Page 43 - NAMAH-Apr-2020

Namah Think it over

an intense pain overwhelms you and drives you “How is it that among those who claim to be
to despair, there is an infallible way to regain thy worshippers, some regard thee as a cruel
calm and peace. torturer, as an inexorable judge witnessing
the torments that are tolerated by thee or even
“In the depths of our being there shines a created by thy own will?
light whose brilliance is equalled only by its
purity; a light, a living and conscious portion “No, I now perceive that these sufferings come
of a universal godhead who animates and from the very imperfection of Matter which, in
nourishes and illumines Matter, a powerful its disorder and crudeness, is unfit to manifest
and unfailing guide for those who are willing thee; and thou art the very first to suffer from it,
to heed his law, a helper full of solace and to bewail it, thou art the first to toil and strive in
loving forbearance towards all who aspire thy ardent desire to change disorder into order,
to see and hear and obey him. No sincere suffering into happiness, discord into harmony.
and lasting aspiration towards him can be
in vain; no strong and respectful trust can be “Suffering is not something inevitable or even
disappointed, no expectation ever deceived. desirable, but when it comes to us, how helpful
it can be!
“My heart has suffered and lamented, almost
breaking beneath a sorrow too heavy, almost “Each time we feel that our heart is breaking,
sinking beneath a pain too strong.... But I have a deeper door opens within us, revealing new
called to thee, O divine comforter, I have horizons, ever richer in hidden treasures,
prayed ardently to thee, and the splendour whose golden influx brings once more a new
of thy dazzling light has appeared to me and and intenser life to the organism on the brink
revived me. of destruction.

“As the rays of thy glory penetrated and “And when, by these successive descents, we
illumined all my being, I clearly perceived reach the veil that reveals thee as it is lifted, O
the path to follow, the use that can be made of Lord, who can describe the intensity of Life that
suffering; I understood that the sorrow that held penetrates the whole being, the radiance of the
me in its grip was but a pale reflection of the Light that floods it, the sublimity of the Love
sorrow of the earth, of this abysm of suffering that transforms it for ever (2)!”
and anguish.
References
“Only those who have suffered can understand
the suffering of others; understand it, commune 1. The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother, Volume
with it and relieve it. And I understood, O divine 15. Cent ed. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram
comforter, sublime Holocaust, that in order to Trust; 1980, p. 182.
sustain us in all our troubles, to soothe all our
pangs, thou must have known and felt all the 2. The Mother. Collected Works, Volume 2. 1978,
sufferings of earth and man, all without exception. pp. 19-20.

Triasha Paul is a student at the Sri Aurobindo international Centre of Education, Pondicherry.

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