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Chapter V
To R. – On Her Birthday

Words of Sri Aurobindo

The repetition of thy gracious years

Brings back once more thy natal morn.

Upon the crest of youth thy life appears, –

A wave upborne.

Amid the hundreds thronging Ocean’s floor

A wave upon the crowded sea

With regular rhythm pushing towards the shore

Our life must be.

The power that moves it is the Ocean’s force

Invincible, eternal, free,

And by that impulse it pursues its course

Inevitably.

We, too, by the Eternal Might are led

To whatsoever goal He wills.

Our helm He grasps, our generous sail outspread

His strong breath fills.

Exulting in the grace and strength of youth

Pursue the Ocean’s distant bound,

Trusting the Pilot’s voice, the Master’s ruth

That rings us round.

Rejoice and fear not for the waves that swell,

The storms that thunder, winds that sweep;

Always our Captain holds the rudder well,

He does not sleep.

If in the trough of the enormous sea

Thou canst not find the sky for spray,

Fear never, for our Sun is there with thee

By night and day.

Even those who sink in the victorious flood,

Where do they sink? Into His breast.

He who to some gives victory, joy and good,

To some gives rest.

But thou, look to the radiant days that wait

Beyond the driving rain and storm.

I have seen the vision of a happier fate

Brightening thy form.

Confident of His grace, expect His will;

Let Him lead; though hidden be the bourne,

See Him in all that happens; that fulfil

For which thou wert born.

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The following titles are phrases from the poem „To R. – On Her Birthday“. The excerpts reproduced under these titles are the editor‘s selection from the writings of Sri Aurobindo.

The Power that Moves it

Every man is knowingly or unknowingly the instrument of a universal Power and, apart from the inner Presence, there is no such essential difference between one action and another, one kind of instrumentation and another as would warrant the folly of an egoistic pride. The difference between knowledge and ignorance is a grace of the Spirit; the breath of divine Power blows where it lists and fills today one and tomorrow another with the word or the puissance. If the potter shapes one pot more perfectly than another, the merit lies not in the vessel but the maker. The attitude of our mind must not be “This is my strength” or “Behold God’s power in me”, but rather “A Divine Power works in this mind and body and it is the same that works in all men and in the animal, in the plant and in the metal, in conscious and living things and in things apparently inconscient and inanimate.”...

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Trusting the Pilot‘s Voice

It is difficult to acquire or to practise this faith and steadfastness on the rough and narrow path of Yoga because of the impatience of both heart and mind and the eager but soon faltering will of our rajasic nature. The vital nature of man hungers always for the fruit of its labour and, if the fruit appears to be denied or long delayed, he loses faith in the ideal and in the guidance. For his mind judges always by the appearance of things, since that is the first ingrained habit of the intellectual reason in which he so inordinately trusts. Nothing is easier for us than to accuse God in our hearts when we suffer long or stumble in the darkness or to abjure the ideal that we have set before us. For we say, “I have trusted to the Highest and I am betrayed into suffering and sin and error.” Or else, “I have staked my whole life on an idea which the stern facts of experience contradict and discourage. It would have been better to be as other men are who accept their limitations and walk on the firm ground of normal experience.” In such moments – and they are sometimes frequent and long – all the higher experience is forgotten and the heart concentrates itself in its own bitterness. It is in these dark passages that it is possible to fall for good or to turn back from the divine labour....

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Fear Not the Waves that Swell

The Master of our works respects our nature even when he is transforming it; he works always through the nature and not by any arbitrary caprice. This imperfect nature of ours contains the materials of our perfection, but inchoate, distorted, misplaced, thrown together in disorder or a poor imperfect order. All this material has to be patiently perfected, purified, reorganised, new-moulded and transformed, not hacked and hewn and slain or mutilated, not obliterated by simple coercion and denial. This world and we who live in....

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Let Him Lead

Our nature is not only mistaken in will and ignorant in knowledge but weak in power; but the Divine Force is there and will lead us if we trust in it and it will use our deficiencies and our powers for the divine purpose. If we fail in our immediate aim, it is because he has intended the failure; often our failure or ill-result is the right road to a truer issue than an immediate and complete success would have put in our reach. If we suffer, it is because something in us has to be prepared for a rarer possibility of delight. ....

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Look to the Radiant Days that Wait

A divine life on earth need not be a thing apart and exclusive having nothing to do with the common earthly existence: it will take up human being and human life, transform what can be transformed, spiritualise whatever can be spiritualised, cast its influence on the rest and effectuate either a radical or an uplifting change, bring about a deeper communion between the universal and the individual, invade the ideal with the spiritual truth of which it is a luminous shadow and help to uplift into or towards a greater and higher existence. Mind it will uplift towards a diviner light of thought and will, life towards deeper and truer emotion and action, towards a larger power of itself, towards high aims and motives. Whatever cannot yet be raised into its own full truth of being, it will bring nearer to that fullness; whatever is not ready even for that change, will still see the possibility open to it whenever its still incomplete evolution has made it ready for self-fulfilment....

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That Fulfil for Which Thou Wert Born

This is thy work and the aim of thy being and that for which thou art here, to become the divine superman and a perfect vessel of the Godhead. All else that thou hast to do, is only a making thyself ready or a joy by the way or a fall from thy purpose. But the goal is this and the purpose is this and not in power of the way and the joy by the way but in the joy of the goal is the greatness and the delight of thy being. The joy of the way is because that which is drawing thee is also with thee on thy path and the power to climb was given thee that thou mightest mount to thy own summits....

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