Chapter 176July 31, 1914

IT seems to me that Thou wouldst make me taste successively all the experiences which are ordinarily put at the summit of a Yoga as its culmination and the proof of its perfect accomplishment. The experience is striking, intense, complete; it carries within it the knowledge of all its effects, all its consequences; it is conscious, willed, the result of methodical effort and not of unexpected chance; and yet it is always single of its kind, like milestones set along a route which are separated from each other by a long ribbon of road; and, moreover, these milestones which mark the infinite ascent are never alike; they are always new and seem to have no connection one with the other. . . . Will a time come when Thou wilt make this being capable of synthetising all these countless experi-ences so as to draw from them a new realisation, more complete and more beautiful than all achieved so far? I do not know. But Thou hast taught me not to regret an exceptional state when it disappears any more than I desire it before it comes. I see in the disappearance no longer the sign of an instability in the progress made, but the evidence of a march which goes deliberately forward without stopping any longer than is indispensable for the various stages of the road.

Each time Thou teachest me yet a little better that the means of manifestation is limited only because we think it so, and that it can effectively partake of Thy infinitude; each time something of Thy immensity makes itself kin to the instrument which is its dwelling-place, flinging wide the doors which open on boundless horizons.