Offering

Offering

Compilation from the Collected Works of the Mother

Life must blossom like a flower offering itself to the Divine.

It is not by running away from the world that you will change it. It is by working there, modestly, humbly but with a fire in the heart, something that burns like an offering.

What is Offering?

Yoga means union with the Divine, and the union is effected through offering—it is founded on the offering of yourself to the Divine.

It means that what you do should not be done with a personal, egoistic aim, for success, for glory, for gain, for material profit or out of vanity, but as a service and an offering, in order to become more conscious of the divine will and to give oneself more entirely to it, until one has made enough progress to know and feel that it is the Divine who acts in you, His force that animates you and His will that supports you—not only a mental knowledge, but the sincerity of a state of consciousness and the power of a living experience.

Offering: the placing of your entire being, with all its movements true and false, good and bad, right and wrong, before the Divine for transformation.

Unconditional integral offering: the joy of offering oneself without asking for anything in return.

What do we offer?

Our Work, actions and skills

If while doing what you have to do—whatever it may be, whatever work it is—if you do it and while doing it are careful not to forget the Divine, to offer to Him what you do and try so to give yourself to Him that He may change all your reactions—instead of their being selfish, petty, stupid and ignorant, making them luminous, generous—then in that way you will make progress. Not only will you have made some progress but you will have helped in the general progress.

You must do the work as an offering to the Divine and take it as part of your Sadhana. In that spirit the nature of the work is of little importance and you can do any work without losing the contact with the inner presence.

Do work as sadhana. You offer to the Divine the work you do to the best of your capacities and you leave the result to the Divine.

Whatever is our work and whatever we do, we must do it sincerely, honestly, scrupulously, not in view of any personal profit, but as an offering to the Divine, with an entire consecration of our being. If this attitude is sincerely kept in all circumstances, whenever we need to learn something to do the work more effectively, the occasion to acquire this knowledge comes to us and we have only to take advantage of the opportunity.

Education is a sacerdocy, teaching is a sacerdocy, and to be at the head of a State is a sacerdocy. Then, if the person who fulfils this role aspires to fulfil it in the highest and the most true way, the general condition of the world can become much better. Unfortunately, most people never think about this at all, they fill their role somehow—not to speak of the innumerable people who work only to earn money, but in this case their activity is altogether rotten, naturally. That was my very first basis in forming the Ashram: that the work done here be an offering to the Divine.

...one must do all one can, as well as possible, and do it as an offering to the Divine...

We know, we have said this many a time, that all work is a prayer made with the body and that the true attitude in work is an offering to the Divine.

That is what I always tell people in other words: whatever work you do―whether you go to an office, keep accounts, drive a car, anything―whatever the work you do, and naturally whomever you do it for, it must be an offering to the Divine. While doing it, you should keep the remembrance of the Divine and do it as an expression of your consecration to the Divine. This is what Sri Aurobindo says, nothing else.

...all works are done not for a personal profit but as an offering of love, for here the only power we can dispose of is the power of love...

A spontaneous act, done because one cannot do otherwise, and done as an offering of goodwill, is the only one which truly has any value.

What better offering can we make to the Divine, than to offer the skill of our growing bodies? (Written for children)

Our Tears

Some days ago I had known it, I had heard: "If thou canst weep without restraint or disguise before Me, many things will change, a great victory will be won." And that is why when the tears rose from my heart to my eyes, I came and sat before Thee to let them flow as an offering, devotedly. And how sweet and comforting was the offering!

Our Food

When eating one aspires that this food may not be taken for the little human ego but as an offering to the divine consciousness within oneself. In all yogas, all religions, this is encouraged. This is the origin of that practice, of contacting the consciousness behind, precisely to diminish as much as possible the absorption of an inconscience which increases daily, constantly, without one's being aware of it.

...to offer to the Divine what one was going to eat before eating it (Mother makes a gesture of offering, hands joined, palms open). It consists in calling the Divine down into the food before eating it. One offers it to Him—that is, one puts it in contact with the Divine, so that it may be under the divine influence when one eats it. It is very useful, it is very good.

Our Will

You have a will and you can offer that will. Take the example of becoming conscious of your nights. If you take the attitude of passive surrender, you would say, "When it is the Divine Will that I should become conscious, then I shall become conscious." On the other hand, if you offer your will to the Divine, you begin to will, you say, "I will become conscious of my nights." You have the will that it should be done; you do not sit down idle and wait. The surrender comes in when you take the attitude that says, "I give my will to the Divine. I intensely want to become conscious of my nights, I have not the knowledge, let the Divine Will work it out for me."

Let us offer our will to the Divine Grace; it is the Grace that accomplishes all.

Our Body

...this body in all its totality may draw near to Thee solemnly and offer to Thee in a complete and humble surrender this means of manifestation abandoned perfectly to Thy Will, if not perfectly ready for this realisation....

Instead of being upset and struggling, the best thing to do is to offer one's body to the Divine with the sincere prayer, "Let Thy Will be done." If there is any possibility of cure, it will establish the best conditions for it; and if cure is impossible, it will be the very best preparation for getting out of the body and the life without it.

Our Energy

Energy is in perpetual movement. It enters and leaves your physical being (mental, vital and material) and it is during your stay in what you call "you" that you must make of it an offering to the Divine and put it at His service. Inner demons and weaknesses ...to the extent one discovers this (dark corners) within oneself and says sincerely, "It must change", one finds that one acquires a sort of inner clear-sightedness, one gradually becomes aware of what goes on in others, and instead of flying into a temper when they are not quite what one would like them to be, one begins to understand how things happen, how it is that one is "like this", how reactions are produced.... Then, with the indulgence of knowledge, one smiles. One no longer judges severely, one offers the difficulty in oneself or in others, whatever may be its centre of manifestation, to the divine Consciousness, asking for its transformation.

All weaknesses, all responses to adverse suggestions (I mean the smallest things of every minute in the cells), are taken in the same movement of offering (and these come sometimes in waves, to such an extent that the body feels it will swoon before this assault), and then comes a light, so warm, so deep, so powerful, which puts everything back in order, in its place, and opens the way to transformation.

...If you come allowing all the bad movements to rise to the surface, to show themselves; if you offer them, if you say, "Well, this is how I am", and if at the same time you have the aspiration to be different, then this second of presence is extremely useful; you can, yes, in a few seconds receive the help you need to get rid of them; while if you come like a little saint and go away content, without having received anything, it is not very useful.

To give the best one has is very fine and is much appreciated; but to give the worst one has is much more useful; and perhaps this offering is even more appreciated—on condition that it is given in order to get rid of it, not to take it back afterwards!

Do not try to appear virtuous. See how much you are united, one with everything that is anti-divine. Take your share of the burden, accept yourselves to be impure and false and in that way you will be able to take up the Shadow and offer it. And in so far as you are capable of taking it and offering it, then things will change.

And this corresponds to a state in which one is so perfectly identified with all that is, that one becomes all that is anti-divine in a concrete way, and that one can offer it—one can offer it and truly transform it by offering it.

Let us offer our falsehood to the Divine so that He may change it to joyous Truth.

Whereas if one generously makes an offering of one's defect, vice or bad habit, then one has the joy of making an offering and one receives in exchange the force to replace what has been given, by a better and truer vibration.

Ego & likes and dislikes

Let us make a complete offering of this ego with all its desires to the Divine, let us be confident and wait for the liberation that is sure to come.

For example, you go to your class. If you are not in a very good mood, you say, "Oh, how tedious it is going to be!" Supposing it is a professor who does not know how to entertain you (one can be a very good professor without knowing how to amuse you, for it is not always easy... there are days when one does not like to be amusing), one would like to be somewhere else rather than at the school. Still, you go to your class, in that way, you go because you have to go, for if you go about according to your whims, you will never have control over yourself, it will be your whims that will control you, it won't be you who will control yourself. You go to your class. But then, on your way there, instead of saying, "Oh, how bored I am going to be, oh, dear! it is not going to be at all interesting", etc., if you say, "There is not a minute in life, there is not a circumstance in one's existence that cannot bring an opportunity for progress; what then is the progress that I am going to make today?... I offer all my little person to the Divine. I want it to be a good instrument for Him to express Himself, that I may be ready one day for the transformation. What am I going to do today? I am going to that class, it is a subject that does not enthuse me; but if I do not know how to take interest in this work, it is perhaps because there is something lacking in me, because somewhere in my brain some cells are missing. But then, if that is so, I am going to try to find out; I am going to listen properly, concentrate properly and above all drive away from my mind this kind of frivolity, this outward levity which makes me feel bored when there's something I do not grasp. Why do I get bored?... Because I do not progress." When one does not progress, one gets bored—old and young, everybody—because we are here upon earth to progress. If we do not progress every minute, well, it is indeed boring, monotonous; it is not always pleasant, it is far from being fine. "So I am going to find out today what progress I can make in this class; there is something I do not know and which I can learn."

Daily actions

We make an offering of all our daily actions. "Here we are with our whole day's activities, we were busy with our body, here it is, we offer to you all our movements, just as they were, just as we are."

Every Small Detail of Life

In the integral Yoga, the integral life down even to the smallest detail has to be transformed, to be divinised. There is nothing here that is insignificant, nothing that is indifferent. You cannot say, "When I am meditating, reading philosophy or listening to these conversations I will be in this condition of an opening towards the Light and call for it, but when I go out to walk or see friends I can allow myself to forget all about it."

Limit not sacrifice to the giving up of earthly goods or the denial of some desires and yearnings, but let every thought and every work and every enjoyment be an offering to God within thee. Let thy steps walk in thy Lord, let thy sleep and waking be a sacrifice to Krishna.

Money

All money that comes here must be an offering.

...money which is an altogether impersonal force: money has no colour, no taste, no psychological consciousness. It is a force. It is like saying that the air breathed out by a scoundrel is more tainted than that breathed out by an honest man—I don't think so. I think the result is the same. One may for reasons of a practical nature refuse money which has been stolen, but that is for altogether practical reasons, it is not because of divine reasons. … if one knows that a man has acquired money by the most unnamable means, obviously, it would not be good to go and ask him for money for some divine work, because that would be like "rehabilitating" his way of gaining money. One cannot ask, that is not possible. If, spontaneously, for some reason, he gives it, there is no reason to refuse it.

Well-developed Instruments

For us who want to...make It (Supreme Reality) descend into life and transform the world, if we offer to this Reality instruments which are refined, rich, developed, fully conscious, the work of transformation will be more effective.

All of our Being

O divine Master, accept the offering of all myself.

All the being is gathered into a well-tied sheaf made of various but harmonised flowers. The will was the hand that gathered the flowers and the tie that bound the sheaf and it is the will that now holds it out to Thee like a scented offering. To Thee it is held out unweariedly, without faltering.

if you truly want to receive the divine Light and transform yourself, it is your whole way of being you must offer—offer by opening it, making it as receptive as possible so that the divine Consciousness which sees how you ought to be, may act directly and change all these movements into movements more true, more in keeping with your real truth. This is infinitely more important than surrendering what one does.

(In short) To do something for the Lord is to give Him something of what one has, or of what one does, or of what one is. That is to say, to offer to Him one part of our goods or all of our possessions, to consecrate to Him one part of our work or all our activities, or to give ourselves to Him totally and without reserve so that He may take possession of our nature in order to transform and divinise it.

Who do we offer to?

The Divine

It means an offering...not to the ego or desire but to the Divine, who is behind all action.

The only offering that truly enriches is the one made to the Divine.

To live for the Divine means to offer all that one does to the Divine without desiring a personal result from what one does. Certainly at the beginning, when the Divine is only a word or at most an idea and not an experience, the whole thing remains purely mental. But if one makes a sincere and repeated effort, one day the experience comes and one feels that the offering made is made to something real, tangible, concrete and beneficent. The more sincere and assiduous one is, the sooner the experience comes and the longer it remains.

all we offer, we necessarily offer to the Supreme, because He is the sole Reality behind everything.

Perfection

Let us offer our efforts towards perfection...

Nation soul

Just as each individual has a psychic being which is his true self and which governs his destiny more or less overtly, so too each nation has a psychic being which is its true being and moulds its destiny from behind the veil: it is the soul of the country, the national genius, the spirit of the people, the centre of national aspiration, the fountainhead of all that is beautiful, noble, great and generous in the life of the country. True patriots feel its presence as a tangible reality. In India it has been made into an almost divine entity, and all who truly love their country call it "Mother India" (Bharat Mata) and offer her a daily prayer for the welfare of their country. It is she who symbolises and embodies the true ideal of the country, its true mission in the world.

Heart Centre

...pull up the sensation and offer it in the heart centre.

When to Offer?

Morning & night

...as an initial help to set you on the path, I can tell you: (1) that on getting up, before starting the day, it is good to make an offering of this day to the Divine, an offering of all that one thinks, all that one is, all that one will do; (2) and at night, before going to sleep, it is good to review the day, taking note of all the times one has forgotten or neglected to make an offering of one's self or one's action, and to aspire or pray that these lapses do not recur.

Every moment

...the least detail of life and action, each movement of thought, even of sensation, of feeling, which is normally of little importance, becomes different the moment you look at it asking yourself, "Did I think this as an offering to the Divine, did I feel this as an offering to the Divine?..." If you recall this every moment of your life, the attitude becomes quite different from what it was before. It becomes very wide; it is a chain of innumerable little things each having its own place, whilst formerly you used to let them go by without being aware of them. That widens the field of consciousness. If you take a half-hour of your life and think of it, putting to yourself this question: "Is it a consecration to the Divine?" you will see that the small things become a big thing and you will have the impression that life becomes rich and luminous. Offering and Related Terms

Cautionary note before defining related terms

if one wants to split hairs, as it is said—one can make a distinction between self-giving, consecration and offering. These are three... they may be three different phases. But that is if truly one wants to create complications; because in writing, as I said, one can very well use one word in place of another, according to the rhythm of the sentence, and this keeps the meaning intact. For if you want to make a distinction, you are immediately obliged to put adjectives, aren't you?... Take the word in itself, "self-giving, offering, consecration".... Now, if you want to make a distinction, you say "a total consecration", "a partial self-giving".... You see, you are obliged to use adjectives: they are synonyms.

Surrender

The two words (surrender & offering) are almost synonymous: "I make the offering of myself and I surrender myself", but in the gesture of offering there is something more active than in the gesture of surrender. Unfortunately, soumission, in French, is not the true word; in English we use "surrender"; between the words "surrender" and "offering" there is hardly any difference. But the French word "soumission" gives the impression of something more passive: you accept, while offering is a giving—a voluntary giving.

Are not offering and surrender to the Divine the same thing? They are two aspects of the same thing, but not altogether the same. One is more active than the other. They do not belong to quite the same plane of existence. For example, you have decided to offer your life to the Divine, you take that decision. But all of a sudden, something altogether unpleasant, unexpected happens to you and your first movement is to react and protest. Yet you have made the offering, you have said once for all: "My life belongs to the Divine", and then suddenly an extremely unpleasant incident happens (that can happen) and there is something in you that reacts, that does not want it. But here, if you want to be truly logical with your offering, you must bring forward this unpleasant incident, make an offering of it to the Divine, telling him very sincerely: "Let Your will be done; if You have decided it that way, it will be that way." And this must be a willing and spontaneous adhesion. So it is very difficult.

Even for the smallest thing, something that is not in keeping with what you expected, what you have worked for, instead of an opposite reaction coming in—spontaneously, irresistibly, you draw back: "No, not that"—if you have made a complete surrender, a total surrender, well, it does not happen like that: you are as quiet, as peaceful, as calm in one case as in the other. And perhaps you had the notion that it would be better if it happened in a certain way, but if it happens differently, you find that this also is all right.

Does Offering imply Surrender?

Not at all. You can give for the joy of giving, without any idea of surrender. In a movement of enthusiasm, when you have glimpsed something infinitely higher than yourself, you can give yourself in an élan, but when it is a question of living that every minute, of surrendering oneself every minute to the higher Will and when every minute requires this surrender, it is more difficult. But if by "offering" you mean the integral offering of all your movements, all your activities, that is equivalent to surrender, without implying it necessarily. But then it is no longer a movement made in enthusiasm, it is something which has to be realised in detail. One may say that any movement made in ardour and enthusiasm is relatively easy (that depends upon the intensity of the movement in you), but when it is a question of realising one's aspiration every minute of one's life and in all its details, the enthusiasm recedes a little and one feels the difficulty.

Identification is the goal of Yoga. Can one say that surrender is the first step and offering the second? No, some begin with an offering and end with surrender. It depends upon the character of each one. You may perhaps begin by having a feeling of inferiority—you are a little crushed by the grandeur of the Divine, and then you feel a little freer and give with joy what you are. This is not always so. Many begin by self-giving; for them the easiest movement is to give themselves. In the beginning the giving is a little indefinite, then one has to make an effort at times to surrender in detail; you can give yourself with much enthusiasm, but when at every step you have to submit to the higher Will, the thing becomes more difficult.

Consecration

"Consecration" generally has a more mystical sense but this is not absolute. A total consecration signifies a total giving of one's self; hence it is the equivalent of the word "surrender", not of the word soumission which always gives the impression that one "accepts" passively. You feel a flame in the word "consecration", a flame even greater than in the word "offering". To consecrate oneself is "to give oneself to an action"; hence, in the yogic sense, it is to give oneself to some divine work with the idea of accomplishing the divine work.

Collective Offering

From the beginning of human history, it is known that certain groups of people would meet to express a certain common state of soul: some to sing together the praise of God, hymns, thanksgiving, to express adoration, thankfulness, gratitude, and to praise God; others—and there are historical examples of this—a certain number of people gathered together for a common invocation, for instance, to ask God for something, and this was done all together, united, in the hope that this invocation, this prayer, this asking would carry more weight. There have been some very famous instances. A very old one occurred in 1000 A.D. when some prophets had announced that it was the end of the world and everywhere people gathered together to offer common prayers and ask that the world may not come to an end (!) or anyway, for it to be protected. Much more recently, in modern times, when King George of England was dying of pneumonia, people assembled in England, not only in the churches but even in the streets in front of the royal palace, to offer prayers and ask God to cure him. It so happened that he recovered, and they believed that it was their prayers.... That is, of course, the most external form, I could say the most worldly, of group meditation.

Why is Offering Important?

To help Humanity

I see only one solution: if you want to help humanity, there is only one thing to do, it is to take yourself as completely as possible and offer yourself to the Divine. That is the solution. Because in this way, at least the material reality which you represent will be able to grow a little more like the Divine.

Development, Progress and its joy

It is in work done as an offering to the Divine that the consciousness develops best.

Let us offer our work to the Divine; this is the sure means of progressing.

Consciousness develops best through work done as an offering to the Divine.

Exactly, when the difficulty is egoistic or personal, if one makes an offering of it and throws it into the fire of purification, one immediately feels the joy of progress. If one does it sincerely, at once there is a welling up of joy. To work without getting tired The best way to work without getting tired is to offer the work you do (whatever work it is) to the Divine and to find in the Divine the support you need—for the Divine's Force is inexhaustible and He answers always to whatever offer is made to Him sincerely.

We offer because all belong to the Lord

All is Thine, O Lord, it is Thou who placest all things at our disposal; but how blind we are when we imagine that we can be owners of any one of these! I am a visitor here as elsewhere, as everywhere, Thy messenger and Thy servant upon earth, a stranger among men, and yet the very soul of their life, the love of their heart.... Offering Turns Struggle into Fortune But all this, which was a struggle, a turmoil, a perpetual effort, has become through the sovereign grace of Thy conscious Presence, a priceless fortune which the being rejoices to offer as its gift to Thee. The purifying flame of Thy illumination has turned it into jewels of price laid down as a living holocaust on the alter of my heart. It is an alternative to Meditation It (Traditional meditation) is not necessary if your work is a constant offering to the Divine.

To overcome obstacles

O my sweet Master, my being is ablaze with the ardent flame of the sacrifice of love: accept my offering that the obstacle may be overcome. To accomplish the work of the Divine O divine Master, accept the offering of all myself as a holocaust that Thy work may be accomplished and the time may not pass by in vain.

Realisation

Integral offering: the surest road to realisation. To make our bodies means of manifestation O sovereign Force, O victorious Power, Purity, Beauty, supreme Love, grant that this being in its integrality, this body in all its totality may draw near to Thee solemnly and offer to Thee in a complete and humble surrender this means of manifestation abandoned perfectly to Thy Will, if not perfectly ready for this realisation....

Total Safety

When one gives oneself, when one surrenders, entrusts oneself entirely to That which is above, beyond all creation, and when, instead of seeking any personal advantage from the experience, one makes an offering of it to the divine Grace and knows that it is from This that the experience comes and that it is to This that the result of the experience must be given back, then one is quite safe.

An indomitable courage, a perfect sincerity, a total self-giving to the extent that you do not calculate or bargain, you do not give with the idea of receiving, you do not offer yourself with the intention of being protected, you do not have a faith that needs proofs,—this is indispensable for advancing on the path,—this alone can shelter you against all dangers.

All shall be for good

...once you are poised in the psychic and have made your self-offering to the Divine, all that happens will happen for the best, for everything, however disguised, will be a definite divine response to you. Delight I think it would be better to say that there is a certain state of consciousness—which one can acquire by aspiration and a persistent inner effort—in which joy is unmixed and light shadowless, where all possibility of fear disappears. It is the state in which one does not live for oneself but where whatever one does, whatever one feels, all movements are an offering made to the Supreme, in an absolute trust, freeing oneself of all responsibility for oneself, handing over to Him all this burden which is no longer a burden.

if this is done with a sincere self-giving—something that gives itself, offers itself and expects nothing in exchange for its offering—one will feel that kind of sweet warmth, comfortable, intimate, radiant, which fills the heart and is the herald of Delight.

Cautionary note on offering for delight

And this discipline I spoke about, which one must undergo, if it is practised with the aim of finding Delight, the result is delayed, for an egoistic element is introduced into it, it is done with an aim and is no longer an offering, it is a demand, and then.... It comes, it will come, even if it takes much longer—when one asks nothing, expects nothing, hopes for nothing, when it is simply that, it is self-giving and aspiration, and the spontaneous need without any bargaining—the need to be divine, that's all.

To receive Force and Light

And my (The Mother’s i.e. the Universal Power’s) work is to...in answer to this offering (which each one can make in his own way), to open every consciousness, widen the receptivity, make a unity of this receptivity and bring down the Force.

Offer sincerely to the Divine your obscurities and you will be able to receive the light.

To be able to do Difficult Things

... if you are doing something difficult, call me, call me. (The Mother) No, not in order to come first or gain a victory, but so that nothing unpleasant happen to you. Call me so that things may go as well as possible, not for showing off but for the joy of doing well. And you may also call in order to do the thing as an offering, and then it becomes very good.

How to Offer?

Through adoration

...the whole being lifted up in a great surge of adoration, and gathering all its memories like an abundant harvest, it placed them at Thy feet, O Lord, as an offering.

“In a silent contemplation, in a mute adoration, uniting myself with all this dark and painful substance, I hail Thee, O Lord, as the divine saviour; I bless Thy love as the supreme liberator, I offer thanks for its countless boons, and I give myself fully to Thee so that Thou mayst complete Thy work of perfectioning. Then identifying myself with Thy love, I am nothing but Thy inexhaustible love; I penetrate all things; living within the heart of each atom I kindle therein the fire which purifies and transfigures, the fire that never burns out, the messenger flame of Thy beatitudes, realiser of all perfections.”

Through Right Attitude

In all pursuits, intellectual or active, your one motto should be, "Remember and Offer." Let whatever you do be done as an offering to the Divine. And this too will be an excellent discipline for you; it will prevent you from doing many foolish and useless things.

All is in the spirit of the offering....

Through Unifying Your Being

"Here I am, a creature of various qualities, good and bad, dark and enlightened. I offer myself as I am to you, take me up with all my ups and downs, conflicting impulses and tendencies—do whatever you like with me." In the course of your self-offering, you start unifying your being around what has taken the first decision—the central psychic will. All the jarring elements of your nature have to be harmonised, they have to be taken up one after another and unified with the central being. You may offer yourself to the Divine with a spontaneous movement, but it is not possible to give yourself effectively without this unification. The more you are unified, the more you are able to realise self-giving. And once the self-giving is complete, consecration follows: it is the crown of the whole process of realisation, the last step of the gradation, after which there is no more trouble and everything runs smoothly. 

Detailed offerings

In the beginning you start by making this offering in a general way, as though once for all; you say, "I am the servant of the Divine; my life is given absolutely to the Divine; all my efforts are for the realisation of the Divine Life." But that is only the first step; for this is not sufficient. When the resolution has been taken, when you have decided that the whole of your life shall be given to the Divine, you have still at every moment to remember it and carry it out in all the details of your existence. You must feel at every step that you belong to the Divine; you must have the constant experience that, in whatever you think or do, it is always the Divine Consciousness that is acting through you. You have no longer anything that you can call your own; you feel everything as coming from the Divine, and you have to offer it back to its source. When you can realise that, then even the smallest thing to which you do not usually pay much attention or care, ceases to be trivial and insignificant; it becomes full of meaning and it opens up a vast horizon beyond.

This is what you have to do to carry out your general offering in detailed offerings. Live constantly in the presence of the Divine; live in the feeling that it is this presence which moves you and is doing everything you do. Offer all your movements to it, not only every mental action, every thought and feeling but even the most ordinary and external actions such as eating; when you eat, you must feel that it is the Divine who is eating through you. When you can thus gather all your movements into the One Life, then you have in you unity instead of division. No longer is one part of your nature given to the Divine, while the rest remains in its ordinary ways, engrossed in ordinary things; your entire life is taken up, an integral transformation is gradually realised in you.

Offering Each Part of One’s Being

You must first begin by distinguishing between the different parts of your being, and then, when you can distinguish them clearly, you offer them one by one. Helpful Aids in the Process of Offering

Divine Grace

The complete consecration is undoubtedly not an easy matter, and it might take an almost indefinitely long time if you had to do it all by yourself, by your own independent effort. But when the Divine's Grace is with you it is not exactly like that. With a little push from the Divine now and then, a little push in this direction and in that, the work becomes comparatively quite easy. Resolution Of course the length of time (for complete consecration) depends on each individual, but it can be very much shortened if you make a really firm resolve. Resolution is the one thing required—resolution is the master-key.

Be Quiet

Be quiet and offer yourself calmly and confidently.

Complete Giving

I am going to give you quite a concrete and material example. You make an offering of your purse; it contains three rupees. Your neighbour offers his purse which contains fifty. Well, the gift of fifty rupees is larger than the gift of three. That's all.

But, from the moral point of view, if you have given all that you have, you have done the utmost you could have done, nothing more can be asked of you; you understand, from the moral point of view, from the pure spiritual point of view, not from the point of view of realisation. From the purely spiritual point of view the gift of your three rupees has exactly the same value as the gift of fifty. And even he who gave fifty rupees, if he has kept back one, his gift is less integral and pure than yours of only three.

Will

Your will must continue to act steadily, not in the way of choosing a particular action or demanding a particular object, but as an ardent aspiration concentrated upon the end to be achieved. This is the first step. If you are vigilant, if your attention is alert, you will certainly receive something in the form of an inspiration of what is to be done and that you must forthwith proceed to do. Only, you must remember that to surrender is to accept whatever is the result of your action, though the result may be quite different from what you expect. On the other hand, if your surrender is passive, you will do nothing and try nothing; you will simply go to sleep and wait for a miracle. Aspiration

You aspire for a certain state; for instance, you have found something in yourself that is not in keeping with your ideal, a movement of darkness and ignorance, perhaps even of ill-will, something that's not in harmony with what you want to realise; then that is not going to be formulated in words; that will be like a springing flame and like an offering made of a living experience, asking to grow larger, be magnified and ever more and more clear and precise.

Sincerity

Whatever is the nature of the offering, when it is made with sincerity it always contains a spark of divine light which can grow into a full sun and illuminate the whole being. You can be sure of my love, you can be sure of my help, and our blessings are always with you.

The simplest and most effective way is to offer it to the Divine; the more sincere and radical this offering is, the more quickly the result will come.

When I say, "If you are sincere, you are sure of victory", I mean true sincerity: to be constantly the true flame that burns like an offering. That intense joy of existing only by the Divine and for the Divine and feeling that without Him nothing exists, that life has no longer any meaning, nothing has any purpose, nothing has any value, nothing has any interest, unless it is this call, this aspiration, this opening to the supreme Truth, to all that we call the Divine (because you must use some word or other), the only reason for the existence of the universe. Remove that and everything disappears. Receptivity What is asked here is a receptive offering, not of the body or the mind or the vital, of a piece of your being, but of your entire being. No other thing is asked of you, only to open yourself; the rest of the work I undertake.

Spontaneous Surrender

You might have, for example, worked very hard to do a certain thing, so that something might happen, you might have given much time, much of your energy, much of your will, and all that not for your own sake, but, say, for the divine work (that is the offering); now suppose that after having taken all this trouble, done all this work, made all these efforts, it all goes just the other way round, it does not succeed. If you are truly surrendered, you say: "It is good, it is all good, it is all right; I did what I could, as well as I could, now it is not my decision, it is the decision of the Divine, I accept entirely what He decides." On the other hand, if you do not have this deep and spontaneous surrender, you tell yourself: "How is it? I took so much trouble to do a thing which is not for a selfish purpose, which is for the Divine Work, and this is the result, it is not successful!" Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it is like that.

Individualisation

First one must become a conscious, well-knit, individualised being, who exists in himself, by himself, independently of all his surroundings, who can hear anything, read anything, see anything without changing. He receives from outside only what he wants to receive; he automatically refuses all that is not in conformity with his plan and nothing can leave an imprint on him unless he agrees to receive the imprint. Then one begins to become an individuality! When one is an individuality, one can make an offering of it.

Flowers

When, therefore, you offer flowers to me their condition is almost always an index to yours. There are persons who never succeed in bringing a fresh flower to me—even if the flower is fresh it becomes limp in their hands. Others, however, always bring fresh flowers and even revitalise drooping ones. If your aspiration is strong your flower-offerings will be fresh.

In some countries (particularly here) certain plants are used as the media for worship, offering, devotion. Certain plants are given on special occasions. And I have often seen that this identification was quite in keeping with the nature of the plant, because spontaneously, without knowing anything, I happened to give the same meaning as that given in religious ceremonies. The vibration was really there in the flower itself....

How to Offer One’s Will?

How to offer one's will to the Divine when one does not know what the divine Will is? This is a very interesting problem. … Perhaps you could first silence your will and wait for the inner voice before acting! That would be wiser. You see, we have already found many ways of offering our will to the Divine: first, not to will any longer! Second, do what everybody wants except oneself! Third, want no matter what and do no matter what, then, afterwards, offer to the Divine what one has done! But one can also formulate to oneself one's will and try to pass it before the screen of one's higher ideal, and see what it looks like in front of this ideal, whether it cuts a fine figure or not. If it vacillates, you may be sure there is something there to check up. If, on the other hand, it passes very quietly and without protest, you may risk doing what you wanted and see the result. But here too we are before a very difficult problem.... Those who wish to remain in an inner peace say that everything that happens is the will of God—this is very convenient for being quiet, it is the best way, there is no better; if there is a better way, it is much more difficult. So, if your will is contradicted, you say it is the will of God; you are quiet, you have done what you could and the result is different from what you expected, and you are in peace. (Note that this is not very easy; it is so far quite good, but this is not all.) But it may also be quite possible that your will was contradicted by circumstances and yet it was right. Then the solution is much more difficult. First, how to know that it was right?... If you are quite impartial, quiet, peaceful, and as little egoistic as possible, if you look straight in the face at what has happened and see a sort of contradiction, the impression that a light has gone out and you are in the presence of a falsehood, you remain quite calm, but you see and understand that your will has been contradicted for some unknown reason, though in itself it was not false, that what you had seen was the truth but it did not manifest itself for some reason or other. So you must start on the adventure of discovering the reason why your truth did not manifest itself. This is a problem a little more difficult... but if you expand your vision sufficiently, both in height and wideness, you can immediately see the consequences your will would have had if it had been realised, and the consequences of what would have happened; and if you fling your view far enough, you will be able to see that your will, however true it was, was a partial truth—it was not a collective, general truth, and still less a universal one—and, consequently, if this truth had been realised at that moment, it would have dislocated a certain ensemble and many things which form a part of the divine Work (for everything, in fact, is a part of the divine Work, the entire creation, the entire universe): one part of the whole would have been left behind. People always ask, "But if the Divine is all-powerful, why is it that things have not yet changed?" This is the reason why. And mark that your idea of what ought to be is so infinitely far off from what will be, that, by this very fact, even if you try to see in the most complete way possible, you will leave behind such a large portion of the universe that it will be almost a linear realisation, and in any case so small, so narrow, that the greater part of the universe will remain unchanged. And even if you have a very vast view of the whole, even if you can conceive of something more total and you go ahead on the path which is ready—for it is with paths as it is with beings, some are ready—without having the patience to wait for others, that is, if you wish to realise something very close to the true Truth in comparison with the present state of the world, what will happen?—the dislocation of a certain unity, a rupture not only of harmony but of equilibrium, for there will be an entire part of the creation which will not be able to follow. And instead of a complete realisation of the Divine, you will have a small localised realisation, infinitesimal, and nothing will be done of what finally ought to be done. Consequently, you should not be impatient, should not be disappointed, depressed, discouraged if the truth you have seen is not immediately realised. Naturally, it is not a question of being down-hearted or grieved or in despair if you have made a mistake, for every mistake can be corrected; from the moment you have found it is a mistake, there is an opportunity to work within you, to make progress and be very happy! But the situation is much more serious and more difficult to overcome when you have seen something true, absolutely, essentially true, and the state of the universe is such that this truth is not yet ripe for realisation. I do not say this happens to many people, but perhaps it may happen to you, and it is then you have to have a great patience, a great understanding, and say to yourself, "It was true, but it was not completely true", that is, it was not a truth in keeping with all the other truths and, above all, not in keeping with the present possibilities; so we tried to realise it too quickly, and because we tried to be too quick it was belied. But do not say it was false because it was belied; say it was premature, that is all you can say—what you saw was true, but it was premature, and you must, with much patience and perseverance, keep your little truth intact for the moment when it will be possible to realise it. The final victory is for the most patient.

Obstacles to be aware of while offering

Prematurely thinking that one can integrally consecrate at once ...you must not forget that you cannot become integrally consecrated at once. You are often deluded into such a belief when, for a day or two, you have a strong movement of a particular kind. You are led to hope that everything else will automatically follow in its wake; but in fact if you become the least bit self-complacent you retard your own advance. For your being is full of innumerable tendencies at war with one another—almost different personalities, we may say. When one of them gives itself to the Divine, the others come up and refuse their allegiance. "We have not given ourselves," they cry, and start clamouring for their independence and expression. Then you bid them be quiet and show them the Truth. Patiently you have to go round your whole being, exploring each nook and corner, facing all those anarchic elements in you which are waiting for their psychological moment to come up. And it is only when you have made the entire round of your mental, vital and physical nature, persuaded everything to give itself to the Divine and thus achieved an absolute unified consecration that you put an end to your difficulties. Then indeed yours is a glorious walk towards transformation, for you no longer go from darkness to knowledge but from knowledge to knowledge, light to light, happiness to happiness....

Vanity

If you remember what you have given to the Divine, He will have no need of remembering it Himself; and if you ever mention the gift or speak of it to anybody, it is not to the Divine that you have made the offering but to the demon of your vanity. Giving off excess and calling it offering To give to the Divine what one has in excess is not an offering.

Offering to obtain merit

Whatever the sacrifices and oblations a man in this world may offer throughout a whole year in order to acquire merit, that is not worth even a quarter of the homage offered to a just man.

Offering Lords of Falsehood

One of the commonest demands of the vital is for praise. It hates to be criticised and treated as if it were of little importance...each movement of self-satisfaction is an offering at the altar of the lords of falsehood.

Offering as a Painful Sacrifice

Surrender has no value if it is painful, if it is a sacrifice. Surrender must be truly a joyous offering (I am using the word soumission in the sense of surrender, but it is not quite surrender—surrender is between soumission and abandon). One gives up something, surrenders oneself, but without sacrifice.

Need for Acknowledgement

All this work which you have done, which has taken almost a year, all these efforts you have made, all the difficulties you have overcome, all this you have done as an offering to the divine Work, you see, with all your sincerity and goodwill, the best of your ability and a complete good-heartedness. Yes, you have put into it all that you could, you have succeeded to a certain extent, in any case you have done things as well as you could. Then "this" added with a smile which, indeed, was a little impish: "What is it to you whether a few stupid fools see what you have done or not? Now you have done the work, you have accomplished it, you have shown what you could do. What is it to you whether a few foolish spectators see it or not?" It was clear, you see. I am expressing it; in expressing it I take away something from it. It was a state of consciousness, and then, indeed, it troubled me a little, because... trouble! that's a way of speaking... I told myself: "Heavens! If it is like that after all, we can't be sure that the rain will stop. For if truly it is of no importance that some thousand odd people should see what we have done, if our offering has been accepted as an offering made as well as possible and with all our heart, the attitude is not to be anxious about the result—we do not care for the result. Then, perhaps, the rain will continue."

Desire

It is a soul of human or Titanic desire clinging to the garish colour, disordered poetry, violent tragedy or stirring melodrama of the mixed flux of good and evil, joy and sorrow, light and darkness, heady rapture and bitter torture. It loves these things and would have more and more of them or, even when it suffers and cries out against them, can accept or joy in nothing else; it hates and revolts against higher things and in its fury would trample, tear or crucify any diviner Power that has the presumption to offer to make life pure, luminous and happy and snatch from its lips the fiery brew of that exciting mixture.

Desire for Progress

As soon as we think of the result we begin to bargain and that takes away all sincerity from the effort. You make an effort to progress because you feel within you the need, the imperative need to make an effort and progress; and this effort is the gift you offer to the Divine Consciousness in you, the Divine Consciousness in the Universe, it is your way of expressing your gratitude, offering your self; and whether this results in progress or not is of no importance. You will progress when it is decided that the time has come to progress and not because you desire it.

Slave Mentality

There are people who can stand on their own legs. They do a thing because they find that it is good to do it. They offer themselves freely to the guru and take his guidance. But all the time it is a free movement. There are others who are slaves. They always want to have a social or official recognition for what they do. They can have self-confidence only if some authority recognises them. This is the slave mentality.

Pulling back

They tell you, "Ah! I called, I prayed and I did not have the answer. I had no answer, nothing came." But then, if you ask, "Did you offer yourself?"—"No, I pulled."—"Ah, yes, that is why it did not come!" It is not that it did not come, it is that when you pull you remain so shut up in your ego, as I told you just now, that it raises a wall between what is to be received and yourself. You put yourself in prison and then you are astonished that in your prison you feel nothing.

Offering animals and other beings

If one wants to sacrifice something to the Divine, I don't see by what right one can seek the life of another, be it human being or animal, to offer it in one's own stead. If one wants to sacrifice, it is one's own self one must sacrifice, not others.

Superstition

The ordinary consciousness always does it just through superstition, with the idea that "If I do this, if I go to the temple or church once a week, if I offer prayers, something very fine will happen to me." This is superstition, spread all over the world, but it has no value at all from the spiritual point of view.

...very few people, very few, an insignificant number, go to church or temple with a true religious feeling, that is, not to pray and beg for something from God but to offer themselves, give thanks, aspire, give themselves. There is hardly one in a million who does that. So they do not have the power of changing the atmosphere. Perhaps when they are there, they manage to get across, break through and go somewhere and touch something divine. But the large majority of people who go only because of superstition, egoism and self-interest, create an atmosphere of this kind, and that is what you breathe in when you go to a church or temple. Only, as you go there with a very good feeling, you tell yourself, "Oh, what a quiet place for meditation!

Offers of Vital Beings

They know how to do all that (kill animals), it is written in their books. These are words and ceremonies having a certain power. Naturally, those who do that must have a vital force. A vital force is necessary—a little mental force also, not much, even very little—but quite a strong vital power to control these little entities, govern them. And these people rule them precisely through fear, for they have the power to dissolve them, so these entities fear this very much. But upon all these formations, all these entities, it is enough to put simply one drop of the true, pure light, the pure white light—the true, pure light which is the supreme light of construction—you put one drop upon them: they dissolve as though there had been nothing at all there. And yet this is not a force of destruction; it is a force of construction but it is so alien to their nature that they disappear. It is this they feared, for I had called them by showing them this white light; I had told them, "Look, here is this! Come." But their offer was touching: "Oh! We shall do everything you want." I said, "Good what can you do?"—"Throw stones!" (Laughter)

Outer Influences

...you have allowed an influence to interfere strongly between you and your spiritual life; your devotion and your faith have been seriously shaken by this. As a consequence, you became afraid and you did not find the same joy in your offering to the Divine Cause; and also, quite naturally, you fell back into your ordinary consciousness and your old life.