Aspiration

On the other side of the eternal stairs
The mighty kingdoms of the deathless Flame
Aspired to reach the Being’s absolutes.
Out of the sorrow and darkness of the world,
Out of the depths where life and thought are tombed,
Lonely mounts up to heaven the deathless Flame.
In a veiled Nature’s hallowed secrecies
It burns for ever on the altar Mind,
Its priests the souls of dedicated gods,
Humanity its house of sacrifice.
Once kindled, never can its flamings cease.
A fire along the mystic paths of earth,
It rises through the mortal’s hemisphere,
Till borne by runners of the Day and Dusk
It enters the occult eternal Light
And clambers whitening to the invisible Throne.

Sri Aurobindo “Savitri”

In the silence of the heart burns the lamp that can never be extinguished, the fire of an ardent
Aspiration to know and to live integrally the Divine.

Aspiration is like an arrow. It rises, rises, rises, rises straight up, very strong and then it strikes against a
kind of a lid which is there, hard like iron and extremely thick, and it does not pass through. And your
aspiration is a drop of water which, instead of falling, rises . . . and when it makes the hole suddenly it
springs up out of this lid and enters an immensity of light.

It is truly like a great purifying flame of will, and it carries in its core the thing that asks to be
realised.

In aspiration there is an unselfish flame which is not present in desire. From the purely psychological
point of view, aspiration is a self-giving, while desire is always something which one draws to
oneself.

Aspiration is a thing to be developed, educated, like all activities of the being. One may be born
with a very slight aspiration and develop it so much that it becomes very great. It is precisely upon
this that Sri Aurobindo has insisted. He says you must choose, and the choice is constantly put before
you and constantly you must choose, and if you do not choose, well, you will not be able to advance.
You must choose; there is no “force like that” which chooses for you, or chance or luck or fate –
this is not true. Your will is free, it is deliberately left free and you have to choose. It is you who decide
whether to seek the Light or not, whether to be the servitor of the Truth or not – it is you. Or whether to
have an aspiration or not, it is you who choose.

What is necessary is an aspiration which burns in the being like a constant fire, and every time you have
a desire, a preference, an attraction it must be thrown into this fire. If you do this persistently, you will see that a little gleam of true consciousness begins to dawn in your ordinary consciousness. At first it
will be faint, very far behind all the din of desires, preferences, attractions, likings.

But you must go behind all this and find that true consciousness, all calm, tranquil, almost silent.

The Mother

Aspiration is to call the higher forces. When the forces have answered, there is a natural state of quiet
receptivity… But the clarities of the higher illumination cannot be kept so long as there is not this
Strength of the Flame of Aspiration to guard them, for hostile powers snatch them away and conceal
them again in their secret cavern.

Aspiration is the Divine Will and being manifested in man, itself liberated, liberates him from the cords
which bind him as a victim in the world sacrifice; and destroys the powers of falsehood whose imitations
cannot hem in its growth and its out-flaming; it brings the divine waters from the luminous Heaven, the
divine wealth liberated from the attacks of the Enemy, and gives the final peace and perfection.

Sri Aurobindo