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THE MOTHER Questions and Answers
SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PONDICHERRY April, 1959 Questions and Answers In the life of the ordinary man is religion a necessity ? IN the life of the society it is a necessity, because it serves as a corrective to the collective egoism which would assume excessive proportions without this control. The level of the collective consciousness is always lower than the individual level. It is very remarkable that when men gather in a group or meet in large numbers their intelligence seems to go down in proportion. Thus the consciousness of a crowd is much lower than the individual consciousness and the collective consciousness of the society is certainly lower than the consciousness of the individuals comprising it.
In the ordinary life, the individual, whether he knows it or not, has always a religion, but the object of his religion is sometimes quite of an inferior order; the god he adores may be the god of success or the god of money, the god of power or simply a family god, the god of children, the god of the family, the god of the ancestors. Always there is a religion. The quality of the religion differs according to individuals, but it is difficult for a human being to live and to continue to live and maintain his life without having something like the rudiments of an ideal serving as the centre of his existence. Most of the time he does not know it, and if he were asked what was his ideal he would not be able to formulate it, but he has one vaguely, something which is most precious in his life. For the majority of people, it is, for example, safety; to live in safety, to be in conditions in which one is sure of being able to continue to live. It is one among the great goals—if it can at all be called a goal—one of the great motives of human endeavour. There are some for
Page-3 whom comfort is the important thing, for others it is pleasure, amusement. All these things have their place very much low down and one would hardly be tempted to give them the name of an ideal, but it is truly a form of religion, something which may seem to require that one should consecrate one’s life to it. There are many influences that seek to possess men by making use of that as the basis. This feeling of insecurity, uncertainty is a kind of weapon, a means used by political or religious groups to influence individuals. One plays upon these ideas. Every political or social ideal is a kind of inferior expression of an idea that is a rudimentary religion. As soon as there is the faculty of thinking, there is necessarily the aspiration towards something higher than the most gross daily existence of every minute and it is that which gives energy and the possibility of living. It can be said, of course, of individuals as well as of groups, that their value is just in proportion to the value of their ideal, of their religion, that is to say, of the thing which they place at the summit of their existence. To say the truth, everyone has, whether he knows it or not, his own religion, even while he belongs to any of the great recognised religions that have a name and a history. It is certain that even when one learns by heart the dogmas and follows a prescribed ritual, every one understands in his own way and acts in his own way; the name only of the religion is the same, but this same religion is not the same for all individuals who believe in practising it. One can say that if this aspiration to the unknown and the higher found no expression, human existence would be very difficult. If there were not in the core of every being, the hope for something better, for some order, whatever it be, it would be difficult to find the necessary energy to continue to live.
But there are very few people who are able to think freely, it is much more easy to join a religion, accept it, adopt it, adhere to the religious collectivity than to formulate for oneself one’s
Page-4 own cult. Apparently, therefore, you are this or that, but in reality it is only an appearance. * * *
What is the effect and the value of a collective prayer ? There are different kinds of collective prayers, as there are different kinds of collectivities. There is the anonymous mass, the crowd, that gathers by a chance circumstance, without an inner coordination, driven by the force of an event, as, for example, when a king or a personage who attracts the attention of the mass happens to be in a critical situation, ill or victim of an accident and the population gathers together to have news and also to express their feeling. It is through the chance of circumstances that people are assembled, that is to say, there is no inner bond except that of the same emotion or the same interest. There was the example of crowds that began praying to obtain the cure of someone who interested them particularly. Naturally, the same crowds may gather for an opposite purpose, a purpose of hatred and their cry may also be a sort of prayer, a prayer to hostile and destructive forces. These movements are spontaneous movements, unorganised, unexpected.
There is also the collectivity of individuals who group together around an ideal or a teaching or an action which they want to execute, and have an organising bond among themselves, the bond of one goal, one will and one faith. They can assemble in a regular way for a common practice of prayer or meditation; and if their goal is high, their organisation well made, their ideal powerful, such groups can have, by their prayer or meditation, a considerable effect upon the events of the world or upon their own inner growth and their collective progress. These groups are necessarily much higher than the others, but they have not
Page-5 the blind force that crowds have, the collective action of the crowd. They replace the vehemence, the intensity of the latter by the power of a willed and conscious organisation. At all times there have been upon earth groups who organised themselves in this way. Some of them had had a historical life, a historical action in the world, but generally they had not much success with the crowd, the mass, any more than exceptional individuals, have it They were always suspected and exposed to attacks, persecutions and often they were dissolved in a very brutal, very obscure and very ignorant ways. Some of these groups, semi-religious, semi-chivalrous, gathered around a belief, rather a credo, with a precise goal, had had a very interesting history in the world. And certainly they have done much for the collective progress by their individual effort. There is an ideal organisation which, if integrally carried out, can make an extremely powerful whole provided it consists of elements all having the same goal and the same will and so well developed internally as to be able to give a quite coherent body to an inner unity of goal, aspiration and action. In all ages centres of initiation have tried that, more or less successfully and always it has been considered in all occult traditions as an extremely powerful means of action. If the collective unity could reach the same cohesion as the individual unity, it would multiply the power and the action of the individual. Usually, if several individuals are put together, the collective value of the group is much less than the individual value of each one taken separately, but with an organisation that is sufficiently conscious and coordinated, the power of individual action, on the contrary, can be multiplied. * * * Page-6 Can one increase his faith by personal effort ? Faith is surely a gift made to us by the Divine Grace. It is as it were a gate opening suddenly on the eternal truth, through which we can see, almost touch that truth. Like all things in the human ascent, it is necessary, particularly at the beginning, to make a personal effort. It may happen that under certain exceptional circumstances, for reasons that wholly escape our intelligence, faith comes as an accident, quite unexpectedly, almost without our having ever asked for it, but more frequently it is an answer to a desire, a need, an aspiration, something in the being that seeks, wants, even if it is not very conscious or very systematic. In any case, when faith has been granted, when one has this sudden inner Illumination, to maintain it constantly in the active consciousness individual effort is absolutely indispensable. One must hold to one’s faith, ask for one’s faith, seek it, cultivate it, protect it. The human mind has the morbid and deplorable habit of doubt, discussion and scepticism. It is there that human effort has to be exercised : one must refuse to admit them, refuse to listen to them, and more than that refuse to follow them. No game is more dangerous than to play mentally with doubt and scepticism. They are not merely enemies, they are frightful snares and once you fall into them you have a formidable difficulty in coming out of them. Some people think that it is a great mental elegance to play with ideas, discuss them, contradict one’s faith, that it gives you a very superior attitude and that you are thus above all superstition and ignorance; but it is in listening to the suggestions of doubt and scepticism that one falls into the grossest ignorance and turns away from the straight path. You enter into confusion and error, into the meanderings of contradictions and you are not always sure of being able to come out. You stray so far away from the inner truth that you lose sight of it and at times you also lose all contact with your soul.
Certainly, there must be a personal effort to preserve one’s faith, to let it grow in oneself. Later on, much later, you can one
Page-7 day look behind and see that whatever has happened, even what appeared to be the worst was a divine Grace to make us progress on the path, and then you perceive that the personal effort also was a Grace; but before you reach there you need to walk much, struggle much, at time even to suffer much. To sit down in an inert passivity and say : "If I must have faith, I shall have it, the Divine will give it to me", is an attitude of laziness, of unonsciousness, almost of bad will. For the inner flame to burn, one must feed it, one must watch over the fire, cast into it the fuel of all errors that one seeks to throw off, all that delays the advance, all that obscures the path. If you do not feed the fire, it smoulders under the ashes of your unconsciousness and your inertia; and then it is not years but centuries, and fives will pass before you arrive at your goal. You must watch over your faith, as one watches over the cradle of an infinitely precious life, and you must protect it with great care from everything that might alter it. In the ignorance and obscurity at the beginning, faith is the most direct expression of the divine Power that comes to battle and conquer. * * * What does it mean: "Spirituality helps the mind to escape from itself"? (Sri Aurobindo — The Life Divine) So long as the mind is convinced that it is the summit of human consciousness, and that there is nothing above and beyond it, it takes its functioning as a perfect functioning and is wholly satisfied with the progress it is able to make within the limits of this functioning, with an increase of clarity, precision, complexity, suppleness, plasticity in its movements.
It has always a spontaneous tendency to be self-satisfied and satisfied of what it is capable of doing, and if there were no greater force than its own, a higher force making it learn in an irrefutable
Page-8 manner its limitations, its indigence, it would never make an effort to come out of it by the true door of exit: liberation into a higher and truer mode of being. When the spiritual force can act, when it begins to have an influence, then it shakes this self-satisfaction of the mind and by a continuous pressure begins to make it feel that beyond it there is something higher and truer, then a little of this self-conceit begins to yield; and once it is aware that it is limited, ignorant, incapable of touching the true truth, its liberation begins and the possibility of its opening to something beyond. But for it to surrender it must feel the power, the beauty, the force of this beyond. It must perceive its incapacity and its hmitations in front of something higher than itself, otherwise how can it feel its infirmity ! At times a single contact is sufficient, something that makes a little rift in this self-contentment, then the desire to go beyond, the need of a purer light awakes and with this awakening comes the aspiration to conquer them and with the aspiration begins the liberation and one day bursting your limits you open out into the infinite Light. If there were not this constant pressure, at once from within and from without, from above and from the deepest depths, nothing would ever change. Even with that, how much time is needed for things to change! What obstinate resistance is there in this lower nature, what blind and stupid attachment to the animal ways of being, what refusal to be liberated ! There is in the whole manifestation an infinite Grace which is working constantly to lead the world out of the misery, the obscurity and the stupidity in which it happens to be. At all times this Grace is at work, without ever ceasing its effort; and yet how many thousands of years have been necessary for this world to awake to the necessity of something that is more true, more great, more beautiful.
By the resistance that one meets in his own being, everyone can measure the tremendous resistance that the world offers to the work of the Grace.
Page-9 It is only when you understand that all external things, all mental constructions, all material efforts are vain, useless, only when you are entirely consecrated to this Light and to this Force above, to this Truth that is trying to express itself that you become ready for the decisive progress. Therefore the one truly effective attitude is the perfect, total, fervent giving of one’s self to That which is above us and which alone has the power to change everything. When you open yourself to the Spirit within you, it gives a first foretaste of this higher life that alone is worth living, then comes the will to lift yourself to that, the hope of reaching it, the certitude that it is possible, and finally the force to make the necessary effort and the resolution to go through. First you must awake, then you can conquer. * * * How to overcome suffering? The problem is not so simple as that. The causes of suffering are innumerable and its quality also differs greatly, although the origin of suffering is the same and comes from the initial action of an anti-divine will. For the facility of understanding, suffering can be classified into two distinct categories, although practically they are often found mixed together. The first is purely egoistic and comes from the fact of one’s feeling baulked in one’s rights, deprived of what one needs, insulted, stripped, betrayed, wounded etc., etc.—this entire category of suffering is clearly the result of hostile action and it opens not only the door of consciousness to the hostile influence, but it is one of the most powerful means of its action in the world, the most powerful of all, if you add its natural and spontaneous consequences : hatred and the desire for revenge in the strong, in the weak despair and the desire to die. The other category of suffering, of which the initial cause is Page-10 the pain of Separation, which is the work of the Adversary, is wholly opposite in its nature : it is suffering born of divine compassion, the suffering of love feeling the misery of the world, whatever be its origin, its cause and effect. But this suffering, which is of a purely psychic character, contains no egoism, no self-regard, it is full of peace and force and power of action, faith in the future and will to victory. It does not pity, it consoles, it does not identify itself with the ignorant movement of others, it cures and illumines. It goes without saying that in the purity of its essence, only that which is perfecdy divine can feel this suffering; but partially, momentarily like lightning flashes behind the dark clouds of egoism, it appears in all who have a wide and generous heart. Yet, most often, in the personal consciousness, it is mixed up with that sorry and petty self-regard which is the cause of all depression and faintness. But if you are vigilant enough to refuse this mixture or at least to reduce it to a minimum, you perceive forthwith that this divine compassion is based on a sublime and eternal delight which alone has the force and the power to liberate the world from ignorance and misery. And this suffering also will disappear from the universe only with the total disappearance of the adversary and all the consequences of his action. * * * How to find the true stage and the true turning of one’s self-development ? How to find ? Seek. You must will for it, with persistence. That must be the most important thing."
What happens most often, when one makes the necessary inner endeavour to discover one’s soul, to be united with it, allow it to govern one’s life, is a kind of enchanting wonder of the discovery and the first instinct is to say : "Now I have what I
Page-11 need, I have found the infinite delight and to be busy no more with any other thing". This is moreover what has happened to almost all those who made the discovery, and there are even some who raised this experience to the very principle of realisation and said, "After this discovery everything has been done, there is nothing to be done any more, you have reached the goal, at the end of the path". After all, you need a great courage to go farther, this soul that one discovers must needs be an intrepid warrior who is never satisfied with his own inner joy, consoling himself at the unhappi-ness of others with the idea that sooner or later all will arrive there, and that the endeavour you have made, others also must in their turn make. There are others again who console themselves by saying that you can, from this station of inner wisdom, with great benevolence and profound compassion, help others to reach there and when everybody is there, well, it will be the end of the world and it is so much the better for those who do not like to suffer. But…there is a but, are you quite sure that such has been the purpose and intention of the Supreme when He manifested himself ? All this creation, all this universal manifestation appears at best like a very bad joke, if it is to arrive at that. Why to begin, if it is only to come out ! What is the use of having struggled so much, suffered so much, created something which, at least in its outward appearance, is so tragic and dramatic, if it is only to teach you how to come out of it,—better not to have begun at all.
But if you go down to the bottom of things, if, rid not only of all egoism but also of ego, you give yourself totally, unreservedly, so completely, so disinterestedly as to enable you to know the Purpose of the Lord Supreme, then you know that it is not a bad joke, it is not a tortuous path simply to come back—somewhat — bruised—to the starting-point. It is, quite on the contrary, in order that the whole creation may learn the delight of being, the beauty of being, the greatness of being, the majesty of a sublime life, and the perpetual, ever progressive growth of this delight and beauty and grandeur. Then everything has a sense, then there is no more
Page-12 regret for having struggled and suffered, there is only the enthusiasm to realise the divine goal and you rush forward into the realisation with the certitude of the goal and the victory. To know that, you must cease to be egoist, cease to be a separate being that turns round on itself and cuts itself from the supreme Origin. That is what you have to do : get rid of the ego, then you can know the true goal and that is the only way. Get rid of the ego, let it drop like a useless robe. The result is worth the effort that one has to make. And you are not all alone on the way, you get the help, if you have trust. If you had but one second of contact with the Grace—the marvellous Grace that carries you along, that makes you run, makes you forget even that you have to run,—if you had only for one second contact with it, then you could make an effort not to forget. And with the candour of a child, the simplicity of a child for whom there are no complications, you give yourself to this Grace and let it do its work. What is needed is not to listen to what resists, not to believe what contradicts, to have trust, a true trust, a trust that enables you to give yourself away without calculation, without bargain. Trust ! Say, "Do that for me, I leave you to do your work". That is the best means.
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One must go farther, one must advance, rise towards greater heights, transcend all hungry seeking for pleasure and personal good, not out of fear for punishment, even other-worldly punishment, but by the growth of a new sense of beauty, a thirst for truth and light, by understanding that it is only by widening oneself, illumining oneself, kindling oneself with the ardour for progress that one can find at the same time the inner peace and the enduring happiness. One must rise up and widen oneself—rise up., .and widen oneself. The Mother Page-14
Reprinted from Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education April, 1959 Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, Pondicherry.
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