WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

To Choose the Truth
24 December 1966

What is the Truth? What do you mean when you speak of "the Truth"?

You want a mental definition of the Truth. The Truth cannot be expressed in mental terms. Yes, it is so. And all the questions put are mental questions.

The Truth cannot be formulated, it cannot be defined--it is to be lived.

And one who is wholly consecrated to the Truth, who wants to live the Truth, serve the Truth, will know at each moment what must be done: it will be a kind of intuition or revelation (most often without words, but sometimes also expressed in words) which will make you know at every minute what is the truth of that minute. And it is this that is so interesting. You want to know "the Truth" as a thing well defined, well classified, well established, and after that you are at rest: there is no need to seek any more! You take it up, you say: "Here, this is the Truth" and then it is fixed. This is what all the religions have done. They have established their truth as a dogma. But it is not the Truth any more.

The Truth is something living, moving, expressing itself at each second, and it is one way of approaching the Supreme. Each one has his way of approaching the Supreme. There are perhaps some who are able to approach him from all sides at the same time, but there are those who approach through Love, those who approach through Power, those who approach through Consciousness and those who approach through Truth. But each of these aspects is as absolute, imperative and undefinable as the supreme Lord himself is. The supreme Lord is absolute, imperative and undefinable, unseizable in his action, and his attributes have this same quality.

Once one knows this, he who puts himself at the service of one of these aspects will know (it is expressed in life, in time, in the movement of time), will know at each moment what Truth is, and will know at each moment what Consciousness is, and will know at each minute what Power is, and he will know at each minute what Love is. And it is a multiform Power, Love, Consciousness, Truth that expresses itself innumerably in the manifestation, even as the Lord expresses himself innumerably in the manifestation.