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WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Human and divine love

31 October 1956

Mother, someone has asked me to request you to explain one of your sentences. You have said somewhere that one must become divine before one can bear the pressure of Divine Love. It is in the "Diary".

Oh! you are repeating it a little freely!

Well, what does he want to know?

He is asking whether man must first become divine before Love can spread over the earth.

I don't think this is what is meant. Surely what you mean is that Divine Love cannot manifest until man becomes divine. Is that what you mean?

That is what we understand.

Oh! that's how you understand it!... But I don't think this is what is meant.

First of all, we are going to take the historical fact, if there is one. That is to say, through the action of the forces of separation, Consciousness became inconscience and matter was created such as it is, on a basis of inconscience so total that no contact seemed possible between the Origin and what was created. And this total inconscience made a direct descent necessary, without passing through the intermediate regions, a direct descent of the divine Consciousness in its form of Love. And it is this descent of Divine Love into matter, penetrating it and adding a new element to its composition, which has made possible the ascent, slow for us, but an uninterrupted ascent, from inconscience to consciousness and from darkness to light. Therefore, one cannot say that Love [new p. 340]can manifest only when the creation [old p. 340]becomes divine, for it is on the contrary because of its manifestation that creation can become divine once again.

What I said there has nothing to do with this.

I was speaking not of the world in general but of human consciousness in particular; and certainly, I was alluding to the fact that this Divine Love which animates all things, penetrates all, upbears all and leads all towards progress and an ascent to the Divine, is not felt, not perceived by the human consciousness, and that even to the extent the human being does perceive it, he finds it difficult to bear--not only to contain it, but be able to tolerate it, I might say, for its power in its purity, its intensity in its purity, are of too strong a kind to be endured by human nature. It is only when it is diluted, deformed, attenuated and obscured, so to say, that it becomes acceptable to human nature. It is only when it moves away from its true nature and essential quality that man accepts it, and even (smiling) approves of it and glorifies it. This means that it must already be quite warped in order to be accepted by the human consciousness. And to accept it, bear it and receive it in its plenitude and purity, the human consciousness must become divine.

This was what I meant, not anything else. I was stating that a human being, unless he raises himself to the divine heights, is incapable of receiving, appreciating and knowing what divine Love is. Love must cease to be divine to be accepted by man.

But that is a phenomenon of the outer, superficial consciousness; it doesn't prevent Love in its form of Grace from being at work everywhere and always, and from doing its work in an unknown but constant way, to put it thus; and I think, in fact, that it never works so well as when it is not known... for even the so-called human understanding is already a deformation.

That is the meaning of the sentence, and nothing else. I was not speaking of a cosmic phenomenon.

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 08, pp. 339-40