Sachchidananda 'The Life Divine' Book I,Ch.9, 10, 11, 12 - Track 1209

As it is said in the Vaishnav tradition the divine is all the time in sport, he could have chosen a sport in which there was no hiding and seeking it will be delightful where everything is manifest God is never veiled and everything is raslila all the time but that is not the only kind of delight that he is capable of there is another kind of delight which comes by hiding and seeking another kind of delight and if you want that kind of delight which itself is not wrong to have that kind of delight then in the process the suffering becomes inevitable you are not denying suffering you're not saying it's a part of joy no suffering is suffering but that kind suffering is inevitable if you want that kind of delight. Now you may ask the question why does the Divine want that kind of delight which comes through this suffering the answer is the following that even what you call suffering even in the creature who suffering the inner delight is never abolished the inner delight which is available to everybody is never abolished it's never extinguished it is hidden but never abolished not only that but there is a inner joy which is present even in the suffering, inner joy not that explicit joy the inner joy is always present and that is why a person is able to bear this suffering. Why is it that humankind is able to bear the worst kind of suffering? Or when the suffering becomes absolutely worst he becomes fainted there is absolutely no experience of suffering, all suffering and this is very important, all suffering is sufferable. The argument could be levelled against God only if there was a suffering which was insufferable although we complain very often that the suffering is unsufferable, but when it really becomes unsufferable you find that there is no suffering this is the presence of the divine. Divine does not want to give any suffering which is a insufferable and that suffering which you experience does not  abolish the inner delight on the contrary you are spurred to eliminate the suffering to such an extent that it can ultimately be destroyed. Destroyable, sufferable, suffering is the nature of suffering if this was not so we cannot defend this world. We are saying that this suffering is of such a nature that while suffering, you have an inner joy, if you really go into the depths of your matter you will really experience the inner joy which is never abolished. And secondly even the suffering that suffering could not be a threat joy was not manifesting in one way as suffering his father point suffering itself is a current of that joy. Suffering would not be suffering if it was not a current of joy. So joy is not abolish the all on the contrary suffering itself is a current of joy. It is experienced by us are suffering its another matter it's another kind of taste you might say. The bitter taste is a taste, similarly this is the this is a bitterness but bitterness of Ananda. Ananda is capable of manifesting itself as neutrality as pleasure and pain. From the point of view of Ananda all the three are all pain basically. Even what you call pleasure of is actually the deformation of that Ananda, neutrality is deformation of Ananda, what we call pain is deformation of Ananda. The very fact that what we call pleasure can be experienced as pain which happens very often that which is pleasure can be experienced as pain and that is pain can be experienced as pleasure they are transferable. That shows that these currents are not absolute currents, these currents are transferable from one to the other. And finally they are not only transferable from one to the other they can be completely transformed into Ananda that would not be a suffering was absolute or that suffering was really something that was permanent as a temporary experience in order to attain to that Ananda that we can obtain only when we pass through suffering, which searches the scheme of the world then there is no contradiction between Ananda and the suffering.

Question: if we become conscious of our goal as Ananda any suffering I can take in that sense there any suffering I can take with that attitude?

Answer: very true, it's not only attitude but also it is really so merely by taking attitude it cannot happen if it was not really so. Ultimately it is only because really speaking that the joy can be transferred into pain and pain can be transferred into joy really speaking. As Sri Aurobindo says when he was in the Alipore jail one of the experiences that he had was that red ants, poisonous ants used to bite him in the jail because there was no protection, the ground was not cemented so in the hot summer he was arrested in the month of May it was a hot summer and the red ants used to sprawl upon his body and bite him tremendously and then Srikrishna said that I have brought you to this point because I want you to see how this pain can be transformed into ecstasy. So he experienced ecstasy with the bite of the poisonous ants. It is a real fact it is not as if an attitude is taken, no know I can enjoy it that is also good but ultimately it is because of the fact that the suffering can be really changed into Ananda. Sri Aurobindo says that all things is jugupsa, jugupsa means shrinking, shrinking is because of limitation or slow development. You see when a child wants to talk to you, the child first comes to you and then runs away the child is very shy it is jugupsa. And in that experience that is suffering, if the child knew that there is no need to be jugupsa at all, that mother is not going to scold me, mother is not going to do anything and that I'll be welcome fully then there is no problem but because of my limitation I shrink.