Changes

An aimless life is always a miserable life.

Every one of you should have an aim. But do not forget that on the quality of your aim will depend the quality of your life. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/the-science-of-living#p1,p2</ref>

...the true ''raison d'être'' of life and of individual existence to become aware of the Divine, that may emerge anywhere at all, at any moment whatsoever. If there is the least possibility, it springs up. Naturally, if one is perfectly satisfied, then that is an obstacle, because one sleeps in self-satisfaction. But that cannot last. In life, in the world as it is at present, an egoistic satisfaction, a personal satisfaction cannot last, and—as long as it lasts, yes, one may grow hard, not aspire at all. But it does not last. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/4-november-1953#p34</ref>

Life on earth is essentially a field for progress. But how brief life is for all the progress that has to be made! To waste one’s time seeking the satisfaction of one’s petty desires is sheer folly. True happiness is possible only when one has found the Divine. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/16/19-february-1972#p1,p2</ref>

...one is here [on earth] because there is something to be done and this something is not anything egoistic. This seems to me the most logical way of entering upon the path – all of a sudden to realise, “Since I am here, it means that I have a mission to fulfil. Since I have been endowed with a consciousness, it is that I have something to do with that consciousness – what is it?”

Generally, it seems to me that this is the first question one should put to oneself: “Why am I here?” <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/24-march-1951#p30,p31</ref>

Essentially there is but one single true reason for living: it is to know oneself. We are here to learn – to learn what we are, why we are here, and what we have to do. And if we don’t know that, our life is altogether empty – for ourselves and for others. And so, generally, it is better to begin early, for there is much to learn. If one wants to learn about life as it is, the world as it is, and then really know the why and the how of life, one can begin when very young, from the time one is very, very tiny – before the age of five.

And then, when one is a hundred, one will still be able to learn. So it is interesting. And all the time one can have surprises, always learn something one didn’t know, meet with an experience one did not have before, find something one was ignorant of. It is surely very interesting. And the more one knows, the more aware does one become that one has everything to learn. Truly, I could say that only fools believe they know. That indeed is a sure sign, someone coming and telling you, “Oh! I know all that; oh! I know all that”; he is immediately sized up!” <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/3-february-1954#p10,p11</ref>

==Aligning Ourselves with Earth’s Purpose==

...according to very old traditions, the Earth, from the deeper spiritual point of view, has been created as a symbolic concentration of universal life so that the work of transformation may be done more easily, in a limited, concentrated “space”—so to say—where all the elements of the problem are gathered together so that, in the concentration, the action may be more total and effective...the purpose of terrestrial existence is to awaken, to develop and finally to reveal in a total manifestation the Spirit which is hidden at the centre of Matter and impels this Matter from within outwards towards a progressive development which will liberate the Spirit working from within.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/23-october-1957#p4</ref>

He says that evolution is the result of the inevitable fulfilment of the Truth of Being which is the essential reality of the universe. The fulfilment of this Truth, the fulfilment of the Truth of Being, is the fundamental fact of evolution, that is, it is the cause and principle of the evolution; but naturally, if this Truth of Being is inevitably fulfilled, it must be by means of a will and a purpose. There has to be an aim and the will to fulfil that aim.

You only have to reduce this to the individual scale. When someone is conscious and does something consciously, he necessarily does it knowing what he wants to do, with a plan. For instance, when you prepare a programme for the anniversary of your "boarding", you have a purpose, don't you?—you ''want'' to make a programme for the anniversary, and so you have a plan, you choose what you are going to enact and how it is going to be enacted, and at the same time you want to do it, otherwise you would not do it—so, Sri Aurobindo says just that. That is, that if the universe is a conscious entity, if there is a Consciousness which expresses itself, it necessarily expresses itself in accordance with a plan and with a will to express itself—it is quite simple.

<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/29-january-1958#p4,p5,p8,p9</ref>

This world is not really created by a blind force of Nature: even in the Inconscient the presence of the supreme Truth is at work; there is a seeing Power behind it which acts infallibly and the steps of the Ignorance itself are guided even when they seem to stumble; for, what we call the Ignorance is a cloaked Knowledge, a Knowledge at work in a body not its own but moving towards its own supreme self-discovery. This Knowledge is the covert Supermind which is the support of the creation and is leading all towards itself and guides behind this multitude of minds and creatures and objects which seem each to be following its own law of nature; in this vast and apparently confused mass of existence there is a law, a one truth of being, a guiding and fulfilling purpose of the world-existence. The Supermind is veiled here and does not work according to its characteristic law of being and self-knowledge, but without it nothing could reach its aim. A world governed by an ignorant mind would soon drift into a chaos; it could not in fact come into existence or remain in existence unless supported by the secret Omniscience of which it is the cover; a world governed by a blind inconscient force might repeat constantly the same mechanical workings but it would mean nothing and arrive nowhere. This could not be the cause of an evolution that creates life out of Matter, out of life mind, and a gradation of planes of Matter, Life and Mind culminating in the emergence of Supermind. The secret truth that emerges in Supermind has been there all the time, but now it manifests itself and the truth in things and the meaning of our existence. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/9-october-1957#p1</ref>

The universe is an objectivisation of the Supreme, as if He had objectivised himself outside of himself in order to see himself, to live himself, to know himself, and so that there might be an existence and a consciousness capable of recognising him as their origin and uniting consciously with him to manifest him in the becoming. There is no other reason for the universe. The earth is a kind of symbolic crystallisation of universal life, a reduction, a concentration, so that the work of evolution may be easier to do and follow. And if we see the history of the earth, we can understand why the universe has been created. It is the Supreme growing aware of himself in an eternal Becoming; and the goal is the union of the created with the Creator, a union that is conscious, willing and free, in the Manifestation.

That is the secret of Nature. Nature is the executive Force, it is she who does the work.<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/7-may-1958#p5</ref>

==To Find Our True Self==

If you have even for a moment contacted it, you will carry with you a conviction about the Divine which nothing will shake. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/the-ordinary-life-and-the-true-soul#p3</ref>

One suddenly feels that everything one does, everything one sees, has no meaning, no purpose, but that there is something which has a meaning; that essentially one is here on earth for something, that all this—all these movements, all this agitation, all this wastage of force and energy—all that must have a purpose, an aim, and that this uneasiness one feels within oneself, this lack of satisfaction, this need, this thirst for something must lead us somewhere else. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/09/13-august-1958#p24 </ref>

… to transform oneself integrally, it is to have a single aim in life.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/8-june-1955#p51</ref>

The aim should be in Yoga to develop (if one has it not already) a strong central being and harmonise under it all the rest, changing what has to be changed. If this central being is the psychic, there is no great difficulty. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/28/the-parts-of-the-being#p7</ref>