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THE MOTHER Questions and Answers
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry
April, 1962
Questions and Answers I
Sri Aurobindo writes, "The Supreme has laid his luminous hand upon a chosen human vessel of his miraculous Light and Power and Ananda" ("The Synthesis of Yoga", p. 100) IT is as you like. One does not know who has begun ! But the two happen generally at the same time. If you want an order of priority, it is evident that the Divine exists before the individual, then it is the Divine who must have chosen the first time. But it is a choice made before the terrestrial fife. In the order of the ordinary human consciousness it can be either the one or the other or both at the same time. In fact it is probable that it is the Divine who perceives at first that this one or that one is ready. But one who is ready generally begins by not knowing it, so he has the impression that it is he who chooses and decides. But that must be an impression rather than a reality. But once you are chosen, it is irresistible, you cannot escape, even if you try.
The being who is chosen by the Divine, can he understand it ‘ from his very birth ? Even before his birth. Perhaps his very birth is the result of this choice. It is like that generally. But it may happen at any time of one’s life. For those Page-1 who are predestined, it is before the birth; generally they have come upon earth with a purpose, for a fixed goal. You would like very much to know if it so happened in your case, isn’t it ? (laughter) Does the Divine choose only one individual to manifest Himself or can he choose several? He chooses several. But here also there is a hierarchy. You can understand nothing of the spiritual life if you do not understand true hierarchy. Now, it is not the fashion. In human thinking it is a thing which does not find favour at all. But from the spiritual point of view it is something automatic, spontaneous, undisputable. So, if the hierarchy is true, there is a place for everybody; and for each individual, at the place where he is, his individual truth is absolute. That is to say, each element that is truly in its place has a total and perfect relation with the Divine, in its place. And yet taken as a whole there is a hierarchy which is also quite absolute. But to understand the spiritual life you must understand that first and it is not very easy. Everyone can be a perfect expression of the Divine in himself, on condition that he knows his place and keeps to it. And if they don’t know the hierarchy? But they need not know that they form a hierarchy, it is not necessary to know it. It is only when you want to organise physically a spiritual society that you have to materialise the hierarchy. But generally in the world as it is, there are so many gaps in this hierarchy that it looks like a confusion,.
The perfect hierarchy is an all-inclusive hierarchy and it
Page-2 cares neither for time nor for space. But when you want to realise it physically, it becomes very difficult. It is like a piece of cloth to be woven with good many holes everywhere; the holes upset the general harmony. Always people are missing, levels are missing, pawns are missing on the chess-board—things are missing. So it looks like a confusion. But if the whole thing were expressed and each thing were in its place, then it would be a perfect harmony and a perfect hierarchy. There is somewhere—not in the material universe, but in the manifested universe—this perfect hierarchy, it exists. But it is not yet manifested upon earth. Perhaps that will be one of the results of the supramental transformation : the world will be ready for a perfect, spontaneous, essentially true hierarchical manifestation—and without coercion of any kind—in which everyone will have the consciousness of his own perfection.
What exactly is the spiritual hierarchy? Because when one speaks of hierarchy, it implies an order with higher and lower elements? Yes—but it is quite wrong. That is to say, materially it is like that. But that is not what I call a hierarchy. What then is a hierarchy? It is the organisation of functions and the manifestation in action of every one’s own nature. Sometimes comparisons were attempted, but they are worth nothing, because none of the things we know physically can answer to that condition. There is always as you say the sense of superiority and inferiority.
Hierarchy has been compared to
the various functions of the body, for example. But that always gives the
impression that the head is above and the feet below—that is embarrassing !
Page-3
Each element is the whole Divine at the same time, then how can one speak of hierarchy? Each element has a direct and perfect relation with the Divine. But can’t they become the whole Divine? Yes, all become the Divine, but not the whole Divine— because the Divine is the All. You cannot take a bit of the Divine and say, "this is the Divine". And yet every one in his spiritual consciousness has a perfect relation with the Divine, that is to say. everyone is the Divine as perfectly as he can be. But to rebuild the Divine, the whole Divine is necessary. And that is exactly what constitutes the very essence of hierarchy; but as everyone is perfect in himself, there can be no feeling of inferiority or superiority. I do not think human mentality can understand that. I think one must live it and once you have lived it, it is very simple, it appears luminously simple. But to understand that with the mind is not possible, it seems impossible. Especially because the mind in order to understand any thing has to divide everything, put everything in opposition, otherwise it does not understand, it is in a confusion. Because of its very function it makes itself incapable of understanding.
How can one say that a thing is "already done", when it is not yet manifested, for example, that the Divine has chosen an instrument, when nothing is as yet apparent? Yes, within, in the world that is not yet manifested, there is the decision, it is done there, only it must come out on the surface.
It is exactly the individual
equivalent of what I have told you several times, in connection with the freedom
of India. When I had gone to a certain plane, I told Sri Aurobindo, "India is
free", I did not tell him, "India will be free", I told him, "India
is free”. Page-4 Well, between that moment when it was an accomplished fact and the moment when it was translated in the material world upon earth, how many years were needed ? It was in 1915 and the liberation came in 1947, that is to say, 32 years. That is the exact image of the resistance. For the individual it is the same thing. It takes sometimes the same length of time, sometimes it goes quicker.
You say that you saw India free… No, I did not see, I knew. When you said to Sri Aurobindo, "India is free", was India wholly free? I had meant what happened in 1947, that is to say, the foreign domination was withdrawn. That is all, nothing else than that, not her moral or spiritual freedom, I did not speak of that at all. I said simply that she was liberated from foreign domination. And even I answered to a question put by Sri Aurobindo, "There will be no violence, it will be done without a revolution, it is the British people who of themselves will decide to go away, for the place will become untenable for them because of certain circumstances upon the earth". So that was the whole matter, there was no spiritual question here. The things happened that way. I told Sri Aurobindo in 1915 exacdy. It was all there, it was there, I guessed nothing, prophesied nothing—it was a fact.
This then gives you an image of the
time that is needed between the established fact and the outer realisation. For
the individual also it is the same thing. He is chosen, he has chosen. He has
chosen the Divine and he is chosen. It is a thing decided and it will be
realise^! infallibly. One cannot escape even if one wanted. Only it may take a
long time.
Page-5
Mother, you said that India was free in 1915, but was she free as now ? because Indian is not free as a whole, she has been divided. Oh, that’s what you wanted to know ! But the details were not there. Yet there must have been a possibility that it might be otherwise; for, when Sri Aurobindo sent them his message1 he knew very well that one could avoid what happened in the end. If they had listened to him at that tune, there would have been no division. Therefore the division was not decreed. It is a human deformation; uncontestably it was a human deformation.
But then how can one say that the decision of the Supreme is unescapable, if He had chosen that India must be free ? No, no, it is not like that, my child. It is a fact, that’s all. It is the Divine that is India, it is the Divine that is freedom, it is the Divine that is subjection, it is the Divine that is all—then how could he have chosen ? I advise you to go up there, then you will understand. Until you have climbed the ladder up to there, it will be difficult to understand. * * *
1
Let us recall that in 1942, at the time when Sir Stafford Crips proposed his
"reforms" (reforms that did not yet contemplate India’s independence but would
lead to it), Sri Aurobindo took the trouble of sending a special messenger to
Delhi to convince the responsible persons that the reforms should be accepted.
They did not understand him. Had the reforms been accepted India would probably
have avoic?e6 the Pakistan partition and the atrocities that went with it.
(Editor’s note)
Page-6 II
"At best we have only the poor relative freedom which by us is ignorantly called free will. But that is at bottom illusory, since it is the modes of Nature that express themselves through our personal will; it is force of Nature, grasping us, ungrasped by us that determines what we shall will and how we shall will it. Nature, not an independent ego, chooses what object we shall seek, whether by reasoned will or unreflecting impulse, at any moment of our existence." ("The Synthesis of Yoga", p. 108) I have explained it to you I do not know how many times. You believe that it is you who decide, it is the impulses coming from outside that decide. You believe you are conscious of your will, it is a consciousness not yours. You are wholly built up by the forces of Nature that express a higher Will of which you are unconscious. But you understand that only when you are able to come out of your ego, even though for one moment; for the ego is convinced—and it is this which gives it its strength—that it is itself that decides. But if you look closely you will perceive that it is moved by all kinds of things that are not itself. But what then is mental and vital will?
It is an expression of something that is not personal. If you
analyse with care, you will perceive, for example, that all that you think has
been thought by others; these are things that circulate and pass through you,
but you are not at the origin of your thoughts. All your reactions arise out of
atavism from those who gave you birth and the environment in which you have
lived, out of the impressions that hav.e« gathered in you and built up something
which appears to you as yourself, but it is not created by you, it is
Page-7 simply felt and experienced. You become aware of it on your way, but it is not you who created it, not you who gave it birth. One might say that they are like sounds (words or music or anything) recorded by an instrument and reproduced by another instrument, which repeats like the gramophone, for example. You won’t say that it is the gramophone that has created the sound which you hear, you would never think that way, isn’t it ? But as you have the illusion of a separate personality, these thoughts that pass through your head and express themselves, these feelings that pass through your vital and express themselves you think them coming out of you, but there is nothing that comes out of you. Where is the "you" that can create all that ? You must go in deep, deep, must reach and find the eternal essence of your being to have that creative reality within you. And once you have found that, you realise that it is the same thing in others and then where is your separate personality ? Nothing remains. Yes, they are instruments for recording and reproducing and there are always various deformations—deformations for the better, as well as deformations for the worse, there may be sufficiently big changes. The inner combinations are such that things are not reproduced exactly when they pass from one to another, for the instrument is very complex. But it is one and the same thing which is moved by one single conscious Will, and this Will is altogether independent of personal wills.
When the Buddha wanted his disciples to understand this, he
told them: each time you send out a vibration, a desire, for example, the desire
for a particular thing, your desire begins circulating from one to another, from
one to another through the universe, and will turn all around and come back to
you. And as it is not only one thing and as you are not the only transmitting
centre—all individual beings are transmitting centres—it makes such a complex
affair that you do not recognize yourself. But these vibrations move about in
the same identical field; but it is only the complication and interception of {h,e
vibrations that gives you the impression that a thing is separated or
independent.
Page-8 But there is nothing separate or independent, it is only one substance, one single Force, one single Consciousness, one single Will that moves in coundess ways. And it is so complicated that one cannot make anything out of it. But if you take one step back and follow the movement, any line of the movement, no matter what, you discover very well that the vibrations are continued gradually on and on, and, in fact, there is only one single unity—unity of Substance, unity of Consciousness, unity of Will. And that is the only reality. Outwardly, it is a kind of illusion—the illusion of separation and the illusion of distinction.
The desires also? It is not personal, not at all. And it is very easy to find it out: of all things it is the easiest to find out, oecause ninety times out of a hundred, they come from another person, from a certain circumstance or from a set of circumstances, or from a vibration coming from another person or several other persons. You can recognize it easily. It is a vibration that suddenly awakens something similar in you. Something produces a shock in you and this shock brings forth a response, just as when you touch a note. Well, this vibration of desire comes and touches you in a certain way and you respond.
Even when you are a child, if you are attentive
you can be aware of it. You five constantly in the midst of constant collective
suggestions. I do not know if you have attended funerals, for example, or if you
have been in a house where there is a death—naturally you must observe yourself
a little, otherwise you are aware of nothing—if however you observe yourself a
little, you have no particular reason to be full of grief or sorrow for the
passing of the person in question, it is a person like many others, the thing
happened and by a conjunction of social circumstances, you have been brought
into -the house. There all on a sudden without knowing why and how, you feel a
great emotion, a great grief, a
Page-9 great sorrow and you ask yourself, "Why am I so unhappy ?" Simply the vibrations have entered into you, nothing else. I tell you it is easy to observe, because I myself had this experience when I was quite a child (and at that time I was not doing any conscious yoga, not yet; perhaps I was doing yoga, but not consciously) and I observed it very, very clearly; I told myself, "certainly, it is their grief that I feel, for I have no reason to be especially touched by the death of the person"; but all on a sudden tears came to my eyes, I felt my throat choked and inclined to weep, as if I had a great grief—I was quite a child—I understood immediately, "But it is their grief that entered into me". It is the same thing with regard to anger. It is very clear that people get it all of a sudden, not even from any body, but from the atmosphere; it is there, and all of a sudden it enters. It takes you usually by your lower part and then it rises and pushes you and you go. A minute before you were not angry, you were quite master of yourself, you had no intention to be in anger. And the thing seizes you so strongly that you are unable to resist— because you are not sufficiently conscious, you allow it to enter into you and it makes use of you—you, what you call "you", that is to say, your body; because apparently (I say indeed apparently) it is separate from the body of your neighbour. But it is only an illusion of your eyes, because in fact there are constantiy what may be qalled particles, even physical particles, like a kind of radiation coming out of the body and mixing with others. And when one is very sensitive one can feel at a distance because of that.
It is said, for example, that blind people acquire such
a sensitiveness, such a delicate perception of sensations that when they
approach an object they feel the impact at a distance. But you can make an
experiment of it quite easily. For example, you approach some one without making
a noise, put your hand quite near— sensitive people feel it immediately. You
have exercised no will in order to make them feel, you have not caused any
psychological element to intervene, you have only made the experiment, the
purely physical experiment, of approaching’ without noise so that you may not be
heard—someone sensitive will feel it immediately.
Page-10 That is to say, the body seems to end here, but it is only the way in which our eyes are built. If we had a little more subtle vision, having a wider scale, we would see that something comes out—as there is something that comes out of other bodies— and all that gets mixed and they react upon one another.
What does Sri Aurobindo mean by "the unity of dynamic force"? That’s what I was telling you. There is a dynamic force that moves all things and when you become conscious of it, you see that it is one single Force that moves all things; you can even follow its movement and see how it works through people and things. As soon as you become conscious of the unity—unity of Force, unity of Consciousness and unity of Will—you have no longer the perception due to which you seem quite separate from the others, you do not know what is happening in them and they are strangers to you,’ you are shut up as it were in your skin and you have no contact with others except in an altogether external and superficial manner. But it is precisely because you have not realised in you the perception of the unity of Consciousness, the unity of Force, the unity of Will—even the unity of material vibration. It is the complexity that makes the perception difficult; because our faculties of perception are too linear and too simple. In case we want to understand we are immediately assailed by an innumerable quantity of things which are almost contradictory to one another and are mixed up in such a complex way that you are unable to discover the lines and follow the things, you enter suddenly into a whirl.
But it is because the majority of people think one idea
after another, even as they are obliged to utter one word after another —they
cannot utter many words at the same time, otherwise they stammer. So, the
majority of people think like that, they think one thought after another, their
whole consciousness moves lineally. But you begin to cognize things only when
you cognize spherically,
Page-11 globally—think spherically, that is to say, an innumerable quantity of thoughts and perceptions that are simultaneous. Naturally, up till now, if you want to describe things, you are obliged to describe them one after another, because you cannot say ten words at the same time. And that is why all that one says is practically incapable of expressing the truth, altogether incapable, because we are obliged to say one thing after another. And as soon as we say things one after another they are no longer true. One must say all at the same time, even as one can come to cognize them at the same time and each in its place. When you begin to see like that—to see, to perceive, to feel, to think, to will like that—then you are approaching the truth. But as long as one sees as one speaks—oh, it is lamentable poverty.
Sri Aurobindo writes: "As long as we live in the ignorant seeming, we are the ego and are subject to the modes of . Nature. Etislaved to appearances, bound to the dualities, tossed between good and evil, sin and virtue, grief and joy, pain and pleasure, good fortune and ill fortune, success and failure, we follow helplessly the iron or gilt and iron round of the wheel of Maya." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 108) Yes, there are people who have a happy and comfortable life and there are others that have a miserable life. It depends upon individual destiny, it depends perhaps on what they have to do upon earth, upon the stage where they are; it depends upon many things. It is quite evident that it is not they themselves who choose. Because the majority of people would choose always the same thing. If they were asked what they wanted, there would be differences but not very great. It would be quite monotonous.
The majority of people would like to be what they call
"quiet", what they call "peaceful", have a small organisation suited to their
dimension—which is generally microscopic—which consists in living a regular
routine, activities almost always identical, within
Page-12 an almost identical frame, in an almost identical surrounding and that repeats without too great a difference, with a sufficient variety so that it does not become irksome, but nothing that would upset the regular circle which makes what is called a peaceful life. For the immense majority of people that is the ideal. And then the realisation of the details of this ideal depends exclusively on the country in which one is born, the society in which one is born, the customs of one’s environment. They have their ideal fashioned by the habits of the country or society in which they live. Evidently there are exceptions, but they only prove the rule. In a general way, the widest ideal is to be born in a sufficiently comfortable surrounding in order not to have too many difficulties in life, to marry a person who would not give you too much trouble, to have children who are healthy and grow normally (also in order not to have trouble) and then a quiet and happy old age and also not to’ fall ill too much in order not to have trouble. And then to depart when one is tired of life, also again because one would not like to have trouble. At bottom, it is the most widely spread ideal. Naturally there are exceptions, you find even the very contrary. Otherwise, the life as men conceive it would be sufficiently monotonous. The differences would come in the details, because in one country one prefers one thing and in another another thing; and then in the society in which one is born, you have certain habits, an ideal of happiness and in another society you have other habits and another ideal of happiness—that’s all.
If one speaks to the Europeans, for example, they tell you
that there is nothing more beautiful than Europe. I knew Frenchmen—not one, but
hundreds—who said there were nowhere in the world more beautiful women than
French women ! I knew a Negro who had all his education in France and who, when
asked where were the most beautiful women, answered, "None more beautiful than a
Negro woman". It was quite natural, isn’t it ? Well, it is like that No house is
more beautiful than the one in which one has been accustomed to five—the houses
of the country
Page-13 where you live, where you are born—and the landscape, it is the same, the food, it is the same, the habits, it is the same. Provided it all passes in a sufficiently harmonious way, without any violent blows, you are perfectly satisfied. That is the general mentality. You turn round, you turn round —and sometimes it is an iron circle, sometimes it is a circle of gold —but you turn round and round and round and your children also will turn round and round and your grand children will also turn round and round—and that will continue. There you are. * * * III
"Nature as Prakriti is an inertly active Force—for she works out a movement imposed upon her; bid within her is One that knows (the Purushottama)…. The individual soul or the conscious being in a form may identify itself with this experiencing Purusha or with the active Prakriti. If it identifies itself with Prakriti, it is not master, enjoyer and knower…" (The Synthesis of Yoga p.112.) If Nature does what is imposed on her, how is it that there are all these deformations? It is the theory of the Gita, it is not the whole truth.
I heard it when I was in France.
These are people who ex plain the Gita, saying that there is no fire without
smoke—which is not true. Starting from that they say, "life is like that and you
will not change it. All that you can do is to pass over to the side of the
Purusha and become the ruling force instead of the ruled force". But as Sri
Aurobindo says, it is the theory of the Gita, it is not the whole truth. It is
only a partial way of seeing things—useful, practical, convenient, but not
wholly true.
Page-14
In that case, how is it that disciples of Sri Aurobindo preach the message of the Gita for the salvation of the world ? It is their business. If it pleases them, I do not mind. That has nothing to do then with the Yoga of Sri Aurobindo ? You can’t say it has nothing to do. But it is narrowness, that’s all. They have caught one corner and made it the whole. But that happens to everybody. Who can grasp the whole, I would like to know ? Everybody catches a corner and makes it the whole. But Sri Aurobindo has explained… Oh ! but you are a propagandist! Why do you want to convince them ? If they are satisfied that way, leave them with their satisfaction. If they come and tell you, ‘This is Sri Aurobindo’s theory, then you have the right to tell them, "No, you are mistaken, it is the traditional theory, it is not Sri Aurobindo’s theory".’ That’s all. But you can’t tell them, "you must change". If it pleases them let them keep it. It is a very convenient theory. I saw it in France, at Paris, before coming to India, I saw to what extent it was practical. First of all, it makes you grasp a very profound and extremely useful truth and then it keeps you away from all necessity of changing your external nature.
It is so convenient, isn’t it ? You
say, "I am like that, how can I help it ? I separate myself from Nature, I leave
it to do as it likes, I am not this Nature, I am the Purusha; let it go its own
way, after all, I can’t change it". There are people who accept this even after
having read and studied Sri Aurobindo. They hold on to it, they stick to it,
because it is comfortable, you have not got to make any effort to change
ymav nature—it is unchangeable. Only you look at it from your ivory
tower and allow it to do whatever it likes,
Page-15 and say, "It is not I, I am not that". This is extremely convenient. That is why people take it up, because they imagine they are in the Purusha, but at the slightest scratch, they fall plump, back into Prakriti and they get furious, or are in despair or fall ill. I heard also of someone who had however realised this identification with the Purusha and who spread a very remarkable atmosphere; but he considered as dangerous revolutionaries people who sought to change anything in earthly Nature, all those who wanted that things upon earth should change; as for example, suffering should be abolished or that one should in the end annul the necessity of death, or that there might be an evolution, a luminous progress that needs no destruction. Yes, people who think like that are dangerous revolutionaries. If need be, they must be put in prison! If you want to be a wise man, without there being any question of becoming a great Yogi, you must be able to look at such things with a smile, not to be touched. You have your own experience, try to make it as true and as complete as possible, but leave each one to his own experience. Unless, of course, they come to you and take you as a Guru and ask you "Now, lead me to the Light and the Truth", then there begins your responsibility — not before.
Should not one try to show the new truth to others and convince them? If you reach this conception that the world is the expression of the Divine in all its complexity, then the necessity of the complexity and diversity has to be accepted and it becomes impossible for you to try to convince others and make them think and feel like you.
Everybody has his own way of thinking, feeling and
reacting. Why should you want others to do like you and to be like you ? Even if
it is admitted that you have a greater truth than theirs (although this word
signifies nothing, because from a certain
Page-16 point of view all truths are true—they are all partial, but they are true as they are truths), but the moment you seek your truth to be greater than that of your neighbour you begin to stray from the truth. This habit of wanting to compel others to think as you think always seemed to me arbitrary, it is what I call "the spirit of propagandists" and that takes you very far. You can take one step further and want people to do as you do, to feel as you feel and it becomes a terrible uniformity. In any case, I may assure you that there is a time when one does not feel at all, at all, the necessity of convincing others of the truth of what one thinks. IV
How to enter into the occult worlds? Do you know how to exteriorise yourself ? Do you know at all what it is to exteriorise oneself ? Not philosophically or psychologically, I mean in the occult way ? Are you conscious when you exteriorise yourself, do you do it at your will ? Do you know how to leave the body and live in a subtier body, then to leave that body too and live in another still subtler body—and so on ? Can you do all that ? Have you done it ? No —then we shall talk about it another day.
It happens in dream. In dream ? Do you Page-17
A little. A little ? It is getting interesting. Where do you go in your dreams ? Often in the vital worlds. Oh ! Oh ! You go into the vital world—and nothing unpleasant happens ? Most often. Ah ! and how do you get out of it ? Run back into the body. That is where ends your knowledge ? No, sometimes I call for the Light and then I find there is no need to run away. But that does not last long. You enter and come out at will ? Not at will. Can you return to a place where you have already been before ? No, Mother. You do not find back again the same spot several times ? Page-18 Not at my will. But there are children who know how to do that, they continue their dreams. Every night when they go to bed, they return to the same spot and continue their dream. When I was a child, Mother, I used to do that. You are no more a child, it’s a pity. Because I was not preoccupied at that time. Well, become a child again and you will know how to do it again. There is nothing more interesting. It is quite a pleasant occupation for the-nights : you begin a story, and when it is time to get up, you put a fullstop at the last word and get back into your body. The following night you start again, you open the page once more and begin your story and continue all the while you are outside; then you put the things in order—it must be well arranged, quite beautiful. And when the time comes to return, you put a full stop once more and tell the things, "keep quiet till I come back!" Then you get back into your body. You continue that every evening and you write a book of wonderful fairy tales—provided of course you remember them when you wake up.
But that depends on the quietness in which one has passed the day ?
No, that depends on the candidness of a child,
upon its trust in things that come to him, upon the absence of the mind’s
critical sense, upon heart’s simplicity, upon a young and active energy— it
depends upon all that—upon a kind of vital generosity within. And one must not
be too egoistic, too greedy and one must not be too practical, too
utilitarian—yes, there are all kinds of things that one must not be, as children
are not. And then one must have
Page-19 a power of living imagination, because (I seem to tell you foolish things, but it is absolutely true) there is a world where you are a supreme maker of forms, it is your own world of the vital. You are a supreme maker of forms and you can make a marvel of your world. If you know how to make use of it, if you have the consciousness of an artist, of a poet, if you love harmony and beauty, you will build there a wonderful thing that will tend to come into the material manifestation. When I was a child, that was what I used to call telling stories to myself. It is not at all telling stories through words, but in the head: it means going to a spot yet virgin and build there a wonder story. And when you know how to tell a story like that and it is truly beautiful and harmonious, truly strong and coordinated, it will realise itself in your life—perhaps not exactly in the form you created, but as a physical expression, more or less deformed of what you might have done. That perhaps will take years, but your story will tend to organise your life. But there are very few people who know how to tell a beautiful story and then they mix up always horrors which they regret afterwards. If one could create a fine story with no horrors in it, nothing but beauty, that would have a considerable If one could utilise this power, this creative power in the world of vital forms, if one knew to utilise that when yet a child, a little child ! because it is then that one builds up one’s material destiny. But generally the people who are around you, sometimes even your little comrades, but especially the parents and teachers meddle there and spoil everything, to such an extent that there are very few cases where it succeeds wholly. Otherwise, if it were done like that, with the spontaneous candour of a child, you could organise for you a wonderful life. I am speaking to you of the physical world. Dreams of childhood are realities of ripe age. *
* *
Page-20 V
How can one understand the Divine ? By becoming Him, my child. That is the only way, by identity. "If one did not carry Him in oneself", Sri Aurobindo says, "one would never be able to understand Him". It is because He is the very essence of our being that we are able to become Him and therefore understand Him, otherwise it would be quite impossible.
How can we find the Divine within ourselves? It is just what I said. First of all, you must set about looking for Him, as it is the most important thing in your life, then the will must be constant, the aspiration constant, the preoccupation constant and this must be the only thing that you want, then you will find Him. Naturally, if you think of it only five minutes in your life and be busy with other things for three quarters of an hour, there is hardly any chance of success. In any case, many lives will be needed. It must not be a pastime, it must be the exclusive occupation of your being, the very reason of your existence. *
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Page-21 VI
"All the Timeless presses towards the play in Time; all in Time turns upon and around the timeless Spirit". {"The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 137) Why? Because, it is like that, my child. All that is not manifested wants to be manifested and all that is manifested tries to return to its Origin. It is as if you asked me, "Why is the earth round, why are there the sun and the planets ?" It is like that, the Law of the Universe is like that. Most of these things are simply statements of facts; but there are no explanations, because you cannot give a mental explanation; you can give it, but each thing that you want to explain is explained by another which must again be explained by another, which in its turn must be explained by yet another—and so on indefinitely. You can go round the universe, each thing explaining another thing, but that explains nothing. The only thing that one can do is to say, it is like that.
That is why it is said that the mind can know nothing.
It can know nothing, because it has need of explanations. And an explanation has
a value only to the extent it gives you the power to act upon the thing which is
explained. Otherwise, what is the use of it ? If by explaining a thing you do
not have the power to change it, it is absolutely useless. Because, as I have
said, the explanation that you give necessitates another explanation and so on.
But if by an explanation you get a power over the thing, to make it different
from what it is, then that is worth the trouble. But this is not the case. Here
we turn round and round upon the surface, instead of leaping into the air
towards a new height.
Page-22 How can one increase one’s understanding? Understanding ? Well, it is by increasing the consciousness, by going beyond the mind, by widening one’s consciousness, by deepening one’s consciousness, by coming in contact with regions above the mind. Later on, at the time of the publication of this talk, Mother added the following commentary. I would add now one thing : it is experience. Change the knowledge into experience. And experience leads you automatically to another experience. But by "experience" I mean quite a different thing from what it is usually taken to mean. It is not experiencing the thing that one knows—that is, of course, understood—but instead of knowing and understanding (even a knowledge much higher than the mental knowledge, even a most integral knowledge), to become the power that causes it to be. People always say that at the beginning of the Manifestation there is saccidananda When you are there, you have the sense of such a tremendous power—the universal power ! You have the sense of total mastery of the universe.
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Reprinted from The Bulletin of S. A. I. C. of Education April, 1962
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