two demon kings.