Our aspiration for the Divine, in the beginning and for a long time afterwards is coated with inferior elements. To have a pure and simple aspiration for the Divine, to know Him, to be possessed by Him, to belong to Him and to nothing else is an extremely rare spiritual phenomenon. Our sadhana is to purify our aspiration and most of our troubles are products of impure desires however sublime and great they may appear from human point of view. We have to be born into a true and exclusive aspiration for the Divine Truth. To give you an image, we are like fishes aspiring to walk, live and move on the earth, on a new earth. If we remain attached to our own kind, then, we shall always remain in the same polluted water and the new world would be a chimera. The presence of aspiration is the sign of anew emerging consciousness however faint may be its vision, hearing, and other capacities. It is an evolutionary movement towards a new race. There is no question of any selfishness or egoism, there is a powerful irresistible call from the unknown which gradually draws us away from the human life towards some hopefully luminous land of joy and deliverance. Our aspiration is often weak and blurred and intermittent but gradually it grows more and more steady, powerful and effective. A time comes when we are no longer afraid of our aspiration, we are no longer suspicious of the ulterior motive of our deepest being. Gradually we learn to have more and more faith in the oracle that now begins to function in our life. We can measure our faith by the quality of our readiness to follow the Divine Call. When we are willing to do anything and everything for the Divine, when we can accept any condition offered to us by the Divine, when we can feel that it is the Divine who as a person, teacher, friend, guide, master is doing for us whatever is the best for the progress and his work, then the true journey begins. The yoga of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo starts when we have become aware of the Divine, when we have surrendered our life mind and body and soul, our past, present and future, all we are and have been and will be in His hands, then the Supreme Artist-Sculptor begins His work of love with a chisel and a hammer on this brute image of flesh and blood and a little imprisoned consciousness that we are. We are witness to God’s working in us, His powers and energies, breaking the old, shaping the new, burning the useless, transforming what can be transformed. From then on, there is no doubt or vacillation. It is a most wonderful, dangerous, difficult and an extremely challenging adventure. The Divine is our constant companion. We are His living laboratory, His field of alchemy, His forge of hot molten matter. The absolute surrender is the goal and the gradual perfection of surrender is the path. Without surrender, we cannot enter into the yoga of Sri Aurobindo. Let the deepest Oracle, the voice of Truth be our guide. May we listen to it with all sincerity. May we learn to distinguish the voice of the Mother Divine from the voice of all other forces, then we are safe, then the protection is with us and around us. One has to be very, very quiet, then only one becomes aware of what has to be done, the line of action, the progress. Our horizons are enlarged, the veils are removed gradually one by one from our limited mental consciousness and there is no limit to the possibility of the growth of consciousness. This is our path, our undeniable destiny. The blossoming of the soul may be even very slow, that does not matter. What is important is the fact that we have become aware of the Divine and that we belong to Him and would one day belong to Him in every possible way. May the Divine give you courage, faith and a quiet strength. Go gently you way following the call of the Master, turn to Him for help, for whatever you need, confide to Him all that you can never speak to another soul. Remember Him with love and He will become more and more concrete and real in your life. You are going through a period of great trail. It is also a period of purification. Not in the ethical or moral sense but in a divine sense. All that is incompatible with our highest conception of the Divine, His light, His presence and His joy, should be gradually eliminated. It is the work of a lifetime – so, cheer up, pick up the staff and start the long marvellous journey. We do not carry the cross, we hold the hand of our Mother and go ever forward on the luminous way.
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Niranjan Guha Roy