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THE MOTHER Questions and Answers
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry February, 196a
Questions and Answers I
"One of the most common forms of ambition is the idea of service to humanity. All attachment to this idea or this work is a sign of personal ambition". ("Conversations", The Mother) - -
How do you say it is ambition ? "WHY do you want to serve humanity, what is your idea ? It " is ambition, it is to become a great man among men. Is it difficult to understand? The Divine is everywhere. Therefore if you serve humanity, you serve the Divine. Wonderful ! what is most clear in this matter is to say that the Divine is in myself. If I serve myself, I serve also the Divine ! The Divine is indeed everywhere. There is no need to serve humanity. The Divine will do very well his business without you. I see quite well that you do not understand. But truly, if you understand that the Divine is there in everything, how is it your concern to serve humanity ? To serve humanity you must know better than the Divine what has to be done for it. Do you know better than the Divine how to serve ? The Divine is everywhere. Yes. Things do not have the look of being divine. Myself I can see but one solution. If you want to help humanity, you must take yourself as totally as possible and offer yourself to the Divine. That is the solution.
It is said that the Divine is in everything. Why then things do not change ? Because the Divine does not get the response. Everything does not respond to the Divine. You must search
Page-1 at the bottom of your consciousness to see Him. What do you want to do for serving humanity ? To give food to the poor ? You can feed millions. That will not be a solution. The problem will remain just the same. To give to mankind new and better conditions ? The Divine is within it. How is it that it does not change ? The Divine must know better than you the conditions of mankind. What are you ? You represent only a little quantity of consciousness and a little quantity of matter. That is what you call "I". In any case you are not strong enough to do it. How can you help another if you do not have a consciousness higher than his ? It is such a childish idea ! It is children who say : I am opening a dormitory, I am going to build a Nursery, I will offer soup to the poor, preach a knowledge, spread a religion etc. It is only because you consider that you are better than the others, that you know better than them what they should be or do. That is serving humanity. Do you want to continue all that ? It has not changed much. It is not for helping humanity that one opens a hospital or a school.
All the same, that has helped? If we abolished all the schools—-
I do not think humanity has become happier or that there has been a great improvement. That gives you above all the feeling of "I am something". That is what I call ambition.
Page-2 If you say to the same people who are ready to give money for schools that there is a divine work to do, that the Divine has decided to do it in that way, even though they might be convinced that it was indeed the work of the Divine, they would refuse to give, for it is not a recognised form of welfare work; you do not have the satisfaction of having done something good. That is what I call ambition. I have had examples of people capable of giving lacs of rupees to open a hospital, because that gave them the satisfaction of doing something great, noble, generous. You glorify yourself, that is what I call ambition. I knew a wit who said, "The reign of the Divine is not going to come so soon, for what then would remain for the poor philanthropists ? If mankind had no suffering, philanthropists would be left without occupation". It is difficult to get out of that. Yet, it is a fact that the world will never come out of the condition in which it is now, unless it gives itself to the divine. All the virtues, you may extol them, they increase your self-satisfaction, therefore your ego; they do not help you in becoming truly conscious of the Divine. It is the large-hearted wise people of the world who are the most difficult to convert. They are quite satisfied with their life. A poor man who has committed all kinds of blunders in his life, regrets immediately and says, "I am nothing, I can do nothing. Do with me whatever you want". That person is more in the right and much nearer to the Divine than one who is wise and full of his wisdom and of vanity. He sees himself as he is.
The generous and wise man who has done much for humanity is too self-satisfied to have the least idea of changing himself. It is such people generally who say, "If I had created the world, I would not have made it so, I would have created it very much better". And they try to mend what the Divine has ill done; according to their picture the whole thing is stupid and useless. With that attitude you can never belong to the Divine. There will always be between you and Him the ego conscious of its intellectual superiority that judges the Divine and is sure that it is not making a mistake. Because they are convinced that if they had made the world they would not have done all the stupidities that God
Page-3 has done. And all that comes from pride, vanity, self-sufficiency; and there is just this grain in those who want to serve humanity. What are they going to give to humanity ? Nothing at all! Even if they gave every drop of their blood, all the ideas in their head, all the money in their pocket, that will not change the individual man who is but a second in eternity. And they imagine that they can serve eternity. Even higher beings than men have come, they have brought the light, given their life and that has not changed things very much. Then what can man, a small microscopic being, do to help truly ? It is pride. The argument given is, "If everyone does his best, all would go well". I do not believe, and besides it is impossible. In some way, everything in the universe does its best. But this best is worth nothing. Unless the whole thing changes nothing will change. It is the best that must change. In place of ignorance knowledge and capacity and consciousness must be born, otherwise you will turn round and round around the same stupidity. You may open millions of hospitals, that will not prevent people from falling ill. On the contrary, they will get every facility and encouragement to fall ill. People are steeped in ideas of this kind. That puts your conscience at ease : "I am come into the world, I must help others". You tell yourself: "How unselfish I am ! I am going to help humanity". All that is nothing but egoism. In fact, the first humanity that concerns you is yourself. You want to mitigate suffering, but unless you are able to change the capacity to suffer into a certitude of being happy, the world will not change. It would always be the same, you turn round and round—one civilisation follows another, one catastrophe follows another, but the thing does not change, because there is something missing, something not there, it is the consciousness. That is all.
But this is my opinion. I give it to you for what it is worth. If you want to build hospitals, schools, you can do so; if that makes you happy, all the batter for you. It has not much importance. When I saw the film "Monsieur Vincent", I was greatly interested. He found out that while he fed ten poor people, a thousand arrived.
Page-4 That was what Colbert told him : "You seem to be giving birth to the poor by feeding them !" And it is not quite wrong. However, if it is your destiny to found schools, give education, nurse the sick, open hospitals, it is all right, do so. But you must not take the thing seriously. It is something grandiose you do for your pleasure. Say : "I do it because it gives me pleasure". But do not speak of Yoga. It is not Yoga that you do. You believe you are busy doing a great thing, that is all, it is personal satisfaction. It is said that Viswamitra had also created a new world ? What did he do, tell me. He was not satisfied with this world and he made another ? Where is that world ? Naturally, the first idea is to be superior to him who has created the world. Because it is thought he has done it badly. That is possible, you may say that it is done badly. If you imagine that you can do better than the Divine, I do not say you are wrong. I say you cannot say you are not ambitious. It is nothing else than that. The proof is that it is persons doing good, persons generous, kind, unselfish who are the most difficult to convert; their ego is tremendous. Their idea of justice, generosity etc. is so crude that here there is no place for any other thing, no place for the Divine.
Before one is able to do good, one must go to the very depth of oneself and make a very important discovery. It is this that one does not exist. There is one thing that exists, that is the Divine; and as long as you have not made this discovery, you cannot move forward on the way. But it is such a hard shell ! If you had the philosophical spirit, you would ask, "What is it that I call "I" ? Is it my body ? That is changing all the time. It is not the same thing. Is that then my feelings. But my feelings have so often changed. Are my thoughts that thing ? These are being built up and destroyed continually. All that is not "I". Where is "I" ? What is it that gives me the sense of my continuity ? If you go on with sincerity you go backward a few years. This becomes more and more embarrassing. You go on looking. You tell yourself,
Page-5 "It is my memory". But even if you lost your memory, you would he yourseh. if you continue this plumbing, with sincerity, there comes a moment when everything disappears, only one thing exists, it is the Divine, the Divine Presence. All disappears, dissolves, melts away like butter in the sun. When you have made this discovery, you perceive then that you are nothing but a bundle of habits. What speaks always is that which does not know the Divine and is not conscious of the Divine. In everyone, hundreds and hundreds of Ts speak and in hundred quite different ways. Unconscious, changing, fluid Ts. The T who speaks today is not the same as yesterday’s; and if you look far, the "I" disappears. Only one remains. It is the Divine. It is the only thing that one can see always the same. Can one with one’s good will help the world ?
With good will one can change many things, only it must be a consummately pure and unmixed good will. But it is quite evident that a perfectly pure and true thought or prayer, if it is thrown upon the world does its work. But where is this perfectly pure and true thought when it passes into the human brain ? There are degradations. If you can in yourself, by an effort of the inner consciousness and knowledge, surmount, that is to say, dissolve and abolish truly a desire, and you are able, by means of an inner good will, by means of your consciousness and light and knowledge, to dissolve the desire, you will be first of all for yourself, personally, hundred times more happy than if you had satisfied the desire. And then it will have a wonderful effect. It will have such a repercussion in the world, you have no idea. It will spread. Because the vibrations you have created will continue to spread. They are things that enlarge themselves like snowballs. A victory, however small it may be, that you win in your character is a victory which can then be won in the whole world. And that is what I wanted to say just now : all the things that are done externally without changing the inner nature—hospitals, schools etc.—are done through
Page-6 vanity, through the feeling of being great, while small obscure things conquered in oneself bring an infinitely greater victory, although the effects may be hidden. Each movement in you that is false and contrary to the truth is a negation of the divine life. Your small efforts have considerable effects, which you do not even have the satisfaction of knowing, but which are true and precisely produce an impersonal and general result. If you want truly to do something good, the best thing to do is to win your little victories in all sincerity, one after another, and in this way you will do for the world the maximum of which you are capable. Will our victory act for the whole world? It will not change everybody. For your victory is too small to include everybody. Millions are needed. It is just a small victory if it is compared to the whole. But it mixes up with other things. You could say that it is like winning in the world the capacity of doing a certain thing; but for its action to become effective, sometimes centuries are needed. It is a question of proportions. You may carry on the experiment with the people around you. You must be altogether sincere, you must not do the thing with the idea of securing a particular result, but simply because you want to gain a victory. If you gain the victory, it will necessarily have an effect upon the people around you. But if there is even one commercial element, if you do such a thing in order to get such a result: "I want to conquer my defects, but that person also should conquer his", that will not do. It is the attitude of the businessman. "I give this, but I will take that". That spoils all. There is neither purity, nor sincerity. It is bargaining. Nothing must come and mix with your sincerity, with your aspiration, with your motive. You do a thing for the love of the Divine, for the truth, for the perfection, without any other motive, any other idea. And that produces results. Page-7 II
What does Sri Aurobindo mean by "an integral idea of the Divine" ? Everyone makes for himself an idea of the Divine according to his personal taste, his possibilities of understanding, his mental preferences, even his desires. You form for yourself an idea of the Divine whom you want, the Divine whom you desire to meet and therefore naturally you limit considerably your realisation. But if we come to understand that the Divine is everything we are able to conceive and infinitely more, then we begin to make a move towards integrality. Integrality is an extremely difficult thing for a human consciousness which begins to become conscious only by limiting. However, with a little effort and for those who know how to play with mental activities it is possible to widen oneself sufficiently so as to approach something integral. You form an idea of the Divine, do you not, which agrees with your own nature and your own conception. Then if you wish to come out of yourself a little and try to do just an integral yoga, then you must try to understand that the Divine is not only what you think or feel it to be, but it is also what others think and feel it to be—and yet something more, something which none can think nor feel. If you understand this, you have put your first step on the way to integrality.
Instinctively and even without being aware of it, people are bent upon demanding that the Divine should be according to their conceptions. For they say quite spontaneously, without reflection : "Yes, this is divine, but no, that is not divine !" But what do they know ? And then there are people who no sooner did they put their feet on the path, no sooner did they arrive here and had a look at things "tor seen a few people than they would tell you, "This Ashram has nothing to do with the Divine, it is not at all divine". But if they were asked, "what is divine ?" they would
Page-8 be very much embarrassed to answer, they know nothing about it. And the less one knows, the more one judges, that is an absolute fact. The more one knows, the less one pronounces judgments on things. And there comes a moment when all that one can do is to make a statement simply, but to make a judgment is impossible. You can see things, see them as they are, in their relations and at the place they occupy, being fully aware of the difference between the place they occupy and what they should occupy (for this is the great disorder in the world), but you do not judge. You simply observe. Also there comes a moment when you would be incapable of saying, "This is divine, that is not divine", because there is a moment when one perceives the world in such a total and comprehensive way that, to tell the truth, it is impossible to take away something out of it without disturbing the whole. And you take one or two steps farther, you come to know for certain that what is shocking to you as a contradiction of the Divine is simply because things are not at their place. Each thing should be at its place, and moreover should be supple and plastic enough to include in a progressively harmonious organisation all the new elements that are constantly added to the manifested universe. The universe is in a perpetual movement of inner reorganisation and at the same time it enlarges itself, so to say or becomes more and more complex; it becomes more and more complete, more and more integral—and so on indefinitely. And as new elements are manifested, the whole organisation should be be done over again on a new basis; what happens is that there is thus not a second when the whole is not in a perpetual movement. But if the movement is according to the divine order, it is harmonious, so perfectly harmonious that it is almost not perceptible, difficult to perceive it.
Now, if you come down from this consciousness back to a more external consciousness, naturally you Begin to feel in a very precise manner things that help you towards attaining the true consciousness and those that bar the way or pull you backward
Page-9 or even fight against all forward movement. Then the point of view changes and you are obliged to say : this is divine or this helps you towards the Divine; and that is against the Divine, the enemy of the Divine. But it is a point of view that is pragmatic, for action, for movement in material life—because one has not yet attained that consciousness which rises beyond all that, because one has not reached that inner perfection which would enable him to have no more to struggle, because he has gone beyond the zone of struggle, the period of struggle, or the necessity of struggle. But before you come to that state in your consciousness and in your action, there must necessarily be struggle, and if there is struggle, there is a choice and for a choice there must be discernment. And the surest way to have discernment is a conscious, willing and as total a surrender as possible to the Divine Will and Guidance. Then there is no risk of making a mistake or taking false lights as the true ones. * * * III
All things are attracted by the Divine. Are hostile forces also attracted bv the Divine ? That depends on the point of view. You cannot say like that. For there is a potential attraction, but so much veiled and so secret that you cannot even say that it exists. In Matter which has an appearance of inertia (it is only an appearance, but still) the attraction for the Divine is more a possibility than a fact^ that is to say, it is something that will develop, but as yet it does not exist perceptibly.
It can be said that all consciousness, whether it knows or not, —even if it does not know—gravitates towards the Divine.
Page-10 But there must be already consciousness there in order to be able to affirm it. Even among human beings, who for the moment are the most conscious beings on earth, there is a vast majority who are potentially drawn towards the Divine but they do not know it; there are even some who deliberately refuse this attraction. Perhaps in their refusal or behind it something is preparing, but neither willingly nor knowingly. In the end, however, all will be drawn by the Divine. Only there are direct paths and there are paths labyrinthine where one seems to get away for a long time before getting near. And there are beings who have chosen the labyrinthine path and have the intention of remaining there as long as they can. Apparently these are the beings who struggle against the Divine. Although those who are of a higher nature know it very well that it is an absolutely vain and useless struggle without any issue, yet they take pleasure in doing it. Even though it takes them to destruction, they have decided that they would do it. There are beings, human also, who give themselves to vice —some vice or other, like alcoholic drinks or anaesthetic injections etc. and they know very well that it leads to destruction and to death. But they choose to do it, consciously. They have no self-control. There is always a moment when everybody has self-control. If you had not said ‘yes’ once, if you had not made a decision, you would not have done it. There is no human body that has not the energy and the capacity to resist a thing imposed on it, if it is allowed to do so. People who tell you, "I cannot do otherwise", say so because in their heart of hearts they do not want to do otherwise, they have accepted to be the slaves of their vice. There is a moment when one accepts. I go still further and say, "There is a moment when you Page-11 accept to be ill. If you did not accept to fall ill, you would not be ill. Only people are so unconscious of themselves, of their own inner movements that they are not aware of what they do." But all depends upon the way you look at things. From a certain view-point, there is nothing that is wholly useless in the world. Only, things that were tolerable or permissible at certain times are no longer so at other times. And when they are no longer permissible, people begin to say that they are bad, because a will is awakened to drive them out. But in the history of the universe, you can say in the history of the earth, to limit the problem to our little planet, I think all things that exist have their necessity and their importance at a given moment. And in the measure you advance, these things are rejected or replaced by others that belong to the future instead of belonging to the past. Then about things that have no more reason for existence, you say, "they are bad", because you try to find in yourself a lever to throw them out, to break with the habit. But perhaps at a certain time they were not bad, other things were bad. There are ways of being, ways of feeling, ways of doing which one tolerates in oneself for a very long time; that does not trouble you; you do not seem to yourself at all bad or useless or to be eUminated. Then all on a sudden, one day, you do not know why nor what has happened, but the way of seeing changes and you look at things and say, "But how is it ? that is in me ? I carry that in me ? It is intolerable, I do not want it any more". And it appears to you bad all on a sudden, because it is time to reject it, because it does not agree with the attitude you have taken or the step you have taken in your march forward in the world. Those things should be elsewhere, they are not at their place, so you find them bad. But perhaps these very things which appear bad to you, to others, may seem excellent, to others who are at a lower rung.
There is always something worse, more dark, more unconscious, more ignorant than yourself. The state which appears intolerable to you, which you can no more keep, which must go, would perhaps appear to be luminous for those who are at a lower
Page-12 status. What right have you to say, "It is bad" ? You can only say, "I do not want it any more—I do not want it, because it does not agree with my present manner of being, I want to go to a place where these things are out of place, there they are no longer at their place, they should go elsewhere to get their place". But you cannot judge. It is impossible to say, "It is bad". At the most you may say, "It is bad for me, with me it is not in its place, that must go". That is all. And you drop it on the way. That makes the progress easier, much easier to think and feel like that instead of sitting in despair and lamenting, how you are, the misery you carry, the defects you have, the impossibilities that assail you and all that. You say, "No, no these things are not at their place here, let them go elsewhere, there where they would be at their place and would be welcome ? I am going forward, I am climbing an upgrading, I am going towards a purer, better and completer light; then all these things that love obscurity must go." But that is all. Every time you see in you something which appears to you truly ugly, well, that would prove that you have made progress. Then instead of lamenting and despairing, you must be glad and say, "It is all right, I go on". IV What is the meaning of the Message you have given this year1 ? Does it mean that there will be great victories ? That means perhaps a very simple thing, namely, it is better to let things be done than to talk about them. For my part I believe that is the meaning; it is preferable to say nothing of
1 Message of 1956: "The greatest victories are the least noisy. The manifestation of a new world is not proclaimed by beat of drum." Page-13 what will be before it is done, otherwise it would be what I call beat of drum, "tomtoming". It is like people asking you, "How it will be like ?" You will see ! Wait ! At least we must have surprise ! And I answer them, "I don’t know". For I put myself immediately in the consciousness of the world as it is, to which it is announced that extraordinary things are going to happen and which is quite incapable of imagining them—because I have already told you once that if you begin to imagine them, it means they are already there. Otherwise you cannot imagine them. Yes, in our higher being we can have a very clear, exact, luminous perception of what is. But if you come down into the material consciousness, you /are obliged to say, "Well, I know-nothing." When it will be there I shall tell you how it will be— and perhaps I will have no need to tell you, for you yourself will be able to see. I hope you will be among those who will be able to see. For that matter there will be those who will not be able to see. So then of what use is it? Of what use is it going to people and telling them, "It is that, do you know, it is like that"? They answer you, as in the play staged here the other day, "I do not see anything myself!" You remember ? It was in "Le Sage" ("The Wise")— don’t you remember it in "Le Sage", the messenger saying that "the Divine is there, He hears you, He is present" and then someone replying, "But I don’t see Him !" It is like that. It is like the people who come to visit the Ashram and tell you, "But there is no spirituality here !" How should they be able to see it ? By what organs ? However, I have very good hope that when something manifests, you will be able to see it.
Naturally, if there are all on a sudden luminous manifestations, if external physical forms undergo a complete change, then in that case, even a dog or a cat, anything whatsoever, would be able to see. But for that time is needed, it is not something immediate, but far away, much later on. Many great things will happen before that, things much more important than that, please note.
Page-14 Because it is only the flower that blooms forth. But before it blooms, the principle of its being must be there in the root of the plant. If there is a manifestation, will it be purely spiritual, that is to say, only those who do yoga will be able to see it or will it have results in the outside world? My child why do you put the thing for the future ? There have been already for many years past extraordinary, fantastic results in the world. But to see them, one must know something, otherwise you take them for quite ordinary, normal things—because one does not even know how they are produced. So, it will perhaps be exactly the same thing; there can happen tremendous changes, fantastic actions and people will say, "That, it is naturally like that". Because one does not know how things happen. An action in the world ? It is constantly happening. It is something which is spreading, acting everywhere, everywhere giving new impulses, new directions, new ideas, new wills— everywhere. But as one does not see how it is done, one thinks that it is what all say quite "natural". It is "quite natural". But it is a different natural than that of the ordinary physical nature.
Indeed it is quite logical to say that you must be conscious of the Spirit in order to perceive the working of the Spirit. If you are not conscious of the Spirit how can you see it working ? Because the result of what the Spirit does is necessarily material, in the material world, and being material you find it quite natural. What do you know of Spirit’s working and what do you know of Nature’s working ? All that Nature does—I am speaking of material Nature—very little is known o£ it, almost nothing, because all the time we have to learn things that upset all that we believed we knew before.
Page-15 Then how to distinguish between what is Nature’s work and what is Spirit’s work through Nature ? You must know how to distinguish one from the other. And how can one distinguish when one has not a consciousness that is perfectly limpid and sure of what is the Spirit, how to recognise it, how to see its work ? It seems to me a very simple logic. The world will continue. Things will go on happening. There will perhaps be only a handful of men who will know how things have been done. That is all. And supposing you were at this moment all on a sudden precipitated without any transition, into the world as it was— say, two or three thousand years ago, even less than that perhaps —one or two thousand years ago, it will be such a suffocating contrast, that probably very few people would be able to face it. But as it is done "like that", with the amiable slowness of Nature, with all her fantasies, people find it quite natural, they do not even notice it. It is not an image, it is not literature when it is said that if you enter into the true consciousness, if you change your consciousness, the world itself changes for you : and it is merely an appearance or an impression; you see other things than what you see in the ordinary consciousness; the relations are different, the causes are different, the effects are different. And instead of noticing only something which is not transparent—you do not see behind, it is a surface, a crust; it is that only which one sees, you do not see even what moves it, what makes it exist—everything is reversed and it is that which appears artificial and unreal, almost non-existent. And then when you see things in that way normally without being forced, without being compelled to do meditations and concentrations and mighty efforts to see things in that way, when it becomes your normal natural vision, then you understand things in a totally different way, naturally the world is different.
A little preliminary journey is indispensable, and those who have made this little preliminary journey, find that all kinds of speculations and questions can no longer exist for them.
Page-16 But to come back to our subject, what I wanted to say, quite simply is that one day when I was asked for a message—I give it, because it is asked of me—I was asked and was told, "We wish to print it, couldn’t you send it ?" Then what did I do ? I looked at the year that was coming—to be precise, in order to speak of it I must have a look at it. Then while looking at it I see at the same time all the imaginations of the people, all their speculations and inventions about what is going to happen in this so-called wonderful year. I look at that and at the same time I look at what it is—what it is already in advance—it is already like that somewhere. Immediately I find what is the best thing to do, not to say what it will be like. And as people expect a good deal of flourishes and proclamations I said what I have said. That is all, nothing more. That is all that I wanted to say, "let us not speak of it. That is better, it is preferable." I said nothing else than that. It is better not to speak of it, not to make much noise about it, because that does not help. Let things happen in accordance with a deeper law, without our being astounded like one who does not know and looks on. Above all do not come and say, "you know, it will be like this". Because in that way the thing becomes more difficult. I do not say that what should be will not be, but perhaps it will be with much more difficulty if one speaks of it. So it is better to let things happen of themselves. After all, if you want to be sober, very sober, you have only to ask yourself, "well, in ten thousand years, what will it be, this realisation with which we are busy now ? An imperceptible point in the march of time, a preparation, an attempt at future realisations. Better not to be excited, let us do what we can and let us keep quiet. That is all." Now, there are people who require whipping, as butter is whipped. But for that you must go to the poets, not to me. I am not a poet, I am satisfied with doing. I like better doing than speaking. The Mother Page-17
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Reprinted from The Bulletin of S. A. I. C. of Education February, 1962
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