In our ignorance we are like children proud of our success in walking erect and unaided and too eager to be aware of the mother’s steadying touch on the shoulder. When we wake, we look back and see that God was leading and upholding us always.
Sri Aurobindo
(463−Thoughts and Aphorisms)
Let your life be a constant search for the Truth and it will be worth living.
The Mother
(Words of the Mother, Vol. 15 Page:238)
The ego-centric man feels and takes things as they affect him. Does this please me or displease, give me gladness or pain, flatter my pride, vanity, ambition or hurt it, satisfy my desires or thwart them, etc. The un-egoistic man does not look at things like that. He looks to see what things are in themselves and would be if he were not there, what is their meaning, how they fit into the scheme of things—or else he feels calm and equal, refers everything to the Divine, or if he is a man of action, how they will serve the work that has to be done or the life of the world or the cause he serves, etc. etc. There can be many points of view which are not ego-centric.
Volume: 22-23-24 [SABCL] (Letters on Yoga), Page: 1371
Men usually work and carry on their affairs from the ordinary motives of the vital being, need, desire of wealth or success or position or power or fame or the push to activity and the pleasure of manifesting their capacities, and they succeed or fail according to their capability, power of work and the good or bad fortune which is the result of their nature and their Karma. When one takes up the yoga and wishes to consecrate one’s life to the Divine, these ordinary motives of the vital being have no longer their full and free play; they have to be replaced by another, a mainly psychic and spiritual motive, which will enable the sadhak to work with the same force as before, no longer for himself, but for the Divine. If the ordinary vital motives or vital force can no longer act freely and yet are not replaced by something else, then the push or force put into the work may decline or the power to command success may no longer be there. For the sincere sadhak the difficulty can only be temporary; but he has to see the defect in his consciousness or his attitude and to remove it. Then the Divine Power itself will act through him and use his capacity and vital force for its ends.
The only work that spiritually purifies is that which is done without personal motives, without desire for fame or public recognition or worldly greatness, without insistence on one’s own mental motives or vital lusts and demands or physical preferences, without vanity or crude self-assertion or claim for position or prestige, done for the sake of the Divine alone and at the command of the Divine. All work done in an egoistic spirit, however good for people in the world of the Ignorance, is of no avail to the seeker of the yoga.
Letters On Yoga Volume-23, Page 669: Sadhana Through Work
Hand over your problems to the Divine and He will pull you out of all difficulties.
3 July 1970
There is a purpose in life ― and it is the only true and lasting one ― the Divine. Turn to Him and the emptiness will go.
Blessings.
You are here to contact your soul, and that is why you live. Aspire persistently and try to silence your mind. The aspiration must come from the heart.
11 June 1971
To be and to become more and more what the Divine wants us to be should be our greatest preoccupation.
25 July 1971
He who wants to advance on the path of perfection must never complain about the difficulties on the way, for each is an opportunity for a new progress.
To complain is a sign of weakness and insincerity.
The Mother
(Words of the Mother, Vol. 14 Page: 236)
11 May 1967
You see, in the present condition of the world, circumstances are always difficult. The whole world is in a condition of strife, conflict, between the forces of truth and light wanting to manifest and the opposition of all that does not want to change, which represents in the past what is fixed, hardened and refuses to go. Naturally, each individual feels his own difficulties and is faced by the same obstacles.
There is only one way for you. It is a total, complete and unconditional surrender. What I mean by that is the giving up not only of your actions, work, ambitions, but also of all your feelings, in the sense that all that you do, all that you are, is exclusively for the Divine. So, you feel above the surrounding human reactions − not only above them but protected from them by the wall of the Divine’s Grace. Once you have no more desires, no more attachments, once you have given up all necessity of receiving a reward from human beings, whoever they are − knowing that the only reward that is worth getting is the one that comes from the Supreme and that never fails − once you give up the attachment to all exterior beings and things, you at once feel in your heart this Presence, this Force, this Grace that is always with you.
And there is no other remedy. It’s the only remedy, for everybody without exception. To all those who suffer, it is the same thing that has to be said: all suffering is the sign that the surrender is not total. Then, when you feel in you a “bang”, like that, instead of saying, “Oh, this is bad” or “This circumstance is difficult,” you say, “My surrender is not perfect.” Then it’s all right. And then you feel the Grace that helps you and leads you, and you go on. And one day you emerge into that peace that nothing can trouble. You answer to all the contrary forces, the contrary movements, the attacks, the misunderstandings, the bad wills, with the same smile that comes from full confidence in the Divine Grace. And that is the only way out, there is no other.
This world is a world of conflict, suffering, difficulty, strain; it is made of it. It has not yet changed, it will take some time before changing. And for each one there is a possibility of getting out. If you lean back on the presence of the Supreme Grace, that is the only way out. That I have been telling you since two or three days, like that constantly.
Now?
What to do?
What? For your work there is nothing to say. You are doing it perfectly well, exactly as it has to be done; it is all right. Your work is quite all right.
That is what I wanted to ask: whether this work is in any manner needed or not? Why should I go on doing it?
Excellent, go on doing it. You do it perfectly well. Don’t expect human appreciation − because human beings don’t know on what grounds to appreciate something, and, moreover, when there is something that is superior to them, they don’t like it.
But where to get such a strength?
Within you. The Divine Presence is in you. It is in you. You look for it outside; look inside. It is in you. The Presence is there. You want the appreciation of others to get strength you will never get it. The strength is in you. If you want, you can aspire for what seems to you the supreme goal, supreme light, supreme knowledge, supreme love. But it is in you − otherwise you would never be able to contact it. If you go deep enough inside you, you will find it there, like a flame that is always burning straight up.
And don’t believe that it is so difficult to do. It is because the look is always turned outside that you don’t feel the Presence. But if, instead of looking outside for support, you concentrate and you pray − inside, to the supreme knowledge − to know at each moment what is to be done, the way to do it, and if you give all you are, all you do in order to acquire perfection, you will feel that the support is there, always guiding, showing the way. And if there is a difficulty, then instead of wanting to fight, you hand it over, hand it over to the supreme wisdom to deal with it − to deal with all the bad wills, all the misunderstandings, all the bad reactions. If you surrender completely, it is no more your concern: it’s the concern of the Supreme who takes it up and knows better than anybody else what is to be done. The only way out, only way out. There, my child.
One thing is that whatever I do there, it is not liked by my own people.
Your own people are all mixed up, as everybody is.
But my feeling is so strong − not only strong but it is as clear as daylight, as if I am just sitting in your presence − that I do not do anything myself. This is such a great, clear experience to me for all these years. Whatever is being done by me, it is being done by some Force and not by me at all. And it gets it done, but then the…
What ! You expect the world to understand that ?
No. They may not understand, I don’t want any credit for that. But you see, the obstacles and the…
If you consider this: that I can understand and know, then you have my full support. I never told you that you were doing wrong, did I? Now, once and for all you must understand that unless people are true yogis, out of the ego, completely surrendered to the Supreme, they can’t understand. How could they? They see with all the exterior eyes and knowledge; they see exterior things and appearances. They don’t see the inside. When we have stopped expecting appreciation from the outside, that is from human beings, we have no reason to complain. They appreciate, so much the better for them. They don’t appreciate, it doesn’t matter. It’s their own look-out. We do things not to please them, we do things because we feel that that is to be done.
I have never expected appreciation, Mother.
Perhaps things are coming to compel you to take up that position − because that is the liberation, that is the true liberation.
Not from ego, but I am a sadhu by nature. I don’t need anything at all.
That is all right, but also you must not need the appreciation of your own family.
With all my failings and weaknesses, I don’t need anything at all. I don’t need any appreciation.
Then you can’t suffer. Because the only thing that you need is the support of the Divine, and you have it. Then you can’t suffer.
But I am suffering very much.
Yes, there is a conflict in your being. One part of your consciousness knows but there is still one part that is the slave of circumstances.
(Silence)
Perhaps all that has been coming upon you for the supreme and the total liberation. And if you take it as the expression of the Grace, you will see the result. Peace, a peace that nothing can disturb, perfect equanimity and a strength that never fails.
(Long silence)
Take it as a new birth today. The new life that is beginning.
A life consecrated to union with the Divine is the only life worth living.
24 April 1971
How often there is a kind of emptiness in the course of life, an unoccupied moment, a few minutes, sometimes more. And what do you do? Immediately you try to distract yourself, and you invent some foolishness or other to pass your time. That is a common fact. All men, from the youngest to the oldest, spend most of their time in trying not to be bored. Their pet aversion is boredom and the way to escape from boredom is to act foolishly.
Well, there is a better way than that – to remember.
When you have a little time, whether it is one hour or a few minutes, tell yourself, “At last, I have some time to concentrate, to collect myself, to relive the purpose of my life, to offer myself to the True and the Eternal.” If you took care to do this each time you are not harassed by outer circumstances, you would find out that you were advancing very quickly on the path. Instead of wasting your time in chattering, in doing useless things, reading things that lower the consciousness – to choose only the best cases, I am not speaking of other imbecilities which are much more serious – instead of trying to make yourself giddy, to make time, that is already so short, still shorter only to realise at the end of your life that you have lost three-quarters of your chance – then you want to put in double time, but that does not work – is better to be moderate, balanced, patient, quiet, but never to lose an opportunity that is given to you, that is to say, to utilise for the true purpose the unoccupied moment before you.
When you have nothing to do, you become restless, you run about, you meet friends, you take a walk, to speak only of the best; I am not referring to things that are obviously not to be done. Instead of that, sit down quietly before the sky, before the sea or under trees, whatever is possible (here you have all of them) and try to realise one of these things–to understand why you live, to learn how you must live, to ponder over what you want to do and what should be done, what is the best way of escaping from the ignorance and falsehood and pain in which you live.
16 May 1958
People have the habit of dealing lightly with thoughts that come. And the atmosphere is full of thoughts of all kinds which do not in fact belong to anybody in particular, which move perpetually from one person to another, very freely, much too freely, because there are very few people who can keep their thoughts under control.
When you take up the Buddhist discipline to learn how to control your thoughts, you make very interesting discoveries. You try to observe your thoughts. Instead of letting them pass freely, sometimes even letting them enter your head and establish themselves in a quite inopportune way, you look at them, observe them and you realise with stupefaction that in the space of a few seconds there passes through the head a series of absolutely improbable thoughts that are altogether harmful.
You believe you are so good, so kind, so well disposed and always full of good feelings. You wish no harm to anybody, you wish only good – all that you tell yourself complacently. But if you look at yourself sincerely as you are thinking, you notice that you have in your head a collection of thoughts which are sometimes frightful and of which you were not at all aware.
For example, your reactions when something has not pleased you: how eager you are to send your friends, relatives, acquaintances, everyone, to the devil! How you wish them all kinds of unpleasant things, without even being aware of it! And how you say, “Ah, that will teach him to be like that!” And when you criticise, you say, “He must be made aware of his faults.” And when someone has not acted according to your ideas, you say, “He will be punished for it!” and so on.
You do not know it because you do not look at yourself in the act of thinking. Sometimes you know it, when it becomes a little too strong. But when the thing simply passes through, you hardly notice it – it comes, it enters, it leaves. Then you find out that if you truly want to be pure and wholly on the side of the Truth, then that requires a vigilance, a sincerity, a self-observation, a self-control which are not common. You begin to realise that it is difficult to be truly sincere.
You flatter yourself that you have nothing but good feelings and good intentions and that whatever you do, you do for the sake of what is good – yes, so long as you are conscious and have control, but the moment you are not very attentive, all kinds of things happen within you of which you are not at all conscious and which are not very pretty.
If you want to clean your house thoroughly, you must be vigilant for a long time, for a very long time and especially not believe that you have reached the goal, like that, at one stroke, because one day you happened to decide that you would be on the right side. That is of course a very essential and important point, but it must be followed by a good many other days when you have to keep a strict guard on yourself so as not to belie your resolution.
4 April 1958
