Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 1

Being or Becoming and Having

AGAIN, in this ceaseless continuity of progression it is indeed not necessary at all to stop a while or somewhere and become something for one's perfection or fulfilment. The normal ideal that is placed before man or which he himself seeks is that he should become something, a definite pattern of some particular achievement, and possess something in the sense of an acquisition. An ordinary man must have an occupation and even an extraordinary man, the saint or the sage, must embody, that is to say, enchain himself in the name and form of a particular realisation – a siddhānta or a siddhi. A man has to be -a soldier, a merchant, a politician or a poet, a philosopher: even so he has to be a bhakta or a jnāni, a mauni or a vāksiddha. Each human being should have a ticket and a roll number, an identity card. Now, for the soul of man none of these or other adjuncts are necessary: its progress and its growth are independent of such auxiliaries or correlates. A soul can be and even express itself perfectly at the highest point of its being without formulating itself, binding itself in a scheme of some external achievement or functioning. The soul need not possess any of the glories – aiśwaryas – to realise itself, in order to be the abode of the Divine. Its very existence is full to the brim of the substance of the truth and its simple living marks the law or rhythm of that Truth.

A soulful man, whatever he says, thinks, feels or acts, always embodies wholly the Divine. Not that because he says, acts, thinks or feels in a certain manner that he has attained perfection or is in dynamic union with the summit a d integral consciousness. As the Mother brings out the distinction, although in a somewhat different context, the perfect soul-existence .cannot be judged by the forms it takes, the forms themselves have to be judged by the soul-existence.

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