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<span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN; font-weight:700'>
<font size="4">God's Labour</font></span></p>
			<p align="center" style="line-height: 150%; margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0">&nbsp;</p>
<div class=Section1>

<p align=center style='text-align:center;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><b><span lang=EN
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN'>1</span></b></p>
<p align=center style='text-align:center;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>&nbsp;</p>

<p style='text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>SRI Aurobindo's Yoga, it has been said, begins
where other yogas end. Other yogas end by the attainment of the Brahman or some
form or mode of it or something akin to it, which means the transcendent
Reality, the supreme status of the Spirit beyond name and form, beyond all
particular manifestation. It is the final realisation of the soul in its upward
ascent, the <i>nee plus ultra. </i>Sri Aurobindo's Yoga takes that poise for
granted and upon it bases its own development and structure. In other words, it
works for the descent of the Spirit upon the level from which the Spirit worked
up. The Mystery of the descent is the whole characteristic secret of this Yoga.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>The general idea of a descent of the Spirit, that
is to say, the Divine, the conception of <i>avat</i></span><i><span lang=EN
style='font-family:"Luxi Serif";mso-ansi-language:EN'>Ä</span><span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>ra </span></i><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>and <i>avatarana </i>is, of course, not new. But
here there is a difference. Avatara or Avatarana in the older disciplines was
more or less an intervention of God as God, the working of a Force come
specifically in the midst of the world circumstances, maintaining still its
divine transcendental character, to work out a given problem, accomplish a
special mission and then, when the work is done, retire to its own status. It
is, as it were, a weapon of flame and light hurled into the earthly fray – even
like the discus of Vishnu – and having accomplished its mission, going back
into the hand of the thrower, its fount and origin. The task of the Avatara was
usually <i>bh</i></span><i><span lang=EN style='font-family:"Luxi Serif";
mso-ansi-language:EN'>ū</span><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:
EN'>bh</span><span lang=EN style='font-family:"Luxi Serif";mso-ansi-language:
EN'>Ä</span><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>ra-haralJa, </span></i><span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>lightening earth's load: it means removing
the sinful and preserving the virtuous, re-establishing the reign of Law.
Esoterically, he also embodied the Way to spiritual fulfilment. There was no<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Page – 277</span><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p style='line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>
<span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>question of saving humanity – it was more serving
than saving – by transfiguring it, giving it a new body and life and mind, nor
was there any idea of raising the level of earth-consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>The Divine acts in three different ways in his
three well-known aspects. As the transcendent Reality he is above and beyond
creation, he is the U nmanifest, although he may hold within either involved or
dissolved the entire manifestation. Next, he is the manifestation, the cosmic
or the universal; he is one with creation, immanent in it, still its master and
lord. Finally, he has an individual aspect: he is a Person with whom human
b.eings can enter into relations of love and service. The Divine incarnate as a
human being, is a special manifestation of the Individual Divine. Even then, as
an embodied earthly person, he may act in a way characteristic of any of the
three aspects. The Divine descended upon earth, as viewed by Sri Aurobindo,
does not come in his transscendental aspect, fundamentally aloof and away, in
his absolute power and consciousness, working miracles here; for transcendence
can do nothing but that in the midst of conditions left as they are. Nor does
he manifest himself only as his cosmic power and consciousness, imbedded in the
creation and all-pervading, exercising his influence through the pressure of
Universal Law, perhaps in a concentrated form, still working gradually, step by
step, as though through a logical process, for the maintenance of the natural
order and harmony, <i>lokasamgraha. </i>God can be more than that,
individualised in a special, even a human sense. His individual being can and
does hold within itself his cosmic and transcendental self covertly in a way
but overtly too in a singular manner at the same time. The humanised
personality of the Divine with his special role and function is at the very
centre of Sri Aurobindo's solution of the world enigma. The little poem <i>A
God's Labour </i>in its short compass outlines and explains beautifully the
grand Mystery.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>The usual idea of God (as the theists hold, for
example) is that he is an infinite eternal impassible being, aloof from human toils
and earthly turmoils, himself untouched by these and yet, in and through them,
directing the world for an inscrutable purpose, unless it is for leaning
towards it and stretching out the hand of Grace to those of the mortals<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Page – 278</span><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

</div>

<p style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>who wish to come out of the nightmare of life,
sever the coils of earthly existence. But the Divine in order to be and remain
divine need not hold to his seat above and outside the creation, severely
separated from his creatures. He can, on the contrary, become truly the
ordinary man and labour as all others, yet maintaining his divinity and being
conscious of it. After all, is not man, every human being, built in the same
pattern, a composite of the earthly human element supported and infused by a
secret divine element? However, God, the individual Divine, does become man,
one of them and one with them. Only, his labour thereby increases manifold,
hard and heavy, although for that very reason full of a bright rich multiple
promise. The Divine's self-hurilanisation has for it a double purpose: (I) to
show man by example how he can become what he truly is, how he can divinise
himself: the Divine as man lives out the life of a <i>sadhaka </i>wholly and
completely; (2) to help concretely by his own force of consciousness the world
and man in their endeavour for progress and evolution, to give the help wholly
and completely from the innermost status of the self down to the most external
physical body and the material field. This help again is a twofold function.
The first is to make available, gather within easy reach, the high
realisations, the spiritual treasures that are normally stored in a heaven
somewhere else. The Divine Man brings down the divine attributes close to our
earth, turns them from mere far possibilities into near probabilities, even
imminent realities. They are made part and parcel, constituent elements of the
earthly atmosphere, so that one has only to open one's mouth to breathe in,
extend one's arms to seize and possess them: even to this opening and this gesture
man is helped by the concrete touch and presence of the Divine. Further, the
help and succour come in another way which is more intimate, more living and
appealing to man.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>A great mystery of existence, its central rub is
the presence of Evil. All spiritual, generally all human endeavour has to face
and answer this Sphinx. As he answers, so will be his fate. He cannot rise up
even if he wishes, earth cannot progress even when there is the occasion,
because of this besetting obstacle. It has many names and many forms. It is<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Page – 279</span><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

</div>

<p style='text-align:justify;line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Sin or Satan in Christianity; Buddhism calls it
Mara. In India it is generally known as Maya. Grief and sorrow, weakness and
want, disease and death are its external and ubiquitous forms. It is a force of
gravitation, as graphically named by a modern Christian mystic, that pulls man
down, fixes him upon earth with its iron law of mortality, never allowing him
to mount high and soar in the spiritual heavens. It has also been called the
Wheel of Karma or the cycle of Ignorance. And the aim of all spiritual seekers
has been to rise out of it – some-how, by force of <i>tapasy</i></span><i><span
lang=EN style='font-family:"Luxi Serif";mso-ansi-language:EN'>Ä</span><span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>, </span></i><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>energy of concentrated will or divine Grace – go
through or by-pass and escape into the Beyond. This is the path of ascent I
referred to at the outset. In this view it is taken for granted that this
creation is transient and empty of happiness – <i>anityam asukham </i>(Gita) –
it is </span><i><span lang=EN style='font-family:"Arial Narrow";mso-ansi-language:
EN'>anatta, </span></i><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>empty of self
or consciousness (Buddha) and it will be always so. The only way to deal with
it, the way of the wise, is to discard it and pass over.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Sri Aurobindo's view is different. He says Evil
can be and has to be conquered here itself, here upon this earth and in this
body-the ancients also said, <i>ihaiva tairjitah, </i>they have con. quered
even here, <i>pr</i></span><i><span lang=EN style='font-family:"Luxi Serif";
mso-ansi-language:EN'>Ä</span><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:
EN'>k</span><span lang=EN style='font-family:"Luxi Serif";mso-ansi-language:
EN'>ś</span><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>ariravimok</span><span
lang=EN style='font-family:"Luxi Serif";mso-ansi-language:EN'>s</span><span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>an</span><span lang=EN
style='font-family:"Luxi Serif";mso-ansi-language:EN'>Ät</span><span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>, </span></i><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>before leaving the body. You have to face Evil
full-square and conquer it, conquer it not in the sense that you simply rise
above it so that it no longer touches you, but that you remain where you are in
the very field of Evil and drive it out from there completely, erase and
annihilate it where it was reigning supreme. Hence God has to come down from
his heaven and dwell here upon earth and among men and in the conditions of
mortality, show thus by his living and labour that this earthly earth can be
trans&shy;formed into a heavenly earth and this human body into a &quot;body
divine&quot;.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Matter or the physical body is not by itself the
centre of gravity of the human consciousness; it is not that that pins the soul
or the self to the life of pain and misery and incapacity and death. Matter is
not the Evil, nor made up of Evil; it contains or harbours evil under the
present circumstances, even as dross is mixed up, inextricably as it appears,
with the noble metal in the natural ore; but the dross can be eradicated and
the free metal brought out, pure- and noble in its own true nature. It is, as
Rumi, the Persian mystic, says in his famous<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Page – 280</span><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p style='line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>imagery, like a piece of iron, dull and dismal to
look at, but when put into fire slowly acquires the quality of fire, turning
into a glowing and radiant beauty, yet maintaining its original form and
individuality and concrete, even material reality. Now, the crust or dross that
has to be eliminated in Matter is called by Sri Aurobindo
&quot;Inconscience&quot;. Matter is inconscient, therefore it is unconscioas
and ignorant. Make it conscious, it will be radiant and full of knowledge. That
is the great transformation needed, the only way to true and total reformation.
The Divine descends into Matter precisely to work out that transformation. <o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>It is a long dredging process, tedious and
arduous, requiring the utmost patience and perseverance, even to the absolvte
degree. For Inconscience, in essence, although a contingent reality, local and
temporal, and therefore transient, is nonetheless the hardest, most obdurate
and resistant reality: it lies thick and heavy upon the human vehicle. It is
massed layer upon layer. Its first formation in the higher altitudes of the
mind is perhaps like a thin fluid deposit; it begins as an<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>individualised separative consciousness stressing
more and more its exclusiveness. Through the lower ranges of the mind and the
vitality it crystallises and condenses gradually; in the worlds of thinking and
feeling, enjoying and dynamic activity, it has still a malleable and mixed
consIstency, but when it reaches and possesses the physical being, it becomes
the impervious solid obscurity that Matter presents.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>The root of the Cosmic Evil is in Matter. From
there it shoots up and overshadows the upper layers of our being and consciousness.
Even if the mind is cleaned, the vital cleared, still if the physical
consciousness is not sufficiently probed into, purified and reclaimed, then
nothing permanent is done, one would build upon sand. All efforts, spiritual or
other, at the regeneration and reformation of mankind and a good many
individual endeavours too have come to a sorry end, because the foundation was
not laid sufficiently deep and secure. One must dig into Matter as far down as
possible – like Rishi Agastya in the Veda – even to the other end. For there is
another mystery there, perhaps the Mystery of mysteries. The deeper you go down
into Matter, as you clear up the jungle and bring in the higher light, you
discover and unlock strange<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Page – 281</span><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p style='line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p>and
mighty energies of consciousness secreted there, even like the uranium pile in
the atomic world. It is revealed to you that Inconscience is not total absence
of consciousness, it is simply consciousness asleep, in-gathered, entranced.
And this nether consciousness is, after all, one with the supreme
Consciousness. It is itself the best weapon to bring about its own
transformation. Not only the higher self, but the lower self too must be
salvaged and saved by its own <i>self – </i></span><i><span lang=EN
style='font-family:"Luxi Serif";mso-ansi-language:EN'>Ä</span><span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>tman</span><span lang=EN
style='font-family:"Luxi Serif";mso-ansi-language:EN'>Ä</span><span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'> </span><span lang=EN
style='font-family:"Luxi Serif";mso-ansi-language:EN'>Ä</span><span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>tm</span><span lang=EN
style='font-family:"Luxi Serif";mso-ansi-language:EN'>Ä</span><span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>nam uddharet.</span></i><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

<p align=center style='text-align:center;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><b><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>2</span></b></p>
<p align=center style='text-align:center;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'>&nbsp;</p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>The Divine brings down with himself his shaft of
light, and the light, as it spreads, begins to scatter and dissolve the clouds
of ignorance. The Divine comes here below and as he formulates and concentrates
his consciousness in or as an individualised channel, the power of the consciousness
becomes dynamic and concrete and works out the desired change in th_ material
plane. In the descent the Divine has to assume the lower potentials on the
inferior levels and this involves an apparent veiling and lessening of his
higher and divine degrees. In other words, the Divine in becoming human accepts
and embraces in that embodiment all that humanity normally means, its
weaknesses and frailties, its obstacles and difficulties, all the ignorance and
inconscience. This sacrifice he has agreed to, has undertaken in order to
create out of it a golden body, a radiant matter, a heavenly or divinised
earth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>God made man, the spirit become flesh: this is
Grace, the benediction of the Holy One upon the sinful earth. The working of
Grace in one of its characteristic movements has been beautifully envisaged in
esoteric Christianity. The burden of sin-that is to say, of weakness, impurity
and ignorance – lies so heavy upon man, the force of gravitation is so
absolute, that it is divine intervention alone, and in the most physical sense,
which can save him. God takes upon himself man's load and relieves him of it:
thus freed he can soar up easily and join the company of the Happy in heaven
alongside God. This is the ransom paid by God to His Enemy, the vicarious
atonement suffered by the Divine, the cross he has to bear when he comes<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Page – 282</span></p>

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<span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>upon this earth, into this vale of tears. I t is
said, in terms of human feeling, pity so moved him that he left the happy abode
of heaven, came down among men and lived like one of them, sharing their sorrow
and pain and, what is divine, taking up the evil into himself, drinking, as it
were, out of the poisoned bowl, so that man, frail mortal creature, may escape
his doom.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>This way too, as all other ways, has indeed been
the way of escape. God came down in order to take away some men with him. They
were the blessed ones, but the normal humanity remains as it is, as it has
been, on the whole. The few that pass beyond do not seem to leave any trace
here below. There was no regeneration of mankind, no reformation of earthly
life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Sri Aurobindo aims at a power of consciousness, a
formulation of the divine being that is integral. It takes up the whole man and
it embraces all men: it works on a cosmic scale individually and collectively.
That force of consciousness identifies itself with each and every individual
being in all its parts and limbs; establishing itself in and working through
their normal and habitual functionings, it moulds and refashions the earthly
vessel. It is a global power, first of all, because it is the supreme creative
Power, the original energy of consciousness that brought out this manifested
universe, the matrix or the nodus that holds together and in an inviolable
unity and harmony the fundamental truth-aspects of the' one and indivisible
Reality. This luminous source and substance of all created things consists of
their basic true truths which assume disguised and deformed appearances under
the present conditions of the world. It is therefore, in the second instance,
the secret power in created things which manifests in them as the evolutionary
urge, which drives them to rediscover their reality and re-form the appearance
as the direct expression and embodiment of this inner soul.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>The Divine incarnates, as an individual in the
concrete material actuality, this double aspect of the utter truth and reality.
There are, what may be called, intermediary incarnations, some representing
powers – aspects of the Divine – in the higher mental or overmen tal levels of
consciousness, others those of the inner heart, yet others again those of the
dynamic vital consciowmess. But the integral Divine, he who unites and
reconciles in his body the highest height and the lowest<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Page – 283</span><span lang=EN
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<p style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>depth,
who has effectuated in him something like the &quot;marriage of Heaven and
Hell&quot; is an event of the future-even perhaps of the immediate future. The
descent into hell is an image that has been made very familiar to man, but all
its implications have not been sounded. For what we were made familiar with was
more or less an image of hell, not hell itself, a region or experience in the
vital (may be even in the mental): real hell is not the mass of desires or
weaknesses of the flesh, not &quot;living flesh&quot;, but dead Matter whose
other name is Inconscience. In the older disciplines the central or key truth,
the heart of reality where the higher and the lower – Brahman and Maya, the
Absolute and the Contingency, the One and the Many, God and the World – met and
united in harmony was bypassed: one shot from below right into the supreme
Absolute; the matrix of truth-creation was ignored. Even so, at the other end,
the reality of brute matter was not given sufficient weight, the spiritual
light disdained to reach it <i>(vijigupsate).</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>The integral Divine not merely suffers (as in the
Christian tradition) a body material, He accepts it in his supernal delight,
for it is his own being and substance: it is He in essence and it will become
He in actuality. When he comes into the world, it is not as though it were a
foreign country; he comes to his own, – only he seeks to rebuild it on another
scale, the scale of unity and infinity, instead of the present scale
ofseparativism and finiteness. He comes among men not simply because he is' moved
by human miseries; he is no extra-terrestrial person, a bigger human being, but
is himself this earth, this world, all these miseries; he is woven into the
fabric of the universe, he is the warp and woof that constitute creation. It is
not a mere movement of sympathy or benevolence that actuates him, it is a total
and absolute identification that is the ground and motive of his activity. When
he assumes the frame of mortality, it is not that something outside and totally
incongruous is entering into him, it is part and parcel of himself, it is
himself in one of his functions and phases. Consequently, his work in and upon
the material world and life may be viewed as that of self-purification and
self-illumination, self-discipline and self&shy;realisation. Also, the horrors of
material existence, being part of the cosmic play and portion of his infinity,
naturally find shelter in the individual divine incarnation, are encompassed<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Page – 284</span><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'><o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>in his
human embodiment. It<b> </b>is the energy of his own consciousness that brought
out or developed even this erring earth from within it: that same energy is now
available, stored up in the individual formation, for the recreation of that
earth. The advent and acceptance of material existence meant, as a kind of
necessity in a given scheme of divine manifestation, the appearance and play of
Evil, the negation of the very divinity. Absolute Consciousness brought forth
absolute unconsciousness – the inconscient – because of its own self-pressure,
a play of an increasingly exclusive concentration and rigid objectivisa&shy;don.
That same consciousness repeats its story in the individual incarnation: it
plunges into the material life and matter and identifiesltselfwith Evil. But it
is then like a pressed or tightened spring; it works at its highest potential. <span
style='mso-bidi-font-weight:bold'>In<b> </b></span>other words, the Divine in
the body now works to divinise the body itself, to make of the negation a
concrete affirmation. The inconscient will be embodied consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>The humanist said, 'INothing human I reckon
foreign to me,&quot; In a deeper and more absolute sense the divine Mystic of
the integral Yoga says the same. He is indeed humanity incarnate, the whole
mankind condensed and epitomised in his single body. Mankind as imbedded in
ignorance and inconscience, the conscious soul lost in the dark depths of dead
matter, is he and his whole labour consists in working in and through that
obscure &quot;gravitational&quot; mass, to evoke and bring down the totality of
the superconscient force, the creative delight which he is essentially in his
inmost and topmost being. The labour within himself is conterminous with the
cosmic labour, and the change effected in his being and nature means a parallel
change in the world outside, at least a ready possibility of the change. All
the pains and weaknesses normal humanity suffers from, the heritage of an
inconscient earthly existence, the Divine takes into his incarnated body-all
and more and to the highest degree-into a crucible as it were, and works out
there the alchemy. The natural man individually shares a1so each other's burden
in some way, for all are interconnected in life-action at one point has a
reaction at all other points: only the sharing is done unconsciously and is
suffered or imposed than accepted and it tends to be at a minimum. An ordinary
mortal would break under a greater pressure. It<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span
lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Page – 285</span><span lang=EN
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<p style='text-align:justify; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>is the
Avatar who comes forward and carries on his shoulders the entire burden of
earthly inconscience.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Suffering, incapacity and death are, it is said,
the wages of earthly life; but they are, in fact, reverse aspects of divine
truths. Whatever is here below has its divine counterpart above. What appears
as matter, inertia, static existence here below is the devolution of pure
Existence, Being or Substance up there. Life-force, vital dynamism here is the
energy of Consciousness there. The pleasure of the heart and emotions and
enjoyment is divine Delight. Finally, our mind with its half-lighted thinking
power, its groping after knowledge has at its back the plenary light of the
Supermind. So the aim is not to reject or withdraw from the material, vital and
mental existence upon the earth and in this body, but house in them, make them
concrete vehicles, expressions and embodiments of what they really are.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p style='text-align:justify;text-indent:9.65pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span lang=EN
style='mso-ansi-language:EN'>Pain and suffering, disease and incapacity, even
age and death are fortuitous auxiliaries; they have come upon us simply because
of the small and partial scale of our life to which we agreed. One can live
here below, live a full life, upon a larger scale, upon the scale of infinity
and eternity. That need not dissolve body and life and mind, the triple ranges
that make up our earthly existence. In brief, man himself is not truly man, he
is the reverse aspect of God; and when he becomes divine and remains not merely
human, he but realises what he is truly and integrally himself.<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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