Page 7 - All India Magazine Dec-2024

be tepid... The principle of Love as it exists beyond the Manifested
and the Non-Manifested has nothing to do with either tepidness
or cruelty. Only, Sri Aurobindo’s idea would seem to be that oppo-
sites are the quickest and most effective means of shaping Matter
so that it can intensify its manifestation.
As an experience, this is absolutely certain, in the sense that,
first of all, when one comes into contact with eternal Love, the
supreme Love, one immediately has — how to put it? — a per-
ception, a sensation — it is not an understanding, it is something
very concrete: even the most illumined material consciousness,
however much it has been moulded and prepared, is incapable
of manifesting That. The first thing one feels is this kind of inca-
pacity. Then comes an experience: something which manifests a
form of — one cannot call it exactly “cruelty”, because it is not
cruelty as we know it — but within the totality of circumstances,
a vibration appears and, with a certain intensity, refuses love as
it is manifested here. It is precisely this: something in the mate-
rial world which refuses the manifestation of love as it exists at
present. I am not speaking of the ordinary world, I am speaking
of the present consciousness at its highest. It is an experience, I
am speaking of something that has happened. So the part of the
consciousness which has been struck by this opposition makes a
direct appeal to the origin of Love, with an intensity which it would
not have without the experience of this refusal. Limits are broken and
a flood pours down which could not have manifested before; and
something is expressed which was not expressed before.
When one sees this, there is obviously a similar experience
from the point of view of what we call life and death. It is this kind
of constant “brooding” or presence of Death and the possibility
of death, as it is said in Savitri: we have a constant companion
throughout the journey from cradle to grave; we are constantly
accompanied by this threat or presence of Death. Well, along with
this, in the cells, there is a call for a Power of Eternity, with an in-

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