Nature - Words of Wisdom

The Mother

Love of Nature is usually the sign of a pure and healthy being uncorrupted by modern civilisation. It is in the silence of a peaceful mind that one can best commune with Nature.

Blessings.

13 Nov 1969, Pg 401, Vol 16, CWM

Mental capacity seems to have grown, mental power seems to have developed, men seem to be much more capable of playing with ideas, of having mental command over all principles, but at the same time they have lost the simple and healthy candour of people who lived closer to Nature and knew less how to play with ideas. Thus humanity as a whole seems to have reached a very dangerous turning-point. Those who are trying to find a solution to the general corruption preach a return to the simplicity of yore, but of course that is quite impossible: you cannot go back.

We must go farther on, we must advance, climb greater heights and go beyond the arid search for pleasure and personal welfare, not through fear of punishment, even punishment after death, but through the development of a new sense of beauty, a thirst for truth and light, through understanding that it is only by widening yourself, illumining yourself, setting yourself ablaze with the ardour for progress, that you can find both integral peace and enduring happiness.

One must rise up and widen — rise up... and widen.

18 Apr 1958, Pg 236, Vol 03, CWM

You see, the human species is a part of Nature, but as Sri Aurobindo has explained, from the moment mind expressed itself in man, it put him into a relationship with Nature very different from the relationship all the lower species have with her. All the lower species right up to man are completely under the rule of Nature; she makes them do whatever she wants, and they can do nothing without her consent. Whereas man begins to act and to live as an equal; not as an equal in terms of power, but from the standpoint of consciousness (he is beginning to do so since he has the capacity to study and to find out Nature’s secrets). He is not superior to her, far from it, but he is on an equal footing. And so he has acquired – this is a fact – he has acquired a certain power of independence that he immediately used to put himself under the influence of the hostile forces, which are not terrestrial but extra-terrestrial.

22 Jun 1958, Pg 112, Vol 01, Mother's Agenda

Sri Aurobindo

Live according to Nature, runs the maxim of the West; but according to what nature, the nature of the body or the nature which exceeds the body? This first we ought to determine.

O son of Immortality, live not thou according to Nature, but according to God; and compel her also to live according to the deity within thee.

The Mother

What does Sri Aurobindo mean here by “the nature which exceeds the body”?

The nature which exceeds the body is the nature which goes on living even after the disappearance of the body; it is the psychic nature which is immortal and divine in essence. The psychic can and must become conscious of the Divine at its centre and consciously unite with Him.

07 Aug 1969, Pg 242, Vol 10, CWM

In order to progress Nature destroys, while the Divine Consciousness stimulates growth and finally transforms.

Pg 12, Vol 15, CWM

There is nothing in this world which is not submitted to a direct action beyond Nature — but most of the men are unaware of it.

18 Sep 1967, Pg 09, Vol 15, CWM

Nature is only a limited expression of the Divine, whereas man was created to become the conscious expression of the Divine, with all the possibilities of power and light which that implies.

18 Nov 1969, Pg 271, Vol 10, CWM

The Divine alone can liberate us from the mechanism of universal Nature. And this liberation is indispensable for the birth and development of the new race.

01 Feb 1972, Pg 22, Vol 13, Mother's Agenda

(Someone asked whether chemical fertilisers and pesticides should be used in Auroville.)

NO, NO, NO.

Auroville should not fall back into old errors which belong to a past that is trying to revive.

Mar 1971, Pg 233, Vol 13, CWM

Cultivation without chemical fertilisers and dangerous insecticides is advisable.

Mar 1971, Pg 234, Vol 13, CWM