Does one seek the
Divine for Ananda (Bliss)?
The Divine is Anandamaya
and one can seek him for the Ananda he gives; but he has also
in him many other things and one may seek him for any of them,
for peace, for liberation, for knowledge, for power, for anything
else of which one may feel the pull or the impulse. It is quite
possible for someone to say: "Let me have Power from the
Divine and do His work or His Will and I am satisfied, even if
the use of Power entails suffering also." It is possible
to shun bliss as a thing too tremendous or ecstatic and ask only
or rather for peace, for liberation, for Nirvana. You speak of
self-fulfilment,-- one may regard the Supreme not as the Divine
but as one's highest Self and seek fulfilment of one's being in
that highest Self; but one need not envisage it as a self of bliss,
ecstasy, Ananda -- one may envisage it as a self of freedom, vastness,
knowledge, tranquility, strength, calm, perfection -- perhaps
too calm for a ripple of anything so disturbing as joy to enter.
So even if it is for something to be gained that one approaches
the Divine, it is not a fact that one can approach Him or seek
union only for the sake of Ananda and nothing else.
That involves something
which throws all your reasoning out of gear. For these are aspects
of the Divine Nature, powers of it, states of his being, -- but
the Divine Himself is something absolute, someone self-existent,
not limited by his aspects,-- wonderful and ineffable, not existing
by them, but they existing because of Him. It follows that if
he attracts by his aspects, all the more he can attract by his
very absolute selfness which is sweeter, mightier, profounder
than any aspect. His peace, rapture, light, freedom, beauty are
marvellous and ineffable, because he is himself magically, mysteriously,
transcendently marvellous and ineffable. He can then be sought
after for his wonderful and ineffable self and not only for the
sake of one aspect or another of his. The only thing needed for
that is, first, to arrive at a point when the psychic being feels
this pull of the Divine in himself and, secondly, to arrive at
the point when the mind, vital and each thing else begins to feel
too that that was what it was wanting and the surface hunt after
Ananda or what else was only an excuse for drawing the nature
towards that supreme magnet.
Divine for his own
sake
Your argument that
because we know the union with the Divine will bring Ananda, therefore
it must be for the Ananda that we seek the union, is not true
and has no force. One who loves a queen may know that if she returns
his love it will bring him power, position, riches and yet it
need not be for the power, position, riches that he seeks her
love. He may love her for herself and could love her equally if
she were not a queen; he might have no hope of any return whatever
and yet love her, adore her, live for her, die for her simply
because she is she. That has happened and men have loved women
without any hope of enjoyment or result, loved steadily, passionately
after age has come and beauty has gone. Patriots do not love their
country only when she is rich, powerful, great and has much to
give them; love for country has been most ardent, passionate,
absolute when the country was poor, degraded, miserable, having
nothing to give but loss, wounds, torture, imprisonment, death
as the wages of her service; yet even knowing that they would
never see her free, men have lived, served and died for her --
for her own sake, not for what she could give. Men have loved
Truth for her own sake and for what they could seek or find of
her, accepted poverty, persecution, death itself; they have been
content even to seek for her always, not finding, and yet never
given up the search. That means what? That man, country, Truth
and other things besides can be loved for their own sake and not
for anything else, not for any circumstance or attendant quality
or resulting enjoyment, but for something absolute that is either
in them or behind their appearance and circumstance. The Divine
is more than a man or woman, a stretch of land or a creed, opinion,
discovery or principle. He is the Person beyond all persons, the
Home and Country of all souls, the Truth of which truths are only
imperfect figures. And can He then not be loved and sought for
his own sake, as and more than these have been by men even in
their lesser selves and nature?
What your reasoning
ignores is that which is absolute or tends towards the absolute
in man and his seeking as well as in the Divine -- something not
to be explained by mental reasoning or vital motive. A motive,
but a motive of the soul, not of vital desire; a reason not of
the mind, but of the self and spirit. An asking too, but the asking
that is the soul's inherent aspiration, not a vital longing. That
is what comes up when there is the sheer self-giving, when "I
seek you for this, I seek you for that" changes to a sheer
"I seek you for you." It is that marvellous and ineffable
absolute in the Divine that X means when he says, "Not knowledge
nor this nor that, but Krishna." The pull of that is indeed
a categorical imperative, the self in us drawn to the Divine because
of the imperative call of the greater Self, the soul ineffably
drawn towards the object of its adoration because it cannot be
otherwise, because it is it and He is He. That is all about it.
A self-less Self-giving
I have written all
that only to explain what we mean when we speak of seeking the
Divine for himself and not for anything else -- so far as it is
explicable. Explicable or not, it is one of the most dominant
facts of spiritual experience. The will to self-giving is only
an expression of this fact. But this does not mean that I object
to your asking for Ananda. Ask for that by all means, so long
as to ask for it is a need of any part of your being -- for these
are the things that lead towards the Divine so long as the absolute
inner call that is there all the time does not push itself to
the surface. But it was really that that has drawn from the beginning
and is there behind -- it is the categorical spiritual imperative,
the absolute need of the soul for the Divine.
I am not saying that
there is to be no Ananda. The self-giving itself is a profound
Ananda and what it brings, carries in its wake an inexpressible
Ananda -- and it is brought by this method sooner than by any
other, so that one can say almost, "A self-less self-giving
is the best policy." Only one does not do it out of policy.
Ananda is the result, but it is done not for the result, but for
the self-giving itself and for the Divine himself -- a subtle
distinction, it may seem to the mind, but very real.
- Sri
Aurobindo
