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<p class="paracenter">WHEN IMPERFECTION IS GREATER THAN 
PERFECTION
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<p class="para"> A perfected consciousness is 
attained in the highest status of being, when it is full of light and delight, 
peace and purity, one with the Divine Consciousness. Such a Consciousness, when 
it comes down upon earth in its original unmixed clarity, lives as a foreign 
element and has no real contact with the world; it can have only a very indirect 
influence upon men and things. If the perfect, the Divine Consciousness has to 
be truly effective, has to change human and world nature, it must put on 
partially at least that nature; it must share in the imperfection of ignorance 
so that it can show how that imperfection can be dealt with and transformed. The 
Divine has to become human, even the ordinary human, in a sense, in the outward 
instrumental aspect, to a greater or lesser degree as needed, so that He may 
come in living contact with the obscure lower consciousness and put His light 
into it and gradually purify and illumine it. If, however, the consciousness 
retains its fullness of power and light and makes its appearance as such, it may 
dazzle and overwhelm, as a meteor miracle,
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-81</p>
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<p class="para">but leave nothing substantial behind. This is what has happened 
in the past of man's history. The saints and sages, the greatest and the most 
genuine among them, mostly dwelt apart from humanity in consciousness and even 
away from human contact; the earth could not profit wholly by their example.
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<p class="para"> Therefore the Mother says in her <i>
Prayers and Meditations </i>that having gone beyond all desires still she had to 
live in the midst of desires; she had no choice of her own, no preference, no 
attachment, no need of anything, yet she was put in the conditions of very 
ordinary life, the normal human life; she had to deal with the common man, 
handle the small insignificant objects of material existence. In one part of her 
being she had to identify herself with ignorance and obscurity, so much so that 
even the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness—the conscient and 
the inconscient—was for a time obliterated. Naturally, the inmost being in its 
inner self remained always calm, luminous, inviolable, but it put around itself 
this body of ordinary nature to meet its ordinary reactions and through them 
gradually to uplift and train it to manifest and incarnate the inmost divine.
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<p class="para"> The gods are perfect; but, it is 
said, they have to become men, come down upon earth and assume human 
proportions—that is, imperfections,—if they wish to progress further, attain 
still higher levels
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-82</p>
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<p class="para">of consciousness. For, the gods are perfect each in his own 
limited and well-defined and therefore unchangeable type; but man means an 
aspiring soul, that is to say, infinity—his very imperfection is a sign and 
symbol of ever greater possibility; the fluidity of his nature means an 
opportunity.
</p>
<br><p class="pageno">Page-83</p>
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