On Thoughts and Aphorisms

Aphorism - 70

70—Examine thyself without pity, then thou wilt be more charitable and pitiful to others.

Very good!

It is very good, very good for everybody, particularly for people who think themselves very superior.

But this really corresponds to something very profound.

In fact, this is an experience which I have been having for some time. It is almost like a reversal of attitude.

Indeed, men have always considered themselves victims harassed by adverse forces; those who are courageous fight, the others complain. But I have an increasingly concrete vision of the role that the adverse forces play in the creation, of the almost

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absolute necessity for them, so that there can be progress and for the creation to become its Origin once again—and such a clear vision that instead of asking for the conversion or abolition of the adverse forces one must realise one's own transformation, pray for it and carry it out. This is from the terrestrial point of view, I am not taking the individual standpoint. We know the individual standpoint; this is from the terrestrial point of view. It was the sudden vision of all the error, all the misunderstanding, all the ignorance and obscurity, and even worse, all the bad will in the terrestrial consciousness which felt responsible for the perpetuation of these adverse beings and forces and which offered them in a great aspiration—more than an aspiration, a kind of holocaust—so that the adverse forces might disappear and have no further reason to exist, so that they might no longer be there to point out everything that has to be changed.

Their presence was made unavoidable by all these things that were negations of the divine life. And this movement of offering of the earth consciousness to the Supreme, in an extraordinary intensity, was like a redemption so that the adverse forces might disappear.

It was a very intense experience which expressed itself like this: "Take all the faults I have committed, take them all, accept them, efface them so that these forces may disappear."

This aphorism is the same thing from the other end, it is the same thing in essence. As long as it is possible for a human consciousness to feel, act, think or be contrary to the great divine Becoming, it is impossible to blame anyone else for it; it is impossible to blame the adverse forces which are maintained in creation as the means of making you see and feel all the progress that has yet to be made.

(Silence)

The state I found myself in was like a memory—a memory that is eternally present—of that Consciousness of supreme

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Love which the Lord emanated upon earth, in the earth—in the earth to—bring it back to Him. For that was truly a descent into the most total negation of the Divine, the negation of the very essence of the divine Nature, and therefore a renunciation of the divine state in order to accept earth's obscurity and bring earth back to the divine state. And unless this supreme Love becomes all-powerfully conscious here on earth, the return can never be final.

This experience came after the vision of the great divine Becoming,¹ and I asked myself, "Since this world is progressive, since it is becoming more and more the Divine, will there not always be this intensely painful feeling of the thing which is undivine, of the state which is undivine compared to the one which is to come? Will there not always be what we call 'adverse forces', that is, something which is not following the movement harmoniously?" Then the answer came, the vision came: no, indeed the time for this possibility is near, the time for the manifestation of that essence of perfect Love which can transform this unconsciousness, this ignorance and the bad will which results from it into a progression that is luminous, joyful, eager for perfection and all—inclusive.

It was very concrete.

And this corresponds to a state in which one is so perfectly identified with all that is, that one becomes all that is anti-divine in a concrete way, and that one can offer it—one can offer it and truly transform it by offering it.

Basically, this kind of will for purity, for good, in men—which expresses itself in the ordinary mentality as the need to be virtuous—is the great obstacle to true self-giving. This is the origin of Falsehood and even more the very source of hypocrisy—the refusal to accept to take upon oneself one's own share of the burden of difficulties. And in this Aphorism Sri Aurobindo has gone straight to this point in a very simple way.

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Do not try to appear virtuous. See how much you are united, one with everything that is anti-divine. Take your share of the burden, accept yourselves to be impure and false and in that way you will be able to take up the Shadow and offer it. And in so far as you are capable of taking it and offering it, then things will change.

Do not try to be among the pure. Accept to be with those who are in darkness and give it all with total love.

21 January 1962