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6 August 1958
Sweet Mother, what is the effect and value of collective prayer?
We have already spoken about this, about collective prayers, the use that has been made of them. I believe that it has even been published in the Bulletin. Besides, there are different kinds of collective prayer, just as there are different kinds of collectivities. There is the anonymous mass, the crowd, formed by chance circumstances, without any inner coordination, impelled by the force of circumstance, as for instance when a king or a person who attracts public attention is in a critical situation, either ill or the victim of an accident, and the people gather to obtain news and also to express their feelings; and through chance circumstances people have collected there, that is, there is no inner link except that of the same emotion or interest. There have been cases of crowds spontaneously beginning to pray to ask for the recovery of someone in whom they were specially interested. Of course, these very crowds can gather for a completely different purpose, out of hatred, and their cries are also a sort of prayer, a prayer to the adverse and destructive forces. Those movements are spontaneous, not organised, unexpected. There is also the collectivity formed by individuals who have gathered together around an ideal or a teaching or an action they want to carry out, and who have an organising link between them, the link of the same purpose, the same will and the same faith. These can gather in a methodical manner to practise common prayer and meditation, and if their aim is high, their organisation good, their ideal powerful, through their prayers or meditations these groups can have a considerable effect on world events or on their own inner development and collective progress. Page – 369 These groups are necessarily far superior to others, but they don’t have the blind strength of the mobs, the collective action of the crowd. They replace this vehemence, this intensity by the strength of a deliberate and conscious organisation. At all times there have been on earth groups organised in this way. Some of them have had a historical life, a historical action in the world, but as a rule they have not succeeded better with the crowd, the mass, than exceptional individuals. They have always been suspected and subjected to attacks, persecutions, and often they have also been dissolved in a very brutal, obscure and ignorant way.…There were those semi-religious, semi-chivalric groups, gathered around a belief or rather a creed, with a definite aim, which have had a very interesting history in the world. And certainly, they have done much for collective progress through their individual effort. There is an ideal organisation which, if fully realised, could create a kind of very powerful unity, composed of elements all having the same aim and the same will and with enough inner development to be able to give a very coherent body to this inner oneness of purpose, motive, aspiration and action. At all times centres of initiation have tried this, more or less successfully, and this is always mentioned in all occult traditions as an extremely powerful means of action. If the collective unit could attain the same cohesion as the individual unit, it would multiply the strength and action of the individual. Usually, if several individuals are brought together, the collective quality of the group is much lower than the individual value of each person taken separately, but with a sufficiently conscious and coordinated organisation, it would be possible, on the contrary, to multiply the power of individual action. Page – 370
Sweet Mother, in July 1953 you told us that after five years you would give us lessons on spiritual life. ¹ I have brought what you said, Sweet Mother.
Really! That is interesting!
(Mother reads the text given by the child) Has it been printed?
No, Mother.
Oh! I like the last sentence very much! (After a silence) So, what do you expect me to do?…To begin?
Yes, Mother.
But I have already started, haven’t I? Even before the five years have passed! It seems that on that day, I…Oh! I wrote] here is something I wrote…
It is written in Conversations,² Sweet Mother.
There I have written about the confusion made between asceticism and spiritual life, and then I promise that one day I shall speak to you about the confusion people make between what they call God and what I call the Divine. But I have already spoken to you about that several times, haven’t I? I did not remember my promise but I have kept it without remembering it and even before the day came!
¹ See Question and Answers 1953 (15 July). ² Presently entitled Questions and Answers 1929. Page – 371 Now, if you ask me a precise question on this subject, I shall see what I can say. What do you want to know about spiritual life?…Do you have a particular question?
You mean you have started the meditations, Mother?
Yes!…And giving you explanations on what I read. We have even begun, in the small class, to meditate on the disciplines which are necessary to lead a spiritual life. And when I took up the reading of the Dhammapada, we read many things leading to the knowledge of spiritual life. But if you have a precise question on a special point, you can ask it, I shall reply.
Sweet Mother, why don’t we profit as much as we should by our presence here in the Ashram?
Ah! That is very simple; it is because it is too easy!…When you have to go all round the world to find a teacher, when you have to give up everything to obtain only the first words of a teaching, then this teaching, this spiritual help becomes something very precious, like everything that is difficult to obtain, and you make a great effort to deserve it. Most of you came here when you were very small, at an age when there can be no question of the spiritual life or spiritual teaching – it would be altogether premature. You have indeed lived in this atmosphere but without even being aware of it; you are accustomed to seeing me, hearing me; I speak to you as one does to all children, I have even played with you as one plays with children; you only have to come and sit here and you hear me speak, you only have to ask me a question and I answer you, I have never refused to say anything to anybody\is so easy. It is enough to…live – to sleep, to eat, to do exercises and study at school. You live here as you would live anywhere else. And so, you are used to it. If I had made strict rules, if I had said, “I shall not tell you Page – 372 anything until you have truly made an effort to know it”, then perhaps you might have made some effort, but that’s not in keeping with my idea. I believe more in the power of the atmosphere and of example than of a rigorous teaching. I count more on something awakening in the being through contagion rather than by a methodical, disciplined effort. Perhaps, after all, something is being prepared and one day it will spring up to the surface. That is what I hope for. One day you will tell yourself, “Just think! I have been here so long, I could have learnt so much, realised so much and I never even thought of it! Only like that, now and then.” And then, on that day…well, on that day, just imagine, you are going to wake up all of a sudden to something you never noticed but which is deep within you and thirsts for the truth, thirsts for transformation and is ready to make the effort required to realise it. On that day you will go very fast, you will advance with giant strides.…Perhaps, as I said, that day has come now after five years? I said, “I give you five years….” Now the five years have passed, so perhaps the day has come! Perhaps you will suddenly feel an irresistible need not to live in unconsciousness, in ignorance, in that state in which you do things without knowing why, feel things without understanding why, have contradictory wills, understand nothing about anything, live only by habit, routine, reactions – you take life easy. And one day you are no longer satisfied with that. It depends, for each one it is different. Most often it is the need to know, to understand; for some it is the need to do what must be done as it should be done; for others it is a vague feeling that behind this life, so unconscious, so futile, so empty of meaning, there is something to find which is worth being lived – that there is a reality, a truth behind these falsehoods and illusions. One suddenly feels that everything one does, everything one sees, has no meaning, no purpose, but that there is something Page – 373 which has a meaning; that essentially one is here on earth for something, that all this – all these movements, all this agitation, all this wastage of force and energy – all that must have a purpose, an aim, and that this uneasiness one feels within oneself, this lack of satisfaction, this need, this thirst for something must lead us somewhere else. And one day, you ask yourself, “But then, why is one born? Why does one die? Why does one suffer? Why does one act?” You no longer live like a little machine, hardly half-conscious. You want to feel truly, to act truly, to know truly. Then, in ordinary life one searches for books, for people who know a little more than oneself, one begins to seek somebody who can solve these questions, lift the veil of ignorance. Here it is very simple. You only have to…do the things one does every day, but to do them with a purpose. You go to the Samadhi, look at Sri Aurobindo’s picture, you come to receive a flower from me, sit down to a lesson; you do everything you do but…with one question within you: Why? And then, if you ask the question, you receive the answer. Why? Because we don’t want life as it is any longer, because we don’t want falsehood and ignorance any longer, because we don’t want suffering and unconsciousness any longer, because we do not want disorder and bad will any longer, because Sri Aurobindo has come to tell us: It is not necessary to leave the earth to find the Truth, it is not necessary to leave life to find one’s soul, it is not necessary to give up the world or to have limited beliefs in order to enter into relation with the Divine. The Divine is everywhere, in everything, and if He is hidden…it is because we do not take the trouble to discover Him. We can, simply by a sincere aspiration, open a sealed door in us and find…that Something which will change the whole significance of life, reply to all our questions, solve all our problems and lead us to the perfection we aspire for without Page – 374 knowing it, to that Reality which alone can satisfy us and give us lasting joy, equilibrium, strength, life. All this you have heard many a time. You have heard it – Oh! There are even some here who are so used to it that for them it seems to be the same thing as drinking a glass of water or opening a window to let in the sunlight. But since I promised you that in five years you would be able to live these things, to have a concrete, real, convincing experience of them, well, that means you ought to be ready and that we are going to begin. We have tried a little, but now we are going to try seriously! The starting-point: to want it, truly want it, to need it. The next step: to think, above all, of that. A day comes, very quickly, when one is unable to think of anything else. That is the one thing which counts. And then… One formulates one’s aspiration, lets the true prayer spring up from one’s heart, the prayer which expresses the sincerity of the need. And then…well, one will see what happens. Something will happen. Surely something will happen. For each one it will take a different form. That’s all. I am glad you gave me this. Page – 375
This short talk was given on a Friday, the day on which the Dhammapada was usually read.
As today is Sri Aurobindo’s birthday I thought that instead of reading the Dhammapada I could read to you something which will both interest you and show you how Sri Aurobindo visualised our relation with the gods. You know, don’t you, that in India especially, there are countless categories of gods, who are all on different planes, some very close to man, others very close to the Supreme, with many intermediaries. You will understand better what I want to tell you if I mention the gods of the Puranas – like those we saw the other day in the film – who in many ways are, I must say, inferior to man (!) although they have infinitely more power. There are gods of the Overmind who are the great creators of the earth – until now. There are the gods of the Vedas who are mentioned in everything that has come down from the Rishis. And there are the gods of the Supermind, those who are going to manifest on earth, although of course they exist from all eternity on their own plane. Here Sri Aurobindo is speaking mostly about the Vedic gods, but not exclusively nor in a very definite way. At any rate these gods are higher than the gods of the Puranas. Here is what Sri Aurobindo tells us. In fact, it is a prayer: Be wide in me, O Varuna; Be mighty in me, O Indra; O Sun, be very bright and luminous; O Moon, be full of charm and sweetness. Be fierce and terrible, O Rudra; Be impetuous and swift, O Maruts; Page – 376 Be strong and bold, O Aryama; Be voluptuous and pleasurable, O Bhaga; Be tender and kind and loving and passionate, O Mitra. Be bright and revealing, O Dawn; O Night, be solemn and pregnant. O Life, be full, ready and buoyant; O Death, lead my steps from mansion to mansion. Harmonise all these, O Brahmanaspati. Let me not be subject to these gods, O Kali.¹ So Sri Aurobindo makes Kali the great liberating power who ardently impels you towards progress and leaves no ties within you which would hinder you from progressing. I think this will be a good subject for meditation. (Meditation) ¹ Thoughts and Aphorisms, Cent. Vol. 17, p. 85. Page – 377
Sweet Mother, when you tell us to meditate on a subject, we choose, for instance, to meditate that we are opening to the light; we imagine all sorts of strange things, we imagine a door opening, etc., but this always takes a mental form.
It depends on the individual. Everyone has his own particular process. It depends altogether on each one. Some people may have an imagery which helps them; others, on the contrary, have a more abstract mind and only see ideas; others, who live more in sensations or feelings, have rather psychological movements, movements of inner feelings or sensations – depends on each one. Those who have an active and particularly formative physical mind, see images, but everybody does not experience the same thing. If you ask the person next to you, for instance…(To the next child) When I give a subject, do you see images like that?
Sometimes.
Sometimes?
Most often I feel something.
What is it, most often?
A sensation.
A sensation, yes. It is more frequently a sensation – I mean generally – more frequently a sensation or a feeling than an image. The image always comes to those who have a formative Page – 378 mental power, an active physical mind. It is an indication that one is active in one’s mental consciousness.
(The child who had asked the first question) But is this right?
But everything is right if it has a result! Any means is good. Why shouldn’t it be right?…Images like that are not necessarily ridiculous. They are not ridiculous, they are mental images. If they bring you some result, they are quite appropriate. If they give you an experience, they are appropriate. For example, when I ask you to go deep down within yourselves, some of you will concentrate on a sensation, but others may just as well have the impression of going down into a deep well, and they clearly see the picture of steps going down into a dark and deep well, and they go down farther and farther, deeper and deeper, and sometimes reach precisely a door; they sit down before the door with the will to enter, and sometimes the door opens, and then they go in and see a kind of hall or a room or a cave or something, and from there, if they go on they may come to another door and again stop, and with an effort the door opens and they go farther. And if this is done with enough persistence and one can continue the experience, there comes a time when one finds oneself in front of a door which has…a special kind of solidity or solemnity, and with a great effort of concentration the door opens and one suddenly enters a hall of clarity, of light; and then, one has the experience, you see, of contact with one’s soul.…But I don’t see what is bad in having images!
No, but it is only an imagination, isn’t it, Mother?
An imagination? But what is an imagination?…You cannot imagine anything which doesn’t exist in the universe! It is impossible to imagine something that doesn’t exist somewhere. The Page – 379 only possibility is that one may not put one’s image in its place: either one gives it virtues and qualities it doesn’t have, or explains it with some other than the right explanation. But whatever one imagines exists somewhere; the main thing is to know where and to put it in its proper place. Of course, if after having imagined that you are in front of a door which is opening, you thought that it was really a physical door inside your body, that would be a mistake! But if you realise that it is the mental form taken by your effort of concentration, this is quite correct. If you go wandering in the mental world, you will see plenty of forms like that, all kinds of forms, which have no material reality but truly exist in the mental world. You cannot think powerfully of something without your thought taking a form. But if you were to believe that this form was physical, that would obviously be an error, yet it really does exist in the mental world. Imagination is a power of formation. In fact, people who have no imagination are not formative from the mental point of view, they cannot give a concrete power to their thought. Imagination is a very powerful means of action. For instance, if you have a pain somewhere and if you imagine that you are making the pain disappear or are removing it or destroying it – all kinds of images like that – well, you succeed perfectly. There’s a story of a person who was losing her hair at a fantastic rate, enough to become bald within a few weeks, and then someone told her, “When you brush your hair, imagine that it is growing and will grow very fast.” And always, while brushing her hair, she said, “Oh, my hair is growing! Oh, it will grow very fast!…” – And it happened! But what people usually do is to tell themselves, “Ah, all my hair is falling again and I shall become bald, that’s certain, it’s going to happen!” And of course it happens!
Mother, in the Friday Classes, you often read a sentence¹ Page – 380 to us and ask us to meditate on it. But how should we meditate on a sentence? That is, should we think, meditate on the idea or…what should we do?
Meditate on a sentence?
Yes.
Obviously on what it means.
That is, we must think…
Yes. Then?
Because that, Mother, becomes a mental function or what?
The sentence is already a mental formation; the mental formation is made. The sentence is the expression of the mental formation. So when you meditate on a sentence, there are two methods. There is an active, ordinary external method of reflecting and trying to understand what these words mean, understand intellectually what the sentence means exactly – that is active meditation. You concentrate on these few words and take the thought they express and try, through reasoning, deduction, analysis, to understand what it means. There is another method, more direct and deep; it is to take this mental formation, this combination of words with the thought they represent, and to gather all your energy of attention on it, compelling yourself to concentrate all your strength on that formation. For instance, instead of concentrating all your energies on something you see physically, you take that thought and concentrate all your energies on that thought – in the mind, of course.
¹ At that time it was from the Dhammapada. Page – 381 And then, if you are able to concentrate the thought sufficiently and stop it from vacillating, you pass quite naturally from the thought expressed by the words to the idea which is behind and which could be expressed in other words, other forms. The characteristic of the idea is the power to clothe itself in many different thoughts. And when you have achieved this, you have already gone much deeper than by merely understanding the words. Naturally, if you continue to concentrate and know how to do it, you can pass from the idea to the luminous force that is behind. Then you enter a much vaster and deeper domain. But that asks for some training. But still, that is the very principle of meditation. If you are able to go deep enough, you find the Principle and the Force behind the idea, and that gives you the power of realisation. This is how those who take meditation as a means of spiritual development are able to unite with the Principle which is behind things and obtain the power to act on these things from above. But even without going so far – that implies a rather hard discipline, doesn’t it, a long-standing habit – you can pass quite easily from the thought to the idea, and that gives you a light and an understanding in the mind which enables you, in your turn, to express the idea in any form. An idea can be expressed in many different forms, in many different thoughts, just as when you come down to a more material level, a thought can be expressed through many different words. Going downwards, towards expression, that is, spoken or written expression, there are many different words and different formulas which may serve to express a thought, but this thought is only one] of the forms of thought which can express the idea, the idea behind, and this idea itself, if it is followed deeply, has behind it a principle of spiritual knowledge and power which can then spread and act on the manifestation. When you have a thought you look for words, don’t you, and then you try to arrange these words to express your thought; Page – 382 you can use many words to express a thought, you tell yourself, “No, look, if I put this word instead of that, it would express what I am thinking much better.” That is what you learn when you are taught style, how to write. But when I give you a written sentence which has the power to express a thought and tell you to concentrate on it, then, through this thought-form you can go back to the idea behind, which can be expressed in many different thoughts. It is like a great hierarchy: there is a Principle right at the top, which itself is not the only one, for you can go still higher up; but this Principle can be expressed in ideas, and these ideas can be expressed in a great number of thoughts and this great number of thoughts can make use of many languages and an even greater number of words. When I give you a thought it is simply to help you to concentrate.…There are schools which put an object in front of you, a flower or a stone, or any object, and then you sit around it and concentrate on it and your eyes go like this (Mother squints) until you become the object. That too is a method of concentration. By gazing steadily like that, without moving, you finally pass into the thing you are gazing at. But you must not begin to gaze at all kinds of things: only gaze steadily at that. That gives you a look…it makes you squint. All this is to learn concentration, that’s all. Sometimes one of these sentences expresses a very deep truth. It is one of those happy sentences which are very expressive. So that helps you to find the truth that is behind. When we have finished the Dhammapada, that is what I intend to do. I am at present translating the latest of Sri Aurobindo’s books we have published, Thoughts and Aphorisms, and I intend, every Friday, to give one single sentence, one single aphorism – with or without the commentary as necessary – as a subject for meditation. We still have to see how we should go about it.…We could proceed in two different ways. As I am going to take them up in order, you will always know which Page – 383 one will be for the following week and prepare questions in advance; or else if you don’t prepare the questions in advance, perhaps it will be more interesting to take a sentence, to have a meditation on it, and in the following lesson to ask me questions on the sentence from the previous week. Then, from the questions I am asked, I shall choose those that seem to me the most intelligent and answer them. And later we shall take a new sentence which will serve as the subject for meditation on that day and the subject for questions the following week. And this I am going to do with a very precise, very definite purpose: to bring you out of your mental somnolence and compel you to reflect and try to understand what I tell you.…For, it makes a little noise in your ears, a still softer noise in your heads, and then it goes out from the other side, and then it is finished! Sometimes, very rarely, by a special grace, there is just a little effect here, like this (gesture), which lasts like a little flickering flame\burns, and then, pfft!…Something blows on it, it goes out and it is all finished.
We need lessons, Sweet Mother.
When you told me the other day that I had promised to give you “lessons”, well, I took it very seriously. I am going to keep my promise. There. Page – 384 |