The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8

Love Divine

"The intensity of Divine Love does not produce any perturbation in any part of the being" (The Elements of Yoga). Why should it? If there is aperturbation, it is more likely that a different kind of love was in question. If it is Divine Love, there can be no perturbation, for each one receives it according to his capacity,

Divine Love is there in its full intensity, as a tremendous force. But most people, 99 out of 100, feel nothing at all. What they feel is exactly in proportion to what they are, what they can receive and hold. Indeed, you are always bathed in an atmosphere vibrant with Divine Love. Sometimes, on rare occasions, for a few seconds perhaps, there is all on a sudden just the impression of something, and you say: "there, the Divine Love came to me!" Well, it is a way of saying: the true fact being that for some reason or other you happened to be just a little open and you had the perception of the thing that is always with you. The Love is there, the divine consciousness, too, is there in the same way. They are one, after all. They are there all the while; only you do not feel it or do so only spasmodically. Once in a way you find yourself, without any rhyme or reason

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as it were, in that happy state and you declare that the Divine Love has at last turned towards you! But, as I say, the matter is not like that. There came about an opening in you, perhaps no more than a pinpoint, and that was sufficient for the thing to rush in; for the atmosphere is surcharged with it and wherever there is a possibility of its being received, it is received. The same is true of all things divine. They are there: you do not receive or perceive them, because you are closed, shut off, blocked up. You are occupied, most of the time with other things. You are full of yourself, packed with it, and there is no room for anything else. You are not merely passively filled with yourself, but very actively, you are furiously busy with yourself. How can you notice then the marvellous things that are about you, around you? You get a glimpse unawares, perhaps when you are asleep; but it fades away soon. Man's ego is a formidable thing; the whole universe, to him, is a mere function of the ego. You are the centre and the entire creation revolves around you. Such is your vision of the universe. You do not see it as it is; you see only yourself when you look at it.

To begin, then, you must be able to come out of your ego. You will have to enter, as the first step, into something like a state of inexistence. Thereafter only you will begin to see things as they are, that is to say, from a height. If you want to see things as they truly are, you must become absolutely like a mirror—silent, peaceful, immobile, impartial, with no preference, in a state of

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total receptivity. You will begin to see many things that did not seem to be there before, but only now becoming active. Well, you may very well have gone inside one of these things instead of being shut up into a minute spot in the infinite universe, which you call yourself. There are many ways by which you can come out of yourself. Anyhow that is the one thing to be done, if you wish to see the world as it is, not as it seems to be a function of yourself.

Now to come out of the ego, you must have naturally, first of all, the will to do so. The surest way to do it is to give yourself to the Divine, not to pull the Divine towards you but to abandon yourself to Him. That is how you start forgetting yourself. Usually when people think of the Divine, the immediate impulse in them is to pull Him (or whatever they represent Him to be) towards themselves, within themselves. The result generally is that they receive nothing; and they complain: "Oh, I called and called, I prayed and prayed, but there was no answer, I received nothing, nothing came". But before complaining, ask yourself if you had offered yourself. You would find that instead of offering yourself you had pulled. Instead of being generous, open-handed and open-hearted, you were a miser, a beggar. When you pull you remain wholly within yourself, shut up, sealed within your ego. You raise a wall of separation between you and the thing that is around you and wants to come in, which is thus not admitted, almost deliberately refused entrance. You enclose yourself

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within a prison and grumble that you have nothing, feel nothing. At least if you had opened a window you would have had something of the light and air about you.

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