The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 8

Personal Effort and Surrender

There is no difference in the end between the two if the goal to attain is the Impersonal Divine, that is to say, if you want to unite and identify yourself with the Impersonal Divine, merge into it. But if your aspiration is to reach what is beyond, what Sri Aurobindo calls the supramental Reality, then there comes in a difference, a difference in the goal as well as in the way. For the way to the supramental realisation is essentially the way of surrender. It is a question of temperament perhaps. And if one has the temperament, the disposition, the path of surrender is infinitely more easy: three-fourths of your trouble and difficulty are got rid of automatically. But it may prove hard going for some.

Now as regards the result, in one case, I may say, it is linear, it ends at a point, as it were; in the other case, the path is spherical and ends in a totality. Each one individually can reach his origin and the optimum of his being; the origin and the optimum of one's being is the same as the Eternal, the Infinite, the Supreme. If you reach your origin, you reach the Supreme, but you reach along a single line—do not take the image literally, it is only a description to make the thing easy to understand. So it is, I say, a linear realisation terminating

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at a point and this point is one with the Supreme, your maximum possibility. By the other way, you arrive at, what I call, a spherical realisation; for it gives you the idea of something that contains all, it is not a point but a totality that excludes nothing.

The relation of the whole and its part does not hold good here; for there is no longer any division. The very quality of the approach is different. Can you say that a perfect identification with one drop of water would give you the knowledge of what the sea is? And here the perfect identification in question is not merely with the ocean but with all possible oceans. And yet the perfect identification with one drop of water does give you the knowledge of the ocean in its essence; but in the other way you know the ocean not merely in its essence but in its totality. It is however very difficult to express the reality of the truth. What can be said to put it as clearly as possible is this: in the line of personal effort, when one depends solely upon one's personal strength, all that has been individualised maintains the virtues of individuality and hence also, in a certain sense, all the limitations necessary for this individuality. In the other case, when you have surrendered your individuality, you not only enjoy the virtues of individuality but also you are not subject to its limitations. It is almost high philosophy, I am afraid. It is not clear therefore. But that is all I can say.

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