Embracing Opposing Truths
To find that saying a man’s body or mind from suffering is not always for the good of either soul, mind or body, is one of bitterest of experiences for the humanly compassionate.
530. Love and serve men, but beware lest thou desire their approbation. Obey rather God within there.
531. Not to have heard the voice of God and His angles is the world’s idea of sanity.
532. See God everywhere and be not frightened by masks. Believe that all falsehood is truth in the breaking, all failure and effectuality concealed, all weakness strength hiding itself form its own vision, all pain a secret and violent ecstasy. If thou believest firmly and unweariedly, in the end thou wilt see and experience the All-true, Almighty and All-blissful.
533. Human love fails by its own ecstasy, human strength is exhausted by its own effort, human knowledge throws a shadow that conceals half the globe of truth from its own sunlight; but divine knowledge embraces opposite truths and reconciles them, divine strength grows by the prodigality of its self-expenditure, divine love can squander itself utterly, yet never waste or diminish.
534. The rejection of falsehood by the mind seeking after truth is one of the chief causes why mind cannot attain to the settled, rounded and perfect truth; not to escape falsehood is the effort of divine mind, but to seize the truth which lies masked behind even the most grotesque or far-wandering error.
535. The whole truth about any object is a rounded and all-embracing globe which for ever circle around, but never touches the one and only subject and object of knowledge, God.
536. There are many profound truths which are like weapons dangerous to the unpracticed wielder. Rightly handled, hey are most precious and potent in God’s Armour.
537. The obstinate pertinacity with which we cling to our meager, fragmentary, night-besieged and grief-besieged individual existence even while the unbroken bliss of our universal life calls to us, is one of the most amazing of God’s mysteries. It is only equaled by the infinite blindness with which we cast a shadow of our ego over the whole world and call that the universal being. These two darkness’s are very essence and potency of Maya.
538. Atheism is the shadow or dark side of the highest perception of God. Every formula we frame about God, though always true as a symbol, becomes false when we accept it as a sufficient formula. The Atheist and Agnostic come to remind us of our error.
539. God’s negations are as useful to us as His affirmations. It is He who as the Atheist denies His own existence for the better perfecting of human knowledge. It is not enough to see God in Christ and Ramakrishna and hear His words, we must see Him and hear Him also in Huxley and Haeckel.
540. Canst thou see god in thy torturer and slayer even in thy moment of death or thy moment of death or thy hours of torture? Canst thou see Him in that which thou art slaying, see and love even while thou slayest? Thou hast thy hand on the supreme knowledge. How shall he attain to Krishna who has never worshipped Kali?
Excerpt from the book Essays Divine and Human by Sri Aurobindo