Falsehood is the agony of the Supreme — so said the Mother.
And to cure and dissolve this falsehood, the supreme Lord and His conscious-force, the supreme Mother, descended into the very depths of the abyss of creation. The radiating sparks of that supreme divine Presence are the souls on earth.
Man, the human being, is nothing but that divine spark, the emanated spark of the Supreme, robed and lodged in the outer mould of an ignorant terrestrial consciousness. The soul, we might say, is a magic lantern put down here on earth to illumine and annihilate the surrounding obscurity of the material world. In its individual form each soul is unique: it has a unique role to play, a small corner to clean and render transparent, and it is unique also in its relation to the Supreme.
This is the truth, but only one side of it. There is another truth, complementary to it. Man is not an individual wholly separated or isolated from other beings. In spite of his own unique personality and formation he is yet one with all and represents the whole of the terrestrial consciousness; in truth he contains it in himself, in his consciousness. Each element in the earth-consciousness has a corresponding point in the individual consciousness; man is an amalgam of both the good and the evil of the whole of terrestrial nature, a miniature world, a representation of the entire earth-consciousness in a concentrated form, on a mini-scale. The more the consciousness is developed, the more the individual being grows, and the more this parallelism becomes evident. All that is good in the world you have within you; all that is bad on earth, that too you possess in your consciousness. No human being is a pure saint or angel, nor is he a complete devil.
In other paths of yoga one tried to cut off the unnecessary links with the world — unnecessary for the goal of personal liberation — and tried to concentrate on the single or few links which would connect one more easily to one’s source. It was a very practical approach, perhaps even the correct one, for those who aimed at a liberation of their own individual selves from the obscurity of the material world and the earth-consciousness.
But for us who aspire for the deliverance of the entire terrestrial consciousness from falsehood and ignorance, this will not do: we have to accept our burden; we must take part in the collective effort. If one of us makes a progress, he does it for the earth; if one bit of evil is annihilated in one individual consciousness, it produces a corresponding effect in the terrestrial consciousness; if one individual cures a single ill in his nature, the whole world gets the benefit. In fact, unless all is cured, nothing is perfectly cured. This is the secret of collective sadhana. And this is why on our way it is difficult to measure one’s own progress or to mark where one stands as one does on other ways of yoga. We all stand together, we are one in our endeavour.
The earth is full of ills, full of maladies. Maladies of the body there may be, but at bottom they are all maladies of consciousness. In all fields of life and at all levels, one has to face them and to struggle at each step. Take the political field for instance; it is the same story. It is a political sickness, a sickness of the group consciousness in each group or nation, and as in the individual so also in the collectivity the consciousness is centred in the ego and tries only to serve and fulfil its own limited interest at the cost of others. The problem is how to govern one’s own self and at the same time help others to do the same.
To tackle this or any other problem with the right attitude and the right point of view, one has to enlarge one’s ego, to outgrow it, to widen one’s consciousness and feel oneness with others. That is the solution, the only radical one: to grow in your consciousness, make your consciousness large enough to be one with the earth, and look at the problem from there. One has to grow from within, from the true source of one’s being.
As with the individual, so each nation has a soul. One has to grow conscious of it, identify with it and obey it. Then the problem changes its face and a real cure is found, the true solution.
It is the same with all problems of life.
Published August 1982
