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1 January 1958
O Nature, material Mother, Thou hast said that thou wilt collaborate and there is no limit to the splendour of this collaboration. New Year Message, 1 January 1958 Sweet Mother, will you explain the message for this year?
It is already written! The explanation has already been written, it is ready for the Bulletin of February 21. ¹ There is nothing to explain. It is an experience, something that happened, and when it happened I noted it down, and as it turned out, it occurred just at the moment when I remembered that I had to write something for the year – which was next year at that time, that is, the year which begins today. When I remembered that I had to write something – not because of that, but simultaneously – this experience came, and when I noted it down, I realised that it was…it was the message for this year! (Silence)
I will tell you only one thing: you should not misinterpret the meaning of this experience and imagine that from now on everything is going to take place without any difficulties and always in a manner that favours our personal desires. It is not on this plane. It does not mean that when we do not want it to rain, it will not rain! that when we want something to happen in the world, it will happen immediately; that all difficulties will be done away with and everything will be as it is in fairy-tales.
¹ The text of this explanation is given in an appendix to this talk. Page – 245 It is not that. It is something much deeper: Nature, in her play of forces, has accepted the new Force which has manifested and included it in her movements. And as always, the movements of Nature are on a scale which is infinitely beyond the human scale and not visible to an ordinary human consciousness. It is an inner, psychological possibility which has come into the world rather than a spectacular change in earthly events. I am saying this because you might be tempted to believe that fairy-tales were going to be realised on earth. It is not yet time for that.
(Silence)
One must have much patience and a very wide and very complex vision to understand how things happen.
(Silence)
The miracles which take place are not what could be called story-book miracles, in the sense that they don’t happen as in stories. They are visible only to a very deep vision of things – very deep, very comprehensive, very vast.
(Silence)
One must already be capable of following the methods and ways of the Grace in order to recognise its action. One must already be capable of not being blinded by appearances in order to see the deeper truth of things. We could usefully, this evening, just take this resolution: to try throughout the year to do our best, so that the time may not pass in vain. Page – 246
Explanation of the New Year Message of 1 January 1958
In the course of one of our classes¹ I spoke of the limitless abundance of Nature, the inexhaustible creatrix who takes the multitude of forms and mixes them together, separates them again and remoulds them, unmakes and destroys them, to move on to ever new combinations. It is a huge cauldron, I said: she stirs things inside and brings out something; it’s no good, she throws it in again and takes something else.…One or two forms or a hundred have no importance for her, there are thousands and thousands of forms, and then as for years, a hundred years, a thousand, millions of years, it is of no importance, you have eternity before you! It is quite obvious that Nature enjoys all this and that she is not in a hurry. If she is told to rush rapidly through and finish this or that part of her work quickly, the reply is always the same: “But why should I do so, why? Doesn’t it amuse you?” The evening I told you about these things, I identified myself totally with Nature, I joined in her game. And this movement of identification provoked a response, a sort of new intimacy between Nature and myself, a long movement of a growing closeness which culminated in an experience which came on the eighth of November. Suddenly Nature understood. She understood that this new Consciousness which has just been born does not seek to reject her but wants to embrace her entirely, she understood that this new spirituality does not turn away from life, does not recoil in fear before the formidable amplitude of her movement, but wants on the contrary to integrate all its facets. She understood that the supramental consciousness is here not to diminish but to complete her.
¹30 October 1957 Page – 247 Then from the supreme Reality came this order, “Awake, O Nature, to the joy of collaboration.” And the whole of Nature suddenly rushed forward in a great surge of joy, saying, “I accept, I shall collaborate.” And at the same time, there came a calm, an absolute tranquillity so that the bodily vessel could receive and contain, without breaking, without losing anything, the mighty flood of this Joy of Nature which rushed forward as in a movement of gratitude. She accepted, she saw with all eternity before her that this supramental consciousness was going to fulfil her more perfectly, give a still greater strength to her movement, a greater amplitude, more possibilities to her play. And suddenly I heard, as if they came from all the corners of the earth, those great notes one sometimes hears in the subtle physical, a little like those of Beethoven’s Concerto in D-major, which come in moments of great progress, as though fifty orchestras had burst forth all in unison, without a single false note, to express the joy of this new communion between Nature and Spirit, the meeting of old friends who come together again after having been separated for so long. Then these words came, “O Nature, Material Mother, thou hast said that thou wilt collaborate and there is no limit to the splendour of this collaboration.” And the radiant felicity of this splendour was sensed in perfect peace. That is how the message for the new year was born. Page – 248
Mother reads a paragraph from The Life Divine.
We have decided to read paragraph by paragraph so that we can go into certain detailed explanations, but this method has one drawback: as I have already told you, it is that Sri Aurobindo takes up all the theories and expounds them in all their details, with all their arguments, in order to show later what their defects are and their inability to solve the problem, and to present his own solution; but (laughing), when we stop in the middle of an argument and take a single paragraph, if we read this paragraph without going on to the very end, we may very well imagine or believe that he is giving his own opinion. In fact there are some unscrupulous people who have done that, and when they wanted to prove that their own theories were correct, they quoted paragraphs from Sri Aurobindo without saying what went before or what came after, in support of their own theory. They said, “You see, Sri Aurobindo in The Life Divine has written that.” He has written that, but that does not mean that it was his own way of seeing. And now we are facing the same difficulty. For the last two lessons, I think, I have been reading the detailed demonstration of one of the modern theories of life, evolution, the purpose of existence – or the purposelessness of existence – and Sri Aurobindo presents this in quite a…conclusive way, as if it were his own theory and own way of seeing. We stop in the middle and are left with a kind of uneasiness and the feeling, “But that is not what he told us! How is it that he is expounding that to us now?…” It is quite a big drawback. But if I were to read to you the whole argument, when we came to the end you wouldn’t remember the beginning and you wouldn’t be able to follow! So the best thing is to go on quietly, one paragraph at a time, trying to understand what he is saying, but without thinking that he wants to prove to us Page – 249 that it is true. He simply wants to expound the theories with everything that supports them, without telling us that this is the best way of seeing things. In reality, you should take this reading as an opportunity to develop the philosophical mind in yourself and the capacity to arrange ideas in a logical order and establish an argument on a sound basis. You must take this like dumb-bell exercises for developing muscles: these are dumb-bell exercises for the mind to develop one’s brain. And you must not jump to hasty conclusions. If we wait with patience, at the end of the chapter he will tell us – and tell us on a basis of irrefutable argument – why he has come to the conclusion he arrives at. Now, if there is anything that gives rise to a question…
Not in the text, Mother.
Something else? What?
Mother, we sometimes have sudden ideas. Where do they come from and how do they work in the head?
Where do they come from? – From the mental atmosphere. Why do they come?…Perhaps you meet them on your way as one meets a passer-by in a public square. Most often it is that; you are on a road where ideas are moving about and it so happens that you meet this particular one and it passes through your head. Obviously, those who are in the habit of meditating, of concentrating, and for whom intellectual problems have a very concrete and tangible reality, by concentrating their minds they attract associated ideas, and a “company of ideas” is formed which they organise so as to solve a problem or clarify the question they are considering. But for this, one must have the habit of mental concentration and precisely that philosophical mind I was speaking about, for which ideas are living entities with their own life, which are organised on the mental chess-board like Page – 250 pawns in a game of chess: one takes them, moves them, places them, organises them, one makes a coherent whole out of these ideas, which are individual, independent entities with affinities among themselves, and which organise themselves according to inner laws. But for this, one must also have the habit of meditation, reflection, analysis, deduction, mental organisation. Otherwise, if one is just “like that”, if one lives life as it comes, then it is exactly like a public square: there are roads and on the roads people pass by, and then you find yourself at cross-roads and it all passes through your head – sometimes even ideas without any connection between them, so much so that if you were to write down what passes through your head, it would make a string of admirable nonsense! We once said that we could usefully try out a little game: to ask somebody suddenly, “What are you thinking about?” Well, it is not often that he can answer you clearly, “Ah! I was just thinking of that particular thing.” If he says that, you may infer that he is a thoughtful person. Otherwise, the usual spontaneous reply is, “Oh! I don’t know.” You see, all those who have done ordered and organised physical exercises, have the knowledge, for instance, of the various muscles which must be moved to obtain a particular movement, and the best way to move them and how to obtain the maximum result with the minimum loss of energy. Well, it is the same thing with thought. When you train yourself methodically, there comes a time when you can follow a train of reasoning quite objectively, as you would project a picture on a screen – you can follow the logical deduction of one idea from another, and the normal, logical, organised movement, with the minimum loss of time, from a proposition to its conclusion. Once you have acquired the habit of doing that, just as you have the habit of methodically moving the muscles which must be moved to obtain a certain result, your thought becomes clear. Otherwise, movements of thought, intellectual movements, are vague, imprecise, elusive; all of a sudden something rises up, one Page – 251 doesn’t know why, and something else comes to contradict it, one doesn’t know why either. And if one tries to organise this clearly in order to become aware of the exact relation between ideas, the first few times one does it, one gets a fine headache! And one has the feeling of trying to find one’s way in a very dark virgin forest. The speculative mind needs discipline for its development. If it is not disciplined methodically, one is always in a sort of a cloud. The vast majority of human beings can harbour the most contradictory ideas in their brains without being in the least troubled by them. Well, until you try to organise your mind clearly, you risk at the very least having no control over what you think. And very often, you must come down to action before you begin to realise the value of what you think! Or, if not as far as action, at least as far as the feelings: suddenly you become aware that you have feelings which are not very desirable; then you realise you have not controlled your way of thinking at all.
Sweet Mother, do people have bad thoughts because they have no control over their minds?
Bad thoughts?.…There can be several reasons for that. In fact there are several reasons. It may be due to a bad nature – if people have nasty feelings, these nasty feelings can be the cause of nasty thoughts. It may be the opposite. Perhaps they are wide open to all sorts of suggestions from outside and, as I said, these suggestions enter them and gradually create nasty feelings. It may be due to subconscious influences which are conflicting precisely because they are uncontrolled. When these influences rise to the surface, instead of being controlled and those which are undesirable refused, everything is allowed to enter as it likes, the doors are open. You are bathed in all kinds of things – good, bad, neutral, luminous, dark; it’s all there, and each one’s consciousness Page – 252 should, in principle, act as a filter. You should receive only what you want to receive, you should think only what you want to think; and then, you should not allow these thoughts to be changed into feelings and actions without formal authorisation. In fact, this is the very purpose of physical existence. Each person is an instrument for controlling a certain set of vibrations which represent his particular field of work; each one must receive only the ones which are in conformity with the divine plan and refuse the rest. But not one in a thousand does that. You do it a little, half consciously, due to the friction of circumstances and surroundings, but as for doing it deliberately, surely there are very few human beings who do it deliberately; and even when it’s done deliberately, to do it in the true way and with the true knowledge, that indeed is still more exceptional. Thought-control! Who can control his thoughts? Only those who have trained themselves to it, who have tried hard since their childhood. There is the whole range, you see, from total lack of control, which for most people comes to this: it is their thoughts which rule them and not they their thoughts. The vast majority of people are troubled by thoughts they cannot get rid of, which literally possess them, and they don’t have the power to close the door of their active consciousness to these thoughts. Their thoughts govern them, rule them. You hear people saying every day, “Oh! That thought, all the time it comes back to me, again and again, and I can’t get rid of it!” So they are assailed by all kinds of things, from anxiety to ill-will and fear. Thoughts which express dread are extremely troublesome; you try to send them away, they return like a rubber band and fall back on you. Who has control? It requires years of labour and such a long practice. And so, to come to something which is not complete control but anyway already represents a stage: to have the ability to do this in your head (Mother moves her hand across her brow), to annul all the movements, to stop the vibrations. And Page – 253 the mental surface becomes smooth. Everything stops, as when you open a book at a blank page – but almost materially, you understand…blank! Try a little when you are at home, you will see, it is very interesting. And so, one follows the place in one’s head where the little point is dancing. I have seen – I have seen Sri Aurobindo doing this in somebody’s head, somebody who used to complain of being troubled by thoughts. It was as if his hand reached out and took hold of the little black dancing point and then did this (gesture with the finger-tips), as when one picks up an insect, and he threw it far away. And that was all. All still, quiet, luminsous.…It was clearly visible like this, you know, he took it out without saying anything – and it was over. And things are very closely interdependent: I also saw the case when someone came to him with an acute pain somewhere: “Oh, it hurts here! Oh, it hurts! Oh!…” He said nothing, he remained calm, he looked at the person, and I saw, I saw something like a subtle physical hand which came and took hold of the little point dancing about in disorder and confusion, and he took it like this (same gesture) and there, everything had gone. “Oh, oh! Look my pain has gone.” There. Page – 254
Mother reads a paragraph from The Life Divine continuing arguments from the point of view that each type of being, including man, is fixed in its type and does not progress, and that if a new creation is intended, it cannot develop out of man. (page 832)
If all these arguments were true and there were to be no higher realisation…there would be nothing left to do. But fortunately this is not true. Only, Sri Aurobindo has said many times that there will be no irrefutable proof of the truth of what he has said and predicted until it is accomplished; only when everything is accomplished will those who refuse to believe be obliged to recognise their mistake – but perhaps they won’t be there to do it! So there is only one thing to do: to proceed on one’s way keeping one’s own faith and certitude, and to pay no heed to contradictions and denials. There are people who need the support and trust and certitude of others to feel comfortable and to be at ease – they are always unhappy because, of course, they will always come across people who do not believe, and so they will be upset and it will trouble them. One must find one’s certitude within oneself, keep it in spite of everything and go one’s way whatever the cost, to the very end. The Victory is for the most enduring. To maintain one’s endurance in spite of all oppositions, the support must be unshakable, and one support alone is unshakable, that of the Reality, the Supreme Truth. It is useless to look for any other. This is the only one that never fails. Page – 255
Mother reads a passage from The Life Divine which concludes the exposition of the intellectual arguments against the appearance of a higher species.
Next time we begin the argument. All these arguments take place in a field where you don’t usually go, do you? It is a domain which is unfamiliar to you. In fact it is a very special domain, far removed from action or any practical realisation. It has always seemed to me that one could take up any idea at all and use it as the starting-point for an argument and through intellectual logic succeed in proving that this idea is altogether true, simply by the power of argumentation. It is quite remarkable that these are two fields of human activity – action and speculation – which usually find it difficult to be together at the same time in the consciousness; and it is even unusual that a man with a highly developed speculative mind should ever be a man of action, and on the other hand, that a man of action should ever feel at ease in the speculative intellect. When one has an essentially practical bent for accomplishing things, one always feels that all these speculations, arguments, deductions are a more or less interesting occupation for idle people. But…I dare not say this too loud, for it is not appreciated by intellectuals, this has always seemed to me a gymnastic exercise that’s very interesting from the point of view of mental development, but without much practical result. Now, if you listen to people with an abstract turn of mind, they will tell you that physical gymnastics are a thoroughly futile occupation without any practical result: “What’s the use of doing gymnastics? It is simply to exercise your muscles. And why should we not exercise our mental muscles as you exercise the muscles of your Page – 256 body?” And both arguments are of equal value. For me the solution lies elsewhere. (Long silence)
As soon as one is convinced that there is a living and real Truth seeking to express itself in an objective universe, the only thing that seems to have any importance or value is to come into contact with this Truth, to identify oneself with it as perfectly as possible, and to no longer be anything but a means of expressing it, making it more and more living and tangible so that it may be manifested more and more perfectly. All theories, all principles, all methods are more or less good according to their capacity to express that Truth; and as one goes forward on this path, if one goes beyond all the limits of the Ignorance, one becomes aware that the totality of this manifestation, its wholeness, its integrality is necessary for the expression of that Truth, that nothing can be left out, and perhaps that there is nothing more important or less important. The one thing that seems necessary is a harmonisation of everything which puts each thing in its place, in its true relation with all the rest, so that the total Unity may manifest harmoniously. If one comes down from this level, according to me one no longer understands anything and all arguments are of equal worth in the narrowness and limitation which take away all their real value. Each thing in its place, in harmony with all the rest, and then one can begin to understand and to live.
(Silence)
One feels that a single movement, however small it may be, however insignificant it may seem, which is in harmony with that Page – 257 Truth, is of more value than the most wonderful arguments. Let one single drop of light shine in you and it will be more effective in dissolving the darkness than the most beautiful speeches in the world on what light is or on what it can do. Page – 258
“Even in the Inconscient there seems to be at least an urge of inherent necessity producing the evolution of forms and in the forms a developing Consciousness, and it may well be held that this urge is the evolutionary will of a secret Conscious-Being and its push of progressive manifestation the evidence of an innate intention in the evolution.…Truth of Being inevitably fulfilling itself would be the fundamental fact of the evolution, but Will and its purpose must be there as part of the instrumentation, as an element in the operative principle.” The Life Divine, p. 834 Sweet Mother, I did not understand the last part of the sentence.
What don’t you understand? He says that evolution is the result of the inevitable fulfilment of the Truth of Being which is the essential reality of the universe. The fulfilment of this Truth, the fulfilment of the Truth of Being, is the fundamental fact of evolution, that is, it is the cause and principle of the evolution; but naturally, if this Truth of Being is inevitably fulfilled, it must be by means of a will and a purpose. There has to be an aim and the will to fulfil that aim. To fulfil itself this truth must contain a will to fulfilment and an aim, a purpose, a project it wants to fulfil. In order to accomplish something, one must have the will to do it, and to have the will to do it, one must know what one wants to do. If one doesn’t know what one wants to do, one can’t do it. First one must know, have a plan, a purpose, a programme if you like; one must know what one wants to do, and then one must will to do it, and then one can do it. Page – 259 You see, he says: the universe is the evolutionary fulfilment of the truth of the universal Being. The deploying of the universe is the progressive, evolutionary fulfilment of the truth of the universal Being, but for this truth to be fulfilled it must necessarily contain a plan, that is, it must know what it wants to do and must have the will to do it. When you do something you know what you want to do, don’t you? And then you will to do it, otherwise you couldn’t. But it is the same thing, this is what he says. It must necessarily be admitted that there is a plan in the universe, that it is not something that comes about by chance, and that there is a Will to fulfil this plan, otherwise nothing could happen. You see, Sri Aurobindo contradicts those who say that the universe has no plan and no will. But the minute we admit that there is a consciousness – a conscious existence – behind the universe, we admit at the same time, automatically, that there is a plan in this universe and a will to fulfil this plan. That is all he says. It is simple, isn’t it? You only have to reduce this to the individual scale. When someone is conscious and does something consciously, he necessarily does it knowing what he wants to do, with a plan. For instance, when you prepare a programme for the anniversary of your “boarding”, you have a purpose, don’t you? – you want to make a programme for the anniversary, and so you have a plan, you choose what you are going to enact and how it is going to be enacted, and at the same time you want to do it, otherwise you would not do it – so, Sri Aurobindo says just that. That is, that if the universe is a conscious entity, if there is a Consciousness which expresses itself, it necessarily expresses itself in accordance with a plan and with a will to express itself – it is quite simple. Have you understood?…A little! Don’t you know this, that in order to do something one must know what one wants to do and then one must do it, have the will to do it? Even if you decide to walk from here to there, Page – 260 you must decide that you want to walk from here to there, and afterwards you must have the will to walk, otherwise you would not move. No?
Yes.
Ah! it is nothing but that, it is as simple as that. (Silence)
People usually do things so automatically and spontaneously, without watching themselves doing them, that if they were to ask themselves how it comes about, they would require some time before the process becomes conscious to them. You are so used to living that you don’t even know how it happens. All the gestures and movements of life are made spontaneously, automatically, almost unconsciously, in a semi-conscious state, and one doesn’t even realise this very simple fact that in order to do something, one must first know what one is going to do and then must want to do it. It is only when something goes wrong with one of these elements – for instance, the ability to make a plan in one’s mind and the ability to carry out this plan – when these two begin to go wrong, one starts worrying about whether one’s being is in good order. For example, if one morning on waking up in bed you did not know or remember that you had to get up, wash and dress, have your breakfast, do this and that, you would say to yourself, “Why, what’s the matter? Something is wrong – I don’t know what I ought to do any more; something must be out of order.” And if, later, knowing what you have to do – you must get up, go for your bath, dress – you know you have to do it but you can’t do it: there is something, the stimulus of the will, which is no longer working, has no effect on the body; then once again you begin to feel anxious, you say, “Well, well, could I be ill by any chance?” Page – 261 Otherwise you are not even aware that the whole of life is like that. It seems quite natural to you, it is “like that”. That means that you act in a way which is hardly semi-conscious; it is automatic, it is a kind of spontaneous habit and you don’t watch what you are doing. And so, if you want to have some control over your movements, the first thing is to know what is happening. And in fact, this perhaps is the reason why things don’t always go well. For if they went according to a normal, usual rhythm, one would never be conscious of what one is doing; one would do it by habit, automatically, spontaneously, without thinking, and would not watch what one is doing, and so one would never be able to acquire self-mastery. It would be “something”, a vague consciousness in the background expressing itself without your even watching what you are doing, and which would make you act; and then if there came along some strange or unknown current of force, it could make you do anything at all, without your even noticing the process by which it makes you act. And in fact that is what does happen. It is only when one is fully conscious of the process, when one knows how life works, the movement of life and the process of life, that one can begin to have control; otherwise at first one doesn’t even think at all of having any control; but if unpleasant things occur, if, for instance, you do something which has unfortunate consequences and you tell yourself, “Oh! But I should stop doing that”, then, at that moment, you realise that there is a whole technique of “how to live” which is necessary to be able to control your life! Otherwise one is a kind of more or less coordinated medley of actions and reactions, of movements and impulses, and one doesn’t know at all how things happen. This is what is developed in the being by shocks, frictions, all the apparent disorders of life, and what forms the consciousness in very small children. A small child is altogether unconscious, and only gradually, very gradually, does he begin to grow aware of things. But unless they take special care, people Page – 262 live almost their whole life without even knowing how they do it! They are not aware of it. So anything at all can happen. But that is the very first little step towards becoming conscious of oneself in the material world. You have vague thoughts and feelings, don’t you, which develop more or less logically in the being – rather less than more – then you have a faint impression of that; and again, when you get burnt, you realise that something is wrong, when you fall and hurt yourself, you realise that something is wrong: it begins to make you reflect that you must pay attention to this and that, so as not to fall, not to burn yourself, not to cut yourself.…It dawns on you gradually with external experience, external contacts. But otherwise one is a half-conscious mass which moves without even knowing why or how. This is the very small beginning of the emergence from the primary state of unconsciousness. Page – 263 |