Works of Sri Aurobindo

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-43_The Goal.htm

The Goal

 

    WHEN we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge. Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar.


     When we have passed beyond willings, then we shall have Power. Effort was the helper; Effort is the bar.

     When we have passed beyond enjoyings, then we shall have Bliss. Desire was the helper; Desire is the bar.

     When we have passed beyond individualising, then we shall be real Persons. Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar.

     When we have passed beyond humanity, then we shall be the Man. The Animal was the helper; the Animal is the bar.

     Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be  light. This is thy goal.

     Transform effort into an even and sovereign overflowing of the soul-strength; let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy goal.

     Transform enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy; let all thyself be bliss. This is thy goal.

     Transform the divided individual into the world-personality; let all thyself be the divine. This is thy goal.

     Transform the animal into the Driver of the herds; let all thyself be Krishna. This is thy goal.

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    What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities. Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being.


     Impossibility is only a sum of greater unrealised possibles. It veils an advanced stage and a yet unaccomplished journey.


     If thou wouldst have humanity advance, buffet all preconceived ideas. Thought thus smitten awakes and becomes creative. Otherwise it rests in a mechanical repetition and mistakes that for its right activity.


     To rotate on its own axis is not the one movement for the human soul. There is also its wheeling round the Sun of an in- exhaustible illumination.


     Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. All living thought is a world in preparation; all real act is a thought manifested. The material world exists, because an Idea began to play in divine self-consciousness.


     Thought is not essential to existence nor its cause, but it is an instrument for becoming; I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be man’s unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him.


     Not to go on for ever repeating what man has already done is our work, but to arrive at new realisations and undreamed-of masteries. Time and soul and world are given us for our field, vision and hope and creative imagination stand for our prompters, will and thought and labour are our all-effective instruments.


     What is there new that we have yet to accomplish? Love, for as yet we have only accomplished hatred and self-pleasing; Knowledge, for as yet we have only accomplished error and perception and conceiving; Bliss, for as yet we have only accom-

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plished pleasure and pain and indifference; Power, for as yet we have only accomplished weakness and effort and a defeated victory; Life, for as yet we have only accomplished birth and growth and dying; Unity, for as yet we have only accomplished war and association.


     In a word, godhead; to remake ourselves in the divine image.

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