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WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Three conceptions of the world

1. Buddhist and Shankarite:

The world is an illusion, a field of ignorance and suffering due to ignorance. The one thing to do is to get out of it as soon as possible and to disappear into the original Non-Existence or Non-Manifestation.

2. The Vedantic as very commonly understood:

The world is essentially divine, for the Divine is omnipresent there. But its exterior expression is distorted, obscure, ignorant, perverted. The one thing to do is to become conscious of the inner Divine and remain fixed in that consciousness without troubling about the world; for this external world cannot change and will always be in its natural state of unconsciousness and ignorance.

3. Sri Aurobindo's view:

The world as it is, is not the divine creation it is meant to be, but an obscure and perverted expression of it. It is not the expression of the divine consciousness and will, but this is what it is meant to become; it has been created to develop into a perfect manifestation of the Divine under all His forms and aspects--Light and Knowledge, Power, Love and Beauty.

This is our conception of it and the aim we follow.

24 February 1936

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 14, p.33