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you are unfit for yoga. Because, truly, you are not ready for yoga when you are in that state. It is a rudimentary state. January 1961 51 – When I hear of a righteous wrath, I wonder at man’s capacity for self-deception.
When one deceives oneself, one always does it in good faith. One is always acting for the good of others or for the welfare of humanity and to serve you – that goes without saying! How does one deceive oneself?¹
I feel like asking you a question myself! Because your question can be understood in two ways. One can take it in the same spirit of irony and humour that Sri Aurobindo has put in his Aphorism, when he marvels at man’s capacity for self-deception. That is to say, you are putting yourself in the place of someone who is deceiving himself and you say, “But I am acting in good faith! I always want the good of others, etc. – the welfare of humanity, to serve the Divine, that goes without saying! And how can I be deceiving myself?” But actually there are two ways of deceiving oneself, which are very different. For example, you may very well be shocked by certain things, not for personal reasons, but precisely in your goodwill and eagerness to serve the Divine, when you see people behaving badly, being selfish, unfaithful and treacherous. There is a stage where you have overcome these things and no longer allow them to manifest in yourself, but to the extent that you are linked to the ordinary consciousness, the ordinary point of view, the ordinary life, the ordinary way of thinking, they are still possible, they exist latently because they are the reverse of the qualities that you are striving to attain. And this opposition
¹ Oral question and answer. Page – 80 still exists – until you rise above it and no longer have either the quality or the defect. So long as you have the virtue, its opposite is always latent in you; it is only when you are above both the virtue and the defect that it disappears. So this kind of indignation that you feel comes from the fact that you are not altogether above it; you are at the stage where you thoroughly disapprove and could not do it yourself. Up to that point there is nothing to say, unless you give a violent outer expression to your indignation. If anger intervenes, it is because there is a complete contradiction between the feeling you want to have and how you react to others. Because anger is a deformation of the vital power, an obscure and wholly unregenerated vital, a vital that is still subject to all the ordinary actions and reactions. When this vital power is used by an ignorant and egoistic individual will and this will meets with opposition from other individual wills around it, this power, under the pressure of opposition, changes into anger and tries to obtain by violence what cannot be achieved solely by the pressure of the force itself. Besides, anger, like every other kind of violence, is always a sign of weakness, impotence and incapacity. And here self-deception comes solely from the approval given to it or the flattering epithet attached to it – because anger can only be something blind, ignorant and asuric, that is to say, contrary to the light. But this is still the best case. There is another one. There are people who without knowing it – or because they want to ignore it – always follow their personal interest, their preferences, their attachments, their conceptions; people who are not wholly consecrated to the Divine and who make use of moral and yogic ideas to conceal their personal impulses. But these people are deceiving themselves doubly; not only do they deceive themselves in their external activities, in their relation with others, but they also deceive themselves in their own personal movement; instead of serving Page – 81 the Divine, they serve their own egoism. And this happens constantly, constantly! They serve their own personality, their own egoism, while pretending to serve God. Then it is no longer even self-deception, it is hypocrisy. This mental habit of always endowing everything with a very favourable appearance, of giving a favourable explanation to all movements – sometimes it is rather subtle, but sometimes it is so crude that nobody is deceived except oneself. It is a habit of excusing oneself, the habit of giving a favourable mental excuse, a favourable mental explanation to everything one does, to everything one says, to everything one feels. For example, those who have no self-control and slap someone’s face in great indignation would call that an almost divine wrath! It is amazing, amazing – this power of self-deception, the mind’s skill in finding an admirable justification for any ignorance, any stupidity whatsoever. This is not an experience that comes only now and then. It is something which you can observe from minute to minute. And you usually see it much more easily in others! But if you look at yourself closely, you catch yourself a thousand times a day, looking at yourself just a little indulgently: “Oh! But it is not the same thing.” Besides, it is never the same for you as it is for your neighbour! January 1961 52 – This is a miracle that men can love God, yet fail to love humanity. With whom are they in love then?
Is it possible to reach the Divine through philanthropy?¹
It depends on what you mean by philanthropy. Normally, we
¹ Written question and answer. Page – 82 call philanthropists those who do charitable works. Here Sri Aurobindo does not use the word philanthropy, for, as it is usually understood, philanthropy is a social and conventional attitude, a kind of magnified egoism which is not love but a condescending pity which assumes a patronising air. In this Aphorism Sri Aurobindo refers to those who follow the ascetic path in solitary search of a solitary God, by trying to cut themselves off completely from the world and men. But for Sri Aurobindo men form part of the Divine; and if you truly love the Divine, how can you not love men, since they are an aspect of Himself? 18 January 1961
53 – The quarrels of religious sects are like the disputing of pots, which shall be alone allowed to hold the immortalising nectar. Let them dispute, but the thing for us is to get at the nectar in whatever pot and attain immortality.
54 – You say that the flavour of the pot alters the liquor. That is taste; but what can deprive it of its immortalising faculty?
(1) What is this immortalising nectar of which Sri Aurobindo speaks? What, in this nectar, gives us the power of immortality? Is it physical immortality? (2) When we find this nectar, what happens to the religious sects? Do they reach their goal?¹
The immortalising nectar is the supreme Truth, the supreme Knowledge, the Union with the Supreme which gives the consciousness of immortality. Each religious sect has its own way of approaching the
¹ Written question and answer. Page – 83 Divine and this is why Sri Aurobindo compares them to different pots. But he says: No matter which path you follow, the goal alone is important, and the goal is the same whatever the path you follow. The nectar is the same in whichever pot it is contained. Some say that the flavour of the pot, the path you follow changes the taste of the nectar, that is to say, affects your union with the Divine. Sri Aurobindo answers: The approach may be different, each one chooses the one he prefers or which most suits his taste, but the nectar itself, the union with the Divine, always keeps its power of immortality. Now when we say that by union with the Divine we gain the consciousness of immortality, it means that the consciousness in us unites with what is immortal and therefore feels itself to be immortal. We become conscious of the domains where immortality exists. But this does not imply that our physical substance is transformed and becomes immortal. For that quite another procedure has to be followed. You must not only first obtain this consciousness, but bring it down into the material world and let it work not only on the transformation of the physical consciousness, but also on the transformation of the physical substance, which is quite a considerable task. Finally, you must not confuse personal realisation with the realisation of humanity as a whole. When we have found the nectar we are above all religious sects; they no longer have any meaning or use for us. But in a general way, for men in general, these things continue to have their value and usefulness as a path, until they achieve realisation. 28 January 1961
55 – 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 – 84 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.
Why does Sri Aurobindo give more importance to Kali?
It is good and necessary to possess all the divine qualities that these gods represent and symbolise; that is why Sri Aurobindo invokes them and asks them to take possession of his nature. But for one who wants union with the Supreme, for one who aspires for the supreme Realisation, this cannot be sufficient. This is why at the end he calls upon Kali to give him the power to go beyond them all. For Kali is the most powerful aspect of the universal Mother and her power is greater than that of all the gods in her creation. To unite with her means therefore to become more vast, more complete, more powerful than all the gods together and that is why Sri Aurobindo places union with her above and beyond all the others.
2 February 1961
56 – When, O eager disputant, thou hast prevailed in a debate, then art thou greatly to be pitied; for thou hast lost a chance of widening knowledge.
What is the use of discussions? What is the best way to make other people understand what one feels to be true?¹
¹ Oral question and answer. Page – 85 In general, those who like to discuss things are those who need the stimulant of contradiction to clarify their ideas. It is obviously the sign of an elementary intellectual stage. But if you can attend a discussion as an impartial spectator – even while you are taking part in it and while the other person is talking with you – you can always benefit from this opportunity to consider a question or a problem from several points of view; and by attempting to reconcile opposite views, you can widen your ideas and rise to a more comprehensive synthesis. As for the best way of proving to others what one feels to be true, one must live it – there is no other way.
How is it that we lose a chance to widen our knowledge by prevailing in a debate?¹
A debate is never anything but a conflict of opinions; and opinions are nothing but very fragmentary aspects of the truth. Even if you were able to put together and synthesise all opinions on a given subject, you still would not achieve anything but a very imperfect expression of the truth. If you prevail in a debate, it means that your opinion has prevailed over the opinion of another, not necessarily because yours was truer than his, but because you were better at wielding the arguments or because you were a more stubborn debater. And you come out of the discussion convinced that you are right in what you assert; and so you lose a chance to see a view of the question other than your own and to add an aspect of the truth to the one or the ones you already possess. You remain imprisoned in your own thought and refuse to widen it. 17 March 1961 ¹ Written question and answer. Page – 86 57 – Because the tiger acts according to his nature and knows not anything else, therefore he is divine and there is no evil in him. If he questioned himself, then he would be a criminal.
What would be the truly natural state for man? Why does he question himself?¹
On earth² in essence man is a universal being, but he has a special manifestation on earth. man is a transitional being. Therefore, in the course of his evolution, he has had several natures in succession, which have followed an ascending curve and will continue to follow it until he reaches the threshold of the supramental nature and is transformed into the superman. This curve is the spiral of mental development. We tend to call “natural” any spontaneous manifestation which is not the result of a choice or a preconceived decision, that is to say, without the intrusion of any mental activity. This is why when a man has a vital spontaneity which is very little mentalised, he seems more “natural” in his simplicity. But this naturalness is very much like that of the animal and is at the very bottom of the human evolutionary scale. He will only regain this spontaneity free from mental intrusion when he attains to the supramental stage, that is to say, when he transcends mind and emerges into the higher Truth. Until then all his behaviour is, naturally, natural! But with the mind evolution has become, one cannot say twisted, but distorted, because by its very nature the mind was open to perversion and almost from the beginning it became perverted, or, to be more precise, it was perverted by the Asuric forces. And this state of perversion gives us the impression that it is unnatural. Why does he question himself? Simply because this is the nature of the mind!
¹ Oral question and answer. ² Mother added: “This precise detail is not superfluous; I said ‘on earth’ meaning that man does not belong merely to earth.” Page – 87 With the mind individualisation began and a very acute feeling of separation, and also a kind of impression, more or less precise, of freedom of choice – all that, all these psychological states are the natural consequences of mental life and they open the door to everything we see now, from aberrations to the most rigorous principles. Mind has the impression that it can choose between one thing and another, but this impression is the distortion of a true principle which would be completely realisable only when the soul or psychic being appears in the consciousness and if the soul were to take up the governance of the being. Then man’s life would truly become the manifestation of the supreme Will expressing itself individually, consciously. But in the normal human state this is something extremely exceptional which to the ordinary human consciousness does not seem at all natural – it seems almost supernatural! Man questions himself because the mental instrument is intended to see all possibilities. And the immediate consequence of this is the concept of good and evil, or of what is right and what is wrong, and all the miseries that follow from that. One cannot say that it is a bad thing; it is an intermediate – stage not a very pleasant one, but still… one which was certainly inevitable for the complete development of the mind. 17 March 1961
58 – The animal, before he is corrupted, has not yet eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; the god has abandoned it for the tree of eternal life; man stands between the upper heaven and the lower nature.
Is it true that there was an earthly paradise? Why was man driven out of it?¹
¹ Oral question and answer. Page – 88 From the historical point of view – I am not speaking from the psychological but from the historical point of view – if I base myself on my memories – only I cannot prove it; nothing can be proved, and I do not think there is any truly historical proof, that is to say, one which has been preserved, or at any rate none has yet been found, – but according to what I remember, there was certainly a moment in earth’s history when there existed a kind of earthly paradise, in the sense that it was a perfectly harmonious and natural life; that is to say, the manifestation of the mind was in accord, was still in complete accord with the ascending march of Nature and totally harmonious, without perversion or distortion. This was the first stage of mind’s manifestation in material forms. How long did it last? It is difficult to say. But for man it was a life that was like a kind of outflowering of animal life. I have a memory of a life in which the body was perfectly adapted to its natural environment and the climate adapted to the needs of the body, the body to the needs of the climate. Life was wholly spontaneous and natural, just as a more luminous and more conscious animal life would be; but there were none of the complications and distortions that the mind brought in later in the course of its development. I have the memory of that life – I had it, I relived it when I became conscious of the life of the earth as a whole. But I cannot say how long it lasted nor what area it covered. I do not know. I can only remember the condition, the state, what material Nature was like, what the human form and the human consciousness were like at that time and this kind of harmony with all the other elements on earth – harmony with animal life, and such a great harmony with plant life. There was a kind of spontaneous knowledge of how to use the things of Nature, of the properties of plants, of fruits and everything vegetable Nature could provide. No aggressiveness, no fear, no contradictions nor frictions and no perversions at all – the mind was pure, simple, luminous, uncomplicated. It is only with the progress of evolution, the march of evolution, Page – 89 when the mind began to develop in itself, for itself, that all the complications and distortions began.So that the story of Genesis which seems so childish contains some truth. In the old traditions like that of Genesis, each letter¹ stood for a specific knowledge, it was a graphic summary of the traditional knowledge of that time. But apart from that, even the symbolic story had a reality in the sense that there truly was a period of life on earth – the first manifestation of mentalised matter in human forms – which was still in complete harmony with all that preceded it. It was only later… And the symbol of the tree of knowledge represents the kind of knowledge which is no longer divine, the material knowledge that comes from the sense of division and which started spoiling everything. How long did this period last? Because in my memory too it was like an almost immortal life, and it seems that it was an accident of evolution that made it necessary for forms to disintegrate… for progress. So I cannot say how long it lasted. And where? According to certain impressions – but they are only impressions – it would seem that it was in the vicinity of… I do not know exactly whether it was on this side of Ceylon and India or on the other (Mother points to the Indian Ocean, first to the west of Ceylon and India and then to the east, between Ceylon and Java), but it was certainly a place which no longer exists, which has probably been swallowed up by the sea. I have a very clear vision of this place and a very clear awareness of this life and its forms, but I cannot give any material details. To tell the truth, when I relived these moments I was not curious about details. One is in a different state of mind and one has no curiosity about these material details; everything changes into psychological factors. And it was… it was something so simple, so luminous, so harmonious, beyond all our preoccupations – precisely beyond all these preoccupations with time and place. It was a spontaneous, extremely beautiful life, and so close to Nature, like a natural flowering
¹ Of the Hebrew alphabet. Page – 90 of the animal life. And there were no oppositions, no contradictions, or anything like that – everything happened in the best way possible.
(Silence)
Repeatedly, in different circumstances, several times, I have had the same memory. It was not exactly the same scene or the same images, because it was not something that I saw, it was a life that I was living. For some time, by night or by day, in a certain state of trance I went back to a life that I had lived and had the full consciousness that it was the outflowering of the human form on earth – the first human forms capable of embodying the divine Being. It was that. It was the first time I could manifest in an earthly form, in a particular form, in an individual form – not a “general” life but an individual form – that is to say, the first time that the Being above and the being below were joined by the mentalisation of this material substance. I lived this several times, but always in similar surroundings and with a very similar feeling of such joyful simplicity, without complexity, without problems, without all these questions; there was nothing, absolutely nothing of the kind! It was an outflowering of the joy of living, simply that, in universal love and harmony – flowers, minerals, animals: all were in harmony. It was only long afterwards – but this is a personal impression – long afterwards that things went wrong. Probably because some mental crystallisations were necessary, inevitable for the general evolution, so that the mind might be prepared to move on to something else. This is where… Faugh! It is like falling into a hole, into ugliness, into obscurity; everything becomes so dark afterwards, so ugly, so difficult, so painful, it is really – it really feels like a fall.
(Silence) Page – 91 I knew an occultist who used to say that it was not – how to put it? – inevitable. In the total freedom of the manifestation it is the deliberate separation from the Origin that is the cause of all disorder. But how to explain it? Our words are so poor that we cannot speak of these things. We can say that it was inevitable because it happened; but if we go outside the creation, we can conceive – or we could have conceived – of a creation in which this disorder would not have happened. Sri Aurobindo also said practically the same thing, that it was a kind of “accident”, if you like, but an “accident” which has given the manifestation a much greater and much more complete perfection than if it had never occurred. But this still belongs to the real of speculation and these speculations are useless, to say the least. In any case, the experience, the feeling is this: a… (Mother indicates an abrupt fall) oh! all of a sudden. For the earth it probably happened like that, all of a sudden: a kind of ascent, then a fall. But the earth is only a very small point of concentration. For the universe it is something else. (Silence)
So the memory of that time is preserved somewhere, in the earth’s memory, in the region where all the memories of the earth are recorded, and those who are able to communicate with this memory can say that the earthly paradise still exists somewhere; but I know nothing about it, I do not see.
What about the story of the serpent? Why does the serpent have such an evil reputation?
The Christians say that it is the spirit of Evil. (Silence)
But all this is a misunderstanding. Page – 92 The occultist I spoke of used to say that the true interpretation of the Bible story about Paradise and the serpent is that man wanted to rise from a state of animal divinity – like the animals – to a state of conscious divinity through the development of the mind – and that is what the symbol means when it is said that they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. And the serpent – he always used to say that it was iridescent, that is to say, it was all the colours of the rainbow – it was not at all the spirit of Evil, it was the evolutionary force, the force, the power of evolution, and of course it was the power of evolution that had made them taste of the fruit of knowledge. And so, according to him, Jehovah was the chief of the Asuras, the supreme Asura, the egoistic god who wanted to dominate everything and have everything under his control. And once he had taken the position of supreme lord in relation to earthly realisation, of course he was not pleased that man should make this mental progress, for it would bring him a knowledge that enabled him not to obey any longer! This made him furious! For it would enable man to become a god by the evolutionary power of consciousness. And that is why they were driven out of Paradise. There is a good deal of truth in that, a good deal. And Sri Aurobindo fully agreed. He said the same thing. It is the evolutionary power – the power of the mind – that led man towards knowledge, a separative knowledge. And it is a fact that man became conscious of himself with the sense of good and evil. But, of course, that spoiled everything and he could not stay there. He was driven out by his own consciousness. He could no longer stay there.
But were they driven out by Jehovah or by their own consciousness?
It is just two different ways of saying the same thing. According to me, all these old Scriptures and these old traditions Page – 93 have different levels of meaning (Mother makes a gesture to show the different levels ); and according to the period, the people, the needs, one symbol or another has been selected and used. But there comes a time – when you transcend all these things and see them from what Sri Aurobindo calls “the other hemisphere” – when you become aware that these are merely ways of speaking to establish a contact – a kind of bridge or link between the lower way of seeing and the higher way of knowing. And people who argue and say, “Oh, no! it is like this; it is like that” – there comes a time when it seems so funny, so funny! And just that, the spontaneous retort of so many people, “Oh, that is impossible” – the word itself is so funny! For the slightest, I might even say, the most elementary intellectual development enables you to realise that you could not even think of it if it were not possible. (Silence)
Oh! If we could only find that again, but how? Really, they have spoilt the earth, they have spoilt – it they have spoilt the atmosphere, they have spoilt everything! And now, for the atmosphere to come back to what it should be – oh! we have a long way to go, and above all psychologically. But even the very structure of matter (Mother feels the air around her), with their bombs and experiments, oh, they have made a mess of it all!…They have really made a mess of matter. Probably – no, not probably – is quite certain that it was necessary to knead it, to churn it, to prepare it so that it can receive this, the new thing which is not yet manifested. It was very simple, very harmonious, very luminous, but not complex enough. And this complexity has spoilt everything, but it will bring a realisation that is infinitely more conscious – infinitely. And so when the earth again becomes so harmonious, simple, luminous, pure – simple, pure, purely divine – and Page – 94 with this complexity, then we shall be able to do something.
As the Mother was leaving she noticed a brilliant crimson Canna flower.
There were so many flowers just like this in the landscape of the earthly paradise, red, so beautiful. 11 March 1961
59 – One of the greatest comforts of religion is that you can get hold of God sometimes and give him a satisfactory beating. People mock at the folly of savages who beat their gods when their prayers are not answered; but it is the mockers who are the fools and the savages.
How can one give a satisfactory beating to God?
Religion always tends to make God in the image of man, a magnified and aggrandised image, but in the end it is always a god with human qualities. This is what makes it possible for people to treat him as they would treat a human enemy. In some countries, when their god does not do what they want, they take him and throw him into the river!
But are these idols not merely human creations? Do they have any existence in themselves?¹
Whatever the image – what we disdainfully call an idol – whatever the external form of the deity, even if to our physical eye it appears ugly or commonplace or horrible, a caricature, there is always within it the presence of the thing it represents. And there is always someone, a priest or an initiate, or a sadhu,
¹ Mother replied orally to this second question and in writing to the first and third questions. Page – 95 a sannyasin, who has the power and who draws – this is usually the work of the priests – who draws the force, the presence within. And it is real: it is quite true that the force, the presence is there; and it is that, not the form of wood or stone or metal, which people worship – it is the presence. But people in Europe do not have this inner sense, not at all. For them everything is like a surface – not even that, just a thin outer film with nothing behind – so they cannot feel it. And yet it is a fact that the presence is there; it is an absolutely real fact, I guarantee it.
Many people say that the teaching of Sri Aurobindo is a new religion. Would you say that it is a religion?
People who say that are fools who don’t even know what they are talking about. You only have to read all that Sri Aurobindo has written to know that it is impossible to base a religion on his works, because he presents each problem, each question in all its aspects, showing the truth contained in each way of seeing things, and he explains that in order to attain the Truth you must realise a synthesis which goes beyond all mental notions and emerge into a transcendence beyond thought. So the second part of your question is meaningless. Besides, if you had read what was published in the last Bulletin,¹ you could not have asked this question. I repeat that when we speak of Sri Aurobindo there can be no question of a teaching nor even of a revelation, but of an action from the Supreme; no religion can be founded on that. But men are so foolish that they can change anything into a religion, so great is their need of a fixed framework for their narrow thought and limited action. They do not feel secure unless they can assert this is true and that is not; but such an
¹ “What Sri Aurobindo represents in the world’s history is not a teaching, not even a revelation; it is a decisive action direct from the Supreme.”
Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, April 1961, p. 169 Page – 96 assertion becomes impossible for anyone who has read and understood what Sri Aurobindo has written. Religion and Yoga do not belong to the same plane of being and spiritual life can exist in all its purity only when it is free from all mental dogma.1 26 April 1961 60 – There is no mortality. It is only the Immortal who can die; the mortal could neither be born nor perish.
Does a being carry his mental, vital and physical experiences from one life to another?
Each case is different. It all depends on the degree of the individual’s development in his different parts and on how well these parts are organised around the psychic centre. The more organised the being, the more consciously lasting it becomes. We can say in a general way that each person brings into his present life the consequences of his previous lives, without, however, preserving the memory of these lives. Apart from a few very rare exceptions, only when you are united with your psychic being and become fully conscious of it do you obtain, at the same time, the memory of past lives, which the psychic preserves in its consciousness. Otherwise, even in those who are most sensitive, these memories are fragmentary, uncertain and intermittent. Most often they are hardly recognisable and seem to be nothing more than indefinable impressions. And yet a person who knows how to see through appearances will be able to perceive a kind of similarity in the sequence of events in his life. 4 May 1961 Page – 97 |