Towards The Light

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TOWARDS THE LIGHT

By the same author

Rs.

As.

The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo Part I

12

Do. Part II ...

i

4

Do. Part III ...

i

8

Do. Part IV ...

i

4

Do. Part V (Based on Talks

with the Mother)

i

8

Do. Part VI ...

2

o

Do. Part VII (m Press)

The Coming Race

I

12

The Malady of the Century

2

To the Heights: Prose Poems

I

8

The World War: Its Inner Bearings

O

4

The Approach to Mysticism

I

8

Towards a New Society

I

12

Poets and Mystics

3

The Quest and the Goal

Paper

3

8

cloth ...

4

8

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

NOLINI KANTA GUPTA

Publishers :

SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM

PONDICHERRY

First Edition 1938

Second Edition 1944

Third Edition 1955

All rights Reserved

SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PRESS
PONDICHERY

1024/12/54/1000

CONTENTS

Page

I. OF LOVE AND ASPIRATION ... i

II. OF THE DIVINE AND ITS HELP ... 7

III. OF DESIRE AND ATONEMENT ... 13

IV. OF BEAUTY AND ANANDA ... 20
V. OF SOME SUPREME MYSTERIES ... 25

VI. THE BIRTH OF MAYA ... 36

Towards the Light

I

OF LOVE AND ASPIRATION

THERE is a Light before which all other
light is darkness.

There is a Strength before which all other
strength is weakness.

There is a Joy before which all other joy
is suffering.

Forward to the Farthest!
Upward to the Highest!
Downward into the Deepest!

At the farthest awaits a humanity fulfilled
and realised,

At the highest broods the Divinity that
propels and forges,

At the deepest dwells the Instrument
the Individuality that obeys and executes.

Be aware of these triple elements, house
their triple movements;

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

Find your one and total self in the dynamic
union of the Three:

This is the gate to fulfilment and harmony
and the spirit's delight in life.

The human in man seeks Divinity, the
Divine in man seeks humanity.

Your smallnesses only you can call your
own; your greatness is the greatness of the
Divine in you.

*

It is the Godhead in you that can reveal
God to you; there is no other proof of God.

What you want to possess absolutely as
your own, will also claim to possess you as
absolutely its own.

Lose all and you fall into the bosom
of boundless plenitude.

OF LOVE AND ASPIRATION

Sacrifice all but into the radiant fire of
Aspiration that flames up to the gods.

The Heart is the blazing hearth of Aspi-
ration, the divine door that opens into
Immortality.

Of Love Ananda is the soul, self-mastery
the head, and purity the foundation.

The human approaches to the Divine are
dangerous. Seek God in God's ways.

Aspire and love . . .
Ascending Love leads to Immortality.
Descending Love leads to Death.
Love is defeated as often as Lust is
victorious.

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

Love is ascending Ananda that leads to
Immortality.

Lust is descending Ananda that leads to
Death.

The secret of Love is the joy of self-giving.

The secret of joy is self-giving. If any part

in you is without joy, it means that it has not

given itself, it wants to keep itself for itself.

Divine love has an element of detachment
which human love has not; and yet Divine
love can be as passionate as human love,,
nay, Divine love has an intensity which
human love cannot attain.

It is the element of detachment which
intensifies love, because it is this which purifies
love.

Detachment means freedom from attach-
ment to the body and to the bodily desires
and, more than that, freedom from attach-
ment to one's own self.

OF LOVE AND ASPIRATION

The love that is thus detached and free
makes no demands, for it has no hunger.
It is, it exists and therefore possesses the
fullness of delight ; it can only give itself and
ask nothing.

The strongest attachment is the attach-
ment to one's own self not to what one
really is, but to what one has actually become.
To remain what one has been in the past or
is at present, to refuse to be what one is
meant to be this is human, too human.

The human self must yield, surrender and
dissolve itself into the Divine self.

Never seek through your desire-soul the
person you love. You invite thereby not only
misery to yourself but bring a curse upon
one you profess to love.

Place always a space of detachment be-
tween yourself and your beloved; make the
Divine your mediator.

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

Then shall you secure pure and perfect
enjoyment whose true name is Bliss; and
then too can you become the instrument to
bring a bliss and blessing to the object of
your love.

This is the secret of the sweetest and most
exquisite and intimate relation possible with
persons or things, that it should be made and
established in and through the Divine.

The closer we come to the Divine, the
stricter are the conditions we have to fulfil,
the severer grow the tests through which we
have to pass.

An absolute and thorough winnowing and
cleansing is demanded in him who aspires
to be the Divine's favourite.

II

OF THE DIVINE AND ITS HELP

IT is the Divine alone that is capable of
immediate and absolute surrender.

But is there not in the human that which
is divine?

Discover the centre of your being and hold
fast to it; only from there can you describe
the perfect circle of life rounded into its
absolute fullness.

Do not strive and struggle to do. Only be
conscious of what is being done for you.

There is a Power that is not grim and
violent, but smiling and translucent and yet

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

irresistible. It does not give out heat and soot
but radiates a soothing and persuasive clarity.
It is not the Fire of our earth that burns and
bruises, smokes and crackles it is something
like the serene and silent luminousness, the
steady and unaging radiance of the distant
stars that energises the cosmic symphony.

All activity should carry with it a sense of
repose. Doing everything you must feel as if
you were doing nothing even while most
energetic, know how to be perfectly at
lest.

In the same way, all repose must be filled
with intense activity tranquil and immobile,
yet a dynamo of the swiftest and surest
energies.

One must know how to wait calm,
patient, unshakable wait indefinitely, as long
as that is demanded, accepting even what
looks like defeat.

8

OF THE DIVINE AND ITS HELP

But when the time arrives, one must know
also how to be swift, impetuous, violent even
and victorious.

Await every moment, with all the con-
centrated expectancy of an imminent mother-
hood, the birth of the Divine in you. Await
in calmness, await in breathless readiness.

Silence is the gate through which you
enter the Divine. The senses silent, you will
sense the Divine. The brain silent, you will
understand Him. Your passions silent, you
will love Him. Your desires silent, you will
possess Him.

The Divine never withdraws from you; it
is you who move away from the Divine and
imagine the contrary, as the earth might

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

think it is the sun that is moving and not its
own self.

You cannot possess the Divine: your move-
ment must not be a grasping for, the more
you grasp at the Divine the farther will it
recede from you. Approach with self-
abandonment : the greater the abandonment,
the closer to you will you find the Divine.

Tamos means hoarding for oneself, Rajas
squandering for oneself: both mean stealing
from the Divine.

Sattva is a sharing with the Divine. Neither
steal nor share, but give thyself and all to
its Divine owner.

Knowledge and power belong to the Divine
and are bestowed when and on whom He
chooses; covet them not. But devotion and
love are man's and by love and t devotion

10

OF THE DIVINE AND ITS HELP

you can enter into divine power and
knowledge.

*

Man is the net that Divine Fowler has
spread to capture the wide and fleet universal
physical Nature, so that through him it may
be brought under control, tamed and

transfigured.

*

If you think for yourself or feel for yourself
or act for yourself, you become a misappro-
priator, a dishonest trustee a thief of force.

Let the Divine think through you, feel
through you and act through you. Then only
right and perfect use will be made of the
instruments that compose your being.

Let the Divine's Thoughts shine in your
mind, let the Divine's Love swell in your
heart, let the Divine's Energy impel your
limbs.

11

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

Let the taste of Immortality fill my mouth
. . all mortalities will turn insipid.

A little of Her Grace is sufficient for my
little soul; but even if my soul were as big
as the entire universe, that self-same little
would be more than sufficient to fill it to

overflowing.

*

Thou art the goal, Thou the way.

Thou art Thyself what we have to be; by
Thy example Thou showest us how to be.

Thou givest us the power to work and
achieve; Thou art That which works and
achieves; and that which is achieved in us is
Thou.

What is the Truth? The Man who bears
the Truth.

Ask me not to test and toil for the Truth:
ask me rather to love the Man who bears

the Truth.

*

12

Ill

OF DESIRE AND ATONEMENT

WHEREVER you meet a ray of real light, a gleam
of genuine beauty, a particle of true truth
go back with it to its original source. Follow
the track to the end and you will find
yourself in the embrace of the Divine.

Close not your senses however earthly they
may be. Fling them all wide open open
always and everywhere, but to the Divine.

Life itself becomes Art the very highest
form of Art when it is moulded in the
rhythm of the Supreme Beauty, when its
steps follow the cadences of the Divine.

13

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

Every softening of the heart towards things
of the earth is a hardening of it to the things
of Heaven.

Of the host of desires you cherish, not
many are really fulfilled; and even these are
fulfilled only in a way.

Not much is lost by not harbouring desires;
mostly, it is not enjoyment of desire, but the
deceptive pleasure of anticipation that you
lose.

Desirelessness brings about a sovereign
fulfilment, not of desires, but of the out-
reachings of a divine Will in you, of which
your desires are the negation.

Desire lost opens the way to the enjoyment
of Delight supernal.

There is not much virtue in going down
the slope; all can do that for the natural
gravitation of the consciousness is downward.

He is the hero who resists the temptation to

14

OF DESIRE AND ATONEMENT

let himself slip, even for a moment, even to
the extent of a hair's breadth.

The only atonement for a wrong thing
done is to do the right thing on the next
occasion.

Tapasyd: Never to let yourself slip down,
always to maintain your progress up the
slope.

Never say, "I cannot." Look more closely,
you will find that it means in reality, CC I
want not. 55

Each difficulty can be an opportunity for a
new progress. For what is meant by a diffi-
culty? A flaw in the nature brought before
the consciousness that it may be dealt with
and remedied.

15

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

Behind every difficulty is hidden a Truth;
overcome it and a passage is made clear for
that Truth's manifestation.

Every apparent Negation is an index to an
Affirmation waiting behmd it.

You increase your difficulty by thinking it
difficult; consider it easy and it will be made
easy to you.

Maya is real only because you are un-
willing to think it otherwise; once awake
from Maya and you wUl find not only that
it is no more, but that it has never been.

Facts by themselves are not great or small;
it is the forces behind them that give them
their real stature.

Facts have value in so far as they are
significant significant of forces, of dynamic
possibilities that work out in and through
them.

16

OF DESIRE AND ATONEMENT

Facts in their outward form may even
directly contradict the very forces that manifest
through them or are embodied in them.

Do not turn back seeing the desert in front.
Traverse it with courage and fortitude for
beyond is the promised land flowing with milk
and honey.

None is truly weak, not even any limb or
element in him. One has only to open to the
Universal Power, the Divine Mother; she is
the origin and fountain-head of all strength
and energy and she can make the mute speak
and the lame leap over the mountains.

There is no error that cannot be repaired
and even turned to advantage.

There is no loss that cannot be made up
and even turned to a greater gain.

17

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

Each fall or failure should be only a draw-
ing back so that you can leap to a greater
height till you reach the summit and fall
and fail no more.

Your past has created your present ; create
by your present the future.

You can not only obliterate the past, but
make it even as if it had never been.

As the consciousness rises upwards from the
Present and broadens out, it not only creates
the Future but also recreates the Past.

Years are not needed to undo the sins of
years a single moment can efface an age.

A solitary second can be the spark potent
to explode a whole past.

A dip into the ocean of Grace and you come

18

OF DESIRE AND ATONEMENT

out clean, shedding all the Past, reborn unto
the Future.

A single drop of poison can vitiate the
entire stream of wholesome blood in the body.

But there is too a Purity, a drop of which
can render crystal clear a whole morass of
soil and dirt.

19

IV
OF BEAUTY AND ANANDA

TRUTH is Beauty's substance it is Beauty
self-governed.

Beauty is Delight perfectly articulate.

Love is Beauty enjoying itself.

Knowledge is the light that Beauty ema-
nates.

Power is the fascination that Beauty exerts.

All Art is the re-creation of Truth in Beauty.

Rhythm is the gait of Truth dynamic with
Delight.

The Truth of a thing is its native substance,
the being in its absolute self-law. Satyam is
that which is of Sat.

Beauty is delight organised.
20

OF BEAUTY AND AKANDA

Poetry is the soul's delight seeking perfect
expression in speech.

Speech is self-expression. It is the organ of
self-consciousness. The nature of the speech
shows the nature of the self-consciousness. The
degree of perfection in utterance measures also
the extent to which one is conscious of oneself.

Beauty is the soul's delight perfectly arti-
culate and organised.

Where the soul does not speak out, where
the rhythm of the spirit does not manifest,
there comes in ugliness.

Things are ugly when they are not true to
themselves, not sincere, not self-expressive.

In a sense, natural and beautiful are the
same, the perverse commensurate with the
ugly.

Beauty is not merely balance, symmetry,
measure, a regular disposition of features. A
form, an embodiment, need not be pretty
to be beautiful.

21

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

Mere formal beauty is a power, but a
surface power; there is a deeper unity of
rhythm in the embodiment that is beautiful
by its transparent soul-expression.

Art is the incarnation of Truth in Beauty,
The Divine the truest Truth and the

Beauty most beautiful.

The incarnation of the Divine the supreme

Art.

An art with the Divine left out is like a
trunk without the head:

It is built with the lower members and not
with the higher members of Beauty;

Skill it may possess but not greatness;

It may please the senses, but cannot
enrapture the soul.

The very nature of Art is rhythm and
harmony.

22

OF BEAUTY AND ANANDA

The Divine is integral harmony and
perfect rhythm.

The element of divine harmony and rhythm
is the measure of the beautiful in Art.

Even so it is with the art of life.

All things are beautiful, for the All-beautiful
is in every thing.

The domain of Art encompasses the entire
creation.

The Divine is present everywhere, but in
essence.

In the manifestation there is a varying and
developing degree of the Presence.

The Brahman is there equally in the saint
and the sinner, in the knowledge and in the
ignorance, it is the static Brahman.

23

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

But the saint and the knowledge manifest
and embody the dynamic Brahman.

The stress of Life is to reveal and incarnate
more and more of the dynamic Divine, the
creative Ananda of consciousness in its
self-nature.

The progress of art too consists in record-
ing this march of the soul in its ever-growing
consciousness and ever-deepening Ananda
towards a higher incarnation of the Divine.

24

V
OF SOME SUPREME MYSTERIES

THE Supreme is infinite, therefore He is also
finite.

To be finite is one of the infinite aspects of
the Infinite.

Creation is the de-finition of the Infinite.

All creation is fundamentally an act of
self-division.

The multiplicity of the divided selves of the
Supreme forms the created universe.

In and through the unnumbered divided
selves, the one undivided Self still stands intact
and inviolate.

With each successive self-division, the Sup-
reme descends into a more concrete form of
creation.

25

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

The Supreme has pulverised himself into
the atoms of Matter.

Matter is Spirit divided ad infinitum and
infinitely concretised.

Utter Nescience is the focussing of utter
Intelligence the farthest away from itself and
upon infinite points.

The Soul is a portion of the Divine, en-
shrined in the heart of the human being; it is
the child of the Mahdsakti, it is the immortal in
mortality, the secret godhead that urges the
earthly creature ever forward and upward in
the march of evolution, ever expressing and
embodying more and more of its inner truth
in the actualities of life.

The Self is the Purusa in the individual;
it is the consciousness as pure being, simply
existent in its own delight, which sees and
sanctions all and is yet aloof from the muta-
bilities of the life becoming.

The Spirit is the Self immanent, universal
and transcendent.

26

OF SOME SUPREME MYSTERIES

The Supreme Divine is Purusottama, the
Spirit and its expression and its continent, the
Sat and the iakti.

The Soul is God's Grace upon Matter; it
is the living spark from the Heart of the
Divine, sent down into Matter, in order to
lift Matter into Divinity.

The gods are the glories of the Supreme
Divine; they are the agents that effect this
transmutation and the types that embody
the transmuted reality.

The gods are the individualised Name-
Forms of the Supreme.

You are always an instrument, a mere tool,
so long as you are in the unconsciousness.

It is when you are conscious that you be-
come an agent.

As long as you are unconscious, you are
mostly an instrument in the hands of the
Dark Forces.

27

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

When you become conscious, you are an
agent who can act for, and act with, and act
as, the gods.

To be conscious means to become aware of
the truth of one's nature and to live with the
light and the force of that truth.

To be unconscious means to be ignorant of
the realities that make one's true nature, to
be a mere tool driven and utilised by the
forces of Untruth.

To be free and independent does not mean
that one lives and moves as one chooses or
has the feeling of doing so.

A soul captured in the mind and the life
and the body is never free or independent;
its sense of freedom or independence is only a
make-believe so that Inferior Nature might
all the more easily utilise the imprisoned soul
for her own purposes.

28

OF SOME SUPREME MYSTERIES

If you happen to be in the way of the
Divine Power, either you yield to it and are
taken up into its substance and constitution,
become an integral part of it, execute in it a
special function

Or, you oppose it and are mowed down and
destroyed.

The Dark Power tries to work in the self-
same way; but it cannot touch you, even
though you oppose it, if from the outset you
are armed with the protection of the Divine
Force.

The Dark Power too gives protection to
its devotees, but it cannot maintain them long
against the inexorable oncoming of the Divine.

Consciousness is the light that flows from
the Truth of existence.

To be conscious means to be aware of the
Truth of one's nature and live and move with
the luminous force of that Truth.

Awareness is not a mere passive pheno-
menon; it is supremely active and dynamic.
To be aware means a constant radiation of

29

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

the light of consciousness and by the touch
of that light a continuous purification and
new-creation.

Consciousness: the movement by which
existence goes out of itself and turns back
upon itself in order to experience itself.

Will: the selective and realising power of
consciousness.

Faith: Certitude born of the soul's secret
communion with the Truth.

Faith is the urge of the soul's truth the
truth that has not yet come down and be-
come evident to the reason and the
brain-mind.

Faith brings out not only your own latent
power ,but opens the gates to a Power higher
than your own.

30

OF SOME SUPREME MYSTERIES

There is no limit to your own power, if
you know how to push back this own of yours
nearer and nearer to the Divine.

The consciousness seeks in its ordinary
movement to lean upon something, something
outside itself; alone and within itself it feels
a void and is uneasy and short of breath, as
if in a rarefied atmosphere.

The Higher Consciousness feels a com-
pleteness in itself, is full to the brim with
its own reality and needs no going out for
materials and objects necessary to fill a
vacuity.

Two consciousnesses are there at two ex-
treme and opposing poles one of the Spirit
and the other of Matter. Both are static.

A dynamic consciousness lies between; it
joins, harmonises, energises both it is the
Occult Consciousness.

The . passage from the world of the Spirit

31

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

to the world of Matter and back lies through
the Occult World.

Two godheads are there: one above, the
other here below. One is transcendent, the
other immanent; one is eternal, infinite,
immutable, absolute, the other is of the
temporal and in it, wedded to the finite, the
changing, the relative; one is sovereignly
conscious, the other embedded in the un-
conscious. One is the godhead that is, the
other the godhead that is becoming.

One is the godhead in eternal Truth
nitya, svarupa\ the other is the godhead in ever
progressive Reality vyavahdra, rupa. Beth are
one and the same deity. The godhead above,
descending, has become the godhead here
below ascending to meet again and recover
its original nature not there, but here.

Creation is the interaction of these two
elemental Powers expressing themselves as
Nature Nature, an Involution and Evolution
of the double Divinity.

32

OF SOME SUPREME MYSTERIES

Progress is the march of the godhead below
towards a triumphant self-revelation; its self-
finding is the luminous realisation in itself
of the godhead above.

Earth has a consciousness, matter is instinct
with an Aspiration; only the consciousness is
involved and turned inwards, the Aspiration
is mute and knows not itself.

The consciousness is that of a Divinity which
has precipitated and taken this material form,
the Aspiration is to regain Godhead even in
this form of matter, to sublimate itself into
that Divinity here and now.

The secret urge of Evolution lies there in
the compelling stress of that consciousness and
that Aspiration.

In so far as man embodies in himself and
gives expression in his terrestrial life to this
consciousness and Aspiration, to that extent
is he in line with the march of Evolution and
fulfils his high destiny.

Religion is a worship of lesser gods; often,
even, it is the worship of beings that are not

33

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

gods at all but pose as gods, simulating their
truth, usurping their status, acting arbitrarily
in their divine name and aping their authority.
The pseudo-gods are not always evil, nor
do they lead men only to perdition: their
worship may often be useful, even salutary.
But what these beings will not allow is to let
man pass beyond a given frontier; they will
not suffer him to rise m the scale of con-
sciousness higher than a certain limit. Any
attempt or turn towards a transcending of
that limit they watch with jealous vigilance
and suppress it with vehemence, even with
violence. Within their domain, subject to
their dharma, they accord to their worshippers
prosperity and power, sometimes perhaps even
a certain elevation of consciousness.

The lesser gods and the pseudo-gods are
none other than the various forces that reign
in the world of the mental, the vital or the
physical consciousness. These are the three
planes that, in the cosmic as well as in the

3*

OF SOME SUPREME MYSTERIES

human scale, form the fundamental notes of
the Inferioi Hemisphere of Nature.

The true gods belong to higher reaches,
they are powers of the Superior Hemisphere;
living beyond the triple mundane conscious-
ness, in the Fourth tunya they are native
to the domain of the Spirit. They embody
the mighty universal laws of that vaster
Truth-Consciousness (Rtam} .

To go beyond all the dharmas of this three-
fold Lower Nature, attain to the Truth-
Consciousness of the Fourth Status, incarnate
in all that we are, know, will, feel and do the
Law or Dharma of the Spirit and of the Spirit
alone, is what we mean by Spirituality.

35

VI
THE BIRTH OF MAYA

THE Divine is All-Light, All-Bliss, All-
Power in himself, in his essence and true
being, always and for ever.

But, somewhere, in a part of universal
being the Divine chose to forget the Divine,
a veil was allowed to interpose in front of
the All-Light, the All-Bliss, the All-Power:

A mixture became possible, the dualities
were born

Ignorance entered into Knowledge, Pain
invaded Delight, Weakness stole into Strength.

For a new and extraordinary manifestation
this movement was permitted, for the fullness
of experience, for an immense contradiction
turning to a luminous reconciliation and
harmony.

The Eternal negated his eternity, the Divine
became the undivine.

Out of the inconscient Consciousness had
to arise, Light out of darkness, Bliss out of

36

THE BIRTH OF MAYA

suffering, Power out of inertia, for the Divine
is still the only reality, even in the appearances
that are its opposite.

That which is undivine had to become an
instrument of divinity, inconscient Matter to
embody the Supreme.

For when the One Divine descended into
the multiplicity of manifestation, when he
cast out of himself an infinitely varied and
graded existence, the undivine too became a
possibility an aspect, an appearance the
farthest away from his original and highest
status.

All possibilities are manifested in the In-
finite and this line of descent too had to be
followed to its uttermost, the entire range of
its possibility to be exhausted, negated in its
own realisation and brought back to the
nature and substance of its Source.

The beginning of creation is self objecti-
visation.

The Divine put himself away from himself
"went abroad" that he might contem-

37

TOWARDS THE LIGHT

plate himself, that he might establish a
system of infinite relations with himself.

Manifestation Llld is the working out of
this complex of self-objectivisation.

In the processus of this self-objectivisation
the possibility of a movement of denial of
self became in appearance inevitable denial
of self showed itself as the extreme limit, the
final term of self-objectivisation.

The Divine permitted to himself self-
annihilation that he might pass through it to
the completest self-realisation.

In the Spirit there is only Light.

But the Shadow was allowed here below
for it was the vehicle in which the spiritual
Light had to be embodied, to be made real
in Matter and by Matter and as Matter.

Where there is the utmost Denial, there was
to arise the very perfection of the Affirmation
of the Divine.

38