Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 4

WHY do we read the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? And if we read them, how to read them?

Do we read for the sake of study? to know things? to acquire knowledge? That is a secondary aspect, a profit gained by the way. The real purpose of coming in contact with the words of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo is to become conscious, to acquire consciousness, to be more and more conscious, increase more and more the consciousness. To understand, that is to say, to seize by the mind, to grasp intellectually the writings of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo is rather difficult. The easier, the more right way would be to enter into the atmosphere of the world that they have created with their words, to feel the vibration that the words emanate. For the words that they have uttered are not mere words taken or found in the dictionaries, they are not mere sounds, dead syllables, they are living entities, symbols of consciousness, the consciousness of which I have just spoken. These symbols, being symbols of consciousness are luminous, they shed light all along, they are full of power and extend power all along, they have life and they are full of delight. It is this inner world that is behind the outer world of words that one has to be in touch with, be aware of, in the first instance, before one can have a mental understanding; in other words you must cultivate the right attitude, a turn of your consciousness in tune with the consciousness that has worked out the words of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. You have to take a plunge, as it were, dip into the waters, and be soaked in the caress of that element, to come in the living touch of the substance of words, go behind the meaning, if necessary, avoiding it even. You must contact the living sap, the rasa, that has poured itself out in the creation. If you have tasted

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of that, then – It has its own light – that will suffuse you auto­matically with its radiance; the delight of bathing in the living spring will formulate itself in rhythms of knowledge and true understanding.

At least such should be the basis of approach to the works of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. You may have possessed a rich intellectual apparatus, you may have all the information that sciences and philosophies have gathered, you may have perused the whole story of the evolution of human knowledge up to the present time, all these are lesser lights, they do not illuminate the light before which you stand. That light is shown and recognised by its own reflection or emanation in you, the little light that is in you, your soul.

Indeed, there have been instances where great intellectuals, famed savants found themselves bewildered before the simplest magic phrases of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo. On the other hand, simpler minds with no burden of learning, nor pride of pedantry, with their pure streak of light in the depth of their consciousness were able to seize and unveil the secret sense.

Your mental understanding, your intellectual apprehension mayor will add to the joy of your discovery; one that is perhaps at the end or subsequently, when your brain, your physical reason has been washed by the flow of the inner light, when it has been made pure and plastic and docile.

In another way, to understand the Truth – the Truth that the words of the Mother or Sri Aurobindo express – you must start by living it, approaching it not merely through your mind, in fact not even through your heart, but possessing it in the very body. The Mother says, real understanding comes by the body-understanding. Indeed, the true aim of knowledge is not merely to know but to be.

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