Chapter 322–23

23 – God gave me good in a blow. Shall I say, “I forgive thee,

O Almighty One, the harm and the cruelty, but do it not again”?

What does this mean: “God struck me with a human hand”?

These two aphorisms are illustrations of the affirmation of the Divine Presence in all things and all beings, and they also develop the idea which has already been touched on, that there is nothing and no one to forgive, since the Divine is the originator of all things.

This is how this sentence, “God struck me with a human hand”, should be read and understood. If you see nothing but the appearances, it is only one man hitting another. But for one who sees and knows the Truth, it is the supreme Lord who gives the blow through that human hand, and the blow necessarily does good to the one who receives it, that is to say, brings about a progress in his consciousness, for the ultimate aim of creation is to awaken all beings to the consciousness of the Divine.

Once you have understood that, the rest of the two apho-risms is easily explained.

Are we to forgive the Lord for the good He does us, while, at the same time, asking Him not to do it again?

The self-contradiction and stupidity of such a formula are obvious.

9 March 1960

24 – When I pine at misfortune and call it evil, or am jealous

and disappointed, then I know that there is awake in me again the eternal fool.

What is this “misfortune” and why does it come?

If you act in order to obtain a result and if the result obtained is not the one you expected, you call this a misfortune. As a general rule, any event that is unexpected or feared is considered by ordinary minds to be a misfortune. Why does this misfortune come? In each case the reason is different; or rather, it is only after the event that the need to explain things makes us look for reasons. But most often our evaluation of circumstances is blind and mistaken. We judge in ignorance. It is only later on, sometimes very much later on, when we have the necessary perspective and view the train of events and the overall results, that we see things as they really were. Then we perceive that what seemed bad to us was in truth very useful and helped us to make the necessary progress.

Sri Aurobindo describes the state of one who is sunk in ignorance and desire and who judges everything from the point of view of his narrow and limited ego as that of “eternal fool”. To be able to understand and feel things correctly one must have a universal vision and be conscious of the Divine Presence and Will in all things and in all circumstances.

Then we know that whatever happens to us is always for our good, if we take the point of view of the spirit in the unfolding of time.

16 March 1960

25 – When I see others suffer, I feel that I am unfortunate,

but the wisdom that is not mine, sees the good that is coming and approves.

What is this “wisdom”?

It is the supreme wisdom, the wisdom of the Supreme. By this wisdom the present, the past and the future are all seen equally. It knows the causes of all effects and the effects of all causes. The sum total of all circumstances, perceived simultaneously in their entirety, is seen by it as Nature’s sublime effort to express the Divine progressively, her ascending march towards divine perfection. That is “the good that is coming”, everything tends towards that; and that is why the true wisdom approves.

For it is only our shortsightedness, our too limited perception and our misguided sensations that, for us, change into suffering what is a possibility and an opportunity for progress.

And this is proved by the fact that as soon as we understand and collaborate, suffering disappears.

23 March 1960

26 – Sir Philip Sidney said of the criminal led out to be

hanged, “There, but for the grace of God, goes Sir Philip Sidney.” Wiser, had he said, “There, by the grace of God, goes Sir Philip Sidney.”

I have not understood the meaning of this aphorism.

Sir Philip Sidney was a statesman and a poet, but in spite of his success in life, he retained his humble nature. Seeing a criminal being taken to the gallows, he is supposed to have said the famous words which Sri Aurobindo quotes in his aphorism and which could be paraphrased like this, “That could have happened to me too, but for the Grace of God.” Sri Aurobindo remarks that had Sir Philip Sidney been wiser he would have said, “That could have happened to me too, by the Grace of God.” For the divine Grace is everywhere, always, behind everything and every event, whatever our reaction to that thing or event may be, whether it appears good or bad, catastrophic or beneficial.

And if Sir Philip had been a Yogi, he would have had the experience of human unity and he would have felt concretely that it was himself or a part of himself which was being led to the gallows and he would have known at the same time that everything that happens happens by the Grace of the Lord.

30 March 1960

27 – God is a great and cruel Torturer because He loves. You

do not understand this, because you have not seen and played with Krishna.

What does “to play with Krishna” mean? What does “God is a great and cruel Torturer” mean?

Krishna is the immanent Divine, the Divine Presence in everyone and in all things. He is also, sovereignly, the aspect of Delight and Love of the Supreme; he is the smiling tenderness and the playful gaiety; he is at once the player, the play and all his playmates. And as both the game and its results are wholly known, conceived, willed, organised and played consciously in their entirety, there can be room for nothing but the delight of the play. Thus to see Krishna means to find the inner Godhead, to play with Krishna means to be identified with the inner Godhead and to share in his consciousness. When you achieve this state, you enter immediately into the bliss of the divine play; and the more complete the identification, the more perfect the state.

But if some corner of the consciousness keeps the ordinary perception, the ordinary understanding, the ordinary sensation, then you see the suffering of others, you find the play that causes so much suffering very cruel and you conclude that the God who takes pleasure in such a play must be a terrible Torturer; but on the other hand, when you have had the experience of identification with the Divine, you cannot forget the immense, the wonderful love which he puts into his play, and you understand that it is the limitation of our vision that makes us judge in this way, and that far from being a voluntary Torturer, he is the great beneficent love that guides the world and men, by the quickest routes, in their progressive march towards perfection, a perfection which, moreover, is always relative and is always being surpassed.

But a day will come when this apparent suffering will no longer be required to stimulate the advance and when progress can be made more and more in harmony and delight.

6 April 1960

28 – One called Napoleon a tyrant and imperial cutthroat;

but I saw God armed striding through Europe.

Are all these wars necessary for the evolution of the earth?

At a certain stage of human development, wars are inevitable. In prehistoric times the whole of life was a war; and to the present day human history has been one long history of wars. Wars are the natural result of a state of consciousness dominated by the struggle for life and egoistic aggressiveness. And at the present time, in spite of some human efforts towards peace, there is, as yet, nothing to assure us that war is no longer an inevitable calamity. Indeed, does not a state of war, open or otherwise, exist at this moment in many parts of the world?

Besides, everything that happens on earth necessarily leads to its progress. Thus wars are schools of courage, endurance, fearlessness; they may serve to destroy a past which refuses to disappear although its time is over, and they make room for new things. Wars can, like Kurukshetra,2be a way to rid the earth of a domineering or destructive race so that justice and right may reign. They can, through the presence of danger, 2 In the Bhagavad Gita, the legendary battle-field where the Pandavas, led by Sri Krishna, and the Kauravas confronted each other.

shake the apathy of a too tamasic3 consciousness and awaken dormant energies. Finally they can, by contrast, and because of the horrors that accompany and follow them, drive men to seek an effective way to make such a barbarous and violent form of transformation unnecessary.

For everything that is unnecessary to the evolution of the earth automatically ceases to exist.

13 April 1960

You have written: “They [wars] may serve to destroy a past which refuses to disappear although its time is over, and they make room for new things.” Now that the Supermind has descended upon earth will war be necessary to change the present state of the world?

All will depend on the receptivity of nations. If they open widely and quickly to the influence of the new forces and if they change rapidly enough in their conceptions and actions, war may be avoided. But it is always threatening and always in abeyance; every error, every darkening of the consciousness increases this threat.

And yet in the last analysis everything really depends on the Divine Grace and we should look towards the future with confidence and serenity, at the same time progressing as fast as we can.

15 April 1960

29 – I have forgotten what vice is and what virtue; I can only

see God, His play in the world and His will in humanity.

3 Governed by tamas, the principle of inertia and obscurity.

If everything is God’s will, what is the use of personal will?

In the universe and more particularly upon earth everything is part of the divine plan executed by Nature and everything is necessary for its fulfilment. Personal will is one of Nature’s means of action and indispensable for her working. So personal will is in a way part of God’s will.

However, to understand properly, we must first agree on the meaning that is given to the word “will”.

Will, as it is usually conceived, is the elaboration of a thought, to which is added a force, a power of fulfilment ac-companied by an impulse to carry it out. That is the description of human will. Divine will is quite another thing. It is a vision united with a power of realisation. Divine will is omniscient and omnipotent, it is irresistible and immediate in its execution.

Human will is uncertain, often wavering, always in conflict with opposing wills. It is effective only when for some reason or other it is in accord with the will of Nature — itself a transcription of the divine will — or with the divine will itself, as a result of Grace or Yoga.

So one can say that personal will is one of the means that God uses to bring us back to Him.

20 April 1960

30 – I saw a child wallowing in the dirt and the same child

cleaned by his mother and resplendent, but each time I trembled before his utter purity.

Can a child keep this purity even when he has grown up?

In theory, it is not impossible, and some people born away from cities, civilisations and cultures may maintain throughout the life of their earthly body this spontaneous purity, a purity of the soul that is not obscured by the mind’s working.

For the purity of which Sri Aurobindo speaks here is the purity of instinct, that obeys Nature’s impulses spontaneously, never calculating, never questioning, never asking whether it is good or bad, whether what one does is right or wrong, whether it is a virtue or a sin, whether the outcome will be favourable or unfavourable. All these notions come into play when the mental ego makes its appearance and begins to take a dominant position in the consciousness and to veil the spontaneity of the soul.

In modern “civilised” life, parents and teachers, by their practical and rational “good advice”, lose no time in covering up this spontaneity which they call unconsciousness, and substituting for it a very small, very narrow, limited mental ego, withdrawn into itself, crammed with notions of misbehaviour and sin and punishment or of personal interest, calculation and profit; all of which has the inevitable result of increasing vital desires through repression, fear or self-justification.

And yet for the sake of completeness it should be added that because man is a mental being, he must necessarily in the course of his evolution leave behind this unconscious and spontaneous purity, which is very similar to the purity of the animal, and after passing through an unavoidable period of mental perversion and impurity, rise beyond the mind into the higher and luminous purity of the divine consciousness.

27 April 1960

31 – What I wished or thought to be the right thing does not

come about; therefore it is clear that there is no All- Wise one who guides the world but only blind Chance or a brute Causality.

For some people events are always contrary to what they desire or aspire for or believe to be good for them. They often despair. Is this a necessity for their progress?

Despair is never a necessity for progress, it is always a sign of weakness and tamas; it often indicates the presence of an adverse force, that is to say, a force that is purposely acting against sadhana.4

So, in all circumstances of life you must always be very careful to guard against despair. Besides, this habit of being sombre, morose, of despairing, does not truly depend on events, but on a lack of faith in the nature. One who has faith, even if only in himself, can face all difficulties, all circumstances, even the most adverse, without discouragement or despair. He fights like a man to the end. Natures that lack faith also lack endurance and courage.

Sri Aurobindo tells us that for human beings the degree of success in physical life depends on the degree of harmony between the individual and universal physical Nature. Some people have a will which is spontaneously in tune with the will of Nature, and they succeed in everything they undertake; others, on the contrary, have a will which is more or less totally out of tune with the will of cosmic Nature and they fail in everything they do or try to do.

As for the question of what is necessary for progress, in an evolving world everything is necessarily a help to progress; but individual progress extends over a considerable number of lives and through innumerable experiences. It cannot be judged on the basis of a single life between birth and death. On the whole, it is certain that the experience of a life of failure and defeat is just as useful to the soul’s growth as the experience of a life of success and victory; even more so, no doubt, than the experience of an uneventful life, as human existence usually is, in which success and failure, satisfaction and disappointment, pleasure and pain mingle and follow one another — a life that 4 The practice of Yoga.

seems “natural” and does not require any great effort.

4 May 1960

32 – The Atheist is God playing at hide and seek with Him-

self; but is the Theist any other? Well, perhaps; for he has seen the shadow of God and clutched at it.

What does “God playing at hide and seek with Himself” mean?

In the game of hide and seek, one person hides and the other seeks. So God hides from the atheist who says, “God? I do not see him, I do not know where he is; therefore he does not exist.” But the atheist does not know that God is also in him; and therefore it is God who is denying his own existence. Isn’t that a game? And yet a day will come when he will be brought face to face with himself and will be obliged to recognise that he exists.

The believer thinks himself very superior to the atheist, but all that he has been able to seize of God is His shadow and he clings to this shadow imagining that it is God himself. For if he truly knew God, he would know that God is all things and in everything; then he would cease to think himself superior to anybody.

11 May 1960

33 – O Thou that lovest, strike! If Thou strike me not now,

I shall know that Thou lovest me not.

I have not understood this aphorism very well.

All who aspire for the divine perfection know that the blows which the Lord deals us in His infinite love and grace are the surest and quickest way to make us progress. And the harder the blows the more they feel the greatness of the divine Love.

Ordinary men, on the contrary, always ask God to give them an easy, pleasant and successful life. In every personal satisfaction they see a sign of divine mercy; but if on the contrary they meet with unhappiness and misfortune in life, they complain and say to God, “You do not love me.”

In opposition to this crude and ignorant attitude, Sri Auro-bindo says to the divine Beloved, “Strike, strike hard, let me feel the intensity of Thy love for me.”

18 May 1960

34 – O Misfortune, blessed be thou; for through thee I have

seen the face of my Lover.

If through misfortune one sees the face of God, then it is no longer misfortune, is it?

Obviously, far from being a misfortune, it is a blessing. And this is precisely what Sri Aurobindo means.

When things happen which are not what we expect, what we hope for, what we want, which are contrary to our desires, in our ignorance we call them misfortunes and lament. But if we were to become a little wiser and observe the deeper consequences of these very same events, we would find that they are leading us rapidly towards the Divine, the Beloved; whereas easy and pleasant circumstances encourage us to dally on the path, to stop along the way to pluck the flowers of pleasure which present themselves to us and which we are too weak or not sincere enough to reject resolutely, so that our march forward is not delayed.

One must already be very strong, very far along the way, to be able to face success and the little enjoyments it brings without giving way. Those who can do this, those who are strong, do not run after success; they do not seek it, and accept it with indifference. For they know and appreciate the value of the lashes given by unhappiness and misfortune.

But ultimately the true attitude, the sign and proof that we are near the goal, is a perfect equality which enables us to accept success and failure, fortune and misfortune, happiness and sorrow with the same tranquil joy; for all these things become marvellous gifts that the Lord in his infinite solicitude showers upon us.

25 May 1960

35 – Men are still in love with grief; when they see one who

is too high for grief or joy, they curse him and cry, “O thou insensible!” Therefore Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem.

36 – Men are in love with sin; when they see one who is

too high for vice or virtue, they curse him and cry, “O thou breaker of bonds, thou wicked and immoral one!” Therefore Sri Krishna does not live as yet in Brindavan.5

I would like to have an explanation of these two apho-risms.

When Christ came upon earth, he brought a message of brotherhood, love and peace. But he had to die in pain, on the cross, so that his message might be heard. For men cherish suffering and hatred and want their God to suffer with them. They wanted this when Christ came and, in spite of his teaching and sacrifice, they still want it; and they are so attached to their pain that, symbolically, Christ is still bound to his cross, suffering perpetually for the salvation of men.

As for Krishna, he came upon earth to bring freedom and delight. He came to announce to men, enslaved to Nature, to 5 The village where Sri Krishna spent his childhood, and where he danced with Radha and the other Gopis.