What I Have Learnt From The Mother

The Path of Progress and Liberation

If you observe you will see that one after the other, be it in the spiritual field of Sadhana or in the social or national field of administration, man has always sought the path of progress and liberation in all the ways possible.

The force of knowledge, the force of philosophy, the force of thought and intellect in man can no doubt help him guide his practical life but they can also, on the contrary, cause imperfection by creating all kinds of problems in an unstable life. And so in trying to do good it succeeds in just the opposite.J"

No political ideology, religious discipline, philosophical vision, intellectual analysis, moral code or scientific discovery can bring about that perfect fulfilment in man. Man will continue to be the same half-human, half-animal being he is.

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have told us that if man wants to get out of the present condition and consciousness he has to transform his nature and consciousness. Over the human nature, the human consciousness, there is less the Divine Nature, the Divine Consciousness. It is only in the Light of this Divine Consciousness that life can be changed and transformed.

But for that man has to consciously will it. He has to call into him that Divine Consciousness. From below man has to invoke, to aspire for that Divine Consciousness and from above this Divine Consciousness will respond in answer to that aspiration, will consent to come down into human life. The transformation of human life depends on this conjunction of the aspiration from below and the consent from above.

But then until the transformation of human nature takes place, are we to just sit and twirl our thumbs? No, how can that be? Man has to first believe in this Truth with his mind and life. Then keeping this Truth in front he has to educate himself in an integral way. He has to keep the flame of aspiration steadily burning within him along with his reliance on the Divine Grace.

The work has to be done both from within and without. Within, the awakening of the psychic and psychic and spiritual Sadhana,

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without, the Sadhana of the mind, life and body. As a man comes to life with the conjunction of body and soul, so too the Sadhana of man can be complete only with both the physical and psychic effort.

Work is the support of this Sadhana, a work that corresponds to one's nature and liking, what the Gita calls sahajakarma. Our aim is to raise oneself in integral Harmony through work and to make our work perfect with the help of the soul, to realise one's soul through karma and to realise one's karma through the soul.

And we should always endeavour to keep ourselves open to the Divine Consciousness. Then will the Divine Grace and Force descend in our being and body and make the total transformation possible.

The Mother has assured us that this Divine Force and Consciousness, this Supramental Consciousness has come down onto the earth. It is at work in man. The Supramental itself will descend into man and Supramental Consciousness will by itself work out the transformation of human life as and when it wishes.

The whole earth is the instrument of the Mother's Divine Force of Action. Each human being is a centre of the Mother's Consciousness. When this Divine Consciousness will awaken in human life, when this Force will act, then the whole world will get transformed too.

Man has been doing what is within his own means so far. He is not capable of more than this. If he wants to find the key to his problems then he must take recourse to the Divine Consciousness and Force. The Divine Man shall emerge with the joint endeavour, the joint Yogna (askesis) of Man and the Divine. This then is what Sri Aurobindo and the Mother called the "Sunlit path" of human life.

So in brief this is what we must do now. We must try to:

1.Do our work as properly and as perfectly as we can.

2.Develop our mind, life and body, with proper culture and study, to the maximum of their possibilities.

3.Keep a constant contact with our psychic being by japa, prayer, meditation or simply by remembering.

4.Keep ourselves open upward so that when the higher forces come down, they can enter into us and do their work.

5.Remain quietly happy all the time.

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