The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8

Doing for Her Sake

Whatever you do—study or sports—you must think of the Divine in doing it. It is not a very difficult thing after all. At first you may do it as a kind of preparation to make you capable of receiving the divine force, and then as service to help in the collective work. You can do it not for personal gain but in order to be ready for the Divine Work.

This seems to me indispensable. If you keep the ordinary point of view, you will always find yourself in conditions that are not wholly satisfactory and incapable of receiving all the forces that you can receive.

If you are doing long jump, for example, it should not be merely for the pleasure of doing it, it is with the idea of making your body more perfect in its functioning, an instrument more fit to receive the divine forces and to manifest them.

Indeed, everything that you do must be done in this spirit. Otherwise you do not profit by the opportunity, the favourable circumstances that are given to you.

The Consciousness is there pervading everything and seeking to manifest in all movements. And if you, on your side, tell yourself that the effort, the progress you make is to enable you to receive this Consciousness and

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to manifest it, then the work will naturally be done much better and more quickly.

And this seems to me to be the most elementary thing. For, to tell you the truth, I would be astonished if it were otherwise. For your presence at a place organised as it is would have no meaning if it were not for that. What would be its use? There are any number of universities and schools in the world that are much better manned and equipped than ours. If you are here, it must be for a special reason. It is because here there is a possibility of absorbing consciousness and progress. If you do not put yourself in a state in which you receive it, you lose the chance that you are given.

What do you think about it? Is it mere chance or simply because your parents have put you here that you are here, you might as well have been anywhere else? You should put these questions to yourselves. At thirteen one can begin questioning very well, especially if one finds himself at a place which is not quite ordinary. Why one is here, for what reasons, what is the purpose of being here?

If you had asked this, you should have gone and sought for the answer somewhere within you. For the answer is within you, nowhere outside. If you go deep enough you will find an answer very clear, very interesting. If you go deep down, into a silence where all external things are silenced, you will see there within a Flame of which I speak so often and within this Flame you will see your destiny. You will see the aspiration of centuries that

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has accumulated little by little to lead you through countless births to the great day of Realisation. This preparation has taken thousands of years and it is now arriving at its fruition.

And when you have gone deep enough to find that, you will see and feel that all your incapacities, weaknesses, all that in you denies and does not understand, all that is not yourself; it is simply a robe which fits you to a certain extent only and which you have put on for the occasion only.

But you must understand. If you wish to see yourself truly capable of profiting by the opportunity, doing what you wanted to do, what you aspired to do long long ago, you must little by little turn to the Light, the Consciousness, the Truth and bring them into these obscure elements of your external robe. It is only then that you will understand fully why you are here, not only understand but become capable of doing what you are here for.

Through centuries it has prepared itself in you, not naturally in this body, which is the most recent, but in your true being: for centuries it has been waiting for this occasion. You see how wonderful it all is! You see the things that one has hoped for since long long ago, for which one has prayed so much, laboured so much, find now the hour when they are being realised. It is the hour when great things are being done. One must not miss the occasion.

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