CWTVKS Volume 2

4) Destiny—Soul—Birth

Destiny

Men think and move according to the pull of a predestined end.

12 December 1948

Each one is led relentlessly towards his Destiny. All that others about him do or fail to do for him is part of the working out of that destiny.

12 April 1949

What is foreseen in astrology is only that part of the Destiny—or rather the manifested part of it—which comes in the human ken. It is read by means of the relevant signs. But there is much beyond our gaze that is at work and its working may confirm or overrule the working of the manifested destiny.

It is indolence to believe that Destiny does everything and therefore there is no need to exert oneself. One must grow to be conscious of the Destiny of one's soul. To harmonise the higher part i.e. reason and the inner part i.e. the heart, and to exert oneself to the best of his lights is the assured means for that growth. For, after all, the higher destiny is the decree of the Higher Will and to the extent one grows spiritually and learns to harmonise his own will with the Higher Will, one shapes one's own destiny.

5 March 1949

Really speaking there is one universal Destiny at work and what we call our destiny is just that part of the universal Destiny which refers to us individually.

5 March 1949

Is there a conflict between the destinies on different planes? Does the destiny on the highest level effectuate itself through even apparently opposite destinies on the other levels?

The destiny of each plane is different from the rest. The destiny or determinism of the highest plane is the last word, but that is known only from the result. If it were known beforehand, it would no more be referred to as destiny. The destiny of each plane is independent of the destiny of every other plane, as the planes are differently and separately constituted, have their own laws which are independent.

Of course we can say so—that even the workings of contrary destinies serve the ultimate Destiny—it is a sort of delusive satisfaction which under the mask of this specious theory of destiny, robs or tries to rob life of its incentive for effort.

It is not a question of obedience on the part of the lower planes to fulfil the highest destiny. Each one has autonomy. One can take it so, but the satisfaction is not vital but chimerically mental.

6 March 1949

Man carries the burden—a part of it at any rate—of the world, because he is part of the world, he appropriates to himself what properly belongs to the Universal and consequently he has to pay the debt. He shares its joys and cannot escape its responsibilities. As long as he belongs to the world, he has to carry its burden; the moment he is aware of something in him which does not so belong, he ceases to carry the burden.

9 March 1949

Soul—Birth

Man's activities are found to proceed, ultimately, from the soul; yet the soul transcends them. Similarly the Real actuates and carries out all movement, all action; yet It transcends all.

9 March 1949

Are the movements (even perverse) of the desire soul to be taken as necessary workings out of the choice of the deeper soul?

The choice of the deeper soul is not known to the soul that works involved in the triple nature; the desire soul is allowed to suffer and enjoy and yield the result to the deeper being till the time the bubble is pricked.

6 March 1949

Though there are so many planes in the cosmic tier of existence, all of them cannot be said to be active or born in each individual. Most are hardly aware of any but the physical and till one consciously lives and participates in the life of a particular plane of the being, that plane is not yet born in him.

5 March 1949

Each birth is a venture for the soul. The soul is the deepest entity of which the psychic being is a personality put forward in evolution. This psychic being is the link between the innermost soul and the triple existence. The light cast by the soul on the triple existence is reflected on the three levels viz., mental, vital and physical, as the respective soul-purushas (the vital soul is the desire-soul).

Now the soul takes birth with a view to achieving and perfecting an embodiment for the Divine. It aims at progress so that the Divine may find in it a proper vehicle for its manifestation. The soul chooses, at each time of the birth or rather at the time of the death of the previous embodiment, its Destiny. But this Destiny is to be worked out on the physical plane through the desire-soul. For the destiny is not the same on all levels. Destiny on the highest plane or the deepest layer of the spirit is necessarily different from destiny on the next level and so on.

4 March 1949

We come across many instances of persons who were brilliant in their childhood gradually deteriorating with age till they dwindled to an average standard. That is because, as Sri Aurobindo says, in early infancy the soul that has taken birth has a freer expression. Its capacities and development find an unhindered outlet. With growth, however, the environmental influences and training circumscribe the soul's expression and a different orientation is given to the child's development with the result that the spontaneous outplay of the soul's faculties is checked, crabbed. All the same, education and environment influence the expression of the soul only up to a point; sooner or later the inner being asserts itself and lives the life it has chosen for itself before its birth here.

12 February 1949

The progress of the soul can be likened to the life of the bird. Just as a bird builds and rests in a nest now on one tree and after some time on another, the soul finds habitation in one body today, another body another time. When it goes to the next, the life and events of the previous habitation are left behind.

18 November 1948