As He chooses, so He loses Himself in Ignorance, hides in limitations… knowing well that there can be and is but one result: Victory!

So, these ‘ends’ and ‘turns’… in Life, from which the Words and Meanings too cannot escape, being a very important part of our transactions, within and without… being an integral part of our interactions and intra-actions, leading to and through the experiences and realisations, – and expressions, – bit by bit. He only knows, of course, towards what end He drives and turns each and all, and thus the how and when and why, all along turning towards just one End: Himself, Itself, Herself… the Endless.

It is all along a ‘Return Journey’, this Life, which is in plural… ‘Lives’, of which, we, ordinary human beings are not conscious, having our hands full and overflowing with the current of all the ‘current’ and recurrent complexities and perplexities of our Nature, and paradoxically more so when we start becoming conscious of what a ‘Composition’ we are of the Divine…

Now, returning to this Return Journey, and the Words and the part they play: how can they too escape the necessity of expansion and evolution? How can they too not demand attention and a more conscious usage and application?

It goes back to those days… when we were being ‘brought up’ in and by the culture of ‘our birth’…

We were taught never to look for and at the price tag when someone gifted something. The practice was also to remove the price tag when gifting something. And then, almost as a commandment: never try to give, at least not immediately, something in return. The teaching was, basically: Never to have this movement, of this ‘disrespectful’ intent, of even trying, to return ‘materially’ someone’s feelings and love behind the gifting and the gift.

Then, came as a shock, this concept of “return gift”.… Was thought to be kind-of audacious and audacity! Of course, this concept and the tradition (sort of, though cannot be generalised), that has been set in motion, probably or in all likelihood has come into being well-meaningly. But to us, being rooted in the taught, however correct yet relative, our way seemed absolute and this, something deplorable…

Such is the play, and whatever may be the correct way, it is the Director, the Divine, ever holding the sway, giving that ever so gentle push, and of course not always so gentle… to return to the Truth, to Re-turn to the Truth, be it of the Being or of the Words, both and all Single-Sourced. The Eternal, leaves no stone unturned, to make this ‘Re-turn’ happen…, as He lives in the stones too!

Words are redefined, as are refined…: expand and enlarge, showing their limitlessness even in their limitation… Meanings change, end and turn new leaf. ‘Returns’ change, when sought are not returns… sought only to acknowledge and accept humbly the Gift and Re-turn the Gift to the One from Whom the Gift comes, that He may Fulfil it for which He has Given it.

“O Divine Master, grant that today may bring to us a completer consecration to Thy Will, a more integral gift of ourselves to Thy work, a more total forgetfulness of self, a greater illumination, a purer love. Grant that in a communion growing ever deeper, more constant and entire, we may be united always more and more closely to Thee and become Thy servitors worthy of Thee. Remove from us all egoism, root out all petty vanity, greed and obscurity. May we be all ablaze with Thy divine Love; make us Thy torches in the world.” (1)

Who else can? And who else knows for what the Gift has been given? It is the Giver who is the Fulfiller, all Rights His… all Might His…

“Our tasks are given, we are but instruments;

Nothing is all our own that we create:

The Power that acts in us is not our force.

The genius too receives from some high fount

Concealed in a supernal secrecy

The work that gives him an immortal name.

The word, the form, the charm, the glory and grace

Are missioned sparks from a stupendous Fire;

A sample from the laboratory of God

Of which he holds the patent upon earth,

Comes to him wrapped in golden coverings;

He listens for Inspiration’s postman knock

And takes delivery of the priceless gift

A little spoilt by the receiver mind

Or mixed with the manufacture of his brain;

When least defaced, then is it most divine.

Although his ego claims the world for its use,

Man is a dynamo for the cosmic work;

Nature does most in him, God the high rest:

Only his soul’s acceptance is his own.”

References

(1) The Mother. Prayers and Meditations, p. 37. This Part, of Prayers and Meditations of November 28, 1913, was translated by Sri Aurobindo or revised and published under his guidance.

(2) Sri Aurobindo. Savitri, p. 542.