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Namah Insight

is said it is a perverse kind of pleasure, and if Now, we come back to the question why or
one wishes to hang it by calling it masochism, how does the soul, being all delight, become
well, we do not solve the problem in that way, in life the very opposite of its essential nature,
we seek to hide it behind a big word; it is at a thing of misery, why does the spirit descend
the most a point of view. What agrees with or condescend to take the form of matter:
one’s temperament (or prejudices) one calls it is an old-world and eternal problem that
natural and what one does not like appears has been asked and faced and answered in
to him perverse. Another person may have various ways through the ages.
a different temperament and accordingly a
different vocabulary. Here is, briefly, how we view the question.
The soul accepts a mortal life of pain and
An ascetic chastising himself with all kinds suffering, welcomes an apparent denial of its
of rigours, a patriot immolating himself essential nature for two reasons: (1) to grow
relentlessly at the altar of his motherland, a and increase in consciousness through such
satyāgrāhi fasting to death does not merely experiences, — pain and suffering being one
suffer, but takes a delight in suffering. variety of the fuel that tends the Fire that is
He does so because he holds that there is our soul; and (2) to transfer its inalienable
something greater than this preoccupation purity into Matter, by its secret pressure and
of avoiding pain and suffering, than this influence gradually transform earthly life into
ordinary round of a life made of the warp a movement of its own divine state, the state
and woof of enjoyment and disappointment. of inviolable Bliss.
There is a greater delight that transcends
these common vital norms, the dualities of All experiences, all contacts with the forms
the ordinary life. In the case of the ascetic, the and forces of Life and Matter act indeed as
martyr, the patriot, the delight is in an ideal fuel to the flame of the soul’s consciousness,
— moral, religious or social. All that can be whether they are good, bad or indifferent
conceded here is that the suffering voluntarily according to some outward view or standard.
courted does not cease to be suffering, is not And in response to the nature and degree of
itself transmuted into or felt as delight but the growth and increase demanded, does
that it is suppressed or dominated by the the soul choose its fuel, its external mode
other feeling and consciousness. of life and surroundings. If suffering and
misery help to kindle and increase the flame,
True, but even this is an intermediate state. the soul has no jugupsā, repulsion for them.
For there is another in which suffering is not Indeed, it accepts the forms of misery in order
merely suppressed but sublimated, wholly to cure them, transform them, to bring out
transmuted: there is then nothing else but of them their original norms of beauty and
delight, pure and entire. That is the soul state, bliss of which they are a degradation and
the state of permanent dwelling in the Spirit. an aberration.

Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta, Volume 3. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo International
Centre of Education; 1972, p.113-15.

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