-09_questions and answers 8.htm

THE MOTHER

Questions and Answers

Questions and Answers

      The Supramental is not be mentalised

As it was foreseen, I have received a shower of questions meant to oblige me to explain mentally my supramental experience of February 3.

    You want me to speak of the experience, mentalise it to such an extent as to establish a new system so that you may be able to sit down comfortably in your new mental construction.

    I regret that I have to disappoint you, for it is absolutely impossible. If you wish to understand what I have written, well, try and get a supramental consciousness.

    Beware of this tendency of seeking to replace an old dogma by a new one; this inveterate habit of saying : "Oh, all that was false, now we are going to work out a fine practical guide for conduct and that will be true".

    A mental construction will never be true and I refuse to do it. I was obliged to use words that man understands, but I did it in the most incoherent manner possible in order not to be too mental. And this is valid not only for the questions I have received here or by letter, but for all on the same subject and it will be useless to put them to me.

    I would give the same advice to everyone : "Make an effort, work, open yourself, give yourself entirely to the New Force and a day will come when you will have the experience".

   With the experience, you will precisely understand how useless are the questions.

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The sense of beauty

    To do this yoga, one must have, a little at least, the sense of beauty. If one has not, one misses a most important aspect of the physical world.

    There is this beauty, this dignity of the soul—a thing to which I am very sensitive. It is a thing that moves me and evokes in me a great respect always.

    Yes, this beauty of the soul that is apparent in the face, this kind of dignity, the harmony of the integral realisation. When the soul becomes apparent in the physical, that gives this dignity, this beauty, this majesty, the majesty that comes from one’s being the Tabernacle. Then, even things that have no particular beauty put on a sense of eternal beauty, the eternal beauty.

    I have seen in this way faces passing from one extreme to another in a flash. Someone who has this kind of beauty, harmony, sense of divine dignity in the body, and then suddenly comes the perception of the obstacle, the difficulty, the sense of fault, indignity,—and then the sudden deformation in the appearance, a kind of decomposition of the features ! And yet it is the same face. It was like a lightning flash, but it was frightful. This kind of hideousness of the torment and the degradation—what has been translated in religions as "the torment of sin",—that gives you a face indeed ! Even features that are beautiful in themselves become horrible. And it was the same features and the same person.

   Then I saw how horrible is the sense of sin, how much it belongs to the world of falsehood.

The true Supermen .

    We have now arrived at a certitude, for there is already a beginning of realisation. We have the proof that under certain

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conditions the normal state of humanity can be transcended and a new state of consciousness worked out that would allow at least a conscious relation between the mental man and the supramental man.

    It can be affirmed with certainty that between the mental and the supramental being there will be an intermediate specimen, a kind of superman who will have still the qualities and partially the nature of man, that is to say, will still belong, in his most external form, to the human being with an animal origin, but will have sufficiently transformed his consciousness as to belong, in his realisation and activity, to the new race, the race of supermen.

    This species may be considered as a species of transition, because it will discover, as it is to be foreseen, the means of creating new beings without passing through the old animal method, and it is these beings, having truly a spiritual birth, that will form the elements of the new race, the supramental race.

    One might thus name supermen those who still belong by their origin to the older method of generation, but who, by their achievement, are in conscious and active relation with the new world of supramental realisation.

    It appears, it is even certain that the very substance that will constitute this intermediate world which is being already developed is a substance richer, more powerful, more luminous, more resisting, with certain new qualities, more subtle and pervasive and a kind of innate capacity for universality, as if the degree of subtlety and refinement it has reached allows vibrations to be felt in a manner much more wide, if not altogether total and it takes away the sensation of division which one has with the older substance, the ordinary mental substance. There is a subtlety of vibration which makes the universal global vibration a natural and spontaneous thing. The sense of division, of separation disappears altogether naturally and spontaneously with that substance; and that substance is now almost everywhere spread in earth’s atmosphere.

    That can be felt in the waking state, simply by a little concentration and a kind of self-absorption of consciousness, if one

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retraces, retires from the usual exteriorisation that appears more and more artificial and false. This exteriorisation, this feeling that was natural before appears false, unreal and wholly artificial; it answers in no way to the things as they are, it belongs to a movement which corresponds to nothing truly true.

     This new perception is affirming itself more and more, it i; becoming more and more natural, and sometimes the old manner of being is difficult to seize again, as if it was disappearing into a misty past—something that is on the point of ceasing to exist.

    One can conclude from this that since a body formed obviously according to the older animal method is capable of living this consciousness naturally, spontaneously, effortlessly, without coming out of itself, it proves that it is not an exceptional, a unique case, but simply it is the sign, fore-runner of a realisation which even if it is not absolutely general, can in any case be shared by a number of individuals and these moreover as soon as they share the experience will lose the feeling that they are separate individuals and will become a living collectivity.

    This new realisation following its course with a thundering rapidity, so to say, for, if we consider time in the ordinary way, only two years have passed, a little more than two years, between the time when the supramental substanace penetrated the earthly atmosphere and the time when this change has been brought about in earth’s atmosphere.

    If things continue to move at this speed, it is more than possible, it is almost evident that what Sri Aurobindo wrote in a letter would be a prophetic announcement: "The supramental consciousness will enter into a phase of realising power in 1967".

To understand with one’s body

    As the beginnings of the supramental life, which is next to be realised in the evolution of the universe, are developing, not

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perhaps in an apparent but a sure manner, it appears more and more evident that the most difficult means of approach to this supramental life is intellectual activity.

     One might say that it is much more difficult to pass from the mental to the supramental life than to pass from a certain psychic emotion in life — something which is like a reflection, a luminous emanation of the divine Presence in matter, — to the supramental consciousness. From there one can pass much more easily to the supramental consciousness than from the highest intellectual speculation to any supramental vibration. Perhaps it is the word that misleads us. Perhaps it is because we call it supramental that we hope to reach it through a higher mental activity, but the fact is very different. Through this very high, pure, noble intellectual activity you seem to enter into a kind of abstraction cold and powerless, a frozen light which is surely very far from life and farther yet from the experience of the supramental reality.

     There is in this new substance that is spreading and acting in the world, a warmth, a power, and a joy so intense that all intellectual activity appears by its side cold and dry. And that is why the less one speaks of these things the better. One single instant, one single surge of deep and true love, one single minute of deep communion in the divine Grace, takes you much nearer to the goal than all possible explanations.

     One can say even that a kind of sensation that is refined, subtle, clear, luminous, sharp, deeply penetrating opens the door much more to you than the subtlest explanations. And i we push the experience a little further, it seems when you arrive at the work of transformation of the body, when some cells of the body more ready than others, more refined and subtle and plastic, begin to feel concretely the presence of the divine Grace, the divine Will, the divine Power, the Knowledge which is not intellectual but knowledge by identity, when you feel this even in the cells of your body, then the experience is so total, so imperative, so living, concrete, tangible, real, that all the rest appears as a vain dream.

     Thus one can say that it is only when the circle will be completed, when the two extremities will touch, when the highest will

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manifest in the most material that the experience will be truly decisive.

     It would seem that one never truly understands until one understands with one’s body.

Thermocautery

     When you make a mistake, without knowing that it is a mistake, through ignorance, it is evident that as soon as you learn thai it is a mistake and your ignorance goes away, you do not commit the mistake any more, provided you have the good will and so come out of the state in which you might do it. But if you know that it is a mistake and still you do it, that means there is something perverse in you, something that has wilfully chosen to be on the side of disorder or bad will or even on the side of anti-divine forces.

     It is also evident that if one chooses to be on the side of anti-divine forces or if one is so weak and inconsistent as not to be able to resist the temptation of being with them, then it is infinitely more serious, from the psychological point of view. It means there is something vitiated somewhere : an adverse force is already established in you or you have an innate sympathy for these forces. It is much more difficult to correct that than to correct ignorance.

     To correct ignorance means to remove obscurity : you kindle a light, the obscurity disappears. But to repeat a fault which you know to be a fault would be like putting off the light wilfully after you have kindled it. That would be exactly making it dark in a wilful manner, for the argument of weakness does not hold.

     The divine Grace is always there to help those who have resolved to correct themselves and they cannot say, "I am too weak to correct myself". They should rather say that they have not yet taken the resolution to correct themselves. Somewhere in the

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being something there is which has not decided to do it and that is serious.

     The argument of weakness is an excuse. The Grace is there to give the supreme force to whosoever takes the resolution.

    This means that there is insincerity, not weakness. And insincerity is always an open door to the adversary. It means that there is a secret sympathy with what is perverted. And that is serious.

    When it is a matter of illumining the ignorance, it is sufficient, as I have said, to put on the light, but in the case of conscious relapse what is needed is thermocautery.

What does "mental honesty" exactly mean?

     It is a mind that does not try to deceive itself. And in fact it is not a trying, for it succeeds very well in doing it.

    It would seem that an almost constant function of the mind, in the usual psychological constitution of man, is to give an explanation which would be acceptable to what happens in the desire being, the vital being, the most material parts of the mind and the most subtle parts of the body.

    There is a kind of general complicity among the members of the being to give an explanation, even a comfortable justification of all that we do in order to avoid as much as possible the painful impressions that arise from errors that we commit and movements that are hardly desirable. Unless you have gone through or have been made to go through a special training, the mind gives to itself, whatever one does, a sufficiently favourable explanation in order not to feel uneasy. It is only under the pressure of external reactions or circumstances or movements from other people that one gradually consents to look less favourably at what one is and what one does and begins to ask oneself if things could not be better than they are.

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      Spontaneously the first movement is to justify oneself, to excuse oneself. You at once put yourself on your guard, and quite spontaneously you want to prove that you are in the right even in the very smallest things, things absolutely without importance, and this is the general attitude in life.

     These explanations you give to yourself. It is only when circumstances compel you that you give them to others or to another; but first of all you make yourself very comfortable : "it is like that, because it should be like that and it has happened because of that", and always it is the fault of others or the fault of circumstances. It requires truly an effort —unless, as I have said, you have passed through a discipline, unless you have formed the habit of doing it automatically—to begin to understand that perhaps it is not like that, perhaps you did not do exactly what you ought to have done or not reacted as you ought to have reacted and even when you begin to see it, you need a much greater effort to recognise it…officially.

    When you begin to see that you have made a mistake, the first movement of the mind is to cast the thing behind and put a veil in front, the veil of a fine little explanation; and as long as you are not obliged to show it you hide it. This is what I call want of mental honesty.

    First of all, you deceive yourself through habit, but even when you begin by not deceiving yourself, there is an instinctive movement in the being to try to deceive yourself in order to feel comfortable. And then you have to take a bigger step, once you have understood that you made a mistake, to avow frankly’: "Yes, I was mistaken".

    All these things are so habitual, so automatic that you do not even notice them. But when you seek to impose a discipline on your being, you make discoveries that are tremendously interesting. You find out that you constantly live in a state of wilful self-deception; you spontaneously deceive yourself, you need not think at all, spontaneously you throw a nice veil over what you have done so that the thing may not appear in its true colours and that for things which are so insignificant, which have so little importance. One could understand dissimulation when its recognition

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might have serious consequences for life itself—the instinct of self-preservation drives you to do it, it is a protection—but the question is not that here, the question is about things absolutely indifferent, without consequence, one has just to tell oneself, "I am wrong". That is to say, to be mentally sincere you need an effort, a great effort, a discipline. I do not speak naturally of those who tell a he in order not to be caught, for that, everybody knows, is a thing not to be done.

     When one speaks of mental honesty it is of a thing that is acquired by a constant and continued effort.

     You catch yourself, don’t you, you catch yourself all on a sudden giving to yourself, somewhere there in the head or in the heart,—but there it is more serious,—a little explanation very favourable to you. And when you can so pin yourself down, hold yourself and look straight in the face saying "you think it is like that ?", then if you are courageous enough and put a strong pressure you tell yourself in the end : "Yes, I know very well it is not like that".

     Sometimes that takes years. You must allow time to pass, you must change very much within yourself, and the vision of things must be different; you must have a different relation with circumstances so that you may see clearly, completely how much you deceived yourself, even at the very moment when you believed yourself to be sincere.

     Probably perfect sincerity can come only when you will have risen above this sphere of falsehood that the life as we know it upon earth is, even the higher mental life.

    Only when you have ascended into the higher sphere, into the world of the Truth, you will be able to see things truly as they are and when you have seen them as they are you will be able to live them in their truth. Then all falsehoods will drop naturally and favourable explanations having no longer any reason for existence will disappear, for there will be nothing to explain.

     Things will become evident by themselves, the possibility of error will disappear, the Truth will shine forth in the forms.

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When there is an effort in us to do better, but one does not notice any progress, one feels discouraged. What is the best thing to do then ?

      Not to be discouraged, above all. Discouragement leads nowhere. At first, the first thing you have to tell yourself is that you are totally incapable of knowing whether you have made progress or not, because, very often what seems to you a condition of stagnation is a long preparation—long sometimes, but not, in any case, interminable—preceding a leap forward.

     Sometimes we seem only to mark time during weeks or months, then suddenly something that was preparing makes its appearance, and we see that there has been a considerable change and at several points at the same time.

     Like all things in Yoga, the effort for progress must be for the love of the effort for progress, the joy of the effort and aspiration towards progress must be sufficient in themselves, quite apart from the result. All that you do in Yoga must be done for the joy of doing it and not in view of the result you want to secure. After all, in life, always, in everything, the result does not belong to us. And if we wish to have the right attitude, we must act, feel, think, make an effort, spontaneously, because that is the thing to be done and not because you wish to get this or that result.

    Directly we think of the result, we begin to strike a bargain and that takes away all sincerity from the effort. You make the endeavour to progress, because you feel the need of it in you, an imperative need—to make the effort and progress; and this effort is the gift you make to the divine consciousness in you, to the divine consciousness in the world, it is your way of expressing your gratitude, offering your person, and whether that has for its result progress or not is of no importance. You will progress when it will be decided that the time is come for progress and not because you desire it.

    If you desire progress, if, for example, you make an effort to get self-mastery, to overcome some defects, weaknesses or imperfections and you expect to obtain more or less immediately

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the result of your effort, then your effort loses all sincerity, it becomes a bargain.

      So there are two things to remember; first, we are incapable of judging what should be the result. Trust in the Divine and tell yourself: "I am going to give all that I can, as much effort and concentration as I am capable of, it is for Him to judge what is to be given in exchange or if something at all is to be given in exchange; as for me, I do not know what the result should be".

     Are we sure, before we have transformed anything in us, of knowing the direction, the way, the form that the transformation should take ? We know nothing, we only imagine; and generally we limit, we restrict, we make the result that is to be gained—small, superficial and relative. We do not know what may be or should be the result, we shall know it subsequently. When that comes, when the change has been made, then we look backward and say "Ah! it is that towards which I was moving", but one knows only afterwards. Before, you have only vague imaginations that are quite superficial and childish in comparison with the true progress, the true transformation.

     So then, first, we have an aspiration but we do not truly know what is the exact result that we should get. The Divine alone can know it. Secondly, if we say to the Divine : "I give you my effort, but you know, in return I must make progress, otherwise I do not give you anything". That is bargaining. There you are !

     The spontaneous act, done because one cannot do otherwise and done as an offering with a good will, is the only thing that has the true value.

With the human mind can one recognise the soul of another person ?

     Things are not so trenchantly cut and separated as when they are spoken of; that is why it is so difficult to see very distinctly and clearly the different parts of the being unless you have had a

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long training and a long discipline in study and observation. There are no closed compartments between the soul and the mind, the vital and even the physical being. There is an infiltration of the soul into the mind; it is quite large and perceptible in some persons. And it is the part of the mind which has a sort of subtle contact with the psychic being that is able to feel in others the presence of the soul.

     They who have the capacity in some measure to enter into the consciousness of others so that they are able to see or feel directly their thought, their mental activity in the atmosphere of others, they who can communicate without having recourse to words for making themselves understood can make out the difference between one who has an active soul and one whose soul is asleep. The activity of the soul gives to the mental activity a special colouring : it is lighter, more comprehensive, more luminous and that can be felt. For example, one can say with some certainty by looking into the eyes of another that this person has a living soul or that his soul is not visible in his eyes. There are many who can see—many ! I mean among people who are evolved —and say that.

    But of course, to know exactly how far the soul of a person is awake and active, how far it is dominant, is the master of the being, one must have oneself the psychic consciousness, for that alone can judge definitively. But it is not quite impossible to have this kind of inner vibration which makes you say: "Oh, this person has a soul".

    Now evidently, what most often men call "soul", unless they are initiates, is only vital activity. When someone has a strong, active, wilful vital dominating the bodily activities, has a very living or intense contact with persons and things and happenings, when someone has a pronounced taste for art, for all expression of beauty, you are generally tempted to say and to believe that he has a living soul; but it is not his soul, it is his vital being that is living and dominates the bodily activity. That is the first difference between one who is beginning to be developed and those who are still in the inertia and tamas of a purely material life. That gives at first to the appearance and also to the activity a kind of

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vibration, an intensity of vibration which often leaves the impression that the person has a living soul, but it is not that, it is his vital being which is developed, has a special capacity, a vital that is stronger than the physical inertia and gives an intensity of vibration, and life and action that is missing in those whose vital being is not developed. This confusion between vital activity and soul is very common. The vital vibration is indeed much more easily perceptible to the human consciousness than the vibration of the soul.

      Generally, to perceive the soul in anyone, one must have a very quiet mind, very quiet, because when the mind is active, it is the mind’s vibrations that one sees, not the soul’s vibrations.

      And when you look at someone who is conscious of his soul and who lives in his soul, you have the impression that you are going down, entering deep, deep into the person, far, far, very far within; while generally when you look into the eyes of people, very soon you come across a surface that vibrates, answers to the look, but you do not have this impression of going down, down, deep down as if into a pit and very far, very far within,—then you have a faint, a very quiet answer; otherwise generally you enter— there are eyes into which you do not enter at all, they are closed like doors—but there are eyes that are open and you enter, then you meet quite near behind, something that Vibrates, there, like that, which sometimes shines, sometimes twinkles. And then, if you make the mistake you say: "Oh, he has a living soul",—but it is not that, it is his vital.

     To find out the soul, you must draw back from the surface, withdraw into the deep and enter, enter, enter, go down and down and down and down into a pit deep, silent, immobile; there is something warm, quiet, rich with content and very immobile, and very full, something like a sweetness—that is the soul.

     And if you persist and you are yourself conscious, then there comes a kind of plenitude which gives the impression of something complete containing unfathomable depths. And you feel that if you entered there, secrets would be revealed to you, like the reflection in very calm waters of something that is eternal. And you do not feel limited by time any longer.

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      You have the impression that you have always been and you are for eternity.

      That happens when you have touched the centre of the soul.

      If the contact with the soul is conscious and complete enough, it liberates you from the slavery of the external form; you feel no longer that you live simply because you have a body. Generally the usual feeling of the being is that it is bound to the external form, so much so that when you think of "I" you think of the "body". The reality of the person is the bodily reality. It is only when you have made an effort for inner growth and endeavoured to find a point that is a little more stable in your being that you can begin to feel that it is this something that is conscious, in a permanent way, through all ages and changes and it is this something that must be "I"; but this already needs a very deep study. Otherwise when you think : "I am going to do this, I have need of that", it is always your body, a kind of will which is a mixture of sensations, emotional reactions, more or less confused and still more confused thoughts : they make a mixture and are driven by an impulse, an attraction, a desire, some will or other; it is this that becomes "I" for the moment, but not directly, for one cannot conceive of this "I" apart from the head, trunk, arms, legs and all that moves: they are very tightly tied together.

    It is only when you have reflected much, seen much, studied and observed much that you begin to notice that one is more or less independent of the other and that this thing that is behind can move the body or not move it, and may not identify itself wholly with the movement, or action or realisation, that there is something floating. But you must look long before you can see that.

    And you must look much more to see that this second thing which is there, this conscious active will is itself moved by something else which looks on, judges, decides and which seeks to base its decision on knowledge; but that comes much later. When you begin to look at this other thing quite at the bottom, you perceive that it has not only the power to move the second thing, the active will, but that it has a very direct and important action on reactions, feelings, sensations and that finally it is this part that sees, observes, judges and decides, can have a control over

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all the movements of the being. That is the beginning of the control.

      When you become conscious of that, you have seized the thread, and when you speak of control, you know that it is that which has the power of controlling.

      It is thus that you learn to look at yourself.

Why, and through what mechanism does mental formulation dissipate an experience, causes it to lose the major part of its power for action on the consciousness ?

     If, for example, you want to get rid of a wrong movement and, as the result of a grace, the force is sent with this end in view, this force begins to act on the consciousness. Then if you pull it towards you, one might say, to formulate it, naturally you decentralise, disperse and dissipate it.

    But this is not all: the simple fact of speaking to another person opens you automatically to whatever may come from him; an interchange always happens. In this way his curiosity, his obscurity, his good will and at times even his bad will intervenes, modifies, deforms.

   On the other hand, if you want to speak of your experience to your Guru and if he agrees to listen to you, it means that he adds his force and knowledge and experience to the working of the force and he helps in bringing about the result.

   Yet the harm done by the formulation exists nonetheless. Yes, but he repairs it.

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The Power of Thinking

      Words are good and useful only when by a special grace they put you in contact with the thing, but in themselves they have no value.

     In fact, the ideal condition which has already been realised by some individuals is to transmit the essential idea and even something which is higher than the idea, the state, the state of consciousness, the state of knowledge, the state of perception, directly, by vibration. When you think, the mental substance vibrates in a certain way according to the form given by your consciousness to your thought and it is this vibration which the other brain must perceive if it is well attuned.

    After all, words serve only to draw the attention of the other consciousness or of the other centre of consciousness so that it might be attentive to the vibration and receive it; but if it is not attentive and has not the capacity to receive in a relative silence, then you may pour down miles of words, you will not make him understand. Sometimes it happens even that the brain being very active in emanating certain vibrations, it is able to receive only clear and precise vibrations, otherwise what comes to him is a kind of vague mixture, something confused and indefinite giving the impression of a thing misty, fluffy that evokes no idea. Then you speak, you hear quite well the sound, but that brings nothing, —the question is not that of noise but that of precision in the vibrations.

    If you are able to give out your thought quite precisely, if it is something living and conscious that emanates from your consciousness to go and find the other consciousness, if, so to say, you know what you want to say then your thought arrives with that precision, it awakes the corresponding vibration and with the corresponding vibration comes the thought or the idea or the corresponding state of consciousness and then you are understood. But if what is emanated is fluffy, indefinite, if you do not know very well what you want to say and you yourself try to understand what you want to say and if besides the attention of the other is not sufficiendy awakened or if he is busy and active

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elsewhere, then, you can speak for hours, you will not be understood at all.

     In fact, this is what happens most often. When you are able to see in the consciousness of others the result of what you have tried to communicate, it always gives you the impression of deforming mirrors. You have never seen deforming mirrors ? Some elongate you, some widen you, some fatten a bit of yourself and reduce another, so that you have before you a grotesque caricature of yourself; exactly the same thing happens here; you have in the consciousness of the other person quite a grotesque caricature of what you said. You imagine you have made yourself understood, because the sound of words was heard, but you have not communicated.

    If you want to have the least effect upon the mental substance, the first thing is to learn to think clearly,—not a verbal thought depending upon words, but a thought that can do without words, which is understood in itself apart from the words, which corresponds to a fact, a fact of the state of consciousness or a fact of knowledge. Just try to think without words, you will see where you are.

    You have a clear and precise understanding of what you want to communicate to others. That vibrates in a particular way, has the power to give a form to the mental substance and then afterwards, as a concession to human habit, you organise around that, a few words and try—there, much lower down—to give a verbal form to the vibration of consciousness, but the verbal form is quite secondary. It is a kind of crude casing to the power of thinking.

    An illustration of this power of thinking is found in what used to be called formerly the gift of languages. And it is a fact that this phenomenon has been produced and can again be produced. You think, that is to say, what I call thinking, quite independently of the words, you have the clear vision of things and the power to communicate this vision, transmit this phenomenon of consciousness and you are in the presence of a number of people (many or few) speaking different languages and, in fact, accustomed to think in only one language, because they have

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been so brought up, but you project the vibration of your vision, of your understanding, of your experience of things. To draw the attention of the public you pronounce words in a certain language, that which is most familiar to you, it is of no importance; but your vision and your projection are so precise that they can be transmitted directly to the brain of others and automatically that is translated in the head into the respective language of the people who hear. Externally you speak in French or in English and yet each one understands in his own language. You think it is a legend, but it is not; it is quite understandable, it is an almost elementary thing when you enter what I call the region of thought. Note, I do not speak of supramental things, it is not a supramental power, it is simply the true region of thought, that means you begin to think.

      And if you were placed before a public that also thinks, that will happen automatically, only there are very few people who truly think. But when they do think with sufficient power, it removes the obstacle of a perception superficial and matter of fact. That rises, goes seeking a region of higher perception and then, in each one, it drops into the domain of one’s own language. And each one says with the full sincerity of his experience : "Oh, he is speaking this language, and another says : "Excuse, please, he speaks this language", and the third one says, "No, no he speaks that language"….In fact everyone is telling the truth, he is speaking probably none of their languages but the one that he generally uses or one or two others. But it is that, that which goes up and then descends like radio vibrations.

Comments on Dhammapada 

      The question here is about the Four Truths and the Eight Ways that lead to the annihilation of suffering.

      The Four Noble Truths are:

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      (1) Life, taken in the sense of ordinary life, the life of ignorance and falsehood, is indissolubly bound to suffering. Suffering of the body, suffering of the mind.

      (2) The cause of suffering is desire, due to the ignorance of the nature of separative life.

      (3) There is a way of escaping from suffering, making an end of pain.

      (4) This liberation is attained by following the discipline of the eightfold way which gradually purifies the mind of its ignorance. The Fourth Truth is called the method contained in the Eightfold Way.

The Noble Way consists in a training with the following eight stages.

      (1) Right View. To see things as they are, that is to say, a pure and correct vision, the best vision.

      The Dhammapada says that three states characterise existence : (a) Pain, (b) Impermanence and (c) The absence of a fixed ego. But it is not quite that, it is rather the absence of a personality that is fixed, lasting and separate in the psychological make-up, the lack of a true continuity in the personal consciousness; it is for this reason that in the ordinary state, for example, you do not have a memory of past existences nor the sense of conscious continuity through all existences.

     The first point then is to see rightly and to see rightly is to see that pain is associated with ordinary life, that everything is impermanent and that there is no continuity in the personal consciousness.

    (2) Right desires or motives. The word desire, however, should not have been used, for we are told that there should not be desires, they are rather right aspirations. The word desire should be replaced by aspiration

    "To liberate oneself from attachments and to have kindly thoughts for all that exist". To be in a perpetual state of benevolence. To wish the very best for all, always.

    (3) Right speech which hurts no one. Never to speak uselessly, to scrupulously avoid all malicious talk.

    (4) Right conduct—peaceful, honest, from all points of view,

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not materially alone, but mentally and morally also. Mental honesty is one of the most difficult things to attain.

     (5) Right Living. Causing neither harm nor danger to any creature. This is relatively easy to understand. There are people who push this principle to the extreme against all good sense, people, for example, who put a kerchief on their mouth in order not to swallow germs or those who go sweeping the ground in front as they walk in order not to trample insects. That appears a little too much, for life, as it is, is wholly made up of destruction. But if you understand correctly the text, it means that you should avoid all possibility of doing harm and causing danger deliberately to any creature. You may include here all living creatures and if you extend this precaution and benevolence to all having things in the world, that is very favourable to the growth of the inner being.

    (6) Right Effort. Not to make useless efforts for useless things, but reserve all your energy of effort for overcoming ignorance and for liberation from falsehood; that one can never do too much.

    (7) The seventh principle comes to confirm the sixth : Right Vigilance. To have an active and vigilant spirit. Not

to live in half-consciousness and half-unconsciousness. You let yourself go in life and allow things to happen as they may. That is what everybody does. You wake up from time to time and find that you have lost your time then you try hard, to fall back again into indolence a minute after. Better to have something less vehement but more constant.

    (8) And finally, Right Contemplation. Thought concentrated egolessly on the essence of things, the inmost truth and the goal to be attained.

    How often you have a kind of emptiness in the course of your life, an unoccupied moment, a few minutes, sometimes more. What do you do ? You try immediately to distract yourself, you invent one kind of stupidity or another to pass your time. This is a fact that is general. Man, from the youngest to the oldest, passes most of his time in trying not to get bored. Boredom is his bugbear and the way to escape boredom is to indulge in stupidities.

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      But there is one way better than that, namely, to remember. When you have some time, whether it is one hour or a few minutes, tell yourself: "At last, I have the time to concentrate, to gather myself, to live again up to the very reason of my existence, to offer myself to that which is true and eternal". If you took care to do that, each time you are harassed by external circumstances, you would find that you advance very quickly on the way. Instead of wasting your time in useless talk, in doing useless things that brings down the consciousness,—choose here the best of cases, I do not speak of other imbecilities which are much more serious, —instead of trying to dissipate yourself, acting in such a way that time which is so short already becomes shorter still and you find at the end of your life that you have lost three quarters of your chance; you then want to gulp down double doses, but that does not help. Better rather be moderate, sober, patient, quiet, never lose the opportunity that is given to you, that is to say, utilise for the true goal the minute you find yourself without occupation.

     When you have nothing to do, you become restless, you run about, go and meet friends, take a walk—I speak only of what is best, I do not speak of things that are clearly not to be done—instead of that, sit down quietly before the sky, before the sea or under the trees, whatever is possible,—here you have all the things and try to realise one of these, understand why one lives, learn how one should live, think of what one wishes to do and what one should do, what is the best way of escaping from the ignorance—the falsehood and the pain in which one lives.

To live without torments

     Evidently what specially characterises humanity is its mental capacity to look back upon oneself living. The animal lives spontaneously, automatically and if it sees itself as a living being, it must be to a very small and unimportant degree, and that is why it is

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peaceful, it does not torment itself. Even when an animal suffers, for an accident might have happened to it or it might be sick, the suffering is reduced to a minimum by the fact that it does not observe the thing, does not project it into his consciousness or into the future, it does not form ideas about its illness or its accident.

      With man has begun the constant care about what is going to happen and this care is the principal or sole cause of his torments. With the objectification of this consciousness have begun anxiety, painful imaginations, care, torment and the foreseeing of future catastrophes because of which the greater part of humanity— the most conscious part and not the least conscious—live in a perpetual torment. Man is too conscious to be indifferent and he is not enough conscious to know what will happen. It can be truthfully said without being in the wrong that of all creatures upon earth he is the most miserable. The human being is accustomed to be like that, because it is an atavistic condition which he inherits from his ancestors, but truly it is a miserable condition. It is only his spiritual capacity to rise to a higher level and replace the unconsciousness of the animal by the spiritual supraconscious-ness that introduces into his being not only the faculty of seeing the goal of hfe and foreseeing the culmination of his endeavour, but also a clear-seeing trust in a higher spiritual power to which one can give oneself, entrust oneself, hand over the charge of one’s life and one’s future and thus abandon all care.

     Evidently it is impossible for man to come down again to the animal level and to lose the consciousness he has acquired. Therefore for him there exists only one means, one way of coming out of the condition that I call miserable, in which he is now, and rising into a higher state in which care is replaced by confident surrender and the certainty of a luminous fulfilment—this means, this way is to change one’s consciousness.

    To say the truth, no condition is more miserable than to be responsible for a life of which one does not possess the key, that is to say, of which one does not possess the thread that might guide and lead to the solution of the problems. The animal has no problem before it, it lives. Its instinct drives it, it depends

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upon a collective consciousness which has an innate knowledge which is higher than itself; but things are automatic, spontaneous : the animal has no need to will or to make an effort to be like that, it is like that naturally; the animal is not responsible for his life and so has no care. It is with man that the sense of responsibility is born, the care that he has to depend upon himself; and as he has not the necessary knowledge, a perpetual torment is the result. This torment can cease only with a total surrender to a consciousness higher than his to which he can wholly entrust himself, deliver all care of himself and leave the charge of directing his life and organising everything.

     How to solve a problem when you have not the required knowledge for its solution ? And the unfortunate thing is that man believes that he has to solve all the problems of his life, and he has not the necessary knowledge to do it. That is the source, the origin of all torments. This perpetual question, "What is to be done ?" To which another more acute is added, "What is going to happen ?" and at the same time, there is more or less the incapacity to answer.

    That is why all spiritual disciplines begin by the necessity of abandoning all responsibility and giving oneself to a higher principle, otherwise peace is impossible.

    And yet consciousness has been given to man so that he may progress, discover what he does not know, grow into what he is not yet. One can say therefore that there is a state higher than that of an immobile and static peace; it is an assurance all-embracing enough to enable one to maintain the will to progress, to keep it free from all anxiety, from all care about results and consequences. That is one step forward in comparison with the methods that could be called "quietist" and which are based on rejection of all activity and merging into an inner immobility and silence, which abandon life because you have felt immediately that without peace you can have no inner realisation. And quite naturally it was thought that one could not have peace so long as one lived under external conditions, in the state of anxiety for the problem that is set and cannot be solved, because one has not the knowledge how to do it,

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     The next step is to face the problem, but with the calm and certitude that come from an absolute reliance upon the Supreme Power that knows and that can make you act. Then instead of abandoning action, one can do the action with a higher peace that is strong and active.

    That is what can be called a new aspect of the divine intervention in life, a new form of intervention of divine forces in existence, a new aspect of spiritual realisation.