In the Mother's Light

The Service of the Divine

A SPECIAL sense attaches to the word "service" in the Mother's philosophy of Yogic action. She has given the word such a heightened connotation that it has become the key- word of human evolution and spiritual fulfilment. According to her, human birth has only one objective : the service of the Divine; and all human activities and endeavours, pursued from birth to birth, are but a long preparation for it. This view gives a definite teleological significance to the otherwise unaccountable phenomena of life and death and the continued participation even of many liberated souls in the travail of the world.

The soul comes down into the material world not to lose itself in the labyrinths of fleeting interests, not to become a sport of freakish desires and blind passions, not to toss among the conflicting lures of sense-objects, not even to awake, at last, to the futility of of its peregrinations and beat a glorified retreat from this terrestrial existence, but to prepare its triple nature of mind, life, and body till it is fit to fulfil its mission: the manifestation of the Spirit in Matter.

Man is not, therefore, a biological creature of a passing moment, but an immortal spark-soul, clad in mind, life, and body and charged with the mission of revealing in redeemed and purified Matter the supernal glories of the Divine he houses in himself. This divine revelation or manifestation is the service he owes to his Master, this is the sole reason of his earthly existence. Some mystics postulate delight as the end of existence; some a deployment of Power; some, again, the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth; but so far as the individual is concerned and his destiny, the Mother says, service is the great end, the End of all ends, the rapturous tryst of the Spirit with Matter, the sublimest expression of the eternal and ineffable relation between man and his Maker and Lover.

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What is True Service ?

Though the service done in the spirit of sacrifice and with love and devotion and psychological and practical disinterestedness is the most powerful means of purification and liberation, it is not exactly this the Mother means when she speaks in it in its most sublimated sense. She gives, no doubt, the preliminary and purificatory service a considerable importance and declares it to be indispensable to our progress towards a dynamic union with the Divine, but, according to her, the crowning fulfilment comes only from the true service, which is not so much a means to as an expression of divine union.

By true service the Mother means the service of the Divine with the will of the servant in perfect tune with the Will of the Master, and the whole being of the servant, surrendered and integrated, moved by the omniscient divine Force. It is, really speaking, a direct action of the Divine in and through the instrumental being of the liberated, egoless individual. It is, if we can so put it, a service of the Divine by the Divine Himself with the individual serving only as a fire-point of concentration and diffusion. The Mother calls it service, because it is an unerring accomplishment of the work of the Divine and a perfect fulfillment of His purpose in terrestrial existence through man. And in the last analysis, is not this the pivotal truth of all creation —the Divine is the sole Doer of all universal action, the Vishwakarma ? In no other way could this work of a manifold manifestation be accomplished.

Describing the inner state of the individual from which this service proceeds, the Mother says, "Each activity in its own sphere accomplishing its special mission, without any disorder or confusion, one enveloping another, and all hierarchically arranged around a single centre : Thy Will”¹. No discord between the different parts of the being, no contrary pulls or distracting drives of chameleon tendencies, no sting of desires or pang of frustration, but all nature, harmonized and integrated, quickened and illumined, ecstatically responding to the touch of

¹Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, June 30, 1914.

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divine Love and impeccably moved by the divine Force. The Will of the eternal Doer functions through the co-operating will of the apparent human doer, using the means and achieving the ends decreed by itself. The individual being is at once the receiver and the giver—it receives from the Transcendent above and it gives what it receives to the Immanent within and around it. It lives in a double identification—an identification with the supreme Light and an identification with the darkness of this sorrowful earth upon which the Light acts, and in this double identification discovers the "secret of Thy sovereign oneness.” This divine commerce between the Transcendent and the Immanent, between the ordaining and initiating Spirit and the actualising Matter through the medium of the surrendered and emancipated human individual, is what the Mother means by true service.

Aspiration for Service

Once we are convinced that our birth here is not a fall, an aberration, or an exile, or a chance happening of mechanical Nature, but a purposive evolution and a divinely ordained mission, our whole outlook on life and its values undergoes a radical change. No longer do we struggle to escape from the earthly life, nor try to squeeze it to the last drop of its scanty sap, but we aspire and endeavour, as best we can, to discover its source and sustenance, its pulse and purpose, and live it as worthily, usefully and beautifully as the dignity and strength of our divine manhood seem to demand. Individual liberation ceases to be an ideal in so far as it implies a renunciation of life and its salutary activities, an atrophy of the motor springs of our being, and a willful or neglectful sterilization of our creative faculties, and service becomes the watch-word of our spiritual progression. Delight, power, peace, purity, all grow in service, for it is the most spontaneous, concrete expression of our love and devotion for the Divine. And when this initial, preparatory service culminates in what the Mother calls the true service, there is only a beatific interchange of love between

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the individual and the Divine, and a triumphant outpouring of redemptive Force upon the material world.

The Mother seeks knowledge, not for its own sake, but for the sake of the service of the Divine, even the bliss of divine union she seeks not for itself, but for the sake of service. In how many Prayers does she not pray to the Divine to let her be only a servant, an instrument, a docile manifesting channel of His Love and Grace ! And in many a Prayer the Divine too asks the Mother not to revel in the ecstasy of the absorbed union, but to turn her look towards the earth and "work as an ordinary man in the midst of ordinary beings; learn to be nothing more than they are in all that is manifesting". He asks her to "associate with the integral way of their being; for, beyond all that they know, all that they are, thou earnest in thyself the torch of the eternal splendour which does not waver, and by associating with them, it is this thou wilt carry into their midst”. And in words which give the right clue to the secret of service and the significance of the Mother's role in the world, the Divine says, "Hast thou any need to enjoy this light so long as it spreads from thee ? Is it necessary that thou shouldst feel my love vibrating in thee, so long as thou givest it ? Must thou enjoy integrally the bliss of my presence, so long as thou serves! as its intermediary among men ?”¹

Absolutely consecrated to service, the Mother prays :

"O Lord, my sole aspiration is to know Thee better and serve Thee better every day. What do the outer circumstances matter ? They appear to me every day more vain and more illusory, and I take less and less interest in what will outwardly happen to us; but I am more and more intensely interested in the only thing which appears to me important: to know Thee better in order to serve Thee better. All outer events must converge towards this goal, and towards this alone; and for that, all depends upon the attitude we have towards them. To be constantly in search of Thee in everything, to will to manifest Thee better in every circumstance; in this attitude is to be found supreme Peace, perfect serenity,

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, January 11, 1915.

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true contentment. In it life blooms, widens, spreads out so magnificently, in such majestic surges that no storm can any more trouble it.”¹

"Life blooms, widens, spreads out so magnificently”, says the Mother, if we are constantly in search of the Divine in everything, bhūteṣu bhūteṣu vicitya, as the Upanishad phrases it, if we "will to manifest" Him better in every circumstance. This attitude is essentially and fully psychic, that is to say, it comes from the central soul and does not originate either in the mind or the heart of man. When the soul awakes, a seeking for the Absolute or the Infinite or the Eternal awakes in us; our being instinctively feels a want, an inadequacy, an imperfection, sometimes even an illusoriness in the passing phenomena of life. Something above it, something to which it begins to respond with a growing thrill, draws it towards its own inconceivable splendours. At this stage there are two possibilities open to man : if it is only the static side of his soul that yearns for the Eternal, he will feel an exclusive aspiration for its peace and silence and gravitate towards it, emphasizing the illusoriness of the world of appearances and turning away from it; but if it is a full opening of the soul, not only of the witnessing Purusha, but also of the Prakriti in it—for, it comprises both— not only of its status, but also of its purposive dynamism, then the natural aspiration will be for the realization and revelation of the Divine, the supreme Person of the Upanishad, the Purushottama of the Gita, in the very texture of terrestrial life. This integral awakening of the psychic accounts for the intense and comprehensive aspiration for service which has found such an exquisite and inspiring expression in many of the Mother's Prayers and Meditations.

"May every morning our thought rise with fervour towards Thee, asking Thee what is the best we can do to manifest and serve Thee.”²

¹Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, March 12, 1914.

² ibid., January 31, 1914.

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"O Love divine. Knowledge supreme, perfect Unity, at each moment of the day I call to Thee so that I may be nothing else but Thou!

"May the instrument serve Thee, conscious that it is an instrument, and may my whole consciousness be immersed in Thine and contemplate all things with Thy divine sight.

"O Lord, Lord, grant that Thy sovereign Power may manifest; grant that Thy work may be done and Thy servitor solely consecrated to Thy service.

"May the T disappear for ever and the instrument alone live.”¹

A perfect picture of the ideal attitude of true service is found in the following Prayer :

"To be immersed at once in Thee and in Thy work....To be no longer a limited individual...to become the infinity of Thy forces manifesting through a point...to be delivered from all trammels and all limitations...to rise above all restricting thought...to act and be beyond the act...to act through and for individuals and see only the oneness, the oneness of Thy love. Thy knowledge and Thy Being....O my divine Master, eternal Teacher, Sole Reality, dissolve all the darkness of this aggregate which Thou hast formed for Thy service, Thy manifestation in the world. Realise in it that supreme Consciousness which will generate an identical consciousness everywhere.” ²

All the essential strands of divine service have been woven together in this marvellous Prayer. The right spirit, the right attitude, the right way of service, the right definition of service as "Thy manifestation" have been given with an unsurpassable point and precision. At first, union with the Divine, but a dynamic and not a static union, achieved through an integral surrender and an intensive and inclusive concentration; then transcendence of one's mutable individuality and assumption of

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, May 3, 1914.

² ibid.. May 4, 1914.

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the infinitude of the divine forces manifesting through a point, that is to say, through the body, then the simultaneity of unrestricted action and freedom from action; and, last, dealing with and acting for individuals, but seeing, contacting and communing with the One everywhere, in all individuals and units. This last experience of service establishes its sovereignty in a life of spiritual perfection—it is the only means by which the Divine can be loved and adored and served, embraced and communed with in every individual and thing and circumstance at every step and moment of one's earthly existence. It is service alone that can turn the whole field of human existence in the material world—a field so much spurned and condemned by short-sighted religions—into a heaven of constant and active God-union.

In a Prayer of flaming aspiration and melting sweetness, the Mother prays to the Divine to let her only be His servant and nothing else. She puts service above everything else, above every other experience possible on earth, but she gives to it a , depth and an amplitude of sense, unmatched in the history of dynamic mysticism.

"Let me lie down at Thy feet”, she prays, "merge into Thy heart, disappear in Thee, be blotted out in Thy beatitude; or rather” ,—mark the climax of her "self-naughting", the absolute perfection of her self-surrender—"be solely Thy servitor, without pretending to be anything else. I do not desire or aspire to anything more, I wish only to be Thy servitor.”

Hindrances to true Service

But such a consummation of divine service cannot be achieved at a bound or by a jolly trot over a bed of roses. There are many obstacles to be met and overcome, many a pathless desert to be crossed under the dire menace of storms and thunders. We shall touch upon only the cardinal hindrances here and leave out the tremendous question of physical transformation without which no service can be perfect.

The greatest hindrance to the true service is the ego, the

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ignorant sense of one's being a separate individual. This self- insulation of the individual from the universal is the cause of all his besetting limitations—limitations of consciousness, knowledge and power. The ego, the circumscribing sense of I-ness and my-ness, mamatwa, must, therefore, completely disappear, if the individual has to recover his innate infinity and immortality; and without this recovery it is impossible for him to serve the Divine. It is for a complete elimination of the ego, its elimination even from the physical consciousness, that the Mother prays to the Divine : "O Lord, O my sweet Master, dispel this feeling of the 'I'...tear out from my heart this illusion that Thy servant may become pure and faithful.”¹

Another hindrance is attachment. Attachment keeps us chained to persons or things or ideas, and prevents our taking wings towards the Infinite. "One who would serve Thee worthily", says the Mother, "should not be attached to any- thing, not even to the activities which enable him to commune more consciously with Thee...

O, to do everything seeing Thee alone everywhere, and thus to soar above the accomplished act, without any claim which holds us prisoners to the earth, coming to burden the flight.”²

Attachment to opinions, theories, creeds, and principles, so much justified, perhaps even glorified, by the mind of man, has to go the way of all other attachments, if the consciousness has to open and be plastic to the higher light.

Another hindrance, a formidable one, is world-weariness. It comes usually from Tamas, the principle of inertia, incapacity and delusion, in the being. Long tradition and narrowness of outlook have sanctified it into a spiritual tendency, and its blighting effect upon life is completely overlooked or ignored. So long as world-weariness or world-disgust is allowed to obscure the consciousness of the individual and paralyse his creative powers, he cannot be an aspirant for divine service which demands, not a rejection, but an enthusiastic, wholesale acceptance

¹ Prayers and Meditations of the Mother, April 17, 1914.

² ibid., February 25-26, 1914.

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of life as the field of the highest divine realization and revelation. Renunciation of life is a renunciation of the progressive play of God's Light in the material world.

Integral Self-Surrender—the Sole Means

A loving and unreserved self-surrender of the whole being to the supreme Consciousness-Force is the sole means of becoming a servant of the Divine. So long as the ego persists, surrender has to be effected by a constant and detailed self-offering, and it has to be renewed from day to day, so that it may not flag or falter. But when the surrender has been integral and complete, Grace descends and takes up the charge of the being, and begins its victorious work of purification and transformation. Personal effort then ceases, and the divine Shakti expresses and fulfils her Will in the world through the liberated and universalised individual. According to Sri Aurobindo there are three stages of this long discipline. At the first "you have to regard yourself as a soul and body created for her (the Divine Shakti’s) service, one who does all for her sake. Even if the idea of the separate worker is strong in you and you feel that it is you who do the act, yet it must be done for her. All stress of egoistic choice, all hankering after personal profit, all stipulation of self- regarding desire must be extirpated from the nature. There must be no demand for fruit and no seeking for reward; the only fruit for you is the pleasure of the Divine Mother and the fulfilment of her work, your only reward a constant progression in divine consciousness and calm and strength and bliss. The joy of service and the joy of inner growth through works is the sufficient recompense of the selfless worker.”¹

At the second stage, when surrender has progressed far and the ego is fading out of existence, "you will feel more and more that you are the instrument and not the worker... .You will realise that the divine Shakti not only inspires and guides, but initiates and carries out your works; all your movements are originated by her, all your powers are hers; mind, life and body are conscious

¹ The Mother—Sri Aurobindo.

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and joyful instruments of her action, means for her play, moulds for her manifestation in the physical universe...

"The last stage of this perfection will come when you are completely identified with the Divine Mother and feel yourself to be no longer another and separate being, instrument, servant or worker, but truly a child and eternal portion of her consciousness and force....You will know and see and feel that you are a person and power formed by her out of herself, put out from her for the play, and yet always safe in her, being of her Being, consciousness of her Consciousness, force of her Force, ananda of her Ananda. When this condition is entire and her supramental energies can freely move you, then you will be perfect in divine works; knowledge, will, action will become sure, simple, luminous, spontaneous, flawless, an outflow from the Supreme, a divine movement of the Eternal.”¹ It is this unobstructed, luminous working of the Divine through the child-state of the individual that the Mother calls true service.

Service—A Life-Transforming Ideal

This conception of service is not only original, but revolutionary for life. Its initial, purificatory stage, so elaborately delineated in the Gita, is a radical preparation for infinity and impersonality; its final stage, so vividly mirrored in many of the Mother's Prayers, is a supreme triumph of the Divine in man. The former is an ascent of man's love for the Divine, the latter is a descent of the Divine's Love for all creatures. The first is a God-ward service, the second is a God-possessed earthward service. The ideal of true service is the only ideal that can regenerate earthly life, redeem humanity and make it a vehicle of God-manifestation. True service is at once a victory of Love and a vindication of Grace.

¹ The Mother—Sri Aurobindo.

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