BONNE ANNEE
HAPPY NEW YEAR

All India Magazine
Jan 1998

BLESSINGS

As the earth that heaves and opens,as the tree that grows, as the flower that blossoms, as the bird that sings,as the man that loves, let His light permeate you and radiate in everincreasing and widening happiness, a happiness steadily moving onward as the stars move in heaven.

The Mother

Existence is not merely a machinery of Nature, a wheel of law in which the soul is entangled for a moment or for ages;it is a constant manifestation of the Spirit.

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Manifestation is not an episode of the Eternal. lt is his face and body of glory that is imperishable, it is the movement of his joy and power...

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Existence is not a blind machine that somehow came and started a set ignoble motion without object or sense or purpose. Existence is a Truth of things unfolding by a gradual process of manifestation, an evolution of its own involved Reality.

Existence is not an illusion, a Maya that had no reason, no business to exist, could not exist, does not exist but only seems to be. A mighty Reality manifests in itself this marvellous universe.

***

Existence, not annihilation is the whole aim and pursuit of existence.

Sri Aurobindo

All life here is a stage or a circumstance in an unfolding progressive evolution of a Spirit that has involved itself in Matter and is labouring to manifest itself in that reluctant substance. This is the whole secret of earthly existence...

Evolution in its essence is not the development of a more and more organised body or a more and more efficient life - these are only its machinery and outward circumstance. Evolution is the strife of a Consciousness somnambulised in Matter to wake and be free and find and possess itself and all its possibilities to the very utmost and widest, to the very last and highest. Evolution is the emancipation of a self-revealing Soul secret in Form and Force, the slow becoming of a Godhead, the growth of a Spirit.

In this evolution mental man is not the goal and end, the completing value, the highest last significance; he is too small and imperfect to be the crown of all this travail of Nature...

From the clod and metal to the plant, from the plant to the animal, from the animal to man, so much has she completed of her journey. As from matter to life, from life to mind, so now she must pass from mind to supermind, from man to superman...

Sri Aurobindo

Man is a spirit veiled in the works of energy, moving to self-discovery, capable of Godhead. He is a soul that is growing through Nature to conscious self-hood; he is a divinity and an eternal existence; he is an ever-flowing wave of the God-ocean, an inextinguishable spark of the supreme Fire. Even, he is in his uttermost reality identical with the ineffable Transcendencefrom which he came and greater than the godheads whom he worships. The natural half-animal creature that for a while he seems to be is not at all his whole being and is not in any way his real being. His inmost reality is the divine Self or at least one dynamic eternal portion of it, and to find that and exceed his outward, apparent, natural self is the greatness of which he alone of terrestrial beings is capable.... Released into the cosmic consciousness, his spirit can become one with God, one self with the Spirit of the universe or rise into a Light and Vastness that transcends the universe; his nature can become one dynamic power with universal Nature or one. Light with a transcendental Gnosis. To be shut up for ever in his ego is not his ultimate perfection...

Sri Aurobindo

To get through the veil offerees and get at their secret mainspring, which is the Spirit itself, is of cardinal importance. To become ourselves is the one thing to be done; but the true ourselves is that which is within us, and to exceed our outer self of body, life and mind is the condition f or this highest being, which is our true and divine being, to become self-revealed and active. lt is only by growing within and living within that we can find it; once that is done, to create from there the spiritual or divine mind, life, body and through this instrumentation to arrive at the creation of a world which shall be the true environment of a divine living, - this is the final object that Force of Nature has set before us.

This then is the first necessity, that the individual, each individual, shall discover the Spirit, the divine reality within him and express that in all his being and living. A divine life must be first and foremost an inner life; for since the outward must be the expression of what is within, there can be no divinity in the outer existence if there is not the divinisation of the inner being.

Sri Aurobindo

The Divine we seek is not remote and inaccessible. He is at the core of His own creation and what He wants us to do is to find Him, and by our personal transformation to become capable of knowing Him, of uniting with Him and, in the end, of manifesting Him consciously. This is what we should consecrate ourselves to, this is our true reason for existence.

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The true aim of life is to find the Divine's Presence deep inside oneself and to surrender to lt so that It takes the lead of the life, all the feelings and all the actions of the body.

This gives a true and luminous aim to existence.

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The Divine is not far. He is in ourselves, deep inside and above the feelings and the thoughts. With the Divine is peace and certitude and even the solution of all difficulties.

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Open your heart and you will find me already there.

The Mother

The Upanishad teaches us how to perceive Brahman in the universe and in our self-existence.

We have to perceive Brahman comprehensively as both the Stable and the Moving. We must see lt in eternal and immutable Spirit and in all the changing manifestations ofuniverse and relativity.

We have to perceive all things in Space and Time, the far and the near, the immemorial Vast, the immediate Present, the infinite Future with all their contents and happenings as the One Brahman.

We have to perceive Brahman as that which exceeds, contains and supports all individual things as well as all dual things as well as all universe, transcendentally of Time and Space and Causality. We have to perceive It also as that which lives in and possesses the universe and all it contains.

This is the transcendental, universal and individual Brahman, Lord, Continent and Indwelling Spirit, which is the object of all knowledge. Its realisation is the condition of perfection and the way of Immortality.

Sri Aurobindo