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6 March 1957
My eye won’t allow me to read today. ¹ But I have been asked a question on what I read to you last week. I am going to reply to it this evening. Pavitra, will you read, please?
(Pavitra reads) What does this paragraph mean?: “Freedom is the law of being in its illimitable unity, secret master of all Nature: servitude is the law of love in the being voluntarily giving itself to serve the play of its other selves in the multiplicity.” Thoughts and Glimpses, Cent. Vol. 16, p. 386
At a superficial glance these two things appear absolutely contradictory and incompatible. Outwardly one cannot conceive how one can be at once in freedom and in servitude, but there is an attitude which reconciles the two and makes them one of the happiest states of material existence. Freedom is a sort of instinctive need, a necessity for the integral development of the being. In its essence it is a perfect realisation of the highest consciousness, it is the expression of Unity and of union with the Divine, it is the very sense of the Origin and the fulfilment. But because this Unity has manifested in the many – in the multiplicity – something had to serve as a link between the Origin and the manifestation, and the most perfect link one can conceive of is love. And what is the first gesture of love? To give oneself, to serve. What is its spontaneous, immediate, inevitable movement? To serve. To serve in a joyous, complete, total self-giving. So, in their purity, in their truth, these two things – freedom and service – far from being contradictory, are complementary.
¹ On the 27th February there was only a reading followed by a meditation, no talk was given. Since the Darshan of November 24, Mother had been having a slight haemorrhage in her left eye. Page – 49 It is in perfect union with the supreme Reality that perfect freedom is found, for all ignorance, all unconsciousness is a bondage which makes you inefficient, limited, powerless. The least ignorance in oneself is a limitation, one is no longer free. As long as there is an element of unconsciousness in the being, it is a limitation, a bondage. Only in perfect union with the supreme Reality can perfect freedom exist. And how to realise this union if not through a spontaneous self-giving: the gift of love. And as I said, the first gesture, the first expression of love is service. So the two are closely united in the Truth. But here on earth, in this world of ignorance and inconscience, this service which should have been spontaneous, full of love, the very expression of love, has become something imposed, an inevitable necessity, performed only for the maintenance of life, for the continuation of existence, and thus it has become something ugly, miserable – humiliating. What should have been a flowering, a joy, has become an ugliness, a weariness, a sordid obligation. And this sense, this need for freedom has also been deformed and has become that kind of thirst for independence which leads straight to revolt, to separation, isolation, the very opposite of true freedom. Independence!…I remember having heard an old occultist and sage give a beautiful reply to someone who said, “I want to be independent! I am an independent being! I exist only when I am independent!” And the other answered him with a smile, “Then that means that nobody will love you, because if someone loves you, you immediately become dependent on this love.” It is a beautiful reply, for it is indeed love which leads to Unity and it is Unity which is the true expression of freedom. And so those who in the name of their right to freedom claim independence, turn their backs completely on this true freedom, for they deny love. The deformation comes from constraint. Page – 50 One cannot love through compulsion, you cannot be compelled to love, it is no longer love. Therefore, as soon as compulsion intervenes, it becomes a falsehood. All the movements of the inner being must be spontaneous movements, with that spontaneity which comes from an inner harmony, an understanding — from a voluntary self-giving — from a return to the deeper truth, the reality of being, the Origin and the Goal. Page – 51
The following story was told by Mother during one of the Friday classes, generally reserved for readings to the children. A Buddhist Story
As I am still unable to read to you this evening, I am going to tell you a story. It is a Buddhist story which perhaps you know, it is modern but has the merit of being authentic. I heard it from Madame Z who, as you probably know, is a well-known Buddhist, especially as she was the first European woman to enter Lhasa. Her journey to Tibet was very perilous and thrilling and she narrated one of the incidents of this journey to me, which I am going to tell you this evening. She was with a certain number of fellow travellers forming a sort of caravan, and as the approach to Tibet was relatively easier through Indo-China, they were going from that side. Indo-China is covered with large forests, and these forests are infested with tigers, some of which become man-eaters…and when that happens they are called: “Mr. Tiger.” Late one evening, when they were in the thick of the forest – a forest they had to cross in order to be able to camp safely – Madame Z realised that it was her meditation hour. Now, she used to meditate at fixed times, very regularly, without ever missing one and as it was time for her meditation she told her companions, “Continue the journey, I shall sit here and do my meditation, and when I have finished I shall join you; meanwhile, go on to the next stage and prepare the camp.” One of the coolies told her, “Oh! no, Madam, this is impossible, quite impossible” – he spoke in his own language, naturally, but I must tell you Madame Z knew Tibetan like a Tibetan – “it is quite impossible, Mr. Tiger is in the forest and now is just the time for him to come and look for his dinner. We can’t leave Page – 52 you and you can’t stop here!” She answered that it did not bother her at all, that the meditation was much more important than safety, that they could all withdraw and that she would stay there alone. Very reluctantly they started off, for it was impossible to reason with her – when she had decided to do something nothing could prevent her from doing it. They went away and she sat down comfortably at the foot of a tree and entered into meditation. After a while she felt a rather unpleasant presence. She opened her eyes to see what it was…and three or four steps away, right in front of her was Mr. Tiger! – with eyes full of greed. So, like a good Buddhist, she said, “Well, if this is the way by which I shall attain Nirvana, very good. I have only to prepare to leave my body in a suitable way, in the proper spirit.” And without moving, without even the least quiver, she closed her eyes again and entered once more into meditation; a somewhat deeper, more intense meditation, detaching herself completely from the illusion of the world, ready to pass into Nirvana.…Five minutes went by, ten minutes, half an hour – nothing happened. Then as it was time for the meditation to be over, she opened her eyes…and there was no tiger! Undoubtedly, seeing such a motionless body it must have thought it was not fit for eating! For tigers, like all wild animals, except the hyena, do not attack and eat a dead body. Impressed probably by this immobility – I dare not say by the intensity of the meditation! had withdrawn and she found herself quite alone and out of danger. She calmly went her way and on reaching camp said, “Here I am.” That’s my story. Now we are going to meditate like her, not to prepare ourselves for Nirvana (laughter), but to heighten our consciousness! Page – 53
This evening, once again, no reading. But someone has asked me a question on something I have written – Pavitra, do you have it? Read it.
(Pavitra reads) “Our best friend is he who loves us in our best part, and yet does not ask us to be different from what we are.” Words of the Mother, Third Series, 1966 ed., p. 66 I am asked to explain what this means. I have a good mind to tell you all sorts of paradoxical things! But still… Anyway, I wrote this with something in mind which one usually forgets: one asks one’s friends and those around one to be not what they are but what one would like them to be – one can form an ideal for oneself and want to apply it to everybody, but…This reminds me of Tolstoy’s son whom I met in Japan and who was going round the world in the hope of bringing about unity among men. His intentions were excellent, but his way of doing it seemed less happy! He said with an imperturbable seriousness that if everybody spoke the same language, if everybody dressed in the same way, ate in the same way and behaved in the same way, that would inevitably bring about unity! And when asked how he planned to realise this he said it would be enough to go from land to land preaching a new but universal language, a new but universal dress, and new but universal habits. That was all.…And that was what he intended to do! (Laughing) Well, everyone in his own little field is like that. He has an ideal, a conception of what is true and beautiful and noble, and even divine, and this conception of his he wants to impose on others. There are also many people who have a conception of the Divine and who try with all their might to impose Page – 54 their conception on the Divine…and usually don’t lose heart until they have lost their life! It is this spontaneous and almost unconscious attitude I had in mind, for if I were to tell one of you, “There! that’s what you want to do”, he would protest very vehemently and say, “What! Never in my life!” But when one has opinions about people and especially reactions to their way of life, it is because one blames them for not being what one thinks they ought to be. If we never forget that there cannot be, should not be two things exactly alike in the universe, for the second would be useless since there would already be one of the same kind, and that the universe is constituted for the harmony of an infinite multiplicity in which two movements – and even more, two consciousnesses – are never alike, then what right have we to intervene and want that somebody should conform to our own thought?…For if you think in a particular way, it is certain that the other won’t be able to think in the same way. And if you are a person of a certain type, it is absolutely certain that the other cannot be of the same type. And what you ought to learn is to harmonise, synthesise, combine all the disparate things in the universe by putting each one in its place. Total harmony does not at all lie in an identity, but in a harmonisation which can come only by putting each thing in its place. And this must be at the basis of the reaction that one has the right to expect from a true friend, who should wish not that his friend should be like him, but that he may be what he is. Now, at the beginning of the sentence I said, “He loves you in the best part of yourself….” To put it a little more positively: Your friend is not one who encourages you to come down to your lowest level, encourages you to do foolish things along with him or fall into bad ways with him or one who commends you for all the nasty things you do, that’s quite clear. And yet, usually, very, very often, much too often, one makes friends with somebody with whom one doesn’t feel uneasy when one has sunk lower. One considers as one’s best friend somebody who encourages Page – 55 one in one’s follies: one mixes with others to roam about instead of going to school, to go and steal fruit from gardens, to make fun of one’s teachers and for all kinds of things like that. I am not making any personal remarks, but indeed I could quote some examples, unhappily far too many. And perhaps this is why I said, “They are not your true friends.” But still, they are the most convenient friends, for they don’t make you feel that you are in the wrong; while to one who comes and tells you, “Now then, instead of roaming about and doing nothing or doing stupid things, if you came to the class, don’t you think it would be better!” usually one replies, “Don’t bother me! You are not my friend.” This is perhaps why I wrote this sentence. There you are. I repeat, I am not making any personal remarks, but still it is an opportunity to tell you something that unfortunately happens much too often. There are children here who were full of promise, who were at the top of their class, who used to work seriously, from whom I expected much, and who have been completely ruined by this kind of friendship. Since we are speaking of this, I shall tell them today that I regret this very much and that I do not call such people friends but mortal enemies against whom one should protect oneself as one would against a contagious disease. We don’t like the company of someone who has a contagious disease, and avoid him carefully; generally he is segregated so that it does not spread. But the contagion of vice and bad behaviour, the contagion of depravity, falsehood and what is base, is infinitely more dangerous than the contagion of any disease, and this is what must be very carefully avoided. You must consider as your best friend the one who tells you that he does not wish to participate in any bad or ugly act, the one who gives you courage to resist low temptations; he is a friend. He is the one you must associate with and not someone with whom you have fun and who strengthens your evil propensities. That’s all. Now, we won’t labour the point and I hope that those I have Page – 56 in mind will understand what I have said. Indeed, you should choose as friends only those who are wiser than yourself, those whose company ennobles you and helps you to master yourself, to progress, to act in a better way and see more clearly. And finally, the best friend one can have – isn’t he the Divine, to whom one can say everything, reveal everything? For there indeed is the source of all compassion, of all power to efface every error when it is not repeated,¹ to open the road to true realisation; it is he who can understand all, heal all, and always help on the path, help you not to fail, not to falter, not to fall, but to walk straight to the goal. He is the true friend, the friend of good and bad days, the one who can understand, can heal, and who is always there when you need him. When you call him sincerely, he is always there to guide and uphold you – and to love you in the true way.
¹ In 1961 when this talk was first published, Mother commented on this phrase: “So long as one repeats one’s mistakes, nothing can be abolished, for one recreates them every minute. When someone makes a mistake, serious or not, this mistake has consequences in his life, a ‘Karma’ which must be exhausted, but the Divine Grace, if one turns to It, has the power of cutting off the consequences; but for this the fault must not be repeated. One shouldn’t think one can continue to commit the same stupidities indefinitely and that indefinitely the Grace will cancel all the consequences, it does not happen like that! The past may be completely purified, cleansed, to the point of having no effect on the future, but on condition that one doesn’t change it again into a perpetual present; you yourself must stop the bad vibration in yourself, you must not go on reproducing the same vibration indefinitely.” Page – 57
The following talk was given on a Friday, the day Mother used to read to the children.
Reminiscences of Tlemcen
Once again, this evening, I am not going to read, but I won’t tell you a story; I am going to tell you about Madame X. Madame X was born on the Isle of Wight and she lived in Tlemcen with her husband who was a great occultist. Madame X herself was an occultist of great powers, a remarkable clairvoyant, and she had mediumistic qualities. Her powers were quite exceptional; she had received an extremely complete and rigorous training and she could exteriorise herself, that is, bring out of her material body a subtle body, in full consciousness, and do it twelve times in succession. That is, she could pass consciously from one state of being to another, live there as consciously as in her physical body, and then again put that subtler body into trance, exteriorise herself from it, and so on twelve times successively, to the extreme limit of the world of forms.…I shall speak to you about that later, when you can understand better what I am talking about. But I am going to tell you about some small incidents I saw when I was in Tlemcen¹ myself, and a story she told me I shall also tell you. The incidents are of a more external kind, but very funny. She was almost always in trance and she had trained her body so well that even when she was in trance, that is, when one or more parts of her being were exteriorised, the body had a life of its own and she could walk about and even attend to some small material occupations.…She did a great deal of work, for in her trances she could talk freely and she used to narrate what she saw, which was noted down and later formed a teaching
¹ In 1907. Page – 58 — which has even been published. And because of all that and the occult work she was doing, she was often tired, in the sense that her body was tired and needed to recuperate its vitality in a very concrete way. Now, one day when she was particularly tired, she told me, “You will see how I am going to recover my strength.” She had plucked from her garden\was not a garden, it was a vast estate with ancient olive trees, and fig trees such as I have never seen anywhere else, it was a real marvel, on a mountain-side, from the plain to almost half way up – and in this garden there were many lemon trees and orange trees…and grapefruit. Grapefruit has flowers which have an even better fragrance than orange blossoms – they are large flowers and she knew how to make an essence from them herself, she had given me a bottle – well, she had plucked a huge grapefruit like this, (gesture) very large and ripe, and she lay down on her bed and put the grapefruit on her solar plexus, here, (gesture) like this, holding it with both hands. She lay down and rested. She did not sleep, she rested. She told me, “Come back in an hour.” An hour later I returned…and the grapefruit was as flat as a pancake. That meant that she had such a power to absorb vitality that she had absorbed all the life from the fruit and it had become soft and completely flat. And I saw that myself! You may try, you won’t succeed! (Laughter) Another time – and this is even more amusing…But first I shall tell you a little about Tlemcen, which you probably don’t know. Tlemcen is a small town in southern Algeria, almost on the borders of the Sahara. The town itself is built in the valley which is surrounded by a circle of mountains, not very high but nevertheless higher than hills. And the valley is very fertile, verdurous, magnificent. The population there is mainly Arabs and rich merchants; indeed, the city is very prosperous was], for I don’t know what it is like now; I am speaking to you about things that happened at the beginning of this century – there were very prosperous merchants there and from time to time Page – 59 these Arabs came to pay a visit to Monsieur X. They knew nothing, understood nothing, but they were very interested. One day, towards evening, one of these people arrived and started asking questions, ludicrous ones besides. Then Madame X said to me, “You will see, we are going to have a little fun.” In the verandah of the house there was a big dining-table, a very large table, like that, quite wide, with eight legs, four on each side. It was really massive, and heavy. Chairs had been arranged to receive this man, at a little distance from the table. He was at one end, Madame X at the other; I was seated on one side, Monsieur X also. All four of us were there. Nobody was near the table, all of us were at a distance from it. And so, he was asking questions, as I said rather ludicrous ones, on the powers one could have and what could be done with what he called “magic”.…She looked at me and said nothing but sat very still. Suddenly I heard a cry, a cry of terror. The table started moving and with an almost heroic gesture went to attack the poor man seated at the other end! It went and bumped against him.…Madame X had not touched it, nobody had touched it. She had only concentrated on the table and by her vital power had made it move. At first the table had wobbled a little, then had started moving slowly, then suddenly, as in one bound, it flung itself on that man, who went away and never came back! She also had the power to dematerialise and rematerialise things. And she never said anything, she did not boast, she did not say, “I am going to do something”, she did not speak of anything; she just did it quietly. She did not attach much importance to these things, she knew they were just a proof that there are other forces than purely material ones. When I used to go out in the evenings – towards the end of the afternoon I used to go for a walk with Monsieur X to see the countryside, go walking in the mountains, the neighbouring villages – I used to lock my door; it was a habit with me, I always locked my door. Madame X would rarely go out, for the reasons I have already mentioned, because she was in a Page – 60 trance most of the time and liked to stay at home. But when I returned from the walk and opened my door – which was locked, and therefore nobody could have entered – I would always find a kind of little garland of flowers on my pillow. They were flowers which grew in the garden, they are called Belles de Nuit;¹ we have them here, they open in the evening and have a wonderful fragrance. There was a whole alley of them, with big bushes as high as this; they are remarkable flowers – I believe it’s the same here — on the same bush there are different coloured flowers: yellow, red, mixed, violet. They are tiny flowers like…bluebells; no, rather like the convolvulus, but these grow on bushes – convolvulus is a creeper, these are bushes – we have some here in the garden. She always used to put some behind her ears, for they have a lovely smell, oh! delightfully beautiful. And so, she used to take a walk in the alley between these big bushes which were quite high, and she gathered flowers, and – when I came back, these flowers were in my room!…She never told me how she did it, but she certainly did not go in there. Once she said to me, “Were there no flowers in your room?” – “Ah! yes, indeed,” I said. And that was all. Then I knew it was she who had put them there. I could tell you many stories, but I shall finish with this one she had told me, which I did not see myself. As I was telling you, Tlemcen is very near the Sahara and it has a desert climate except that in the valley a river flows which never dries up and makes the whole country very fertile. But the mountains were absolutely arid. Only in the part occupied by farmers did something grow. Now, Monsieur X’s park – a large estate – was, as I said, a marvellous place…everything grew there, everything one could imagine and to a magnificent size. Now, she told me – they had been there a very long time – that about five or six years before, I think, they had felt that these barren mountains might one day cause the river to dry up
¹Mirabilis, Marvel of Peru; significance given by Mother: Réconfort, Solace. Page – 61 and that it would be better to plant trees there; and the administrator of Tlemcen ordered trees to be planted on all the neighbouring hills; a wide amphitheatre, you know. He said that pine trees should be planted, for in Algeria the sea-pine grows very well. And they wanted to try it. Well, for some reason or other – forgetfulness or fantasy, heaven knows! – instead of ordering pine trees they ordered fir trees! Fir trees belong to Scandinavian countries, not at all to desert lands. And very conscientiously all these fir trees were planted. Now Madame X saw this and I believe she felt like making an experiment. So it happened that four or five years later these fir trees had not only grown but had become magnificent and when I went to Tlemcen the mountains all around were absolutely green, magnificent with trees. She said to me, “You see, these are not pine trees, they are fir trees”, and indeed they were – you know fir trees are Christmas trees, don’t you? – they were fir trees. Then she told me how after three years when the fir trees had grown, suddenly one day or rather one December night, as she had just gone to bed and put out her light, she was awakened by a tiny little noise – she was very sensitive to noise; she opened her eyes and saw something like a moonbeam – there was no moon that night – lighting up a corner of her room. And she noticed that a little gnome was there, like the ones you see in the fairy-tales of Norway and Sweden, Scandinavian fairy-tales. He was a tiny little fellow with a big head, a pointed cap, pointed shoes of dark green, a long white beard, and all covered with snow. So she looked at him – her eyes were open – she looked at him and said, “But…Eh! what are you doing here?” – she was a little worried, for in the warmth of her room the snow was melting and making a little pool on the floor of her room. “But what are you doing here!” Then he smiled at her, gave her his sweetest smile and said, “But we were called by the fir trees! Fir trees call the snow. They are trees of the snow countries. I am the Lord of the Snow, Page – 62 so I came to announce to you that…we are coming. We have been called, we are coming.” “Snow?…But we are near the Sahara!” “Ah! then you shouldn’t have planted fir trees.” Finally she told him, “Listen, I don’t know if what you tell me is true, but you are spoiling my floor. Go away!” So he went away. The moonlight went with him. She lit a lamp – for there was no electricity – she lit a lamp and saw…a little pool of water in the place where he had stood. So it was not a dream, there really was a little being whose snow had melted in her room. And the next morning when the sun rose, it rose upon mountains covered with snow. It was the first time, it had never been seen before in that country. Since then, every winter – not for long, just for a little while – all the mountains are covered with snow. So that’s my story. Page – 63
“The delight of victory is sometimes less than the attraction of struggle and suffering; nevertheless the laurel and not the cross should be the aim of the conquering human soul. “Souls that do not aspire are God’s failures; but Nature is pleased and loves to multiply them because they assure her of stability and prolong her empire. “Those who are poor, ignorant, ill-born or ill-bred are not the common herd; the common herd are all who are satisfied with pettiness and an average humanity. “Help men, but do not pauperise them of their energy; lead and instruct men, but see that their initiative and originality remain intact; take others into thyself, but give them in return the full godhead of their nature. He who can do this is the leader and the guru. “God has made the world a field of battle and filled it with the trampling of combatants and the cries of a great wrestle and struggle. Would you filch His peace without paying the price He has fixed for it? “Distrust a perfect-seeming success, but when having succeeded thou findest still much to do, rejoice and go forward; for the labour is long before the real perfection. “There is no more benumbing error than to mistake a stage for the goal or to linger too long in a resting place.” Thoughts and Glimpses, Cent. Vol. 16, pp. 391-92
All that Sri Aurobindo says here is aimed at fighting against human nature with its inertia, its heaviness, laziness, easy satisfactions, Page – 64 hostility to all effort. How many times in life does one meet people who become pacifists because they are afraid to fight, who long for rest before they have earned it, who are satisfied with a little progress and in their imagination and desires make it into a marvellous realisation so as to justify their stopping half-way. In ordinary life, already, this happens so much. Indeed, this is the bourgeois ideal, which has deadened mankind and made man into what he is now: “Work while you are young, accumulate wealth, honour, position; be provident, have a little foresight, put something by, lay up a capital, become an official – so that later when you are forty you “can sit down”, enjoy your income and later your pension and, as they say, enjoy a well-earned rest.” – To sit down, to stop on the way, not to move forward, to go to sleep, to go downhill towards the grave before one’s time, cease to live the purpose of life – to sit down! The minute one stops going forward, one falls back. The moment one is satisfied and no longer aspires, one begins to die. Life is movement, it is effort, it is a march forward, the scaling of a mountain, the climb towards new revelations, towards future realisations. Nothing is more dangerous than wanting to rest. It is in action, in effort, in the march forward that repose must be found, the true repose of complete trust in the divine Grace, of the absence of desires, of victory over egoism. True repose comes from the widening, the universalisation of the consciousness. Become as vast as the world and you will always be at rest. In the thick of action, in the very midst of the battle, the effort, you will know the repose of infinity and eternity. Page – 65 |