Man seeks at first blindly and does not even know that he is seeking his divine Self; for he starts from the obscurity of material Nature and even when he begins to see, he is long blinded by the light that is increasing in him. God too answers obscurely to his search; He seeks and enjoys man's blindness like the hands of a little child that grope after its mother.

Death is the question Nature puts continually to Life and her reminder to it that it has not yet found itself. If there were no siege of death, the creature would be bound for ever in the form of an imperfect living. Pursued by death he awakes to the idea of perfect life and seeks out its means and its possibility.

Pain is the touch of our Mother teaching us how to bear and grow in rapture. She has three stages of her schooling.. endurance first, next equality of soul, last ecstasy.

Pain and grief are Nature's reminder to the soul that the pleasure it enjoys is only a feeble hint of the real delight of existence. In each pain and torture of our being is the secret of a flame of rapture compared with which our greatest pleasures are only as dim flickerings. It is this secret which forms the attraction for the soul of great ordeals, sufferings and fierce experiences of life which the nervous mind in us shuns and abhors.

When I see others suffer, I feel that I am unfortunate, but the wisdom that is not mine, sees the good that is coming and approves.

   
 Hatred is the sign of a secret attraction that is eager to flee from itself and furious to deny its own existence. That too is God's play in His creature.

This world was built by cruelty that she might love. Wilt thou abolish cruelty? Then love too will perish, but thou mayst tranfigure it into its opposite, into a fierce love and delightfulness.

God has opened my eyes; for I saw the nobility of the vulgar, the attractiveness of the repellent, the perfection of the maimed and the beauty of the hideous.

To feel and love the God of beauty and good in the ugly and the evil, and still yearn in utter love to heal it of its ugliness and its evil, this is real virtue and morality.

To hate the sinner is the worst sin, for it is hating God; yet he who commits it glories in his superior virtue.

I have forgotten what vice is and what virtue; I can only see God, His play in the world and His will in humanity.

Sin is that which was once in its place, persisting now it is out of place ; there is no other sinfulness.

                                         SRI AUROBINDO, Thoughts and Aphorisms