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<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:center; text-indent:10.05pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">&nbsp;</p>
<p align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:center; text-indent:10.05pt; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0">
<b style='mso-bidi-font-weight:normal'>
<span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;'><font size="4">Perfection and
Progress</font><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<div class=Section1>

<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='text-align:right;line-height:150%;
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<span
style='font-size:14.0pt;'><o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></i></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>PERFECTION is a relative term. A thing may be
perfect in relation to the present or the past; it may not be so in relation to
what is to come. Creation is a perpetual movement, a perpetual progression.
Each time a new consciousness manifested upon earth, it was very natural for
men of the epoch to have the impression that it was the final definitive
realisation, at least a very great progress.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.0pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>Still we must note that even for an animal,
say an elephant or a dog, human capacities appear as marvellous; they feel, the
dogs do, that man possesses almost divine powers. So men too from the stage
where they are have a hint of things beyond; that is why we are not wholly
satisfied, we have the feeling in spite of all things achieved that there is
something else which eludes, indeed the true thing eludes, we turn around it,
but never touch it. It means that man is ready for a further progress. If it
were not so, if he were satisfied only with what he can do, he would try to do
that alone, better and better perhaps, but in the same groove. However, it is
not that: he seeks something else, something quite different, which is truly
true, on which one can count, which does not crash down when one props oneself
upon it, something durable, permanent, the Rock of Ages. This need of eternity,
of an absolute good and absolute beauty awakens exactly at the moment when one
is ready to receive a new consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.5pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>For a very long time, perhaps from the very
beginning – I do not mean from the beginning of human evolution, for there have
been earlier periods when, before the true man appeared, intermediate beings at 
first were tried who were much nearer to the animal; I mean the beginning of a 
sufficiently developed human form when it became ready to receive something from 
above </span></p>
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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;'>Page – 44<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>there have been always and there are still
individuals who carry in them this need of the eternal and the absolute. It is
only little by little, very gradually, through cycles of enlightenment and
obscurity that something like a collective consciousness in humanity awakes to
the need of such a higher existence. And today this necessity seems evidently
very general, cutting across all turmoils and stupidities of mankind: that
shows that the time is near.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:10.3pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>Yes, for a very long time, men were told,
&quot;It will be, it will be,&quot; were given the promise. It was promised,
thousands and thousands of years ago, that a new consciousness, a new world,
something of the Divine would manifest itself upon earth; it was always in the
future, somewhere in the revolution of the ages. One had not this feeling, this
sensation that it is here and now.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.5pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>By far the larger part of humanity, in fact,
most of it, need to make a very great effort to imagine what the future may be
like. Its consciousness is so much tied down to what is that it finds it
difficult even to imagine that things can be otherwise. When what shall be
becomes, for at least the consciousness of a group of individuals, an
inevitable necessity and what has been and is appears to it as an absurdity
that cannot last, then and then only comes the moment for the change to happen,
not before.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:10.3pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>The question still remains whether the thing
can happen and will happen individually before it happens collectively. But no
individual realisation even can be complete or approach perfection, unless and
until it is in harmony with a group consciousness representing a new world.
There is always an interdependence between the individual and the collective
so much so that an individual realisation is bound to be restricted and diminished
in an unresponsive atmosphere. Earth life as a whole has to follow a certain
curve of progress in order that a new world and a new consciousness may appear
in it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:13.9pt;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:
none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'><span style='mso-tab-count:1'>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span>So
the future realisation does depend, partially at least, upon you, individually
and collectively. Have you ever tried to conceive what the new consciousness
might mean, what the new race and the new world would look like?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:.15in;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>It is evident that the advent of man upon the
earth has changed the terrestrial conditions. One cannot say that this has been
to the greatest good of all, for it meant much suffering in many places. Also
it is evident that the complication which the human</span></p>
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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;'>Page – 45<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:11.75pt;
mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>being has brought with him into life has not
always been favourable to him or to others. But from another point of view it
did mean a progress, a marked progress among the lower species. Man mixed
himself up with the life of animals, with the life of plants, even with the
life of metals and minerals; it was not, as I said, to the great joy of all
those with whom he occupied himself; but in any case, their conditions of life
were changed by this intervention. In the same way, it is likely that the
supramental being, whatever he might be, when he comes, will change considerably
the life upon earth. We cherish this hope in our heart and in our mind that all
the ills the earth suffers from will be, if not completely cured, at least to a
large extent alleviated and that conditions of living here will be more
pleasant and harmonious, at least tolerable for all. That is quite possible.
In man, the mental consciousness that he embodied acted, by the very force of
its nature, for its own satisfaction, for its own growth, without much
consideration for the consequences of its actions. The Supramental, on the
other hand, will act differently; that is our hope, at least.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.0pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>Human life, however, is brief and naturally
there is a tendency in man to shorten the distances in proportion to his
dimensions. Still there will come a time when the thing will happen; there will
be a moment or a movement that will at last land into the reality. Once upon a
time there came a moment when the mental being could appear upon earth. The
start may be poor, very incomplete, very partial, but after all there was the
start. Why should not the same thing occur now?<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:12.2pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:261.6pt;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>The people who
were announcing the good news from the beginning of time must have been the
best informed of men. And I tell you that since the beginning of earth history,
Sri Aurobindo has always presided over the great earthly transformations,
under one form or another, one name or another. And if he came this time and
said this is the final, then it must be the final. Perhaps he knows.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.25pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>In that case, if this time it is final, then
those who are ready or make themselves ready will naturally be the people who
start first on the new path. There will be many such, I hope. But my own
standpoint here is this: even if the thing has only half a chance of </span><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>materialising</span><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'> it is worth the trouble. I think I have told
you more than once that a moment comes in the life of 
<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;'>Page – 46<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>many when life as it is, human consciousness
as it is, becomes absolutely unbearable, creating only disgust and repulsion;
one does not wish to continue it any longer, one can only throw all effort, all
force, all life and soul into this single chance, into this singular
opportunity given at last, so that one may pass on to the other side. What a
relief, to set one's foot on a road that takes you elsewhere! It is worth the
trouble of throwing behind all your burdens, freeing yourself of all loads so
that you may leap all the better. This is how I look at the thing. It is the </span><span
lang=EN-GB style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;mso-ansi-language:EN-GB'>sublimest</span><span
style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'> of adventures; if you have in you the true 
spirit of adventure in the least, you will&nbsp; <i>feel it is </i>worth <i>risking </i>all
for all. <i>But </i>they <i>who </i>fear and hesitate, who ask, &quot;Am I not
giving away my prey for the shadow?&quot; – a most stupid saying, according to
me – they who are more for profiting by what they possess than for risking to
lose all in the hope of something that mayor may not happen tomorrow, I assure
you, such people will not notice the change even if it happens right under
their nose. They will say, &quot;It is all right, we do not care, there is
nothing to regret.&quot; Quite possibly; but after all, they might have to
regret, we do not know.<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-align:justify;text-indent:11.75pt;mso-line-height-alt:
11.75pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none;
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mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in; line-height:150%; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0'><span style='mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt'>In
any case, that is what I mean by sincerity. That is to say, if you regard the
new realisation as the only thing truly worth living for, if what is is
intolerable, not only for oneself, perhaps not so much for oneself as for the
whole world, one feels the need of it if one is not small and egoistic; one
feels that the present has lasted too long and one can do nothing but take up
all that one is, all that one can do and hurl oneself completely – head foremost,
without looking backward, without considering what may happen or not – into the
adventure. It is far better to jump into the abyss, than to stand on the brink
shivering.
<o:p>&nbsp;</o:p></span></p>

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<span
style='font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:14.0pt;'>Page – 47<o:p></o:p></span></p>

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