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Questions and Answers What is the significance of this message for 1957 that you have given us : ”A power greater than that of Evil can alone win the victory. It is not a crucified but a glorified body that will save the world.” THIS message, if it is understood, is just that which can lead to its goal the best human good will showing itself at present upon earth. I wrote it in answer to an immense, pathetic, collective effort to awaken in men the true sense of brotherhood and to prevent all future war. The message has taken a somewhat especial form, because the goodwill proceeded from a Christian country and I answered to a Christian conception, or more exactly, to the form given by Christianity to a conception which is found everywhere in the world expressed differently in different countries and religions. I speak of the idea of total renunciation of all physical reality, common throughout the world to all who turn to spirituality, the profound contempt for the material world, making it a thing of illusion and falsehood and leaving, as Sri Aurobindo used to say always, the field free to the sovereign royalty of the adverse forces. To escape from the concrete reality in search of an abstract and far-off reality means leaving the whole field of concrete realisation at the free disposal of the adverse forces who have taken possession of it and who now more or less rule over it and going away to realise for oneself—as Sri Aurobindo says in "Thoughts and Glimpses"—a zero, an empty unity, to become the sovereign of a Nothingness.
It is because Evil was opposed till now by a spiritual force having no power for transformation in the material world that the mighty effort of goodwill made by mankind through thousands of years has ended only in a lamentable defeat and left the world
Page-1 in the same state of misery and corruption and falsehood. One must—and this is the true, the only remedy—on the very plane where the adverse forces are supreme, on the material plane, secure a power greater than theirs, capable of conquering them totally in that domain itself, in other words, a spiritual force that is capable of transforming the consciousness and the material world. This force is the Supramental Force. What is needed is to be receptive to its action on the physical plane and not run away into a far off Nirvana leaving to the Neither the sacrifice of the physical life nor the giving up of material power can win the
"When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge. Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar." Sri Aurobindo—Thoughts and Glimpses In this first paragraph which is about the mental being and its activities, we see that Sri Aurobindo opposes what he calls knowings to true Knowledge. But what are knowings ? Knowings are all that one can learn by material observation and technical study in the different fields of mental activity—scientific, artistic, philosophical or literary. In other words, it is all that the human mind has produced by an external study of life and things, all that one can find in books or by direct study of nature or by reasoning, deduction, analysis and, in a general way, all the speculative activities of the human mind. In the second sentence of the paragraph we see that Sri Aurobindo places reason at the top of the human mind. In fact, reason is, during the whole period of mental growth, the arbiter Page-2 of his activity, the safest guide, the master, one might say, who controls, and so long as you resort to mental activities, even those that are most speculative, it is reason that must guide you, prevent you from going astray, taking the wrong road or being beguiled by more or less erratic and unhealthy imaginations. But if you want to reach the true knowledge, that is to say, the spiritual knowledge which one gains only by identification, then you must go beyond reason, enter a region higher than the mind where you have direct relation with the light, overmental or supramental. So long as you are in the mental region, Reason is your guide, your helper; but if you want to have the true knowledge by identity, then Reason becomes a limitation and a bar. This does not mean that you must lose it, no, but that it must be subordinated to your movement of ascent; It is not that you must become unreasonable, but that you must pass beyond reason into a higher truth and light.
When is it possible to give up reason ? It is possible to give up reason only when you have passed beyond the mental activity. It is possible only when you have given yourself totally to the Divine. It is possible only when you have no more desires. Reason must be the ruler until you have gone beyond the state where it is indispensable or even merely useful. So long as there is an ego, so long as there are desires, so long as there is a personal will, so long as there are impulses and passions, preferences and attractions and repulsions, you cannot give up reason without falling into an unbalance. There is also another condition altogether indispensable for you to be able to do without reason. And that is not to be open at any point to the suggestions of the hostile world. As a matter of fact, if you are not completely freed from the habit of answering to adverse suggestions, then by giving up your reason, you give up reason itself, that is to say, common sense, and you begin to behave here also in such an incoherent manner as may lead you to a Page-3 dangerous lack of balance. And if the adverse suggestions are not to touch you any more, you must be exclusively under the influence of the Divine. You see now that the problem is not so easy. It means that unless you are completely illumined and transformed, it is always much safer to act by one’s reason. It may be a limitation, indeed it is a great limitation, but it is also a check which prevents you from becoming one of those half crazy people who are too many in the world. Reason is a very respectable person, and like all respectable persons, it has its limitations and partialities; but none the less it is of great utility. There are many things you would have done, if you had no reason and which would have led you straight to your ruin, because as long as you have not reached the higher regions, your best means for discrimination is reason. Naturally it is neither the ideal nor the peak; it is only a guide to lead you through life, a check that protects you from extravagances, excesses and disordered passions and above all from such impulsive acts as may lead you to the abyss. One must be quite sure of oneself, quite free from ego and perfectly surrendered to the Divine Will if one is to dispense with reason safely.
What is the first step towards reaching the true Knowledge ? To lose the illusion of the concrete and absolute value of human knowings. And perhaps that is also the most difficult step. If you study the sciences, for example, the different branches of science or philosophy or any other similar activity, if you study seriously and deeply, then you arrive easily at the sense of the relativity of all these knowings. But when you come down one step to a lower level of mental activity, which determines and governs your attitude to the practical problems of life, you see that like all reasonable beings or those that are on the way to it, you form every instant a set of ideas about things which are not true knowledge but knowings, mental constructions made out of observations Page-4 and experiments and studies which increase in number as you grow in age. You live in this mental construction with an innate, spontaneous and unshakable conviction of the absolute value of your experiences and observations, unless you possess a strong intelligence and have an opening to higher worlds. Indeed, all these mental constructions act in your being, automatically, requiring no conscious reflection on your part, by a sort of habit of associating two movements that such a thing will bring about inevitably such other thing and when you have seen the phenomenon repeating very often, that creates in you the feeling of the absolute value of these knowings about yourself and your life. And here it is infinitely more difficult to come to understand the relativity, the uncertainty that goes even to the extent of illusoriness of this way of knowledge. You are aware of it only when, through a will for discipline and spiritual progress, you look at these things with a deep critical sense. You discover then to what slavery you are subject automatically, even without your being conscious of it, by the mechanical play of reflex action, supported by the subconscient which produces the fact of causes and effects being linked together in a customary order without your perceiving in the least the mechanism of it. If you want to attain true knowledge, the first indispensable step then is not to believe in the validity of all these things; because these knowings in which you have almost an absolute faith and which very reasonably appears to you as evident, are just the limitations that prevent you from arriving at the knowledge by identity. * *
"When we have passed beyond willings, then we shall have Power. Effort was the helper; Effort is the bar." Sri Aurobindo—Thoughts and Glimpses It is the vital being and its power of action which is the subject matter of this paragraph. Sri Aurobindo takes mental activity as the basis of human life, because it is an activity that belongs exclusively to man and it is Page-5 thought that normally comes first in the process of human life and human realisations. Man is a thinking being; he has first of all an idea, then he invests this idea with a vital force, a power of action and transforms it into will. This will then is concentrated upon the object to be realised and with the force and the effort that is added to it, it becomes the lever of action. But Sri Aurobindo does not use here the word will, he says instead willings, that is to say, all the superficial wills based not upon true knowledge, but upon knowings. These willings are necessarily fragmentary, temporary, often contradicting one another; and it is this that gives individual and even collective life its character of incoherence, illogicality and confusion. Sri Aurobindo opposes these willings to true will. He reserves the term will to denote what comes from the depth of the being, or the higher reality and which is the expression, in action, ^not of knowings any more, but of the true Knowledge. This Will, when it manifests itself in action, does so by the intervention of a deeper and more direct power, which makes all personal effort unnecessary. That is why Sri Aurobindo says that the true power of action can exist only when one has passed the stage of willings, that is to say, when the motive of action comes no more from a mental activity but from the true knowledge. The true Knowledge acting in the external being gives the true power. Here no doubt lies the true explanation of the saying very familiar but generally understood in a very superficial manner, "what you will you can." Evidently what is meant here is not willing, that is to say, a more or less incoherent expression of desires, but the true Will expressing the true knowledge, because true will carries in it the force of truth that gives the power, an invincible power. * *
Is it possible for a human being to be perfectly sincere ? Certainly not, if he remains what he is. But it is possible for him so to transform himself as to become perfectly sincere. Page-6 First of all, it must be said that sincerity is a progressive thing; and as the being progresses and grows and as the universe unfolds itself in the becoming, sincerity also goes on perfecting itself continuously. If there is a cessation in the growth, that necessarily would turn the sincerity of yesterday into an insincerity of tomorrow. To become perfectly sincere one must have no preference, no desire, no attraction, no disgust, no sympathy or antipathy, no attachment, no repulsion. You must live in a total, integral vision of things in which every thing is at its place and you have the same attitude to every thing, the attitude that gives the true vision. Evidently it is a very difficult programme for a human being to realise, and unless one decides to divinise himself, it is almost impossible for him to free himself from all these contraries. And yet so long as he carries them within him he cannot be perfectly sincere. The mental, vital and even physical functioning automatically gets falsified. I lay stress on the physical, for even the functioning of the senses is falsified; you do not see, you do not hear, you do not taste, you do not feel things as they are in their own reality, as long as you have a preference. As long as there are things that please you and things that displease you, as long as they awake in you an attraction or a repulsion, you cannot see them in their reality; you see them through your reaction, your preference or your repulsion. The senses are instruments that become false in the same way as sensations or feelings or thoughts become false. Therefore, you must reach a state of complete detachment if you want to be sure of what you see, what you feel, what you experience and what you think. Evidently this is not an easy task; but till then your perception cannot be wholly true and therefore it will not be sincere. Naturally, that is the maximum. There are cruder types of insincerity which everybody understands and which, I think, it is not necessary to emphasise. As for example, to say one thing and think another, to pretend doing one thing but doing another, to express a will which is not your true will and so on,—I do not speak of the blatant falsehood which consists in saying a thing other than what is, nor of that diplomatic way of behaving which Page-7 consists in doing a thing with the idea of getting a result, saying a thing for the sake of producing a certain effect, and all such combinations that lead you to contradict yourself—that is a type of insincerity obvious enough for every body to be able easily to recognise. But there are others, more subtle and they are more difficult to discover. For example, as long as you have in you sympathies and antipathies, quite naturally and, so to say, spontaneously, you will have a favourable view of that for which you have sympathy and an unfavourable view of that for which you have antipathy. Here too the lack of sincerity will be flagrant. However, it may happen that you deceive yourself and do not perceive that you are insincere. In that case the reason is that you have the collaboration,—if one may say so—of a mental insincerity. For while it is true that the principle of sincerity is the same everywhere, insincerity takes a somewhat different character according to the states and parts of the being. But the source of all insincerity whatsoever is always a similar movement arising from desire and a seeking for personal ends, from egoism and the combination of all sorts of limitations arising from egoism, and from all the deformations arising from desire. To say the truth, so long as the ego is there, you cannot be perfectly sincere even if you try to be so. You must go beyond ego, give yourself entirely to the Divine Will, give yourself without reserve or calculation. Then only can you become perfectly sincere, not before. However, this does not mean that you should not make an effort to become more sincere than you are, saying: I wait till my ego disappears to become sincere. For one can turn the phrase round and say that if you do not exert yourself sincerely your ego will not disappear. Sincerity is the basis of all true realisation. It is the means, it is the way and it is also the goal. Without sincerity, you may be sure of taking false steps without number and having to repair constantly the harm you would do to yourself and to others. Besides, there is a wonderful joy in being sincere; every act of sincerity carries in itself its own reward; the feeling of purification, Page-8 uplifting and liberation that one feels when one rejects even if it be a particle of falsehood. Sincerity is safety, protection, guide; ultimately it is the transforming power. * *
What must one understand by "not to have preferences" ? Must not one prefer order to disorder, cleanliness to dirt etc. ? Not to have preferences, does it mean to treat everybody in the same manner ? What you call here preference, I call choice. And every moment of your life you have to choose, choose between that which pulls you;down7and that which pulls you up, between that which makes you go forward and that which makes you go backward. But that I do not call having a preference, I call that making a choice, choosing, and that choice is indispensable, and it is infinitely more than choosing once for all between cleanliness and dirt, whether physical or moral. This attitude of choice must be there constant and perpetual, you must never fall asleep; but I do not call that having preferences. To prefer means just not to choose. The word has for me a very clear meaning. Preference is a blind thing, it is an impulse, an attachment, at times an unconscious and generally an obstinate movement.
And very often preference goes the contrary way to choice. Here is an example that I come across daily. You are in front of a problem and you make the choice of placing yourself entirely at the disposal of the Divine Will so that the true solution might come. It comes, but how is it that you are disappointed? It is because something in you wished, desired, preferred more or less consciously a different solution. And it is just because of this preference it happens that if the answer to your aspiration or your prayer is not what you desire, you feel unhappy and have to struggle to accept it. On the contrary, if you have no preference, whatever the answer to your aspiration, to your prayer and whenever it comes, you adhere to it in a sincere urge, joyously, spontaneously.
Page-9 A choice you have to make every minute, every minute you are put in front of a choice: the choice to go up or to go down, to go forward or to go backward. But this choice does not imply that you would prefer things to be rather like this than that. It is a fact of every instant, it is an attitude you take. A choice is a decision and an act. Preference is a desire, an impulse. Choice is made and should be made, and if it is truly a choice it is made without the least care for consequences; without the expectation of any result you have chosen; you have chosen according to your inner truth, according to your highest consciousness, what the consequences will be is no business of yours; you have made your choice and the true choice. On the contrary, if you have a preference, it is the preference that will make you choose one way or other, it is the preference that will distort your choice. That will be calculation, that will be bargaining; you will act not because that is the truth, the true action to do, but with the idea of getting a certain result, and that opens the door to any thing. Preference attaches itself to a result, choice is independent of the result. I repeat, every second you are put under the necessity of choosing; and you do not choose truly well, in all sincerity, unless it is the truth of the choice that interests you and not its result. If you choose in view of a result, that falsifies your choice. So you see now there has been a confusion in your mind. As for treating every one in the same way, it is a still greater confusion. It is the kind of confusion one makes when one expects the Divine to act in the same way towards every body. In that case it would be of no use that there is diversity in the world, it would be of no use that there are no two individuals alike. To treat every one in the same way would be contradicting the very principle of diversity. You can or you should, if you cannot, aspire to have the same deep attitude of understanding, unity, love, perfect compassion for all that is in the universe. But this very attitude will be applied in each case differently according to the truth and the necessity of the case. In other words, while the origin of the action may be the same, the action itself can be wholly, diametrically opposite Page-10 according to the case and the truth of each one. But that is possible only for the highest, the deepest or essentially the truest consciousness, that which is free from all contingent movements. There you see every minute not only the essential truth of things, but also the truth of action and this is different in each case. And yet, I repeat, the state of consciousness in which one acts remains in every case essentially the same. To understand that you have to enter into the essential deth of things or see them from the highest height. You are then like a centre of light and consciousness, high enough or deep enough to see all things at the same time, not merely in their essence, but in their manifestation. And although the centre of consciousness is one and the same, the action is as diverse as the manifestation, it is the realisation of the divine truth in its manifestation. Otherwise you suppress all the diversity of the world and bring it back to the essential unmanifest Unity. For it is only in the non-manifestation that the One exists in unity. As soon as you enter into manifestation, the One becomes diversified and expresses itself in multiplicity, and multiplicity implies multitude of actions and means. To conclude, I would say that the choice is to be made without caring for the consequences and die action to be done according to the truth of multiplicity in manifestation.
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