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THE MOTHER Questions and Answers
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry August, 1961
Questions and Answers I
Mastery over oneself and mastery over the circumstances of one’s life, are they independent of each other or are they interdependent ? THAT depends on the point of view where you put yourself. A The police commissioner, for example, has some mastery over circumstances, but generally has not much mastery over himself ! (laughter) Evidently one must first of all begin by self-mastery, otherwise one can act on life only to increase the confusion.
But Vivekananda, for example, had no mastery over anger, and yet he had a great mastery over the life around him. This is the first time I hear of that. He had no mastery over anger ? Who has told you the story ? It is written in his biography. He himself has said it ? Is it an authentic story ? Yes, at times he used to lose temper. But he knew it himself ? . He knew it perfectly well. Page-1 In any case, it was not a "great mastery" over his surrounding that he had, but a great influence, which is quite different. One cannot master the Matter outside, unless one masters the Matter inside, because it is the same thing. Vivekananda had an influence, that is to say, he could, by his influence awaken in others some movements which helped them to master themselves ; but it was not he who mastered but they themselves had to master through the awakening—I say "he", but it is anybody; it is a general rule. Mastery means the knowledge of’ how to deal with certain vibrations ; if you have the knowledge of handling these vibrations, you have the mastery. And the best field of experimentation is yourself. You have this mastery first of all in yourself, and having it in yourself you can transmit its vibration into others or create this vibration in them to the extent you are able to identify yourself with them. But if you are not able to handle this vibration in yourself, how can you handle it in others ? You can, through a word, through an influence, encourage them to do what is necessary in order to learn self-mastery, but you cannot master them directly. To master something, a movement, is simply, by your presence, without a word or explanation, to replace the wrong vibration by the right vibration. It is this which constitutes the power of mastery; not speaking or explaining. With the word and the explanation, and even with a certain emanation of force, you can have an influence over someone, but you cannot master the movement. The mastery over the movement means the capacity to set against the vibration of this movement, a vibration that is stronger and more true and that can put a stop to the other vibration.
I will give you a very easy example. Two persons are quarrelling before you. Not only are they quarrelling but they are about to come to blows. You explain to them that it is not a thing to be done, you give them good reasons so that they may stop and they do stop. You would have had an influence upon them. But if simply you stand before them, you look at them and put forward
Page-2 a vibration of peace, calm, tranquillity without uttering a single word, without any explanation, the other vibration can exist no more, it falls by itself. That is mastery. It is the same thing for the cure of ignorance. If you need words to explain something, it is not the true knowledge. If I have to utter all that I utter in order to make you understand me, it is not mastery, it is simply an influence that I am able to exercise upon your intelligence and help you to understand, awaken in you the desire to know, to discipline yourself etc. But if I am not able by simply looking at you, without saying a word, to put into you the light that will make you understand, then I would not have mastered the state of ignorance. You understand ? (The questioner makes a sign of yes). Good. So I may tell you definitely that if it is true historically that Vivekananda had movements of anger and could not master himself, that is to say, he lost control over himself in word and action, then at least in this regard he was not capable of mastery over his surroundings. He could only evoke in them similar vibrations and probably justify in them their weakness in this respect. He could tell them in words, "You must not lose temper in any case", but it would have no effect. It is the eternal, "Do what I say and not what I do".
The problem arises in the class. Oh ! Oh ! You get angry with your students ? No, but how to control or discipline them, when one has not the mastery over oneself ? One cannot ! But if we are to do as you say, have the mastery, that will take the whole life. Page-3 It is a pity ! (laughter) But how do you propose to do otherwise ? For example, you have a student who is undisciplined, disobedient, insolent; that means a certain vibration in the atmosphere which is moreover, unfortunately, very contagious; but if you do not have, you, in yourself, the contrary vibration, the vibration of discipline, order, humility, a quietness and peace that nothing can upset, then how can you hope to have any influence? Are you going to tell him, that it should not be done? Either he will turn worse or he will make fun of you. And if by any chance you do not have yourself the control and you become angry, then it is finished, you lose for the whole of your life any possibility of having authority over your pupils. Teachers who do not possess a perfect calm, an unfailing endurance, an unshakable quietness, who are full of self-conceit will reach nowhere. One must be a saint and a hero to become a good teacher. One must be a great Yogi to become a good teacher. One must have the perfect attitude in order to be able to exact from one’s pupils a perfect attitude. You cannot ask of a person what you do not do yourself. It is a rule. You must then look within you at the difference between what is and what should be, and this difference will give you the measure of your failure in the class. That is all I can offer to you.
And I add, since I have the occasion, this : We ask many students here, when they are grown up and know something, to teach others. Some, I suppose, know why; but there are also those who think that it is because to serve in some way is good and because after all there is need of teachers and you are content to have them. But I tell you—for it is a fact—I have never asked any of those—who were educated here—to give lessons unless I saw that it would be for him the best means of disciplining himself, of learning in the best way what he has to teach and to attain an inner perfection which he would never have if he
Page-4 were not a teacher and had not this occasion for disciplining himself, which is exceptionally hard. Those who are successful as teachers here—I do not mean an external, artificial or superficial success but they who become truly good teachers—, that would signify that they are capable of making an inner progress of impersonalisation, of eliminating their egoism, and mastering their movements and that they have a clear sight, an understanding of others and a patience that never fails. If you go through that discipline and succeed, well, you will not have wasted your time here. And I ask everyone who agrees to give lessons, to accept it in that spirit. It is very good to be nice, to render service, to become useful. It is fine, naturally, and it is a very fine thing; but it is only one side and perhaps the lesser side of the question. The important side is this that a grace has been granted to you so that you may gain self-mastery, gain an understanding of the subject and of others which you would not have without this occasion. If you have not profited by all these years that you have taught others, that would mean that you have wasted your time, at least half of it. What you have said just now concerns each professor in particular, his inner attitude, but how to do it for the general, external organisation of the school? For there is at present much dispute among the teachers. Dispute ? I hope not too much ! Discussions… (laughter)
I can tell you things in general only, but the details of the organisation…. What is your problem, your own ?
Page-5
You have given general ideas, but as regards details of execution, opinions differ ; what then is the true way you want us to take ? But first of all you must tell me from what point of view. Organisation, that is very vague. If it is about the programme of studies, it is quite a formidable subject and cannot be settled in that way. If it is about the way of teaching, it is quite a personal thing (personal in both the cases, besides). The general plan is easy, that is to say, it has been given in a sufficiently clear way; but unless you give me a particular case where there are, say, discussions and differing opinions…
For example, take the one point : you said that full liberty should be given to the student. Some have interpreted it as meaning that there should be no fixed classes, because you are asked to let the student free to do whatever he likes, to come to the class or not to come etc. But if there are no fixed hours the organisation becomes complicated, how to arrange the classes ? That is quite impossible ! But when did I say that the student should be left free to come or not to come ? Excuse me, you must not mix up things. I have said and I repeat it that if a student feels foreign to a subject and has capacities, say, for literature or poetry and a dislike, at least, indifference for mathematics and if he tells me, "I prefer not to follow the course of mathematics", I cannot tell him, "No, you must absolutely go in for it". But if a student has decided to follow a class, it is an absolutely elementary discipline for him to follow it, he must go to the class regularly and behave decently there; otherwise he is quite unfit to go to school. I have never encouraged anybody to lounge about during class hours, to come one day and absent himself another day, never; because, to begin with, if he cannot Page-6 submit himself to this absolutely elementary discipline, he will never gain the least control over himself. He will always be the slave of every impulse and every fancy of his. If you do not want to study a certain branch of knowledge, it is well and good, one cannot force you to do it. But if you decide to do something, whatever it may be, in life, you must do it honestly, with discipline, regularity and method. And without fancifulness. I have never approved of a person being the plaything of his impulses and fancies, never. And you can never get that thing out of me, because then one would no longer be a human being, one would be an animal. Therefore, this is a question absolutely settled and without discussion. Now, another problem ? (laughter) It will be for the next time (laughter). All right. Let it be for another occasion. We shall stop here. * * * II
"Our best friend is he who loves us in our best part, and yet does not ask of us to be other than what we are." (The Mother, "Talks, Aphorisms and Paradoxes") Will you comment upon this sentence? I feel like strongly telling you all kinds of paradoxical things ! But…
When I wrote that, I was thinking of one thing which people usually forget. We ask our friends and all who are around us to be not what they are but what we would like them to be; we form
Page-7 an ideal and we want to apply it to all. That reminds me of Tolstoy’s son whom I met in Japan. He was travelling all over the world in the hope of creating unity among men. His intentions were excellent, but his way of doing seemed less so. He used to say, with a stolid gravity, that if everybody spoke the same language, everybody dressed in the same fashion, ate in the same fashion, acted in the same fashion, that would perforce create a unity ! And when he was asked how he proposed to realise his idea, he answered that it was sufficient to go from country to country and preach a new but universal language, a new but universal dress, new but universal habits. That was all, and it was this that he had the intention to do ! Well, everyone is like that in his little domain. Everyone has an ideal, everyone has a conception of what is true and beautiful and noble and even divine, and it is this conception which he wants to impose on others. There are even people—and they are quite numerous—who try to impose their own conception of the Divine upon the Divine Himself ! And generally they do not get discouraged until they come to the end of their life.
It is this attitude, spontaneous and almost unconscious besides, that I had in view when I wrote the sentence. In fact you may be sure that if I had told one of you, "That is what you are trying to do", he would protest indignantly and say with the utmost certainty, "how is it! never in my life!" Yet when you have opinions on people and especially reactions against their way of being, it is because you blame them for not being what you think they should be. If you remember always that there cannot be, there should not be two similar things in the world, because the second one would be useless, because the universe is built up for the harmony of an infinite multiplicity in which two movements and, with greater reason, two consciousnesses cannot be similar, if you never forget this, how can you wish someone else to
conform to the ideas or the ideal that you have yourself ! Everyone must be what he is, in accordance with the truth which is his own and not according to your truth, your ideal or your ideas which are yours.
Page-8 What you must Iearn is to harmonise, synthetise, synchronise, combine all disparate things that are in the universe, putting each in its place. The total harmony lies not in an identity, but in an organisation where each thing finds its place. That should be the basis of the attitude which one has the right to expect from a true friend : he must not wish that you should be like him, but that you should be, on the contrary, what you are. And I wrote, "Our best friend is he who loves us in our best part". In a more positive way, I would say : he who encourages you to descend to the lowest level in you, who drives you to do stupid things with him or become vicious along with him or approves all that is vile in you is not your friend. And yet, very often, much too often, you make a friend of him with whom you do not feel uneasy when you are below your own self. You associate with those who run about instead of going to school, who would steal fruits from gardens, those who poke fun at their teachers and who do all sorts of nasty things. That is why I said, "Such people are not your good friends". But they are the friends who are very comfortable, because they never give you the impression that you arc in the wrong. Whereas if one who comes and tells you, "I say, instead of roaming about doing nothing or doing stupid things, why not go to your class, don’t you think it would be better?" To such a person you would generally reply, "you are troublesome, you are not my friend."
There are children here who were full of promise, who used to be at the top of their classes, who worked seriously and of whom I had great hopes; they were completely spoilt by this kind of friendship. And since it is spoken about I will tell them today that I am very sorry for it. I do not call such persons friends but mortal enemies and one should keep away from them as one should from contagious maladies. You carefully avoid the company of people having a contagious illness, don’t you; generally they are even isolated so that the disease may not spread. But the contagion of vice and bad conduct, the contagion of degradation and falsehood and all that is low, is infinitely more dangerous than the contagion
Page-9 of an illness and it is that which should be shunned with great care. One should regard him only as his best friend who refuses to take part in a bad or ugly act, who encourages you to resist all lower temptations. He is indeed your friend. It is with him that you should associate and not with one who strengthens your bad propensities and takes part in your bad actions. In reality, you should take as friends only those persons who are wiser than you, whose company ennobles you, helps you to transcend yourself, to progress, to act better and see clearer. And finally, the best friend that one can have, is it not the Divine ! the Divine to whom one can say everything, disclose everything, because here is the very source of all kindness, of the power that effaces every error when it is no longer repeated,1 which can open the path to the true realisation; the Divine who can understand everything, cure everything, who helps you on the way not to waver, not to falter, not to fall down and who leads you straight to the goal. He is the true friend, the friend in good and bad days, who never fails you. When you call him sincerely, he is always there to guide you, to sustain you and love you in the true way. * * * III
"Man seeks at first blindly and does not even know that he is seeking his divine self…" (Sri Aurobindo: "Thoughts and Glimpses".) How is it that one seeks something without knowing that he is seeking? There are so many things you think, you feel, you will and even you do without knowing it. Are you fully conscious of yourself
1 Later on Mother commented on this sentence as follows : "So long as you repeat your faults, nothing can be obliterated, because you recreate them every minute. When someone
Page-10 and of all that is happening in you ? Not at all. If, for example, all on a sudden, without your expecting it, I asked you, "What are you thinking of ?", your answer 99 times out of a hundred would be, "I don’t know". And if I put you in the same way other questions like that, "what do you want ?"—you would say also, "I don’t know at all". And "what do you feel?"—"I don’t know". They alone can immediately give answers to such questions who have the habit of looking at themselves while they live, of observing themselves, those who are intent upon the need of knowing what happens in them. In some circumstances of life you are absorbed in what you feel, in what you think, in what you will and then you can say, "yes, I want this, I think that, I feel that", but these are only moments of life, not the whole time. To seek what one truly is, to seek why one is upon earth, what is the essential reason for physical existence, for the presence here below, for this formation, the vast majority of people live without even putting to themselves any such question. It is only a small elite who are interested in putting the question. And the number of those who set to work to get the answer is still more restricted, because unless there is a chance of finding someone who knows the answer, it is not easy to find it. Suppose, for example, you have never had in your hands a book of Sri Aurobindo’s, nor of any other writers or philosophers or sages who consecrated their life to this quest; suppose you are in the ordinary world—like so many millions who arc in the ordinary world and have heard nothing except (and that too not always) of some gods and of some form of religion, which is more a habit than a faith and which besides rarely tells you why you are on earth—well, you would not think even of thinking of it.
commits a mistake, serious or not, this mistake has its consequences in his life, a Karma which he must exhaust, but the Divine Grace, when it is approached, has the power to cut the consequences; but for that it is necessary that the error is not repeated. You must not believe that you can continue to do the same stupid things indefinitely and indefinitely the Divine Grace will annul all the consequences, it is not like that. The past can be completely purified, cleaned so as not to have any effect on the future, provided you do not make of it a perpetual present : you must yourself stop the bad vibration in yourself, you must not reproduce indefinitely the same vibration."
Page-11 You live from day to day, through everyday circumstances. When you are young you think of playing, eating and a little later learning; afterwards you think of all the circumstances of life. But to stand face to face with the problem and tell yourself, "But why after all am I here ?" How many do that ? For some the idea comes only when they are in front of a catastrophe; when they see someone dying whom they love or when they are placed in particularly painful and difficult situations, then they turn back upon themselves (if they are sufficiently intelligent) and ask, "But what is this tragedy that we live ? What is the use of it, what is its purpose ?" Only at such a moment you begin to seek, to ask. And only it is much later when you have learnt that you have a divine Self that you look about to know it, but that comes much later. Yet from the very moment of the birth in the physical body, there is in the being, at the very depth of the being this psychic presence which impels the whole being towards self-discovery. But who knows it ? And who knows the psychic being ? This discovery also comes only under special circumstances and unfortunately most often these have to be painful circumstances. Otherwise you go on living without reflecting. And in the core of your being you have this psychic being which seeks and seeks to awaken the consciousness and to reestablish the union. But you know nothing about it. When you were ten years old, did you know it ? no, isn’t it ? And yet, in the depth of yourself, your psychic being already wanted that and sought to find itself. And it is probably that that has brought you here. But so many things happen and you do not even ask yourself why; "it is like that, because it is like that", that is all.
It would be interesting to know how many of you, before I told you, had asked themselves how they happened to be here. Most often the answer is very simple, "My parents are here, so I am here". Yet you are not born here. None is born here, and still you are all here. You did not ask yourself why. It was like that because it was like that ! And then between asking oneself the question and giving oneself a sufficiently satisfactory external explanation—to be satisfied with that—and then to tell, "Perhaps
Page-12 it is the indication of a destiny, of the very essential reason of my existence"—what a long way to go ! Everyone finds reasons, more or less external (which besides are not worth much), to explain all things in the most fiat way possible. But there is a profound reason which you do not yet know. Are there many among you who would be interested to know why you are here ? How many among you have put the question, "What is the true reason of my presence here ?" You, have you ever put the question to yourself ? I do not remember And you ? And you ?… They alone who have come here after having lived in the world, who came because they wanted to come, because they had a conscious reason to come, can say, "I came here because of this or that" (and this would be partially at least the explanation). But the most true, the most profound reason may still escape them, that is to say, the special thing each one has to realise in the Work. To know that one must have already passed many steps on the way. Indeed, it is only when one becomes conscious of one’s soul, when one is identified with one’s psychic being that one can have at once the whole picture of his individual growth through the ages. Then one begins to know, not before. Then I guarantee that the thing becomes very interesting.
That changes the position in life. There is such a great difference between feeling vaguely, having a groping impression of something, of a force, of a movement, of an attraction, of an impulsion that pushes you in life (but that is yet so vague, so uncertain, so clouded) such a difference between that and having a clear vision, an exact perception, a total understanding of the sense of one’s fife. It is only at that moment that one can follGw the thread of one’s destiny and perceive clearly the goal and the way to reach it. But that happens through successive inner awakenings, like doors that
Page-13 open all on a sudden on new horizons; verily a new birth in a truer, deeper and more durable consciousness. Till then you live in a cloud, groping, under the weight of a destiny which at times crushes you and gives you the feeling that it is built up in a certain way and you can do nothing. You are under the load of your life, a load that weighs heavy and forces you to crawl upon earth instead of lifting you up and making you see all the threads, the linking threads that join all things together in a single progressive movement towards a realisation that becomes clear. You must get out of this semi-consciousness which is generally considered as altogether natural—it is your "normal" way of being and you do not sufficiently draw back from it to enable you to see and to wonder at this uncertainty, this lack of precise-ness. On the other hand, to know that you are seeking and seeking consciously, deliberately, obstinately, methodically is exactiy the exceptional condition, almost abnormal and yet it is in this way alone that you begin to live truly. * * * IV
"What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities. Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being." (Sri Aurobindo: "Thoughts and Glimpses") At once you land into the greatest difficulty !
You know why that seems to you
paradoxical ? It is simply because Sri Aurobindo has omitted to mention the
links of his thought, to take you step by step from one thought to another.
Nothing but that. It is an almost elementary simplicity.
Page-14 I will make a simple remark to you : when does a thing appear impossible to you ? Only when you try to do it. If you had never tried to do it, it would never have appeared to you as impossible. And how is it that you try to do it ? Because it is somewhere in your consciousness. If it were not in your consciousness, you would never try to do it. And the moment it is in your consciousness, it is quite obvious that it is something you will realise. That alone which is not in your consciousness you cannot realise. It is not more complicated than that ! Only, instead of saying it in that way, Sri Aurobindo tells it to you in a manner that gives, as it were, a whipping to your thought. That is the virtue of paradoxes, they compel you to think. What does then "impossible" mean? There is nothing impossible in the world except that which is outside your consciousness. And as your consciousness can grow, as what is not in your consciousness today may be there after some time, because the consciousness increases, there is nothing then in the eternity of time that is impossible.
At the present time (I have already explained it to you once), at a given moment, in given circumstances, there are impossibilities. But from the viewpoint of the Eternal, in the infinity of time, there is no such thing, there is nothing impossible. And the proof is that everything will be. All things (not only those that are conceivable at the moment, but all those that are for the moment inconceivable) all are not only possible, but will be realised. For what we call the Eternal, the Infinite, the Supreme, the Absolute—we give it many names, but in fact it is eternal, infinite, absolute—contains within it not only all that is, but all that will be, eternally, infinitely; consequently nothing is impossible. Only, for the consciousness of the temporal and objective being, all things are not possible at the same time; it becomes necessary to conceive of time and space to make them possible. Page-15 But outside the manifestation, all is, simultaneously, eternally, as a possibility, as a potentiality; and it is this All, inconceivable because it is not manifested, that manifests itself to become conceivable. This is what Sri Aurobindo says : "Because this temporal universe (that is to say, a universe which is not all at the same time on the same point, outside time and space, a universe which becomes temporal and spatial, which is in succession, which unrolls itself) was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being". Indeed, for That which is outside the manifestation, a temporal universe is truly an absurdity and a paradox; it is the very contradiction of Itself. Whereas for the temporal consciousness, on the contrary, it is the un-temporal which is unthinkable and incomprehensible. We cannot conceive of a thing which is not in time and in space, because we are ourselves in time and in space. We try an approximation to arrive at understanding, a little, Something which is not expressible and which is all, together, eternally and outside time. We can try and we use all kinds of words, but we do not succeed in understanding unless we come out of time and space. Well, if you turn the problem round, for That which is outside time and space, time and space are something paradoxical and incomprehensible; that does not exist, that is not and because iris a paradox that the Eternal has emanated it from His being, that is to say, He has changed its non-existence into an existence—one may say, playfully, in order to know what it is ! because so long as He did not become time-space, He could not know what it was !
But to come back to the beginning of this aphorism, we saw that to have a notion of the impossible, to think that something is "impossible", one must have attempted it. It is extremely practical, very concrete and very encouraging, because, for example, if at this moment you have the impression that what I am telling you is impossible to understand, that means you try to understand it; and if you try to- understand it, that means that it is within your consciousness, otherwise you would not be able to try to understand it—even as I am within your consciousness, my
Page-16 word is within your consciousness, and what Sri Aurobindo has written is also within your consciousness, otherwise you would not have any contact with it. But for the moment it is impossible for you to understand, because some small cells are missing in your brain, nothing else, it is very simple. And as these cells grow through attention, concentration and effort, when you have listened well and made an effort to understand, after some hours, some days or some months new convolutions will have formed in your brain and everything will become quite easy. You will even wonder that there could be even a moment when you did not understand : "it is so simple !" But so long as these convolutions are not there, you can put an effort, you can even give yourself a headache, but you will not understand. It is very encouraging indeed, because the only thing necessary is to will and to have patience. What for you is incomprehensible today will be quite clear after a time. And note, it is not necessary for you to get a headache every hour and every minute in trying to understand. One very simple thing is sufficient : to listen as best as you can, have a sort of will or aspiration or even a desire to understand, and that is all. You make a little opening in your consciousness for the new notion to enter; your aspiration makes this opening, just a little notch inside, a small hole somewhere in what is closed and you let the thing enter. The new notion will work and build up in your brain the necessary elements for understanding. You have no longer to think about it. You try to understand some other thing, you work, study, reflect, you think of all kinds of things; and at the end of a few months—perhaps a year, perhaps less, perhaps more—you open the book again, you read the same sentence and it appears clear like rock water, simply because what was needed for understanding has been built up in your brain. So do not come to me and say "I am not fit for this study, I won’t understand philosophy or that I will never be able to do mathematics;", it is ignorance, it is sheer ignosance, because there is nothing that you are unable to understand, if you give to your brain the time to enlarge itself, complete itself. And you can Page-17 pass from one mental construction to another (which correspond to subjects), from one subject to another (and subjects, that means languages), from one language to another and build one thing after another within you, and contain all that and yet many more things, very harmoniously, if you do it with care and give time to it; because each of these acquisitions corresponds to an inner formation and you can multiply the formations indefinitely if you give time and care for it. I do not believe at all in a limit that you cannot cross. But I see very well the mental formations of people and then a kind of laziness in front of the necessary effort—this laziness and these limits are like maladies. But they are curable maladies unless you have a thoroughly defective mental construction, unless something is missing in you, something "forgotten" when you were formed—then it is more difficult. It is much more difficult, but it is not impossible. There are individuals like that, who are as it were failures (logically it would be better for them not to continue to exist, but it is not the custom, it is not in the ordinary human ideas). But if you are a normal being, then, provided you take the trouble and know the method. Your capacity for growth is almost unlimited. It is said that everyone belongs to a type, that, for example, a fir will never become an oak, that a palm will never be wheat; obviously, but that is another thing. It means that the truth of your being is not the truth of your neighbour’s being. But in the truth of your being, according to your own build, your progress is almost unlimited. It is limited only by your conviction that it is limited, and by your ignorance of the true process. Otherwise, there is nothing that one cannot do, if one knows the way of doing it. * * * Page-18 V A question has been put to me on what I told you recently, when we made a distinction between will and willings. I told you that willings—what Sri Aurobindo calls willings—are movements that derive not from a higher consciousness coming down into the being and expressing themselves in acts, but impulses and influences from outside. We kept the word will to indicate that which is, in he individual consciousness, the expression of an order or of an impulse coming from the truth of the being, from the truth of the individual, from the real being, his true self. And we said that impulses, actions, movements that occur in the being and are not that, are willings. In fact I explained to you that without knowing it or at times even knowing it, you are moved by influences coming from outside, which enter without even your perceiving it and which raise up in you what you call the will that such a thing should be or such other should not be. So I am asked what is the nature of these influences and to give an explanation of their working. These influences are of diverse nature. You may study them from the psychological point of view or you may study them from a purely mechanical standpoint, the latter generally translating the former, that is to say, the mechanical phenomenon is a kind of consequence of the psychological phenomenon.
There are very few people in whom the will of the being expresses the deeper, inner, higher truth; and even in the very best very few are the moments when it is so. The consciousness of the individual overflows considerably his body. Even we saw that the subtle physical which is still material in relation to the vital being and, under certain conditions, is almost visible, overflows at times considerably the visible limit of the physical body. And this subtle physical consists of vibrations which are active and which come in contact or mix with the vibrations of the subtle physical of others, and this mutual contact brings about the influences; they are very powerful vibrations and naturally overcome
Page-19 the others. For example, as I have already told you several times, if you have a thought, this thought clothes itself with subde vibrations and becomes an entity which moves about and wanders in the earth atmosphere seeking to realise itself as best as it can, but your thought is one among millions; there is a multiple and tangled interaction to such an extent that things do not happen as simply and schematically as one would believe. What you call yourself, the individual being shut up within the limits of your present consciousness is constantly invaded by vibrations of this kind which come from outside and appear most often under the form of suggestions; these suggestions, apart from a few exceptions, occur at first in the mental domain, then they become vital, then physical (to be precise I do not speak here of the pure mind, but the physical mind; indeed the physical consciousness itself has a mental activity, a vital activity and a purely material activity; and everything that happens in your physical consciousness, in your bodily consciousness and in your bodily activity enters into you first of all under the form of vibrations of the mental order and therefore under the form of suggestions. Most of the time, these suggestions enter into you without your being in the least conscious of them : they enter, they awaken in you some response and then rise up in your consciousness as if it were your own thought, your own will, your own impulse, because you are unconscious of the process of infiltration. These suggestions are innumerable, various and of very different natures but they can be classified into three principal orders. First of all (and these are hardly perceptible to an ordinary consciousness, they become perceptible to those only who have already reflected much, observed much, studied much their own being), they are what we may call collective suggestions.
When a being takes birth upon earth, he necessarily takes birth in a given country and a given environment; by the very fact of his physical parents he is born in the midst of a national, social, cultural and at times religious group; a group of habits of thinking, understanding, feeling, conceiving; all kinds of constructions which are at first mental then become vital habits and finally
Page-20 modes of material being. To say more clearly, you are born in a certain society, a certain religion, a certain country; this society has a collective conception of its own, this nation has a collective conception of its own and this religion has a collective construction of its own and which is generally quite fixed. You are born within that. Naturally while you are young, you are absolutely unconscious of it, but it acts upon your formation, this slow formation in which hours are added to hours, days to the days and experiences to experiences which little by little build up a consciousness. You are there put as if under a bell-glass; it is a kind of construction that covers you and which in a certain way protects you, but in another limits you considerably. All that you absorb without even noticing it and that makes the subconscious basis of your personal construction. This subconscient base will act on your whole life, and you do not care to free yourself from it. To free yourself from it, first of all you must be conscious of it; and this first step is the most difficult, because the formation has been very subtle, it was done at a time when you were not a conscious being yet, when you just dropped down stunned from another world into this; everything is done without your taking part in the least. Consequently, it does not occur to your mind at all that there could be in it something to know, still less something that should be got rid of. But when you become, for some reason, conscious of the sway of these collective suggestions, you perceive at once that a very assiduous, a very prolonged labour is needed to get rid of them. And the problem does not stop there.
You live surrounded by people. These people themselves have desires, willings, impulses which come from all kinds of causes and take in their consciousness an individual form. For example, you have a father, a mother, brothers, sisters, friends, comrades, each one has his way of feeling, willing and everyone with whom you are in relation expects something from you and you too expect something from everyone. This some thing they do not always express, but it is there more or less conscious in their being and that creates formations. These formations, according to the thinking capacity of each one and the strength of
Page-21 his vitality, are more or less powerful, but they have their own small force which is generally proportionate to yours; so much so that whatever is desired, hoped or expected of you by those who are around you enters into you like that under the form of suggestions that are very rarely expressed and which you absorb without resisting; they all on a sudden awaken within you a similar desire, a similar will, a similar impulse. That happens from morning to evening and also from evening to morning, because these things do not stop when you sleep, on the contrary, often they become acute, because you have no more the awakened consciousness which watches and protects you in a certain measure. And it is general, so general that it is quite natural and so natural that you need special circumstances and occasions of a particular order to become aware of it. Finally it goes without saying that jour own responses, impulses, willings have a similar influence on others and that becomes a wonderful mixture in which the reason of the strongest becomes always the best. If the problem stopped there, one could get out of the mess ! but there is a complication. This earthly world, this human world is constantly invaded by the forces of the neighbouring world, that is to say, the vital world, the subtler region that is beyond the fourfold earthly atmosphere1: and this vital world, not being under the influence of psychic forces and the psychic consciousness, is essentially a world of bad will, disorder, unbalance; indeed it is full of all undivine things that one can imagine. This vital world constantly enters into the physical; it is very often, except to a few rare individuals, altogether imperceptible. There are entities, beings, wills, individualities who have all kinds of purposes and make use of all ocasions to amuse themselves, if they are small beings, or to cause harm and disorder if they are beings with a greater capacity. They have a very considerable power of infiltration and suggestion and wherever there is the least opening, the least affinity, they precipitate, because it is a game that amuses them. «
1 Constituted by the four principles, physical, vital, mental and psychic. Page-22 Besides, they have a great thirst or hunger for some human vital vibrations, that have for them the quality of a rare dish upon which they would like to feed. And then their game consists in exciting these wrong movements in man, so that man may give out these forces upon which they can feed perfectly at ease. All movements of anger, violence, passion, desire, all things that cause you all on a sudden to throw out certain energies from yourself, are precisely what these vital entities prefer, because, as I have said, they enjoy them as a delicious dish. And their trick is very simple; they send you just a little suggestion, a little impulse, a little vibration that enters into you and by contagion or by sympathy evokes in you the necessary vibration so that you may throw out the force which they want to absorb. There it is a little more easy to recognise the influence, because if you are in the least sincere and if you observe yourself closely, you perceive that a part, an element in the being has suddenly awakened within you and answers to an influence, an impulse or a suggestion; you feel even at times that some very concrete thing enters into you and produces similar vibrations in the being. For example, if you are subject to anger and you try to control it, yoga will become aware of something that comes from outside or rises from below and which truly seizes your consciousness and evokes anger in you. I do not say that everyone is capable of this discernment; I speak of those who have tried to understand their being and control it. These adverse suggestions are more easy to notice than, for example, your response to the will or desire of a being who has the same nature as yours, another human being, who can act upon you without giving you a clear impression that it is something coming from outside; the vibrations are so alike, so similar in their nature that you need to be much more attentive, have a much more sharp discernment if you are to be aware of these movements that seem to come out of yourself, but are not really yours and they do come from outside.
Such is the problem. The remedy ? It is always the same. Good will, sincerity, clear-sight, patience—yes, a patience untiring and a perseverance which enables you to be convinced that what
Page-23 you have not succeeded in doing one day, you will succeed another time and you will continue to try until you have succeeded. And this brings us back to Sri Aurobindo’s aphorism; if this control appears to you impossible today, it means not only that it will be possible but that it will be realised later on. * * * VI When someone falls seriously ill, is it a purely physical phenomenon or is it a difficulty in his spiritual life? That depends. If it is about someone who practises Yoga, then quite evidently it is a difficulty of his spiritual life. If he is one who does not concern himself with Yoga, living the ordinary life in the most ordinary way, then it is an ordinary accident. It depends absolutely on the person concerned. The outer phenomena may be similar, but the inner causes are absolutely different. No two illnesses are alike, although labels are put upon them and they are sought to be classified; in fact each person is ill in his own way and his way depends on what he is, on his state of consciousness and the life he leads. We have said many a time that illnesses are always the result of a loss of equilibrium, but this loss of equilibrium may happen in quite different states of being. For the ordinary man, whose consciousness is centralised in the external physical being, the loss of equilibrium is purely physical. But whenever there is behind this superficial life an inner life that is developing, the causes of the illnesses change; they are always the expression of an unbalance between the different parts of the being; between inner progress or effort, on one side, and the resistances or the outer conditions of life and body, on the. other side.
Even from the ordinary external view-point, it has been recognized for a very long time that illnesses always originate from
Page-24 a lowering of the vitality owing to moral causes. When you are in the normal state of balance and you live in a normal physical harmony, the body has its own power of resistance; its most material substance gives out subtle vibrations that have the force to resist illnesses, even illnesses that are called contagious (in fact, all vibrations are contagious; however, some illnesses are considered as especially contagious). Well, if you are in a state of harmonious functioning and a sufficient moral balance, you have at once sufficient resistance so that the contagion does not touch you. But if for some reason you are unbalanced or, for example, weakened by a depression or discontent or by moral difficulties or by excessive fatigue, that diminishes the normal resistance of the body and you are open to illness. If it is about someone doing yoga, then the case is quite different, that is to say, the causes of unbalance change, they are of a different nature; the illness becomes then generally the expression of an inner difficulty that is to be overcome. Each one then has to find out himself why he is ill. Otherwise, in ordinary life and in the majority of cases, it is fear–whether mental fear, or vital fear and almost always physical fear, a fear in the cells—that opens the door to all contagion. The mental fear, if one has a little control over oneself and a little human dignity one can eliminate. The vital fear is more subtle and needs a greater self-control. As for the physical fear, a veritable yoga is necessary to overcome it, because the cells of the body have fear of everything that is unpleasant, painful; whenever there is an illness, even though insignificant they become unquiet, they do not like to be ill at ease; to overcome that you must have the mastery of a conscious will.
Generally it is this fear that opens the door to the illnesses. I do not speak of the first two fears, mental and vital, which every human being who wishes to be human, in the noblest sense of the word, must overcome, because it is a cowardice. But the physical fear is the most difficult to conquer. If you have a minimum control over your body, you can reduce its effects; but that is not immunity. It is this kind of shivering of the material physical fear,
Page-25 in the cells of the body which aggravates all illness; without that, even the most violent attacks could be repulsed. There are people who have a sufficient vital balance not to have any fear, even in their body; they live in a natural harmony, even in the rhythm of their physical life, and they spontaneously reduce illness to the minimum. In others, on the contrary, the illness becomes as bad and as serious as it can be, sometimes up to a catastrophe. All depends on this kind of eurhythmy of the life movement, whether it is harmonious enough to resist the external attacks of illness; otherwise you are subject to this shivering of fear, this kind of instinctive anguish which transforms the least unpleasant contact into something painful and bad. There is the whole scale from one who passes through the severest contagions and epidemics without catching anything down to one who falls ill on the slightest occasion. So everything depends always on the constitution of each one and as for those who make an effort for progress, it depends on the mastery they have over themselves until the time when their body becomes a docile instrument of the higher Will; then one can get from it a normal resistance to all attacks. But when one is able to eliminate fear one is already almost safe. Take epidemics, for example, or the so-called epidemics like those that arc raging these days; 99 per cent it is out of fear, a fear that becomes even a mental fear of the most sordid kind, stirred up by writings in the papers, useless talks and all that follows.
What is the utility of medicines? Because even when one has a body that is not quite unconscious and when one calls the Divine Grace, one sees that there is some need of medicine: if one takes a little medicine, that has a good effect. Does that mean that it is the body that needs medicine or that there is something bad in the mind or in the vital?
The utility of medicines? In the majority of cases, it is simply to help the body to have confidence, provided you make a
Page-26 reasonable use of it, that is to say, not to poison yourself. It is the body that cures itself. When it wants to get cured, it gets cured. It is a well recognised thing now, by even the most traditionalist doctors. They tell you: "yes, our medicines are a help, but it is not they that cure, it is the body that decides to cure itself"; when you give to the body a medicine, it says, "now I am going to be cured" and as it says "I am going to be cured", it does get cured! In almost all cases there are medicines that can help—help a little—provided you do not abuse it. But if you are not reasonable, you are sure to go completely wrong. You are cured of one thing, but generally you catch another which is worse. However, a little help, a little of something that gives self-confidence to the body and makes it say, "Now that I have taken that, it will be all right !" That helps much. The body decides to get cured and gets cured. Here also there is a whole scale of possibilities, beginning from the Yogi who is in such a perfect state of inner control that he can take poison without being poisoned down to one who at the least discomfort rushes to the doctor and needs all kinds of drugs to obtain from his body the necessary movement for cure. It ranges from the complete, supreme mastery to slavery, complete also, to all external adjuvants. Everything is possible. It is like a big keyboard, very complex and very complete on which you can play and the body is the instrument.
Can the body be made to understand through a mental effort (for example, by not taking medicine when ill…)
That is not sufficient; a mental resolution does not suffice. No. There are in the body subtle reactions that do not obey a mental resolution. Some other thing is needed. You must touch other regions. You must have a power higher than the mental. Because all that comes from the mind is always subject to an internal discussion. You take a resolution but you may be sure of something intervening which may not perhaps fight openly your resolution,
Page-27 but will put its effectivity in doubt. And if a resolution becomes the object of the least doubt, that is sufficient to make it lose half of its effect. And if at the same time that you say, "I want", there is somewhere in you, lurking, there, behind, in the background, something that asks what will be the result, that suffices to demolish everything. The play of the mind’s working is extremely subtle and no ordinary human means can succeed in controlling it perfectly. For example, (and it is a thing well known to those who practise yoga and who want to master their body) if you succeed in mastering, through an assiduous yogic work, something in you, a particular weakness of the body, an opening to some unbalance, an unbalance that does not happen for a very long time, years perhaps; well, it is sufficient if one day, at a given moment, all on a sudden a thought crosses your brain," Ah, now it is done !" for the whole thing to come back a minute after. Because you have come in contact with the vibrations of the thing you had rejected, on a plane where you are vulnerable, the plane of thought and the disorder returns. It is a very well-known phenomenon in yoga. The simple fact of stating that victory has been won, stating mentally, thinking of it is sufficient to demolish the whole effect of yoga that might have lasted for years. If you want to avoid that, it is indispensable that you should have a mental silence sufficient to prevent all vibrations from outside to enter into you. And it is such a difficult thing to secure that one must needs have passed from what Sri Aurobindo calls "the lower hemisphere" to the upper hemisphere —the exclusively spiritual—in order that the thing may not happen. No, it is not in the mental domain that you win victories. The mind is open to all contradictory influences and currents. All mental construction carries in it its own contradiction. You may try to master it, make it as inoffensive as possible, but it exists, it is there, and with the least weakness, the least lapse of vigilance, the least carelessness, it enters and undoes all the work. Mentally you do not arrive at much, the result is always mixed. Some other- Page-28 thing is needed. One must pass from the domain of the mind to the domain of faith or that of the higher, consciousness to be able to act securely. One of the most powerful means of action on the body is faith. Those who have a simple heart, a mind not very complicated, simple people, that is to say, who do not have a great mental development but have a very intense faith, produce easily a great effect on their body. People are surprised at times and say, "How is it ? Here is a man with a big realisation, who is an exceptional being and he is a slave of small physical things, whereas the other who is an altogether simple man, who looks crude but has a great faith passes through difficulties and obstacles like a conqueror !" I do not say that a man of superior culture cannot have faith, but it is more difficult; for, it is always the mind that contradicts, argues, seeks to understand, is so difficult to convince, wants proofs. Faith here is less pure. Otherwise one has to rise to a higher degree in the spiral of evolution and pass from the mental to the spiritual; in that case, the faith puts on another quality, of a very superior order. But I speak here of the daily life, the ordinary life; well, a very simple man possessing a very ardent faith can have, if not the mastery over the body, at least a much more spontaneous movement than one who is very highly developed.
I have a personal question to ask, Mother : an incurable organic disease has been cured by your grace, but a disease that is altogether functional does not get cured, in the same body; how does it happen ? It is a thing so personal, so individual; it is impossible to answer. For each one the case is absolutely different; an explanation cannot be given without entering into the details of the functioning.
And for each thing, for each event, there are as many
explanations as there are planes of consciousness. In a simplified way, one can
say that there is a physical explanation, a vital explanation,
Page-29 a mental explanation, a spiritual explanation etc. There is an innumerable gradation of explanations for the same phenomenon. No single thing is completely true, each possesses an element of truth. And finally, if you want to enter into the domain of explanations, you will always be obliged to explain one thing by another; and you may make indefinitely the tour round everything that exists, explaining one thing by another without ever arriving at the end of your explanation. Indeed, when you see the thing in its totality and in its essence, the wisest thing that one can say is, "It is like that, because it is like that".
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Reprinted from The Bulletin of S. A. I. C. of Education August, 1961
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