The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7

DIVINE DISGUST

It is a "disgust" filled with all compassion. It is something which takes upon itself the wrong vibrations in others to cure them. Instead of throwing a wrong movement back upon the wrong doer in a spirit of cold justice, it draws it within itself, absorbs it in order to eliminate it or transform it, reducing as much as possible its material consequences. You know the ancient legend of Shiva who has a dark patch upon his throat, because he swallowed all the poison of the world: it is a figure of divine disgust.

Naturally, the poison will not have the same effect upon the Divine as upon man. For there is an essential difference between a state of ignorance and a state of knowledge. Something untoward happens to you in your normal state of ignorance, it has a certain character and brings mentally certain results: but the same thing happening to you in a state of knowledge will not carry the same effect. For example, take a very material thing, a blow, a right royal physical blow; well, if you are in a state of inconscience and ignorance, as you usually are, you will have to suffer the full consequence that depends wholly upon the force of the blow, who or what gave the blow and the helplessness of the object. But the same blow delivered in the same way by the same agent but upon a being who is conscious and full of knowledge, will produce instantly a reaction reducing the natural consequences to a minimum,

Page 57

even annulling the consequences altogether; for the reaction here is a reaction of knowledge, of light and not that of ignorance, of obscurity. On the moral level the action can be clearly noticed. For example, you can receive an emotional shock, not in egoistic blindness, that is to say, identifying yourself with it or drowned in it; you can hold it away from you, look at it in an objective manner, see what it is, note the nature of its vibration etc. etc., and then you put the light of your knowledge, the ultraviolet ray, as it were, of truth upon it. As a result, there comes a new disposition, the shock loses its effectivity. Even so, the physical result of a physical blow can likewise be obviated. If that were not possible what would be the utility of the Divine taking upon himself the evil thing. Evil would continue in the same way and the world continue suffering in the same way. Precisely because the obscure vibrations are transformed into vibrations of light in the divine consciousness that the Divine takes upon and within himself all the ills of the world.

In the case of the physical occurrence, the knowledge I speak of is the inner knowledge of the body cells, their existence, composition, distribution and the knowledge of the consequences of the blow, its natural and expected effects. Also at the same time there should be the knowledge of what the cells should be like, how they ought to react to the blow. And the procedure adopted too is quite different from that of physical Nature which takes hours, days, months to repair a damage; the inner knowledge can do the thing immediately. This inner knowledge can be

Page 58

brought down from its highest source. Instead of the mere psychological knowledge, one can call down the supramental knowledge and focus it upon the part of the body endangered. If the elements of the body, the cells come under the influence of the force of truth and receive it, then there can be an immediate new ordering of the elements according to the higher law. That will bring about not only the cure from the blow received, the mending of the accident, but initiate a big progress in the general consciousness. This power to command the consciousness has no limit. If you have committed an error, even a grave error, and if you can yet call upon the consciousness of truth, this power of the supramental and allow it to work, it will give you an occasion to make a formidable progress. In other words, never be discouraged if you have blundered, blundered even more than once. Only you must keep your will firm, and take sometime the unshakable resolution not to repeat. Rest assured you will in the end triumph over your difficulty.

Page 59