All Life Is Yoga: Truth and Falsehood - Sri Aurobindo

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      For a moment.

      The impression is this: all our judgments are momentary. They are... one moment, it is like this; the next moment, it is no longer like this. And for us they are errors, because we see things one after another. But to the Divine they cannot appear like this, because everything is within Him.

      Now just try to imagine that you are the Divine, for a moment! Everything is within you; you simply amuse yourself by bringing it out in a certain order. But for you, in your consciousness, everything is there at the same time; there is no time – neither past nor future nor present – everything is together. And every possible combination. He amuses Himself by bringing out first one thing and then another, like that. So the poor fellows down below who can see only a tiny part – they can see only so much of it – say, “Oh, that is an error!” In what way is it an error? Simply because they can only see a tiny part.

      This is clear, isn’t it? It is easy to understand. This concept of error is a concept that belongs to time and space.

      It is like the feeling that something cannot be and not be at the same time. And yet this is true, it is and it is not. It is the concept of time which introduces the concept of error – of time and space.

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      Words of the Mother

      But very few are those who are conscious of the Lord, and it is this unconsciousness that constitutes the Falsehood of the world.

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      Words of the Mother

      ...in the Presence of the Lord’s Peace the Falsehood runs away in shame!

      *

      Words of the Mother

      For those who are eager to get rid of falsehood here is the way:

      Do not try to please yourself, do not try either to please others. Try only to please the Lord.

      Because He alone is the Truth. Each and every one of us, human beings in our physical body, is a coat of falsehood put on the Lord and hiding Him.

      As He alone is true to Himself, it is on Him that we must concentrate and not on the coats of falsehood.

      *

      Words of the Mother

      Does Sri Aurobindo mean that there is no absolute falsehood, no absolute untruth?

      There can be no absolute untruth. In actual fact it is not possible, because the Divine is behind all things....

      So to speak of an absolute falsehood that will disappear would simply mean that a whole set of things will live eternally in the past but will not belong to future manifestations, that is all.

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      Chapter 5

      Choosing the Truth

      Words of Sri Aurobindo

      To see the Truth does not depend on a big intellect or a small intellect. It depends on being in contact with the Truth and the mind silent or quiet to receive it. The biggest intellects can make errors of the worst kind and confuse Truth and falsehood, if they have not the contact with Truth or the direct experience.

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      Words of Sri Aurobindo

      It is not by “thinking out” the entire reality, but by a change of consciousness that one can pass from the ignorance to the Knowledge – the Knowledge by which we become what we know. To pass from the external to a direct and intimate inner consciousness; to widen consciousness out of the limits of the ego and the body; to heighten it by an inner will and aspiration and opening to the Light till it passes in its ascent beyond Mind; to bring down a descent of the supramental Divine through self-giving and surrender with a consequent transformation of mind, life and body – this is the integral way to the Truth. It is this that we call the Truth here and aim at in our Yoga.

      *

      Words of Sri Aurobindo

      When mind is still, then Truth gets her chance to be heard in the purity of the silence.

      Truth cannot be attained by the mind’s thought but only by identity and silent vision. Truth lives in the calm wordless Light of the eternal spaces; she does not intervene in the noise and cackle of logical debate.

      Thought in the mind can at most be Truth’s brilliant and transparent garment; it is not even her body. Look through the robe, not at it, and you may see some hint of her form. There can be a thought-body of Truth, but that is the spontaneous supramental Thought and Word that leap fully formed out of the Light, not any difficult mental counterfeit and patchwork. The supramental Thought is not a means of arriving at Truth, for Truth in the supermind is self-found or self-existent, but a way of expressing her. It is an arrow from the Light, not a bridge to reach it.

      Cease inwardly from thought and word, be motionless within you, look upward into the light and outward into the vast cosmic consciousness that is around you. Be more and more one with the brightness and the vastness. Then will Truth dawn on you from above and flow in on you from all around you.

      *

      Words of Sri Aurobindo

      As long as we remain in the domain of the intellect only, an impartial pondering over all that has been thought and sought after, a constant throwing up of ideas, of all the possible ideas, and the formation of this or that philosophical belief, opinion or conclusion is all that can be done. This kind of disinterested search after Truth would be the only possible attitude for any wide and plastic intelligence. But any conclusion so arrived at would be only speculative; it could have no spiritual value; it would not give the decisive experience or the spiritual certitude for which the soul is seeking. If the intellect is our highest possible instrument and there is no other means of arriving at supraphysical Truth, then a wise and large Agnosticism must be our ultimate attitude. Things in the manifestation may be known to some degree, but the Supreme and all that is beyond the Mind must remain for ever unknowable.

      It is only if there is a greater consciousness beyond Mind and that consciousness is accessible to us that we can know and enter into the ultimate Reality. Intellectual speculation, logical reasoning as to whether there is or is not such a greater consciousness cannot carry us very far. What we need is a way to get the experience of it, to reach it, enter into it, live in it. If we can get that, intellectual speculation and reasoning must fall necessarily into a very secondary place and even lose their reason for existence. Philosophy, intellectual expression of the Truth may remain, but mainly as a means of expressing this greater discovery and as much of its contents as can at all be expressed in mental terms to those who still live in the mental intelligence.

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      Words of Sri Aurobindo

      The mind can think and doubt and question and accept and withdraw its acceptance, make formations and unmake them, pass decisions and revoke them, judging always on the surface and by surface indications and therefore never coming to any deep and firm experience of Truth, but by itself it can do no more. There are only three ways by which it can make itself a channel or instrument of Truth. Either it must fall silent in the Self and give room for a wider and greater consciousness; or it must make itself passive to an inner Light and allow that Light to use it as a means of expression; or else it must itself change from the questioning intellectual superficial mind it now is to an intuitive intelligence, a mind of vision fit for the direct perception of the divine Truth.

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      Words of the Mother

      The true purpose of life –

      To live for the Divine, or to live for the Truth, or at least to live for one’s soul.

      And the true sincerity –

      To live for the Divine without expecting any benefit from Him in return.

      *

      Words of the Mother

      While

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