501. Yet, soul of man, seek not after pain, for that is not His will, seek after His joy only; as for suffering, it will come to thee surely in His providence as often and as is needed for thee. Then bear it that thou mayst find out at last its heart of rapture.
502. Neither do thou inflict pain, O man on thy fellow; God alone has the right to inflict pain; or those have it whom He has commissioned. But deem not fanatically, as did Torquemada.
503. In former times there was a noble form of asseveration for souls compact merely of force and action. “But for our modern needs another asseveration would suit better, As surely as God loveth.”
504. Science is chiefly useful to the God-lover and the God-knower because it enables him to understand in detail and admire the curious wonders of His material workmanship. The one learns and cries, “Behold how the spirit has manifested itself in matter,” the other, “Behold, the touch of my Lover Master, the perfect Artist, the hand omnipotent.”
505. O Aristophanes of the universe, thou who watchest thy world and laughest sweetly to thyself, wilt thou not let me too see with divine eyes and share in thy worldwide laughter’s?
506. Kalidasa says in a daring image that the snow-rocks of Kailasa are Shiva’s loud world-laughters piled up in utter whiteness and pureness on the mountaintops. It is true; and when their image falls on the heart, then the world’s cares melt away like the clouds below into their real nothingness.
507. The strangest of the soul’s experiences is this, that it finds, when it ceases to care for the image and threat of troubles, then the troubles themselves are nowhere to be found in one’s neighbourhood. It is then that we hear from behind those unreal clouds God laughing at us.
508. Has thy effort succeeded, O thou Titan? Dost thou sit, like Ravana and Hirnyakashipou, served by the gods and the world’s master? But that which thy soul was really hunting after, has escaped from thee.
509. Ravana’s mind thought it was hungering after universal sovereignty and victory over Ram; but the aim his soul kept its vision fixed upon all the time was to get back to its heaven as soon as possible and be again God’s menial. Therefore, as the shortest way, it hurled itself against God in a furious clasp of enmity.
510. The greatest of joys it to be, like Naraka, the slave of God; the worst of Hells, being abandoned of God, to be the world’s master. That which seems nearest to the ignorant conception of God, is the farthest from him.
511. God’s servant is something; God’s slave is greater.
512. To be master of the world would indeed be supreme felicity, if one were universally loved; but for that one would have to be at the same time the slave of all humanity.
513. After all when thou countest up thy long service to God, thou wilt find thy supreme work was the flawed and little good thou didst in love for humanity.
514. There are two works that perfectly pleasing to God in his servant; to sweep in silent adoration His temple-floors and to fight in the world’s battlefield for His divine consummation in humanity.
Excerpt from the book Essays Divine and Human by Sri Aurobindo