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April l, 1914
IT seems to me that we have entered into the heart of Thy sanctuary and become aware of Thy will itself. A great joy, a deep peace reign in me, and yet all my inner constructions have vanished like a vain dream, and I find myself now before Thy immensity, without any frame or system, like a being not yet individualised. All that past, in its external form, appears to me ridiculous and arbitrary, and yet I know that it was useful in its time. But at present all is changed: a new stage has begun.
EVERYDAY, at the moment when I wish to write I am interrupted, as if the new period which is opening before us was a period of expansion rather than of concentration. It is in the activity of each Foment that we must serve Thee and be identified Page – 89 with Thee, rather than in deep and mute contemplation or in written or unwritten meditation. But my heart does not tire of singing to Thee a canticle and my thought is constantly full of Thee.
IT seems to me that I am being born into a new life and that all the methods and habits of the past can no longer be of any use. It seems to me that what was once a result is now only a preparation. I feel as if I had done nothing yet, as if I had not lived the spiritual life, as if I was only entering upon the way which leads to it; it seems to me that I know nothing, that I am incapable of formulating anything, that all experience is yet to commence. It is as if I was stripped of all my past, of my errors as well as my conquests, as if all that had disappeared to give place to one new-born whose whole existence has yet to take shape, who has no Karma, no experience it can profit by, but no error either which it must repair. My head is empty of all knowledge and all certitude, but also of all vain thought. I feel that if I can surrender without any resistance to this state, if I do not strive to know or understand, if I consent to be completely like a child, ignorant and candid, some new possibility will open before Page – 90 me. I know that I must now definitively give myself up and be like a page absolutely blank on which Thy thought. Thy will, O Lord, will be able to inscribe themselves freely, secure against all deformation. An immense gratitude rises from my heart, I seem to have at last arrived at the threshold which I have so long sought. Grant, O Lord, that I may be pure enough, impersonal enough, animated enough with Thy divine love, to be able to cross it definitively. O to belong to Thee, without any darkness of restriction !
O LORD, my adoration rises ardently towards Thee, all my being is like an aspiration, a flame which is consecrated to Thee. O Lord, Lord, my sweet Master, it is Thou who livest and wiliest in me ! This body is Thy instrument; this will is Thy servant; this intelligence is Thy tool; and the whole is only Thyself. Page – 91
WHAT is then my courage if I always try to avoid the fight ? What is then my energy if I am instinctively afraid of the new effort to be made and try, without being aware of it, to go to sleep passively, counting upon the results of the past effort ? To act I have to be compelled and my mute contemplation is partly made of laziness…All that appears to me more and more clearly. All I have done up to the present seems to me to be nothing. The poverty and limitation of the instrument which I put at Thy service, O Lord, are evident to me, and I laugh a little sorrow- fully at the idea that I could sometimes have a good opinion of my being, of its efforts and their results. This threshold of the true life which I am always thinking that I have attained is like a hope which is given to me but never a tangible realisation; it is the toy promised to a child, the reward held out before the weak. When then shall I be a truly strong being entirely made of courage, energy, valour and calm perseverance; when shall I have forgotten my personality com- pletely enough to be only an instrument solely moulded by the forces it has to manifest? When will there be no inertia mixed with my consciousness of unity; when with my feeling of divine love will there be no longer mixed any weakness ? O Lord, all thought seems dead in me, now that I have put these questions. I search for my conscious Page – 92 mind and find it no more; I search for my individuality and discover it nowhere; I search for my personal will and it is absent. I search for Thee and there is no word from Thee… Silence, only silence. I seem now to hear Thy voice: "Never hast thou been able to die integrally. Always something in thee has wished to know, to see, to understand. Surrender completely, learn how to disappear, break the last dam which separates thee from me, accomplish- without reserve thy act of surrender." Alas, O Lord, for a long time I have wanted to do it, but I have not been able. Now wilt Thou give me the power to do it? O Lord, my sweet eternal Master, break this resistance which fills me with anguish…deliver me from myself!
O LORD, my thought is peaceful and my heart is at rest; I turn towards Thee with a deep devotion and limitless confidence; I know that Thy love is all-powerful and that Thy justice will reign upon the earth; I know that the hour is near when the last veil will be withdrawn and all iniquity disappear to give place to an era of peace and harmonious effort. O Lord, my mind drawn inward and my heart at peace approach Thee and all my being is filled with Thy divine Presence; grant that I may see only Page – 93 Thee in everything and that all may shine with Thy divine Light. O, may hatreds be appeased, rancours effaced, fears dispelled, suspicions abolished and malevolences overcome, and in this town, in this country, on this earth, may all hearts feel vibrating in them this sublime love, the source of all transfiguration. O Lord, with what an ardent appeal I implore Thy love. Grant that my aspiration may be intense enough to awaken every v/here a like aspiration: O, may kindness, justice, peace reign as sovereign masters, may ignorant egoism be overcome, may darkness be suddenly illumined by Thy pure Light; may the blind see, may the deaf hear, may Thy law be proclaimed in every place and, in a union constantly progressive, in a harmony ever more perfect, may all, as a single being, stretch out their arms towards Thee to identify themselves with Thee and to manifest Thee upon the earth. O Lord, with the mind drawn inward and the heart full of sun-light, I give myself to Thee without .reserve and the " I" disappears in Thee !
SUDDENLY the veil was rent, the horizon was disclosed. Before the clear . vision my whole being threw itself at Thy feet in a great outburst of Page – 94 gratitude. Yet in spite of this deep and integral joy, all was calm, all was peaceful with the peace of eternity. I seem to have no more limits; there is no longer the perception of the body, no sensations, no feelings, no thoughts….A clear, pure, tranquil immensity, penetrated with love and light, filled with an unspeakable beatitude, is all that is there, and that alone seems now to be myself, and this "myself" is so little the former "I", selfish and limited, that I cannot tell if it is I or Thou, O Lord, sublime Master of our destinies. It is as though all were energy, courage, force, will, infinite sweetness, incomparable compassion. Even more forcibly than during these last days the past is dead and as though buried under the rays of a new life. The last glance that I have just thrown backward, as I read a few pages of this book, definitively convinced me of this death, and lightened of a great weight, I present myself before Thee, O my divine Master, with all the simplicity, all the nudity of a child…And still the only thing I perceive is that calm and pure immensity…. Lord, Thou hast answered my prayer. Thou hast granted me what 1 have asked from Thee; the "I" has disappeared, there is only a docile instrument put at Thy service, a centre of concentration and manifestation of Thy infinite and eternal rays; Thou hast taken my life and made it Thine; Thou hast taken my will and hast united it to Thine; Thou hast taken my love and identified it with Thine; Thou hast taken my thought and replaced it by Thy absolute Consciousness. Page – 95 The body, marvelling, bows its forehead in the dust in mute and submissive adoration. And nothing else exists but Thou alone in the splendour of Thy immutable peace.
ALL conspires to prevent me from remaining a being of habits, and in this new state, in the midst of these complex and unstable circumstances, I have never so completely lived Thy immutable peace, or rather the "I" has never so completely disappeared leaving Thy divine peace to live alone. All is beautiful, harmonious and calm, all is full of Thee. Thou shinest in the dazzling sun. Thou makest Thyself felt in the sweet breeze that blows. Thou makest Thyself manifest in our hearts and livest in all beings. There is no animal, no plant that does not speak to me of Thee and Thy name is written on all I look at. O, my sweet Lord, hast Thou at last granted that I should be wholly Thine and my consciousness definitively united with Thine ? What have I done to merit so glorious a happiness? Nothing more than to desire it and will it with constancy, that is very little. But, O Lord, since now it is Thy will and not mine that lives in me. Thou canst make this happiness Page – 96 profitable to all and make its reason of existence the giving to the greatest possible number of beings a perception of Thee. O may all know Thee, love Thee, serve Thee; may all receive the supreme consecration! O Love, divine Love, spread in the world, regenerate life, enlighten the intelligence, break down the dams of egoism, dispel the obstacle of ignorance and be the resplendent Master of the earth.
O LORD, O almighty Master, sole Reality, grant that no error, no obscurity, no fatal ignorance may creep into my heart and my thought. In action, the personality is the inevitable and indispensable intermediary of Thy will and Thy forces. The stronger, the more complex, powerful, individualised and conscious is the personality, the more powerfully and usefully can the instrument serve. But, by reason of the very character of personality, it easily tends to be drawn into the fatal illusion of its separate existence and become little by little a screen between Thee and that on which Thou wiliest to act. Not at the beginning, in the manifestation, but in the transmission of the return; that is to say, instead of being, as a faithful servant, an intermediary Page – 97 who brings back to Thee exactly what is Thy due —the forces sent forth in reply to Thy action—there is a tendency in the personality to want to keep for itself a part of the forces, with this idea: "It is I who have done this or that, I who am thanked…" Pernicious illusion, obscure falsehood, now are you discovered and unmasked. That is’ the maleficent canker corroding the fruit of the action, falsifying all its results. O Lord, O my sweet Master, sole Reality, dispel this feeling of the "I". I have now understood that so long as there will be a manifested universe, the "I" will remain necessary for Thy manifestation, to dissolve, or even to diminish or weaken the "I", is to deprive Thee of the means of manifestation, in whole or part. But what must be radically’ and definitively suppressed, is the illusory thought, the illusory feeling, the illusory sensation of the separate "I". At no moment, in no circumstances must we forget that our "I" has no reality outside Thee. O my sweet Master, my divine Lord, tear out from my heart this illusion that Thy servant may become ; pure and faithful, and faithfully and integrally bring back to Thee all that is Thy due. In silence let me contemplate and understand this supreme ignorance and dispel it for ever. Chase the shadow from my heart, and let Thy light reign in it, its uncontested sovereign. Page – 98
YESTERDAY evening the last veil was almost rent, the last stronghold of the blind and ignorant personality seemed to be on the point of yielding; for the first time I thought I understood what is true impersonal service, and the obstacle which separated me from the integral realisation appeared to me very fragile, on the point of definitively disappearing. But the necessity of my outer duties tore me out of this beneficent and happy contemplation, and at the moment when I was obliged to return to the outer consciousness, the veil closed again and appears to me darker than ever. Why this fall into the inconscience of the night after so great a light? O Lord, Lord, wilt Thou not let me escape at last from the ignorance and be one with Thee? Now that I have known and seen so well what must be the work upon the earth, shall I not be able to realise it? Am I then rivetted to the ignorance and illusion? Why, why this night after so great and pure a light? All my being is strained in an agonising appeal! O Lord, take pity on me!
April 19, 1914
THERE is a great difference between being active in an external action, even while keeping our Page -99 thought constantly fixed on Thee, and entering into that perfect union with Thee which leads to what I have called " the absolute Consciousness, the true Omniscience, the Knowledge". When we act, even with our thought fixed on Thee, we are like a blind man- walking on the road, with a sense of the direction,, but knowing nothing of the way he follows and of the precise manner in which he should walk on it so as to avoid neglecting anything. In the other case, on the contrary, there is the clear vision in the full light, the utilisation of the smallest opportunity, the plenitude of action, the maximum of result. And if the first attitude is indispensable before attaining to the other, we must not at any moment cease to work, to make an effort to attain to the perfect communion. But my heart is at peace, my thought free from impatience, and I give myself to Thy will with the smiling confidence of a child. May Thy peace reign over all.
AFTER I had hoped so much, after I had come to believe that my outer being was at last to become an instrument adapted to Thy ends, after the hope had come of being delivered at last from this ego, so cumbersome and obscure, I feel as far from the goal as before, as ignorant, as egoistic as I was before Page – 100 this great expectation. And once more the way rolls .out interminable across the fields of inconscience. The sublime door is again closed and again I find myself on the threshold of the sanctuary without any power to enter. But I have learnt to regard everything smilingly with a tranquil heart. Only I ask Thee, O my divine Master, not to let me commit errors; even if the instrument is condemned again for a time to inconscience, grant that it may faithfully and docilely let itself be guided by Thy divine law. I salute Thee, O Lord, with a profound and pure devotion. Oh! be the sovereign Master of all hearts.
ALL rules have vanished, the regularity of the discipline has disappeared, all effort has ceased; not by my own will, not, I think, by negligence either, but because the circumstances conspire to make it so. It seems to me that this inner will, always alert, which is like a steersman at the helm, has evaporated or fallen asleep, and my being is only something peacefully surrendered which lets itself be carried by the current. Up to the present, it seems to me that the course has been in a straight line, and I would keep the hope that it is Thou, O Lord, who guidest the current; but certainly if I have sinned sometimes by too great a rigidity, a lack of suppleness and Page – 101 spontaneity, it might well be that now I sin by a contrary excess. I have come to accept peacefully the state in which I am and to say to myself that Thou wilt vouchsafe to me the true, the absolute Consciousness when Thou thinkest fit. I regard all this mobile world as a play which unrolls itself, and I take part in this play with the same energy and conviction as if I believed it to be real and important. All this is quite new. But what is sure is that never were my mind and heart so completely at rest. What will come of it I know not. But I trust to Thee, O Lord; Thou knowest best how to use and develop Thy instrument.
THOU art the Master of the world; Thy law unrolls itself before us with precision, and as I thought or rather Thou hadst made me understand before our departure from Paris, it is the best, that which could best serve Thy work in the world, that has happened. In beatitude I have communed with Thy power which dominates darkness and error and shines like a marvellous and eternal dawn over the mud of the hypocritical force and its apparent success. All has been brought to light, we have taken a step forward towards the full light of sincerity, and it is this full Page – 102 light which will be the first stage of Thy reign upon the earth. O Thou, inconceivable splendour. Thou, conqueror of all ignorance, victor over all egoism. Thou who illuminest our hearts and enlightenest our minds, Thou who art Knowledge, Love and Being, let me live constantly in the consciousness of Thy Unity, let me always conform to Thy Will. With a respectful and silent devotion I salute Thee as the sovereign Lord of the world ! Page – 103 |