Sri Aurobindo
Archives and Research
a biannual journal
April 1977
Volume I; No 1
Seven Aphorisms1
God is the supreme Jesuit Father. He is ever doing evil that good may come of it; ever misleads for a greater leading; ever oppresses our will that it may arrive at last at an infinite freedom.
Our Evil is to God not evil, but ignorance and imperfection, our good a lesser imperfection.
The religionist speaks a truth, though too violently, when he tells us that even our greatest and purest virtue is as vileness before the divine nature of God.
To be beyond good and evil is not to act sin or virtue indifferently, but to arrive at a high and universal good.
That good is not our ethical virtue which is a relative and erring light on the earth; it is supra-ethical and divine.
*
I know that the opposite of what I say is true, but for the present what I say is still truer.
I believe with you, my friends, that God, if He exists, is a demon and an ogre. But after all what are you going to do about it?
1 These two groups of aphorisms were written about the same time as those already published in Thoughts and Aphorisms. See Archival Notes, page 85.