“When
I had the dividing reason, I shrank from many things; after I had lost
it in sight, I hunted through the world for the ugly and the
repellent, but I could no longer find them.”
Q:
Is there really nothing ugly and repellent in the world? Is it our
reason alone that sees things in that way?
A:
The Mother:To understand truly what
Sri Aurobindo means here, you must yourself have had the experience
of transcending reason and establishing your consciousness in a world
higher than the mental intelligence. For from up there you can see,
firstly, that everything that exists in the universe is an expression
of Sachchidananda (Being-Consciousness-Bliss) and therefore
behind any appearance whatever, if you go deeply enough, you can
perceive Sachchidananda, which is the principle of Supreme Beauty.
Secondly, you see that everything in the manifested universe is
relative, so much so that there is no beauty which may not appear
ugly in comparison with a greater beauty, no ugliness which may not
appear beautiful in comparison with a yet uglier ugliness.
When
you can see and feel in this way, you immediately become aware of the
extreme relativity of these impressions and their unreality from the
absolute point of view. However, so long as we dwell in the rational
consciousness, it is, in a way, natural that everything that offends
our aspiration for perfection, our will for progress, everything we
seek to transcend and surmount, should seem ugly and repellent to us,
since we are in search of a greater ideal and we want to rise
higher.
And
yet it is still only a half-wisdom which is very far from the
true wisdom, a wisdom that appears wise only in the midst of
ignorance and unconsciousness.
In
the Truth everything is different, and the Divine shines in all
things.
- 17thFebruary 1960
(The
Mother, ‘CWM’,
Vol. 10, Sri
Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry)
“God
had opened my eyes; for I saw the nobility of the vulgar, the
attractiveness of the repellent, the perfectionof the maimed and the
beauty of the hideous.”
A:
The Mother:This aphorism is the complement and almost an
explanation of the previous one.
Once again, Sri Aurobindo
tells us clearly that behind the appearances there is a sublime
Reality which is, one may say, the luminous opposite of all external
deformations. Thus, when the inner eyes are open to this divine
Reality, it is seen with such power that it is able to dissolve all
that normally veils it to the ordinary vision.
- 24thFebruary 1960
(The
Mother, ‘CWM’,
Vol. 10, Sri
Aurobindo Ashram Trust, Pondicherry)
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