Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

5. On Three Works of the Mother

Fragment ID: 20223

The Mother’s prayer of 12 December 1914 begins: “Il faut à chaque instant savoir tout perdre pour tout gagner” [p. 311]. The Isha Upanishad says: “tena tyaktena bhuñjīthāḥ”. To gain all by losing all comes to the same thing as to enjoy by renouncing. Both ideas seem to have the same source in the depths.

Yes, certainly. It is essentially the same truth put in different ways. It might be put in a negative form – “if we cling to things as they are in their imperfection in the Ignorance, we cannot have them in their truth and perfection in the Divine Light, Harmony and Ananda.”

16 August 1935