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TO Thee, Supreme Dispenser of all boons, to Thee who justifiest life by making it pure, beautify and good, to Thee, Master of our destinies and goal of our aspirations, was consecrated the first minute of this new year. May it be wholly glorified by this consecration; may those who hope to attain Thee seek Thee in the right way; may those who seek Thee find Thee, and may those who suffer without knowing where lies the remedy feel Thy life piercing little by little the hard crust of their obscure consciousness, I bow down with a deep devotion and limitless gratitude before Thy beneficent splendour, in the name of the earth, I thank Thee for manifesting Thyself, in her name, I implore Thee that Thou mayst manifest ever more, in an uninterrupted increase of Light and Love. Be the Sovereign Master of our thoughts, our feelings and our acts. Thou art the reality of our being, the sole Reality Outside Thee all is falsehood and illusion, all is mournful obscurity.
In Thee is life, light and joy. In Thee is the sovereign Peace. Page- 32
THIS marvellous silence manifests Thee, inspite of the folly of human agitation, – the immutable and constant silence so living in every thing that one has only to listen in order to hear it, in opposition to all that is futile noise, vain agitation, useless dispersion of energies. Let it flower in our being as a generator of light and peace, and let its power radiate on all in beneficent waves. Thou art the savour of all life and the reason of all activity, the goal of our thoughts.
IT is always good to look within ourselves from time to time and see that we are nothing and can do nothing, but we must then turn our look towards Thee, knowing that Thou art all and that Thou canst do all.
Thou art the life of our life and the light of our being, Thou art the master of our destiny. Page – 33
THE tide of material thoughts lies always in wait for the least weakness, and if we relax our vigilance even for a moment, if we are negligent, to however flood the result of innumerable efforts. Then the being enters into a sort of torpor, its physical needs of food and sleep increase, its intelligence is obscured, its inner vision is veiled, and in spite of its feeling little real interest in these superficial activities, they occupy him almost exclusively. This condition is very troublesome and fatiguing, for nothing is more fatiguing than thoughts about material things, and the wearied mind suffers like a caged bird unable to spread its wings yet aspiring for the power to take its free flight, But perhaps in this condition there is a utility which I do not see. In any case, I do not struggle at all; and like a child in the arms of its mother like a fervent disciple at the feet of his master, I confide in Thee and surrender myself to Thy guidance, sure of Thy victory.
I HAVE been sitting since a long time before this blank page unable to make up my mind to write Page – 34 all in me being so mediocre, without value or savour, hopelessly commonplace. Not a single idea in my head, not one feeling in my heart, a complete indifference towards everything and an insurmountable dullness. How can such a condition be of any use? I am a veritable zero in the world. For the rest, all that has no importance. And provided Thy work is accomplished. Thy manifestation takes place and the earth becomes more and more Thy harmonious and fruitful kingdom, it matters little whether I accomplish the Work or not. And as it is sure that it will be done, I should have no reason to trouble myself even if I felt so disposed. From the depths up to the outermost surface all this my being, is but a little dust; it is only natural that it should be scattered to the winds without leaving a trace.
THOU art the sole goal of my life and the centre of my aspiration, the pivot of my thoughts, the key of my synthesis; and as Thou art beyond all sensation, all feeling and all thought. Thou art the living but ineffable experience, the Reality lived in the depths of the being but untranslatable into our poor words; and it is because the human mind is powerless to reduce Thee to a formula, that some—with a little Page – 35 disdain—treat as "sentiment" the knowledge which it is possible to have of Thee, but which is certainly as far from sentiment it is from thought. So long as we have not attained to this supreme knowledge, we have no solid base and no enduring center for a mental and emotional synthesis, and all other intellectual construction can not but be arbitrary, artificial and futile, Thou art, in so far as we can perceive Thee, eternal silence and perfect peace. Thou art all the perfection that we have to acquire all the marvels that are to be realised, all the splendour that is to be manifested. And all our words are only the prattle of children when we venture to speak of Thee. :In silence is the greatest respect,
GIVE peace and light to them all, O Lord, open their blinded eyes and their obscured understanding calm their useless torments and futile cares. Turn their regard away from themselves and give them the joy of consecration to Thy work without calculation or mental reserve. Let Thy beauty blossom in everything, awaken Thy love in all hearts, so that Thy eternally progressive order may be realised upon Page – 36 earth and Thy harmony spread till the day when all will be Thyself in perfect purity and peace. Oh! may all tears be dried, all sufferings relieved, as we have not attained to this supreme knowledge all anguish disappear, and may a calm serenity dwell in the hearts of men and a potent certitude strengthen their mind. May Thy life circulate in all as a regenerating flood and may all turn towards Thee to draw in this contemplation energy for every victory.
LET us shun the P^ which ar6 too easy and without effort, those paths which engender in us the illusion that we have arrived; let us shun the negligence which opens the door to every fall; let us shun the complacent self-admiration which leads towards every abyss. We must learn that whatever our efforts, compared with the path still to be traversed what we have already travelled is nothing, and that all are equalinfinitesimal particle of dust or the same divine starsin face of Eternity.
But Thou art the conqueror of all obstacles, the Light which illumines all ignorance, the Love which overcomes all pride, And no error can persist before Thee. Page – 37
O LORD, unseizable reality. Thou who constantly escapest before our conquering advance even though it is effective, and who wilt always be the Unknown inspite of all that we shall learn to know of Thee, inspite of all that we shall have ravished from Thy eternal mystery, we would, with a complete and constant effort, combining the multiple paths which lead towards Thee, advance like a rising and indomitable flood, breaking all obstacles, crossing all barriers, lifting all veils, dispersing all clouds, piercing- all darknesses, advance towards Thee, always towards Thee with a movement so powerful, so irresistible, that a whole multitude will be swept on behind us, and the earth conscious of Thy new and eternal Presence will understand at last what are her true ends and live in the harmony and peace of Thy sovereign realisation.
Teach us ever more, Enlighten us more and more, Dispel our ignorance, Illumine our minds, Transfigure our hearts,
And give us that Love which never fades and make. Thy sweet law blossom in every being.
We are Thine to all eternity. Page – 38
MY aspiration rises towards Thee always the same in its form, infantile and almost commonplace in its simplicity, but my call is more and more ardent, and behind the maladroit words, there is all the fervour of my concentrated will. And I implore Thee, O Lord inspite of the naiveté of this expression which so lacks all intellectuality, I implore Thee for more light, more purity, more true sincerity and love, and that for all, for the multitude which constitutes what I call my being, and for the multitude which constitutes the universal being; I implore Thee, knowing however that to implore is quite useless, since it is we alone, in our ignorance and ill-will, who can be an obstacle to Thy glorious and total manifestation, but something infantile in me finds a support in this mental attitude; I implore Thee that the peace of Thy reign may spread, upon earth. O inaccessible summit which we scale incessantly without ever attaining to Thee, sole Reality of our being which we believe we have discovered only to find that Thou escapest us at once, marvellous state which we think we have seized but which leads us farther, and always farther, into depths and immensities ever-unexplored; none can say: "I have known Thee", and yet all carry Thee in themselves, and in the silence of the soul can hear the echo of Thy voice; but this silence itself is progressive, and whatever may be the perfection of the union we have Page – 39 realised, so long as by our body we belong to the world of relativities, this union with Thee will be always capable of a greater perfection. But all the words by which we speak of Thee are but a vain babbling. Grant that I may become Thy faithful servitor.
AT every minute all the unforeseen, the unexpected, the unknown is before us, at every minute the universe is recreated in its totality and in each of its parts. And if we had a truly living faith, if we had that absolute certitude of Thy almighty power and Thy sole reality. Thy manifestation could at every minute be so evident that the whole universe would be transformed by it. But we are such slaves of all that surrounds us and has preceded us, we are so much determined by the whole mass of what is manifested, and our faith is so feeble that we are still incapable of serving as intermediaries in the great miracle of transfiguration… But, O Lord, I know that it will come one day. I know that a day will come when Thou wilt transform all those who approach us; Thou wilt transform them so radically that, totally liberated from the ties of the past, they will begin to live in Thee with a life quite new, a Page – 40 life solely made of Thee, of which Thou shalt be the sovereign Lord. And also all troubles will be transformed into serenity, all anguish into peace, all doubts into certitude, all ugliness into harmony, all egoisms into self-giving, all darknesses into light and all sufferings into unchanging happiness. But art Thou not already accomplishing this glorious miracle? I see it everywhere blossoming around us! Oh! divine law of love and beauty, supreme liberator, there is no obstacle to Thy power. It is only our blindness that deprives us of the fortifying spectacle of Thy constant victory. My heart sings a hymn of gladness and my thought is illumined with joy. Thy transcendent. Thy marvellous love is the sovereign Master of the world.
January 12, 1914
A TEACHING can be profitable only if it is perfectly sincere, that is to say, if it is lived at the time when it is imparted, and words often. repeated, thoughts often expressed can no longer be sincere. Page – 41
THOU hast passed over my life, O Lord, like a great wave of love, and when I was immersed in it, I knew in a way integral and intense that I had offered to Thee—when ? I do not know, at no precise moment and, doubtless, always—my thoughts, my heart and my flesh in a living holocaust. And in that great love which enveloped me, and in that consciousness of the renunciation made, there was" an immense serenity vaster than the universe and a sweetness so intense and so full of an infinite compassion that a flow of tears came slowly from my eyes. Nothing could be farther removed at once from suffering and from happiness, it was an ineffable peace. O Sublime Love, centre of our life. Marvel of marvels, I find Thee again at last and I live once again in Thee, but how much ‘more powerfully, how much more consciously than before. How much better I know and understand Thee. Each time I find Thee again, my communion with Thee is more integral, more complete, more definitive. O Presence of ineffable beauty, O thought of supreme redemption, sovereign power of salvation, with what joy all my being feels Thee living in itself, sole principle of its life and of all life, marvellous constructor of all thought, all will, all consciousness, Upon this world of illusion, this sombre nightmare, Thou hast bestowed Thy divine reality, and Page – 42 each atom of matter contains something of Thy absolute. Thou art, Thou livest. Thou art radiant and reignest.
O LORD, divine Master of Love, Thou art the eternal victor, and those who put themselves in. perfect accord with Thee, those who live only for Thee and by Thee cannot but win all the victories; for in Thee is the supreme force, the force of complete disinterestedness, of perfect clairvoyance, of sovereign kindness. In Thee, by Thee, all is transfigured and glorified; in Thee is found the key of all mysteries and all powers. But we attain to Thee only if we desire nothing else than to live in Thee, to serve Thee, to make Thy divine work triumph more rapidly for the salvation of a greater number. O Lord, Thou alone art real and all else is illusion; for when we live in Thee we see and understand all things, nothing escapes Thy perfect knowledge, but everything puts on another appearance; for all is Thou in essence, since all is the fruit of Thy work, of Thy magnanimous intervention, and in the most sinister darkness Thou hast lit a star! May our devotion go on always increasing. Page – 43 May our consecration go on always perfecting. itself, And mayst Thou who art already the real sovereign become in effect the sovereign of life.
THOU, who art the sole reality of our being, O sublime Master of love. Redeemer of life, let me have no longer any other consciousness than of Thee at every instant and in . each being. When I do not live solely with Thy life, I agonise, I sink slowly towards extinction; for Thou art my only reason for existence, my one goal, my single support. I am like a timid bird not yet sure of its wings and hesitating to take its flight; let me soar to reach definitive identity with Thee.
IT is because of Thy presence in each being, O divine Master of love, that every man, even the most cruel, can be accessible to pity and that even the vilest respects, as if inspite of himself, honour and justice. It is Thou who from beyond all conventions and prejudices lightest with a special light, divine and pure, all that we are and all that we do, and showest Page – 44 us the difference between what we realise and what we could be. Thou art the insuperable limit opposed to the excess of evil, to the darkness and the ill-will; Thou art the living hope in every heart of possible and future perfections. To Thee all the fervour of my adoration. Thou art the door, accessible to our conception, which leads towards unsuspected and inconceivable splendours, the splendours which will be progressively revealed to us.
ALL that is conscious in me belongs to Thee without restriction, and I shall strive to conquer little by little and always better the subconscient, the bed-rock still obscure. Divine Master of love, eternal Teacher, Thou guidest our lives. It is in Thee alone and for Thee alone that we would live; enlighten our consciousness, guide our steps, and grant that we may do the maximum of what we can do, utilising all our energies solely to serve Thee. Page – 45 January 31, 1914
MAY every morning our thought rise with fervour towards Thee, asking Thee what is the best we can do to manifest and serve Thee. May at each moment amid the many kinds of multiple choice which we can make and which, inspite of their apparent insignificance, are always of a great importance—since according to our decision we submit to one category of determinism or another—may at each moment our attitude be such that it may be Thy divine will which determines our choice and thus it may be Thou who givest the direction to ail our life. According to the consciousness in which we are at the moment when we take a decision, we submit to the determinism of the order of the realities in which we are conscious; whence ail the consequences, often unforeseen and unfortunate, contradictory to the general orientation of life and forming obstacles, sometimes terrible, which have afterwards to be surmounted. We would, therefore,O Lord, Divine Master of love, be conscious of Thee and Thee alone, be identified with Thy supreme law each time that we decide, each time we choose, so that it may be Thy Will which determines us; and our life may thus be effectively and integrally consecrated to Thee. In Thy light we shall see, in Thy knowledge we shall know, in Thy will we shall realise. Page – 46 |