Ok, these are all from âQuestions and Answers, 1956â (available for free online)
QUESTION: Mother, when one is identified with the Divine in the higher part of the being while neglecting the lower parts â neglecting life â doesnât the Divine, in the part where one is identified with Him, advise one to attend to the lower parts?
ANSWER: And if before even beginning, one has decided that this must not happen, perhaps one makes it impossible for oneself to receive the advice of the Divine!
For, truly speaking, each one finds only what he wants to find of the Divine. Sri Aurobindo has said this by turning it the other way round; he has said â I am not quoting the exact words, only the idea: what you expect from the Divine is what you find in the Divine; what you want from the Divine is what you meet in the Divine. He will have for you the aspect you expect or desire.
And His manifestation is always adapted to each oneâs re- ceptivity and capacity. They may have a real, essential contact, but this contact is limited by their own capacity for receiving and approach⊠It is only if you are able to go out of all limits that you can meet the total Divine as He totally is.
And this capacity for contact is perhaps what constitutes the true hierarchy of beings. For everyone carries within himself the Divine, and therefore everyone has the possibility of uniting with the Divine â that possibility is the same in all. But according to each oneâs capacity â in fact, according to his position in the divine hierarchy â his approach will be more or less partial or total.
It could be said â although these words deform things a lot â that the quality of the approach is the same in every be- ing, but the quantity, the totality is very different⊠It is very difficult to explain in words, but if one may say so, the pointat which you are identified with the Divine is perfect in itself, that is to say, your identification is perfect in itself, at this point, but the number of points at which you are identified differs immensely.
And this is very marked in the difference between the paths followed to approach the Divine. Usually people set limits; they limit themselves by excluding everything that is not exactly the path they have chosen, for this is much easier and they go much faster â relatively. But if, instead of following one road, you go forward in a sort of movement which could be called spherical, where everything is included, which takes in all the possibilities of approach to the Divine, naturally the result is much more complete â and it is this that Sri Aurobindo calls the integral yoga â but the progress is much more difficult and much slower.
QUESTION: What does Sri Aurobindo mean by âoneness in dynamic forceâ?
ANSWER Thatâs what I was saying. There is a dynamic force which moves all things, and when you become conscious of it, you see that it is one single Force which moves all things; and as you become conscious, you can even follow its movement and see how it works through men and things.
From the minute you become conscious of the Unity â unity of Force, unity of Consciousness and unity of Will â well, you no longer have the perception which makes you quite sepa- rate from others, so that you do not know what goes on in them, they are strangers to you, you are shut up as it were in your own skin, and have no contact with others except quite externally and superficially. But this happens precisely because you have not realised in yourself the perception of this oneness of Consciousness, Force and Will â even of material vibrations.
It is the complexity which makes this perception difficult â for our faculties of perception are quite linear and very one- sided; so when we want to understand, we are immediately assailed by countless things which are almost inconsistent with each other and intermix in such an intricate way that one can no longer make out the lines and follow things â one suddenly enters a whirlwind.
But this is because⊠For instance, most men think one thought after another, even as they have to say one word af- ter another â they canât say more than one word at the same time, you know, or else they stammer. Well, most people think like that, they think one thought after another, and so their whole consciousness has a linear movement. But one begins to perceive things only when one can see spherically, globally, think spherically, that is, have innumerable thoughts and perceptions simultaneously.
Naturally, up to now, if one wanted to describe things, one had to describe them one after another, for one canât say ten words at once, one says one word after another; and that is why all one says is practically quite incapable of expressing the truth, quite incapable. For we have to say one thing after another â the minute we say them one after another, they are no longer true. They must all be said at the same time, just as they can all be seen at the same time, and each one in its place.
So, when one begins to see like this â to see, to discern, to feel, to think, to will like this â one draws near the Truth. But so long as one sees as one speaks, oh, what a lamentable poverty!
