Purpose in life
(Mother to Mona Sarkar:) “It is... absolutely true that people do not realise why they are here, why they exist, if it is not to find the Divine. At least here [in the Ashram] , they have a chance to find the Truth. I am not speaking of the outside world, but those who are here, – what are they doing? How many are conscious of an inner life, pursue sincerely the search for the Truth? There are not many, they are very few. Most let themselves drift as it pleases them, enjoying themselves and allowing themselves to be acted upon by things that are harmful to spiritual life. They are afraid to leap into the spiritual life because they think that they will lose the monotonous charm of ordinary life. Even if I guarantee them my help and my protection, they will not be convinced, because one must take the pains to find the Divine. They do not want to take the trouble, whatever it may be. They are weary, weary. And they do not realise that if they awaken to this necessity of an inner life, what a force will be with them to help them to advance and to conquer the adverse forces. But they do not respond to my call. That is why this storm [a cyclone] has come – to warn them, to show them the insignificance, the futility of material life.”[1]
(Mother:) “You have to know yourself, recognise your soul or psychic being.
For that you must be absolutely sincere and impartial. You must observe yourself as if you were observing and criticising a third person. You must not start with an idea that this is your life’s mission, this is your particular capacity, this you are to do or that you are to do, in this lies your talent or genius, etc. That will carry you away from the right track. It is not the liking or disliking of your external being, your mental or vital or physical choice that determines the true line of your growth. Nor should you take up the opposite attitude and say, “I am good for nothing in this matter, I am useless in that one; it is not for me.” Neither vanity and arrogance nor self-depreciation and false modesty should move you. As I said, you must be absolutely impartial and unconcerned. You should be like a mirror that reflects the truth and does not judge.
If you are able to keep such an attitude, if you have this repose and quiet trust in your being and wait for what may be revealed to you, then something like this happens: you are, as it were, in a wood, dark and noiseless; you see in front of you merely a sheet of water, dark and still, hardly visible — a bit of a pond imbedded in the obscurity; and slowly upon it a moonbeam is cast and in the cool dim light emerges the calm liquid surface. That is how your secret truth of being will appear and present itself to you at your first contact with it: there you will see gradually reflected the true qualities of your being, the traits of your divine personality, what you really are and what you are meant to be.”[2]
- ↑ Mona Sarkar, Throb of Nature: Conversations with the Mother on Flowers and Nature, p.106
- ↑ Words of the Mother – III, p.336
See also