I do feel the sense of vast cosmic task we humans have to perform over here on earth while reading him but it also make me feel nervous and overburdened of the vast endeavour at hand, as if this too much to handle for me but leaving him and trying to follow some other path feels unsatisfactory, incomplete and smaller infront of the clarity of vision only He provides. Tangible goals like preparing for an exam with a particular syllabus within a particular time period give you a narrow direction and a map for how to go about it. Still, here I don’t even know where to begin. How to deal with this sense of my own littleness in front of such a vast endeavour? Mother somewhere says that one will have to walk through the rope with nothing to hold on to except sincere faith in the divine, but I still feel that sense of trembling before plunging into the massive ocean…
What Sri Aurobindo is giving us is a complete roadmap, the entire truth, the broad idea and the total landscape of the human evolutionary journey as it moves towards an inevitable Divine Future. He is not asking us to do it ourselves, like a homework or to perform well in it like an examination. For the actual undertaking of the journey, he asks us to open to the Grace of the Divine Mother, to Her Love and Peace and Joy that She is always ready and willing to pour upon all. And then behind it all, there is Sri Aurobindo’s Compassion that overrides everything, overcomes every difficulty. These are the mainstay of the sadhana. His books are not do-it-yourself books but a guide to the main outposts on the way. The actual journey is with the constant help of the Grace. All depends on whether one can open to the Grace or not. Here is one of the many passages for the path itself.
‘Never forget that you are not alone. The Divine is with you helping and guiding you. He is the companion who never fails, the friend whose love comforts and strengthens. Have faith and He will do everything for you.’
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/the-divine-is-with-you)
Having said that, one needs to understand that Sri Aurobindo’s writings mainly provide the spiritual truths, whereas The Mother’s writings give us the way and hand-hold us through the journey. But even if we are presently not ready or willing to walk these books, which are not just books of Wisdom or self-help practice, but also books of Power. They give us the strength to walk. In fact, reading them with intent itself becomes a path and liberates us from much ignorance and fear. And works like Savitri and Prayers and Meditations are mantric in nature, whose regular contemplative reading itself becomes a path to take us to the home from where these books have emerged.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
