Guiding Light
The One Universal Self In All
If we want to progress integrally, we must build within our conscious being a strong and pure mental synthesis which conserve us as a protection against temptations from outside, as a landmark to prevent us from going astray, as a beacon to light our way across the moving ocean of life. Each individual should build up this mental synthesis according to his own tendencies and affinities and aspirations. But if we want it to be truly living and luminous, it must be centered on the idea that is the intellectual representation symbolizing That which is at the center of our being, That which is our life and our light. This idea, expressed in sublime words, has been taught in various forms by all the great Instructors in all lands and all ages: The Self of each one and the great universal Self are one.in every world, in every being, in everything, in every atom is the Divine Presence, and man’s mission is to manifest it. In order to do that, he must become conscious of this Divine Presence within him. Some individuals must undergo a real apprenticeship in order to achieve this: their egoistic being is too all-absorbing, too rigid, too conservative, and their struggles against it are long and painful. Others, on the contrary, who are more impersonal, more plastic, more spiritualized, come easily into contact with the inexhaustible divine source of their being. But let us not forget that they too should devote themselves daily, constantly, to a methodical effort of adaptation and transformation, so that nothing within them may ever again obscure the radiance of that pure light. But how greatly the standpoint changes once we attain this
deeper consciousness! How understanding widens, how compassion grows! On this a sage has said: “I would like each one of us to come to the point where he perceives the inner God who dwells even in the vilest of human beings; instead of condemning him we would say, ‘Arise,O resplendent Being, thou who art ever pure, who knowest neither birth nor death; arise, Almighty One, and manifest thy nature.’ ”
– The Mother, Sri Aurobindo Ashram