Is it always Truth that wins? At least this is what we would naturally and rightfully expect in a world governed by the Divine. But in outer life at least we do not see it happen always or even most of the time. Perhaps our seeing is faulty, perhaps we have missed something. Or perhaps the Divine Vision of Truth and is way of working are other than what we understand by the term. Most of all perhaps this world we inhabit is not the perfect expression of Truth. It is an evolving world and therefore Truth itself wears an evolutionary aspect and its emergence appears a struggle of conflicting forces. These are some of the issues being discussed in this talk.
Words of the Mother
“Sweet Mother, it is said that always the good and the true triumph, but we see that often in life it is otherwise. The wicked win, seem somehow to be protected from suffering.”
(Mother laughs, then remains silent.) People always confuse two ideas. It is from the universal and spiritual point of view that, not positively the “good” as men understand it, but the True, the Truth, will have the last word; it goes without saying. That is to say, finally the Divine will be victorious. That is what is said, what all who have lived a spiritual life have said—it is an absolute fact. Men, in translating it, say, “I am a good boy, I live in accordance with what I think to be true, therefore, all existence should be good for me.”
(Mother laughs) First of all, one’s own appreciation of oneself is always doubtful, and then, in the world as it is now, all is mixed, it is not the Law of Truth that openly manifests itself to the half-blind human consciousness it will not even understand it. I mean, to be more exact, that it is the supreme vision that is realising itself constantly, but its realisation in the mixed material world does not appear to the ignorant human sight as the triumph of good, what men call good and true. But (to say it in a joking way) it is not the fault of the Lord, it is the fault of men! That is to say, the Lord knows what he is doing, and men do not understand it.
In a world of truth, all would be just as it is now perhaps, but it would be seen differently.
Both. There would be a difference. It is the present ignorance and obscurity in the world that give a deforming appearance to the divine Action; and that naturally must tend to disappear; but it is also true that there is a way of seeing things which… one might say, which gives another meaning to their appearance— the two are there, like this (gesture of intermixture).
(Silence)
You always come back to this, that man’s judgment is wrong —wrong because his vision of things is wrong, is incomplete— and necessarily this judgment must have wrong results. The world is perpetually changing, perpetually; not for a second is it like itself, and the general harmony expresses itself more and more perfectly; therefore nothing can remain as it is and in spite of all appearances to the contrary, the whole is always constantly progressing; the harmony is becoming more and more harmonious, the truth becoming more and more true in the Manifestation. But to see that, one must see the whole, and man sees only… not even the human domain, but only his personal domain, quite small, quite small, microscopic— he cannot understand.
It is a double thing that is going on completing itself (same gesture of intermixture) and with a mutual action: as the Manifestation becomes more conscious of itself, its expression perfects itself, becomes also more true. The two movements go together.
(Silence)
It was one of the things that was seen very clearly the other day, when there was this Consciousness of Knowledge: when the Manifestation will have sufficiently emerged out of the Inconscient so that all this necessity of struggle, created by the presence of the Inconscient, becomes progressively more and more useless, it will disappear quite naturally, and progress, instead of being made through effort and struggle, will begin to be made harmoniously. That is what the human consciousness foresees as a divine creation upon earth it will still be only one step. But for the present step, it is a kind of harmonious attainment that will change the universal progress (which is ceaseless) into a progress through joy and harmony instead of a progress through struggle and suffering…. But what was seen is that this feeling of insufficiency, of something that is not complete and is not perfect, that, one must foresee, will exist for a very long time if the notion of time remains the same, that I do not know. But all change implies time, does it not? It may not be translated by time as we conceive it, but it does imply a succession.
All these so-called problems all the while one receives, in this way, questions and questions and problems of the mind (all problems in the Ignorance, is it not so?) problems for the earth-worm. As soon as you emerge up there, such problems do not exist any more. There are no more contradictions. Contradictions always come from the inadequacy of vision and the incapacity to see a thing from all points of view at the same time.
In any case, to bring the question down to earth, no sage at any time, I think, has ever said: “Be good, and all will go well with you externally”—because it is a stupidity. In a world of disorder, in a world of falsehood, to hope for that is not reasonable. But you can have, if you are sufficiently sincere and whole and entire in your way of being, you can have the inner joy, the full satisfaction, whatever the circumstances, and that nobody and nothing has the power to touch.
CWM, Vol. 11, pp. 75 – 77
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Oh, why be restless and want that for oneself things should turn out in one way and not another! Why decide that a particular set of circumstances will be the expression of the best possibilities and then launch into a bitter struggle so that these possibilities may be realised! Why not use all one’s energy solely to will in the calm of inner confidence that Thy law may triumph everywhere and always over all difficulties, all darkness, all egoism! How the horizon widens as soon as one learns to take this attitude; how all anxiety vanishes giving place to a constant illumination, to the omnipotence of disinterestedness! To will what Thou willest, O Lord, is to live constantly in communion with Thee, to be delivered from all contingencies, to escape all narrowness, to fill one’s lungs with pure and wholesome air, to get rid of all useless weariness, be relieved of all cumbrous loads, so as to run briskly towards the only goal worth attaining: the triumph of Thy divine Law! O Lord, with what joy and trust I greet Thee this morning! . . .
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Deducing future circumstances from present ones is a mental activity of the nature of reasoning, even if the deduction takes place in the subconscient and is translated in the being into the form of intuition; but reasoning is a human faculty, that is, it is individual; its inspirations do not come from the infinite, the unlimited, the Divine. It is only in the Omniscience, only when one is at once What knows, what is to be known and the power of knowing that one can become conscious of all relations, past, present and future; but in this state there is no longer a past, present or future, all is eternally. The order of manifestation of all these relations does not solely depend upon the supreme impulsion, the divine Law, it depends also upon the resistance put up against this law by the most external world; from the combination of the two there comes forth the manifestation and so far as it is at present possible for me to know, this combination is in a way undetermined. This is what makes the play, the unexpectedness of the play.
The Mother: Prayers and Meditations
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Words of Sri Aurobindo
- The Self can always be won by truth, by self-discipline, by integral knowledge, by a life of purity,—this Self that is in the inner body, radiant, made all of light whom by the perishing of their blemishes the doers of askesis behold.
- It is Truth that conquers and not falsehood; by Truth was stretched out the path of the journey of the gods, by which the sages winning their desire ascend there where Truth has its supreme abode.
- Vast is That, divine, its form unthinkable; it shines out subtler than the subtle:7 very far and farther than farness, it is here close to us, for those who have vision it is even here in this world; it is here, hidden in the secret heart.
- Eye cannot seize, speech cannot grasp Him, nor these other godheads; not by austerity can he be held nor by works: only when the inner being is purified by a glad serenity of knowledge, then indeed, meditating, one beholds the Spirit indivisible.
- This Self is subtle and has to be known by a thought-mind into which the life-force has made its fivefold entry: all the conscious heart of creatures is shot through and inwoven with the currents of the life-force and only when it is purified can this Self manifest its power.
- Whatever world the man whose inner being is purified sheds the light of his mind upon, and whatsoever desires he cherishes, that world he takes by conquest, and those desires. Then, let whosoever seeks for success and well-being approach with homage a self-knower.
Sri Aurobindo: Mundaka Upanishad
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