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VI INDIA, THE WORLD AND THE ASHRAM India has become the symbol representing all the difficulties of modern humanity. India will become the land of the world's resurrection—the resurrection of a higher and truer life. 1.2.1968 The Mother
A great revelation of a great truth that concerns the whole "world. We know also that the earth is the symbol of the cosmic evolution. What creation means has been epitomised in earth's history: the earth has been chosen as the field and means of working out a cosmic plan. As the earth is the representative of the world, so India is the representative of the earth. For the evolution of the earth, India has "been chosen as the channel and the laboratory; all problems confronting humanity are found as if gathered here. All that is solved here will be solved almost automatically in the world and the how of it will be shown. All difficulties are concentrated here because here there is a living consciousness which alone can solve them. In the same way it may be said that our Ashram here is the symbol of all the difficulties that humanity faces, difficulties psychological and material, national and social. Page-141 All varieties of contradictions and contraries, obstacles and impediments, ignorances and prejudices are here that confuse the issue and seek to delay the journey as much as possible, towards progress and new creation. This is because it is a place where there is behind the surface movements of negation, an aspiration and a supporting consciousness supreme in power and effectivity. The individuals here have to meet all kinds of difficulties so that a way out of them may be discovered both in the individual nature and in collective achievement. We have here in the Ashram varieties of races and religions, all social types, samples of humanity as it were, each representing a particular facet of human nature, a particular possibility and its own field of work. Not only with regard to outward work or enterprise, each one carries his own inner nature different from everybody else's, each one has his own psychological assets and liabilities. In other words, each one undertakes the yoga of understanding and purifying himself and finding out his particular role. Apart from that, here each one is not exclusively for himself, in fact, he is not himself only but is part and parcel of a living unity, in a larger whole. Man carries the burden of his own sins, in a way; but in a truer sense he carries the burden of all. It is one single burden that lies equally upon everybody everywhere. Thus the burden of the universal movement is shared by all collectively in equal measure.1 This is true of mankind 1 Sri Aurobindo says, "Even if our personal deliverance is complete, still there is the suffering of others, the world-travail, which the great of soul cannot regard with indifference. There is unity with all beings which something within us feels, and the deliverance of the others must be felt as intimate to its own deliverance." Page-142 in general; but it becomes dynamically true here among us where there is a conscious effort on the part of individuals to uplift and change the human consciousness. It is however the privilege of each individual to deal with one's share in the whole in one's own way, that is to say, the individual has been given the freedom and the capacity to make the burden light or let it remain or grow more heavy. It must be remembered that behind the individual a greater conscious personality has emerged and taken its place to help, to guide and fulfil the individual's divine destiny: even so, behind the universal effort there is a divine helping hand growing more and more powerful and effective in its manipulation of earthly forces and events. The solution of the difficulties will come from there and that can be the only solution. We, who are here, living under the very eye of the supreme transfiguring force and consciousness that is working out inexorably the destinies of the individual being, the national being and the being of humanity to their divine fulfilment, we who have the privilege of not merely witnessing but collaborating in the mighty labour, however little it may be in our way, we can only bow down in thankfulness and gratefulness in the silence of our hearts. Page-143 |