“What is the Divine?” But there could be a hundred good answers to this question. Also, to say that the Divine is simply unthinkable does not take one anywhere. What can help is to think that the Divine is all that we want to become in our highest, most luminous aspiration, all that we want to become. And it is much more than a mere thought; it is the contact of something identical in the being that matters. “As soon as this contact—this fusion—is obtained, even if only for a second, there is no longer any need to explain.” Each one has his own way of establishing that contact, the best that is in him helping him, that which is open in him. But the moment it is regarded that that is the only way of approaching the Divine, then we have religions, philosophies, dogmas, credos—battle. Indeed, the question “what is the Divine?” should not even arise—because there is spontaneously an answer. On the other hand, the question that could be asked is: Why does one want to know what the Divine is? What does it matter to one? One has only to become it. It is a “vastness, smiling and luminous.” Naturally men create difficulties for everything. And the body itself lives in the midst of difficulties; it also seems to like them! but “all of a sudden the cells sing out their OM ... spontaneously. There is the great Vibration, peaceful, all powerful.”

“Stapler is one of your greatest inventions,”—said a child about God. And another one: “I think about you even when I’m not praying.” The answer to the question “What is Divine?” is as simple as that!

24 May 1967

I was asked: “What is the Divine?” But there could be a hundred answers which would all be good, one as good as another. “The Divine is lived, but cannot be defined.” And then I added: “The Divine is the absolute of perfection, eternal source of all that exists, of whom we become conscious progressively, all the while being Himself from all eternity.”

Once someone told me also that the Divine was for him something simply unthinkable. So I answered him: “No! That does not help you. You have only to think that the Divine is all (at the maximum, yes), all that we want to become in our highest, most luminous aspiration. All that we want to become, that is the Divine.” He was so happy, he told me: “Oh! That way it becomes easy!”

But when you look—as you look coming out of the mental activity and as you look at the experience which you have—and you say to yourself: “How to say this? How to explain this?”, then what is nearest, most accessible is this: into this “something” which we aspire to become, we put instinctively, spontaneously, all that we wish to be, all that we conceive of as most wonderful, all that is the object of an intense aspiration (intense and ignorant), all that. ... Essentially, it is not by the thought that you have the contact; you have the contact through something identical in the being, which wakes up by the intensity of the aspiration. And then for oneself, as soon as this contact—this fusion—is obtained, even if only for a second, there is no longer any need to explain: it is something that imposes itself in an absolute way and that is outside and beyond all explanation.

But in order to reach there, each one puts into it whatever guides him most easily.

And when one has the experience, at the moment of this fusion, this joining, it becomes evident to the consciousness that only the identical can know the identical. It is a proof that It is there. And it is by the intensity of aspiration that this awakens. ...

And everyone—whoever was destined to make the joining—in his simplicity believes that the bridge he has followed is the only one. The result: religions, philosophies, dogmas, credos—battle.

Seen as a whole it is very interesting, very charming, with a Smile that looks out. Oh! this Smile... that looks out. This Smile, as though it were saying, “You make it so complicated and it could be so simple!”

To express it in a literary way, one might say: “Such complications for such a simple thing: to be oneself.”

What the Divine is? I have never put the question to myself. As soon as there was a need to know, there was spontaneously an answer, an answer, not with words which one debates, but something like that, a vibration. It is a thing almost constant now.

Naturally men create difficulties for everything, for the least thing there is always a world of difficulties. And the body itself lives in the midst of difficulties (it also seems to like them!), but all of a sudden the cells sing out their OM... spontaneously. And then it is as though a child’s joy in all these cells which say: “Ah yes! One is able to do that? One has the right to do that!” It is touching.

And the effect is immediate: this great Vibration, peaceful, all powerful.

As for me, if I was not under the constant pressure of all the wills around, I would say: “Why do you want to know what the Divine is? What does it matter to you? You have only to become it.” But they do not understand a joke. “You have no need to know: you have to become it.”

For them, I mean the vast intellectual majority, they cannot conceive that one can do or be something without knowing what it is.

That also, one might say if one likes the joke: “It is only when one does not know that one is most divine.”

For those who like definitions, there is another way of answering to “What is the Divine?”... “A vastness, smiling and luminous.” ...

Someone asks me: “And what is God?” It is about a text of Sri Aurobindo. Here it is: [The Synthesis of Yoga, Vol. 21, p. 523]

Love leads us from the suffering of division into the bliss of perfect union, but without losing that joy of the act of union which is the soul’s greatest discovery and for which the life of the cosmos is a long preparation. Therefore to approach God by love is to prepare oneself for the greatest possible spiritual fulfilment.

It is in the context of the last phrase that I am asked: “What is God?” Therefore I said (I took up the word “God”): “It is the name man has given to all that surpasses him and dominates him, all that he cannot know, but to which he submits.”

Instead of putting “to all that surpasses him”, one might put “to that which surpasses him”. There is a “something”—indefinable and inexplicable—and this something, man has always felt, dominates him. It transcends all possible understanding and it dominates him. And so the religions have given it a name; man has called him “God”.

They say: “God is unique.” But they feel it and they say it as Anatole France said it, I believe it is in the Révolte des Anges: “This God who wants to be the only one and all alone.” That is the thing which had made me completely atheist, if one might say so, in my childhood; I did not accept a being who declared himself to be unique and all-powerful, whoever he might be. Even if he was unique and all-powerful, he must not have the right to proclaim it! It was like this in my mind.

I gave what seemed to me the most objective definition. “What is the Divine?” I tried to give the impression of the Thing; here I wanted to fight against the use of the word, which for me is hollow, but dangerously hollow.