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BHAKTI (Devotion) Fourth Period of Commentaries (1969 -1970) Bhakti (Devotion)
Devotion is the key which opens the door to liberation. The Mother
408 − I am not a Bhakta, for I have not renounced the world for God. How can I renounce what He took from me by force and gave back to me against my will? These things are too hard for me.
409 − I am not a Bhakta, I am not a Jnani, I am not a worker for the Lord. What am I then? A tool in the hands of my Master, a flute blown upon by the divine Herd-Boy, a leaf driven by the breath of the Lord.
410 − Devotion is not utterly fulfilled till it becomes action and knowledge. If thou pursuest after God and canst overtake Him, let Him not go till thou hast His reality. If thou hast hold of His reality, insist on having also His totality. The first will give thee divine knowledge, the second will give thee divine works and a free and perfect joy in the universe.
411 − Others boast of their love for God. My boast is that I did not love God; it was He who loved me and sought me out and forced me to belong to Him.
412 − After I knew that God was a woman, I learned something from far-off about love; but it was only when I became a woman and served my Master and Paramour that I knew love utterly. Page – 331 Sri Aurobindo had a genius for humour and all we can do is admire and remain silent. 20 March 1970 What does Sri Aurobindo mean by: How can I renounce what He took from me by force and gave back to me against my will? And also when he says: “After I knew that God was a woman…”?
I cannot answer because, while he was in his body, he never told me anything about this. If anyone knows the exact date on which he wrote this, it might be an indication. Perhaps could tell you when this was written, or whether Sri Aurobindo told him anything about it.¹
413 − To commit adultery with God is the perfect experience for which the world was created.
I do not understand this Aphorism.
This is the most perfect way in which Sri Aurobindo, with his marvellous sense of humour, could ridicule human morality. This sentence is a whole satire in itself. 21 March 1970 414 − To fear God really is to remove oneself to a distance from Him, but to fear Him in play gives an edge to utter delightfulness.
¹ According to the information given to Mother, these Aphorisms were written shortly after Sri Aurobindo’s arrival in Pondicherry. Page – 332 415 − The Jew invented the God-fearing man; India the God-knower and God-lover.
416 − The servant of God was born in Judaea, but he came to maturity among the Arabs. India‘s joy is in the servant-lover.
417 − Perfect love casts out fear; but still keep thou some tender shadow and memory of the exile and it will make the perfection more perfect.
418 − Thy soul has not tasted God’s entire delight, if it has never had the joy of being His enemy, opposing His designs and engaging with Him in mortal combat.
419 − If you cannot make God love you, make Him fight you. If He will not give you the embrace of the lover, compel Him to give you the embrace of the wrestler.
420 − My soul is the captive of God, taken by Him in battle; it still remembers the war, though so far from it, with delight and alarm and wonder.
What does Sri Aurobindo mean by “the joy of being His enemy”?
Here too I have to say that I do not know exactly, because he never told me. But I can tell you about my own experience. Until the age of about twenty-five, all I knew was the God of religions, God as men have created him, and I did not want him at any price. I denied his existence but with the certitude that if such a God did exist, I detested him. When I was about twenty-five I discovered the inner God Page – 333 and at the same time I learned that the God described by most Western religions is none other than the Great Adversary. When I came to India, in 1914, and became acquainted with Sri Aurobindo’s teaching, everything became very clear. 24 March 1970
421 − Most of all things on earth I hated pain till God hurt and tortured me; then it was revealed to me that pain is only a perverse and recalcitrant shape of excessive delight.
422 − There are four stages in the pain God gives to us; when it is only pain; when it is pain that causes pleasure; when it is pain that is pleasure; and when it is purely a fiercer form of delight.
423 − Even when one has climbed up into those levels of bliss where pain vanishes, it still survives disguised as intolerable ecstasy.
424 − When I was mounting upon ever higher crests of His joy, I asked myself whether there was no limit to the increase of bliss and almost I grew afraid of God’s embraces.
I would like You to explain to me the “four stages of pain” which Sri Aurobindo speaks of here.
If Sri Aurobindo is speaking of moral pain, of any kind, I can say from experience that the four stages he mentions correspond to four states of consciousness which are the result of inner development and the degree of union with the divine consciousness which the individual consciousness has achieved. When the union is perfect, there only remains a fiercer form of delight. Page – 334 If it is the physical pain endured by the body, the experience does not follow such a clearly defined order; especially because union with the Divine most often causes the pain to disappear. 25 March 1970 425 − The next greatest rapture to the love of God, is the love of God in men; there, too, one has the joy of multiplicity.
426 − For monogamy may be the best for the body, but the soul that loves God in men dwells here always as the boundless and ecstatic polygamist; yet all the time − that is the secret − It is in love with only one being.
427 − The whole world is my seraglio and every living being and inanimate existence in it is the instrument of my rapture.
Someone who has experienced love for the Divine can no longer love anything but the Divine, and it is the Divine he loves in all those for whom he feels affection; besides, this is the best way to love, because in this way one can be a powerful help for others to become conscious of the Divine who manifests in them. 27 March 1970
428 − I did not know for some time whether I loved Krishna best or Kali; when I loved Kali, it was loving myself, but when I loved Krishna, I loved another, and still it was myself with whom I was in love. Therefore I came to love Krishna better even than Kali. Page – 335 Sri Aurobindo always had his own way of saying things, always original and always unexpected. 29 March 1970
429 − What is the use of admiring Nature or worshipping her as a Power, a Presence and a goddess? What is the use, either, of appreciating her aesthetically or artistically? The secret is to enjoy her with the soul as one enjoys a woman with the body.
430 − When one has the vision in the heart, everything, Nature and Thought and Action, ideas and occupations and tastes and objects become the Beloved and are a source of ecstasy.
Nothing to say. 30 March 1970
431 − The philosophers who reject the world as Maya, are very wise and austere and holy; but I cannot help thinking sometimes that they are also just a little stupid and allow God to cheat them too easily.
432 − For my part, I think I have a right to insist on God giving Himself to me in the world as well as out of it. Why did He make it at all, if He wanted to escape that obligation?
433 − The Mayavadin talks of my Personal God as a dream and prefers to dream of Impersonal Being; the Buddhist puts that aside too as a fiction and prefers to dream of Nirvana and the bliss of nothingness. Thus all the dreamers are busy reviling each other’s visions Page – 336 and parading their own as the panacea. What the soul utterly rejoices in, is for thought the ultimate reality.
434 − Beyond Personality the Mayavadin sees indefinable Existence; I followed him there and found my Krishna beyond in indefinable Personality.
As always, this is Sri Aurobindo’s wonderful way of making clear to us the inanity of human assertions by which each one arrogantly denies anything that is not his own discovery or his own personal experience. Wisdom begins with the capacity to admit all theories, even the most contradictory. 1 April 1970
435 − When I first met Krishna, I loved Him as a friend and playmate till He deceived me; then I was indignant and could not forgive Him. Afterwards I loved Him as a lover and He still deceived me; I was again and much more indignant, but this time I had to pardon.
436 − After offending, He forced me to pardon Him not by reparation, but by committing fresh offences.
437 − So long as God tried to repair His offences against me, we went on periodically quarrelling; but when He found out His mistake, the quarrelling stopped, for I had to submit to Him entirely.
438 − When I saw others than Krishna and myself in the world, I kept secret God’s doings with me; but since I began to see Him and myself everywhere, I have become shameless and garrulous. Page – 337 In his writings, Sri Aurobindo had a genius for expressing the most extraordinary experiences in the most ordinary words, thus giving the impression that his experiences are simple and obvious. 2 April 1970 439 − All that my Lover has, belongs to me. Why do you abuse me for showing off the ornaments He has given to me?
440 − My Lover took His crown and royal necklace from His head and neck and clothed me with them; but the disciples of the saints and the prophets abused me and said, “He is hunting after Siddhis.”¹
441 − I did my Lover’s commands in the world and the will of my Captor; but they cried, Who is this corruptor of youth, this disturber of morals?
442 − If I cared even for your praise, O ye saints, if I cherished my reputation, O ye prophets, my Lover would never have taken me into His bosom and given me the freedom of His secret chambers.
443 − I was intoxicated with the rapture of my Lover and I threw the robe of the world from me even in the world’s highways. Why should I care that the worldlings mock and the Pharisees turn their faces?
444 − To thy lover, O Lord, the railing of the world is wild honey and the pelting of stones by the mob is summer rain on the body. For is it not Thou that railest and peltest, and is it not Thou in the stones that strikest and hurtest me?
¹ Occult powers. Page – 338 There is nothing to say. One can only bow before the perfection of the experience. 3 April 1970
445 − There are two things in God which men call evil, that which they cannot understand at all and that which they misunderstand and, possessing, misuse; it is only what they grope after half-vainly and dimly understand that they call good and holy. But to me all things in Him are lovable.
446 − They say, O my God, that I am mad because I see no fault in Thee; but if I am indeed mad with Thy love, I do not wish to recover my sanity.
447 − “Errors, falsehoods, stumblings!” they cry. How bright and beautiful are Thy errors, O Lord! Thy falsehoods save Truth alive; by Thy stumblings the world is perfected.
448 − Life, Life, Life, I hear the passions cry; God, God, God, is the soul’s answer. Unless thou seest and lovest Life as God only, then is Life itself a sealed joy to thee.
449 − “He loves her,” the senses say; but the soul says, “God, God, God.” That is the all-embracing formula of existence.
In this way Sri Aurobindo reveals and formulates the secret of existence. All that remains is to understand and live it. 4 April 1970 Page – 339 450 − If thou canst not love the vilest worm and the foulest of criminals, how canst thou believe that thou hast accepted God in thy spirit?
451 − To love God, excluding the world, is to give Him an intense but imperfect adoration.
452 − Is love only a daughter or handmaid of jealousy? If Krishna loves Chandrabali,¹ why should I not love her also?
453 − Because thou lovest God only, thou art apt to claim that He should love thee rather than others; but this is a false claim contrary to right and the nature of things. For He is the One, but thou art of the many. Rather become one in heart and soul with all beings, then there will be none in the world but thou alone for Him to love.
454 − My quarrel is with those who are foolish enough not to love my Lover, not with those who share His love with me.
455 − In those whom God loves, have delight; on those whom He pretends not to love, take pity.
This is the most charming criticism one can make of jealousy and also the best way to cure it by overcoming the limits of the ego and by uniting with the Divine Love which is eternal and universal. 6 April 1970 ¹ Sri Krishna loved Radha best among the gopis, but he loved Chandrabali and the other gopis also. Page – 340 |