QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 

 

1929

 

 CONTENTS 

 

PRE CONTENT

 

Publisher's Note

 

 

 

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

 

1930 - 31

 

The Ordinary Life and the True Soul

Vital conversion-Memory of Past Lives

Knowledge of the Scientist and the Yogi

Surrender, Self-offering and Consecration

Resurrection

Knowledge of the Scientist and the Yogi

Renunciation

Reincarnation-Memory of Past Lives

Chance

Aspiration in the Physical for the Divine's Love

Psychic Presence and Psychic Being-Real Origin of Race Superiority

Different Kinds of Space and Time-Fearlessness on the Vital Plane

Aspiration in Plants

Faith

Knowledge by Unity with Divine - The Divine Will in the World

Union with the Divine Consciousness and Will

Power of Right Attitude

Supermind and Overmind

Endurance-the Vital's Hunger for Praise-Signs of the Converted Vital

Power of Imagination

True Humility-Supramental Plasticity - Spiritual Rebirth

Victory over Falsehood

Selfless Admiration

The Supramental Realisation

Difficulties in Yoga

Stepping Back

The Supramental Descent

 

On the Dhammapada

 

 

APPENDIX

Appendix

 

Chance                   

 

What do we understand by the term “chance”? Chance can only be the opposite of order and harmony. There is only one true harmony and that is the supramental – the reign of Truth, the expression of the Divine Law. In the Supermind, therefore, chance has no place. But in the lower Nature the supreme Truth is obscured: hence there is an absence of that divine unity of purpose and action which alone can constitute order. Lacking this unity, the domain of lower Nature is governed by what we may call chance – that is to say, it is a field in which various conflicting forces intermix, having no single definite aim. Whatever arises out of such a rushing together of forces is a result of confusion, dissonance and falsehood – a product of chance. Chance is not merely a conception to cover our ignorance of the causes at work; it is a description of the uncertain melée of the lower Nature which lacks the calm one-pointedness of the divine Truth. The world has forgotten its divine origin and become an arena of egoistic energies; but it is still possible for it to open to the Truth, call it down by its aspiration and bring about a change in the whirl of chance. What men regard as a mechanical sequence of events, owing to their own mental associations, experiences and generalisations, is really manipulated by subtle agencies each of which tries to get its own will done. The world has got so subjected to these undivine agencies that the victory of the Truth cannot be won except by fighting for it. It has no right to it: it has to gain it by disowning the falsehood and the perversion, an important part of which is the facile notion that, since all things owe their final origin to the Divine, all their immediate activities also proceed directly from it. The fact is that here in the lower Nature the Divine is veiled by a cosmic Ignorance and what takes place does not proceed directly from the divine knowledge. That everything is equally the will of God is a very convenient suggestion of the hostile influences which  

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would have the creation stick as tightly as possible to the disorder and ugliness to which it has been reduced. So what is to be done, you ask? Well, call down the Light, open yourselves to the power of Transformation. Innumerable times the divine peace has been given to you and as often you have lost it – because something in you refuses to surrender its petty egoistic routine. If you are not always vigilant, your nature will return to its old unregenerate habits even after it has been filled with the descending Truth. It is the struggle between the old and the new that forms the crux of the Yoga; but if you are bent on being faithful to the supreme Law and Order revealed to you, the parts of your being belonging to the domain of chance will, however slowly, be converted and divinised.   

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