Divine Compassion (HH 143)

The Divine Advent invariably brings upon Earth the Divine Compassion that reaches out to as many souls as possible to rescue them from the net of Ignorance. Collectively too, the Divine action pulls earth and humanity one more step towards the Light thereby facilitating the forward march of humanity. The Mother and Sri Aurobindo bring along with this action of Truth and Compassion, the Grace and Love that can transform earth and men. The present subject centers around the Compassion of the Divine and how we should respond to it.

Words of Sri Aurobindo

“There are these three powers [governing life on earth]: (1) The Cosmic Law, of Karma or what else; (2) the Divine Compassion acting on as many as it can reach through the nets of the Law and giving them their chance; (3) the Divine Grace which acts more incalculably but also more irresistibly than the others.”

Sri Aurobindo: Letters on Yoga

Words of the Mother

All this [the world, the Ashram] is held in my consciousness with a kind of essential compassion applying equally to all things, all difficulties, all obstacles. I receive letters by the dozens, as you know, and each person comes to me with his own little misery or problem, inner or outer (a tiny pimple becomes … a mountain). When people come to me, my inner consciousness always responds in the same way, with a kind of … equality and compassion for all. But when people are talking to me or I am reading a letter and my body grows conscious of what it calls the ‘to-do’ they make over their miseries, it has a kind of feeling (I mean there is a feeling in the cells): ‘Why do they take things like that! They are making things much more difficult.’ The body understands. It understands that their way of taking the least little difficulty in such a blind, egotistical and self-centered manner, increases its difficulties furiously!

It’s a rather amusing sensation, a combination of sensation and feeling, that the ordinary human attitude towards things multiplies and magnifies the difficulties to FANTASTIC proportions; while if they simply had the true attitude – a NORMAL attitude, quite simple, uncomplicated – ahh, all life would be much easier. For the body feels the vibrations (those very vibrations which concentrate to form a body), it feels their nature and sees that its ‘normal’ reaction, a peaceful and confident reaction, makes things so much easier! But as soon as this agitation of anxiety, fear, discontent comes in, the reaction of a will that ‘doesn’t want any of it’ … oh, right away it becomes like water boiling: pff! pff! pff! like a machine. While if the difficulty is accepted with confidence and simplicity, it’s reduced to its minimum, and I mean purely materially, in the material vibration itself…..

February 25, 1961

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Basically, in order to feel at home in the world as it is today, one must belong to the category I spoke of the other day, of those who have established a harmony with all the human faculties, who are satisfied, and also who are egocentric enough not even to notice that things aren’t that way for others. Then it’s fine; otherwise … Sri Aurobindo very much belonged (in his outward being) to the category of those who want things to change, who push for progress, who want to move on, who want to reject the past … very much so. He had to make a great effort to be satisfied with things and people; it was his compassion that made him accept people around him as they were. Otherwise he used to suffer a lot….

December 4, 1965

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But then, when that true Compassion of divine Love comes and you see all those things that look so horrible, so abnormal, so absurd, that great pain over all beings and even over things … Then there was born in this physical being the aspiration to relieve, to cure, to make all that disappear. There is something in Love in its Origin that is constantly expressed by the intervention of the Grace; a force, a sweetness, something like a vibration of solace, spread everywhere, but which an enlightened consciousness can direct, concentrate on certain points. And that’s just where I saw the true use one could make of thought: thought is used as a channel to carry the vibration from place to place, wherever it’s necessary. This force, this vibration of sweetness is there over the world in a static way, pressing to be received, but it’s an impersonal action, and thought – enlightened thought, surrendered thought, the thought that is nothing more than an instrument, that no longer tries to set things in motion, that is satisfied with being moved by the higher Consciousness – thought is used as an intermediary to make contact, to build a connection and allow this impersonal Force to act wherever it’s necessary, on precise points.

We may say in an absolute way that the remedy always goes together with the trouble. We could say that the cure for every suffering coexists with the suffering. Then, instead of seeing an “unnecessary” and “stupid” trouble, as people generally think, you see that the progress, the evolution which made the suffering necessary – which is the cause and the goal of the suffering – achieves the desired result, and at the same time the suffering is cured, for those who can open up and receive. The three things – the suffering as a means of progress, the progress, and the cure of the suffering – are coexistent, simultaneous, meaning that they don’t follow one another, they take place at the same time.

If, when the transformative action creates a suffering, there is in what suffers the necessary aspiration and opening, the remedy is absorbed at the same time, and the effect is total, complete: the transformation, along with the action necessary to obtain it, and at the same time the cure of the false sensation caused by the resistance. And the suffering is replaced by … something unknown on this earth, but which has to do with joy, ease, trust, and security. It’s a supersensation, in perfect peace, and clearly the only thing that can be eternal.

This analysis expresses very imperfectly what we could call the “content” of the Ananda.

September 28, 1966

Apr 5, 2015