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4 November 1958
Do the gods of the Puranas and the gods of Greek and Egyptian mythology have any real existence?
Between the gods of the Puranas and the gods of Greek and Egyptian mythology, all kinds of similarities are found; it could be an interesting subject for study. To the modern Western world, all these divinities − the Greek gods and other “pagan” gods, as they call them − are simply a product of human imagination and correspond to nothing real in the universe. But this is a gross error. To understand the mechanism of universal life, even that of terrestrial life, one has indeed to know that all these are real and living beings, each in its own realm, and have an independent reality. They would exist even if men did not exist. The majority of these gods existed before man existed. In a very old tradition, probably dating before the Chaldean and Vedic traditions, which are its two branches, the history of creation is narrated not from the metaphysical or psychological point of view, but from an objective point of view, and this history is as real as our history of historical epochs. Of course, this is not the only way of looking at the thing, but it is quite as legitimate as any other; and in any case it recognises the concrete reality of these divine beings. These are beings who belong to the progressive creation of the universe and have themselves presided over its formation, from the most ethereal or subtle to the most material regions; it is a descent of the divine creative Spirit. And they descended progressively, through realities more and more − one cannot say dense, because it is not dense, one cannot even say material, because matter as we know it does not exist on those planes − through realities more and more concrete. According to traditions and occult schools, all these zones Page – 375 of realities, these planes of realities have got different names; they have been classified in a different way, but there is an essential analogy, and if you go back far enough into the traditions, you see only the words changing according to the country and the language. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and those of Eastern occultists offer great similarities. All who set out on the discovery of these invisible worlds and make a report of what they saw, give a very similar description, whether they be from here or there; they use different words, but the experience is very similar and the handling of forces is the same. This knowledge of the occult worlds is based on the existence of subtle bodies and of subtle worlds corresponding to those bodies. They are what the psychological method calls “states of consciousness”, but these states of consciousness really correspond to worlds. The occult procedure consists then in being aware of these various inner states of being or subtle bodies and in becoming sufficiently a master of them so as to be able to go out of them successively, one after another. There is indeed a whole scale of subtleties, increasing or decreasing according to the direction in which you go, and the occult procedure consists in going out of a denser body into a subtler body and so on again, up to the most ethereal regions. You go, by successive exteriorisations, into bodies or worlds more and more subtle. It is somewhat as if every time you passed into another dimension. The fourth dimension of the physicists is nothing but the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. To give another image, one can say that the physical body is at the center − it is the most material, the densest and also the smallest − and the inner bodies, more subtle, overflow more and more the central physical body; they pass through it, extending themselves farther and farther, like water evaporating from a porous vase and forming a kind of steam all around. And the greater the subtlety, the more the extension tends to unite with that of the universe: one ends by universalising oneself. Page – 376 And it is altogether a concrete process which gives an objective experience of invisible worlds and even enables one to act in these worlds. There are, then, only a very small number of people in the West who know that these gods are not merely subjective and imaginary − more or less wildly imaginary − but that they correspond to a universal truth. All these regions, all these domains are filled with beings who exist, each in its own domain, and if you are awake and conscious on a particular plane − for instance, if on going out of a more material body you awake on some higher plane, you have the same relation with the things and people of that plane as you had with the things and people of the material world. That is to say, there exists an entirely objective relation that has nothing to do with the idea you may have of these things. Naturally, the resemblance is greater and greater as you approach the physical world, the material world, and there even comes a time when the one region has a direct action upon the other. In any case, in what Sri Aurobindo calls the overmental worlds, you will find a concrete reality absolutely independent of your personal experience; you go back there and again find the same things, with the differences that have occurred during your absence. And you have relations with those beings that are identical with the relations you have with physical beings, with this difference that the relation is more plastic, supple and direct − for example, there is the capacity to change the external form, the visible form, according to the inner state you are in. But you can make an appointment with someone and be at the appointed place and find the same being again, with certain differences that have come about during your absence; it is entirely concrete with results entirely concrete. One must have at least a little of this experience in order to understand these things. Otherwise, those who are convinced that all this is mere human imagination and mental formation, who believe that these gods have such and such a form because Page – 377 men have thought them to be like that, and that they have certain defects and certain qualities because men have thought them to be like that − all those who say that God is made in the image of man and that he exists only in human thought, all these will not understand; to them this will appear absolutely ridiculous, madness. One must have lived a little, touched the subject a little, to know how very concrete the thing is. Naturally, children know a good deal if they have not been spoilt. There are so many children who return every night to the same place and continue to live the life they have begun there. When these faculties are not spoilt with age, you can keep them with you. At a time when I was especially interested in dreams, I could return exactly to a place and continue a work that I had begun: supervise something, for example, set something in order, a work of organisation or of discovery, of exploration. You go until you reach a certain spot, as you would go in life, then you take a rest, then you return and begin again − you begin the work at the place where you left off and you continue it. And you perceive that there are things which are quite independent of you, in the sense that changes of which you are not at all the author, have taken place automatically during your absence. But for this, you must live these experiences yourself, you must see them yourself, live them with sufficient sincerity and spontaneity in order to see that they are independent of any mental formation. For you can do the opposite also, and deepen the study of the action of mental formation upon events. This is very interesting, but it is another domain. And this study makes you very careful, very prudent, because you become aware of how far you can delude yourself. So you must study both, the dream and the occult reality, in order to see what is the essential difference between the two. The one depends upon us; the other exists in itself; entirely independent of the thought that we have of it. When you have worked in that domain, you recognise in Page – 378 fact that once a subject has been studied and something has been learnt mentally, it gives a special colour to the experience; the experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact that the subject was known and studied lends a particular quality. Whereas if you had learnt nothing about the question, if you knew nothing at all, the transcription would be completely spontaneous and sincere when the experience came; it would be more or less adequate, but it would not be the outcome of a previous mental formation. Naturally, this occult knowledge or this experience is not very frequent in the world, because in those who do not have a developed inner life, there are veritable gaps between the external consciousness and the inmost consciousness; the linking states of being are missing and they have to be constructed. So when people enter there for the first time, they are bewildered, they have the impression they have fallen into the night, into nothingness, into non-being ! I had a Danish friend, a painter, who was like that. He wanted me to teach him how to go out of the body; he used to have interesting dreams and thought that it would be worth the trouble to go there consciously. So I made him “go out” − but it was a frightful thing ! When he was dreaming, a part of his mind still remained conscious, active, and a kind of link existed between this active part and his external being; then he remembered some of his dreams, but it was a very partial phenomenon. And to go out of one’s body means to pass gradually through it all the states of being, if one does the thing systematically. Well, already in the subtle physical, one is almost de-individualised, and when one goes farther, there remains nothing, for nothing is formed or individualised. Thus, when people are asked to meditate or told to go within, to enter into themselves, they are in agony − naturally ! They have the impression that they are vanishing. And with reason: there is nothing, no consciousness ! These things that appear to us quite natural and evident, are, for people who know nothing, wild imagination. Page – 379 If, for example, you transplant these experiences or this knowledge to the West, well, unless you have been frequenting the circles of occultists, they stare at you with open eyes. And when you have turned your back, they hasten to say, “These people are cranks !” Now to come back to the gods and conclude. It must be said that all those beings who have never had an earthly existence − gods or demons, invisible beings and powers − do not possess what the Divine has put into man: the psychic being. And this psychic being gives to man true love, charity, compassion, a deep kindness, which compensate for all his external defects. In the gods there is no fault because they live according to their own nature, spontaneously and without constraint: as gods, it is their manner of being. But if you take a higher point of view, if you have a higher vision, a vision of the whole, you see that they lack certain qualities that are exclusively human. By his capacity of love and self-giving, man can have as much power as the gods and even more, when he is not egoistic, when he has surmounted his egoism. If he fulfils the required condition, man is nearer to the Supreme than the gods are. He can be nearer. He is not so automatically, but he has the power to be so, the potentiality. If human love manifested itself without mixture, it would be all-powerful. Unfortunately, in human love there is as much love of oneself as of the one loved; it is not a love that makes you forget yourself. Page – 380 EXPERIENCE OF 5 NOVEMBER 1958 New Year Message for 1959
At the very bottom of the inconscience most hard and rigid and narrow and stifling I struck upon an almighty spring that cast me up forthwith into a formless limitless Vast vibrating with the seeds of a new world.
Here is the origin of this message: Last evening in the class,¹ I noticed that the children, who had a whole week to prepare questions on the text we are reading, did not find a single one. A terrible somnolence ! A total lack of interest ! When I had finished my reading, I said to myself, “But what is there in these brains that does not take interest in anything but their small personal affairs? After all, what is happening inside there, behind these forms?” Then during the meditation, I began going down into the mental atmosphere of the people around me, in order to find there the small light, the thing that responds. And I was literally dragged down to the bottom, as if into a hole. In this hole I saw what I am still seeing. I went down into a fissure, as it were, between two steep rocks, rocks made of something harder than basalt, black, metallic at the same time, with edges so sharp that you had the impression that were you simply to touch them, you would be flayed. It was something that seemed to have no bottom and no end, and it became narrower and narrower like a funnel, so narrow that there was almost no room left even for the consciousness to pass. The bottom was invisible, a black hole, and that went down and
¹Mother’s weekly “Wednesday class”, held at the Ashram Playground Page – 381 down and down, without air, without light, only a kind of glimmer, like a reflection at the peak of the rocks, a glimmer that came from beyond, from something that could be the heavens, but something invisible. I continued to slide down the fissure and I saw the edges, the black rocks, cut with scissors, as it were, shining like a fresh cut, the edges so sharp that they were like knives. Here was one, there another, there another, everywhere, all around. And I was dragged, dragged, dragged down, − I went down, down, down and there was no end to it, it became more and more oppressive, stifling, suffocating. Physically, the body followed, it participated in the experience. The hand that was on the arm of the chair slipped down, then the other hand, then the head bent down in an irresistible movement. Then I said to myself, “But this must stop, for if it continues, my head will be down on the ground !” (The consciousness was elsewhere, but I was looking at my body from outside.) And I asked myself, “But what is there at the bottom of this hole ?” Hardly had I formulated the question when it was as if I had touched a spring that was there at the very bottom of the hole, a spring I had not noticed yet, which acted at once with a tremendous force and at one bound shot me up straight into the air; I was cast out of the fissure into a limitless, formless vast which was infinitely comfortable − not exactly warm, but it gave a comfortable impression of inner warmth. After this painful enough descent, it was a kind of super-comfort, an ease, an ease at its maximum. And my body immediately followed the movement, the head at once became straight again. And I lived all this without objectifying it at all; I was not taking stock of what it was, I did not look for any explanation of what was happening; it was what it was, I lived it and that was all. The experience was absolutely spontaneous. It was all-powerful, infinitely rich; it had no form at all, no limit − naturally I was identified with it and that is why I knew that it had neither limit nor form. It was as if − I say “as if” Page – 382 because it could not be seen − as if this vast was made up of countless imperceptible points, points that did not occupy any place in space (there was no space, you see), points that were a deep warm gold; but this was only an impression, a translation. And all that was absolutely living, living with a power that seemed infinite. And yet it was immobile, with an immobility so perfect that it gave a feeling of eternity, but with an unbelievable inner intensity of movement and life − it was inner, self-contained − and immobile, immobile in relation to the outside, if there was an outside. And it had a boundless life − it may be spoken of as infinite only by way of image − and an intensity, a strength, a force, a peace, the peace of eternity, a silence, a calm, a power capable of everything. And I did not think it, I did not objectify it, I lived it comfortably, very comfortably. This lasted for a very long time − for the rest of the meditation. It was as if that contained all the wealth of possibilities. And all that though it had no form, had the power to become forms. After a moment I asked myself, “What is this, to what does it correspond?” Naturally I found out afterwards, and finally this morning I told myself, “Well, it is just to give me my message for the coming year.” Then I transcribed it − naturally, you cannot make a description, it is indescribable. It was a psychological phenomenon and the forms were nothing but a way of describing the psychological state to oneself. And this is what I noted, obviously in a mental way. I have described nothing, I have only stated a fact:
At the very bottom of the inconscience most hard and rigid and narrow and stifling I struck upon an almighty spring that cast me up forthwith into a formless limitless Vast vibrating with the seeds of a new world.”
Generally the inconscience gives the impression of something Page – 383 amorphous, inert, formless, neutral and grey − formerly, when I entered into the zones of inconscience, that was the first thing that I met; but in my experience yesterday, it was an inconscience hard, rigid, coagulated, as if coagulated for a resistance. It was a mental inconscience; all efforts make no impression on it, nothing can penetrate it. And this inconscience is much worse than a purely material inconscience. It was not the original inconscient; it was, if one may say so, a mentalised inconscient. All this rigidity, hardness, narrowness, fixity, opposition come from a mental presence in the creation: this is what the mind has brought into the inconscient. When the mind had not manifested, the inconscient was not like that: it was formless and had the plasticity of formless things. That plasticity has disappeared. The beginning of the experience is a very expressive image of the action of mind in the inconscient; it has made the inconscient aggressive − it was not like that before − aggressive, resisting, obstinate. That was precisely the starting-point of my experience. I was in fact trying to look into the mental inconscience of people, and this mental inconscience refuses to change, while the other did not; the purely material inconscience has no mode of being, it does not exist, it is not organised in any way. While this one is an organised inconscience, organised through the beginning of a mental influence and it is a hundred times worse ! It has now become a much greater obstacle than before. Before, it did not even have the power to resist, it had nothing, it was truly inconscient. Now it is an inconscience organised in its refusal to change ! So I wrote, “most hard and rigid and narrow” − the idea is of something which presses you, presses you” − most stifling”. Then I wrote, “I struck upon an almighty spring.” That means precisely this: in the deepest depths of the inconscient, there is a supreme spring that enables us to touch the Supreme. Because at the very bottom of the inconscience there is the Supreme. It is the Supreme who enables us to touch the Supreme. This is the “almighty spring”. Page – 384 It is always the same idea that the highest height touches the deepest depth. The universe is like a circle; it is represented by a serpent that bites its own tail. That means that the supreme height touches the most material matter without any intermediary. I have said this many times, but here it was an experience of the thing as I had it. Finally I said, “a formless limitless Vast vibrating with the seeds of a new world”. This does not refer to the primordial creation, but to the supramental creation; so this experience does not correspond to a return to the supreme origin of all. I had altogether the impression that I was projected into the origin of the supramental creation: it is something of the Supreme that has already been objectified precisely for the sake of the supramental creation. There was in fact this entire impression of power, of warmth and of gold. It was not fluid, but like a powdery mist. And each one of these things (they cannot be called particles or fragments or even points, unless point is taken in the mathematical sense, a point that does not occupy any place in space) was like living gold, a powdery mist of warm gold − one cannot call it bright, nor can one call it dark; neither was it light: a multitude of small points of gold, nothing but that. One could say that they touched my eyes, my face… and with a tremendous force ! At the same time, there was the feeling of a plenitude, of an all − powerful peace − it was rich, it was full. It was movement at its maximum, infinitely more swift than anything that one can imagine, and at the same time it was absolute peace, perfect stillness. And this almighty spring was a perfect image of what happens, is bound to happen and will happen for everybody: all at once you shoot up into the vast. The experience that I have just described was followed by another which was also noted down at the time.¹
¹See the following talk of 15 November 1958. Page – 385 EXPERIENCE OF 13 NOVEMBER 1958
To tell the truth, you are never freed from hostile forces until you come out for good into the Light, above the lower hemisphere. And there the phrase “hostile forces” loses its meaning; only the forces of progress are there in order to compel you to progress. But you must come out of the lower hemisphere in order to see things in that way; because below, they are very real in their opposition to the divine plan. It was said in the old traditions that one could not live more than twenty days in that higher state without leaving one’s body and returning to the supreme origin. Now that is no longer true. It is precisely this state of perfect harmony, beyond all attacks, that will become possible with the supramental realisation. It is that which will be realised for all who are destined for the supramental transformation. The adverse forces know quite well that in the supramental world they will automatically disappear: having no more use, they will be dissolved without the need to do anything, simply through the presence of the supramental force. That is why they rush about in a rage, negating everything, everything. But the link between the two worlds has not yet been built − it is in the course of being built. That was the meaning of the experience of February third,¹ namely, to establish a link between the two worlds. For the two worlds are there in fact − not one above the other: one within the other, in two different dimensions − but there is no communication between the two. They overlap each other without being joined together. In the experience of February third, I saw some of those from here and elsewhere who already belong to the supramental world in one part of their being; but there is no connection, no junction.
¹ The Mother commented on this experience in her talk of 19 February 1958 (Questions and Answers 1957-58, Cent. Vol. 9, pp. 271-283).\ Page – 386 The moment has come just now in the history of the universe when that link must be established. The experience of November fifth was a new step in the construction of the link between the two worlds. I was indeed projected into the very origin of the supramental creation: all that warm gold, that living tremendous power, that sovereign peace. I saw once again that the values which govern in this supramental world have nothing to do with our values here below, even the values of the wisest, even those values which we consider most divine at the time we live constantly in the divine Presence. It is altogether different. Not only in our state of worship and surrender to the Lord, but even in our state of identification, the quality of the identification is different depending on whether we are on this side, progressing in this hemisphere below, or have passed over to the other and emerged into the other world, the other hemisphere, the higher hemisphere. The quality or the kind of relation that I had with the Supreme at that moment was quite different from that which we have here, and even the identification had a different quality. With regard to the lower movements one understands very well that they are different, but that was the summit of our experience here, that identification by which it is the Supreme who rules and lives. Well! He rules and lives quite differently when we are in this lower hemisphere and when we are in the supramental life. And at that moment¹ what gave intensity to the experience was that I came to perceive, vaguely, these two states of consciousness at the same time. It is almost as if the Supreme himself is different, that is to say, the experience we have of him. And yet in both cases there was contact with the Supreme. Well, probably what differs is what we perceive of him or the way in which we translate it; but the quality of the experience is different.
¹ The experience of November 13 Page – 387 There is in the other hemisphere an intensity and a plenitude which expresses itself through a power different from the one here. How to explain it? You cannot. The quality of the consciousness itself seems to change. It is not something higher than the summit to which we can rise here, it is not one step more: here, we are at the end, at the summit. It is the quality that is different, the quality, in the sense that there is a plenitude, a richness, a power. This is a translation, in our manner, but there is something that escapes us − it is truly a new reversal of consciousness. When we begin to live the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness takes place which is for us the proof that we have entered the spiritual life; well, another reversal of consciousness occurs when one enters the supramental world. Besides, perhaps each time that a new world opens up, there will again be a new reversal of this kind. Thus even our spiritual life − which is such a total reversal in relation to ordinary life − is and appears to be, in relation to the supramental consciousness, the supramental realisation, something so totally different that the values of the two are almost opposite. One can put it in this way (but this is very imprecise, more than diminished − deformed): it is as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver whereas the supramental is made of gold, as if the whole spiritual life here below were a vibration of silver, not lustreless, but merely a light, a light that goes up to the summit, a light quite pure, pure and intense; but in the other life, the supramental life, there is a richness and a power that makes all the difference. This whole spiritual life of our psychic being and our present consciousness, which appears so warm, so full, so wonderful, so sparkling to the ordinary consciousness, well, all this splendour appears poor in relation to the splendour of the new world. The phenomenon can be very well explained in this way: a series of reversals bringing about, step by step, an ever new richness of creation so that whatever has preceded it appears poor in comparison. Page – 388 What for us, in relation to our ordinary life, is a supreme richness, appears a poverty in relation to this new reversal of consciousness. This was my experience. Last night when I tried to understand what was lacking so that I might be able to bring you completely, truly out of your difficulties, the effort reminded me of what I told you the other day about the Power, the power of transformation, the true power of realisation, the supramental power. Once you enter there, rise into that state, then you see that it is truly the All-Power in relation to what we are here. So once more I perceived, I felt the two states at the same time. But as long as this realisation is not an accomplished fact, it will still be a progression − a progression, an ascension: you gain, you gain ground, you climb up and up; as long as it is not the new reversal, it is as if everything needed to be done over again. It is the repetition of the experience here below − it is reproduced up there. And each time, you have the impression that you have lived on the surface of things. It is an impression that is repeated and repeated. At each new conquest you have the impression: “Until now I had lived only on the surface of things − on the surface of things − on the surface of realisation, the surface of surrender, the surface of power − it was merely the surface of things, the surface of experience.” Behind the surface there is a depth, and it is only when you enter into the depth that you touch the true thing. And each time it is the same experience: what appeared as a depth becomes a surface, a surface with all that it means, something inaccurate, artificial, an artificial transcription, something that gives one the impression that it is not truly living: it is a copy, an imitation − it is an image, a reflection, not the thing itself. You pass into another zone and you have the impression that you have discovered the Source and the Power, the Truth of things; and then, this source, this power and this truth become in their turn an appearance, an imitation, a transcription in relation to the new realisation. Page – 389 Meanwhile, we must indeed recognise that we have not got the key yet; it is not within our hands. Or rather we know quite well where it is, and we have only one thing to do: the perfect surrender of which Sri Aurobindo speaks, the total self-giving to the Divine Will, whatever happens, even in the midst of the night. There is the night and there is the sun, the night and the sun, again the night, many nights; but one must cling to this will to surrender, cling to it as in a tempest, and give up everything into the hands of the Supreme Lord, until the day when the Sun will come for ever, the total victory. Page – 390 |