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THE MOTHER Questions and Answer,
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry
August 1962
Reprinted from The Bulletin S. A. I. C. of Education August 1962
Questions and Answers I
"The absolute of each being is his unique relation with the Divine and his own mode of expressing the Divine in the manifestation". — The Mother. IT is what one calls here in India, the truth of the being or the law of the being, the Dharma of the being, that which is the centre and the cause of the individuality. Everyone carries his truth in himself, which is his unique truth, which is his own and which he is to express in life. Then, what is this truth ? I have been asked, "What is this truth of the being and how does it translate itself in physical life ?" It translates in this way : each individual being has a direct and unique relation with the Supreme, the Origin, That which is beyond all creation. It is this unique relation which must be expressed in his life, through a unique mode of being in relation with the Divine. Therefore, everyone is direcdy and exclusively in relation with the Divine—the relation that one has with the Divine is unique and exclusive. That is how you receive from the Divine, when you are in a receptive condition, the fullness of the relation that is possible for you to have and this is not a share or a portion or a repetition, but it is exclusively and uniquely the Everyone is all alone with the Divine.1
1 This sentence has been added by the Mother on May 13, 1962. Page-1 The relation that you have with Him has never a second or anything identical. No two are ever the same, and therefore nothing That is why if you live in the truth of your being, you are an indispensable part of the creation. Naturally I do not mean to say that if you live as you believe you should be, I say if you live the truth of your being, if by growing you are able to come in contact with the truth of your being, then immediately you have a unique and exclusive relation with the Divine, that has nothing similar to it. That is all. And naturally, being the truth of your being it is that which you must express in your life. * * * II A question has been put to me by someone who finds that I made promises somewhat lightly and after all I have not kept my word ! (Perhaps I expected from humanity more than it could give me — I do not know that. Perhaps it is purely a superficial impression). I said to some extent like this that the people who are here in the Ashram will know of the descent of the Supramental—on that account I cannot be reproached for not having intimated to them when it happened, I did not make a mystery of it, and that they will participate in it. Indeed I have forbidden none from participating in it ! On the contrary, I believe I have encouraged all to open themselves and receive and try to profit by it. And then I said (it was in English), "From that moment the Page-2 transforming Grace shall radiate itself in the most effective manner." Well, I challenge anybody telling me the contrary ! But here the thing begins to be a little more…I added : "And fortunately for the aspirants, this happy future (I do not thank I wrote it in that way, but it does not matter), this happy futiure will materialise for them, in spite of all the obstacles that unregenerate human nature may put up against it". I continue to hope that it will be so. But then this person who is perhaps somewhat impatient answers me, "Why have the difficulties increased for a great number of sadhaks ?" But who tells you that it is not because you have become more conscious and all your difficulties were there even before, only you did not know it ? If you see now more clearly and see things that are not very pretty, it is not the fault of the Supramental, it is your own fault! It gives you a light, a mirror in which you can see better than you did before; and you are a little annoyed, because it is not always very pretty (laughter). And this person concludes: "Does not the Supramental Force work here in spite of all the obstacles that unregenerate human nature may put up against it ?" Indeed, I hope it does ! Because otherwise there would be nothing to do, the world would never be regenerated. But I have explained to you why it appears to you more difficult. It is because you have become a little more conscious and you see things which you did not see before.
There is another reason still. When the Force that is at work is stronger, more insistent, naturally the thing that resists, resists all the more. And (there I have to tell you something not pleasant) if instead of being hypnotised by your small difficulties, small inconveniences, small discomforts or by your big defects, if, instead of being hypnotised by all that, you tried to see the other side, to what extent the Force is more powerful, the Grace more active, the help more tangible, in a word, if you were a little less egoistic and less concentrated on yourself, had a somewhat wider vision in which you could include things that did not concern you personally, perhaps your view of the problem would change.
Page-3 Well, this is what I advise you to do and we shall speak of it again later on when you will have tried my remedy : do not think so much about yourself. After all, it is perhaps the problem in which you are most interested, but certainly it is not the most interesting. * * * III I have been asked to speak to you on our education in sports, and also, in a general way, of the psychological basis on which our activity is based here. These things have been written by Sri Aurobindo, I myself have written them very often, I have explained them to you many times, but very regretfully I am obliged to say that it has not entered into your consciousness. I do not want to start a war against what you feel and what you do, but I would like you at least to understand why things are done here as they are being done, instead of letting yourself adrift, in a spontaneous back-sliding, copying whatever is done elsewhere under the pretext that it is in that way things are done, under the pretext that your parents and your great grand parents, that parents and friends and the great grand parents of your friends and all who are outside continue to do things as they are doing and they consider that that is the normal, natural way of doing them. I do not contest the fact in the sense that humanity has been created by Nature with a special aim and special purposes, and with a view to realise her purposes she has made beings and given them also special habits and special functions. Therefore if you speak of "natural" things, I can only tell you that it is not "natural", simply because it is Nature’s manner.
However I believe I told you—not once, but many times, and Sri Aurobindo also has written, not once but many times—that we are not here to begin once more, continue, perpetuate what
Page-4 is done elsewhere. And we have made the fact concrete specially in our education; because I must say, without giving offence to anybody, that those who come here after having already lived long, who have a rather heavy past behind them, can find it difficult to change immediately their attitude and point of view, but if you take quite little children who are not yet too spoilt—they are already somewhat spoilt—but not too spoilt by the ordinary education, by the family ideas, by parental atavism etc., you have a chance to direct their consciousness towards the true road and obtain a tangible and concrete result. To tell the truth, we have nothing to complain, because we have had outstanding proofs that if one knows how to do it, then what we claim is possible. What we claim is this that given similar conditions, the same education and the same possibilities, there is no reason why a categorical, final and imperative distinction should be made between what one calls men and women. For us, human beings are the expression of a single soul. And if, as I said in the beginning, Nature has made a difference in her expressions in order to satisfy her needs and realise her motives, it does not follow that we must obey her blindly. If our needs and motives are of another kind and if we do not recognise that the physical purposes as they are conceived by Nature are the final and absolute ends, then we can try to develop consciousness on another line. I have been asked, not once but hundreds of times, particularly by people who come from outside with all outside ideas : "Why do you have the same programme of physical education for boys and girls ?" Some consider it a scandal, others think that it is a gross error from the physical, material point of view. "Why are the girls not treated in a special and different way from the boys?…" And then the big argument : "…as it is done everywhere". Ah, many thanks ! Then why do we have an Ashram ? Why do we have a Centre of Education ? If everywhere they do the same things, then w* have no need to repeat them. We won’t do them better than the others. Page-5 When people throw this argument at my face, they can tell me nothing more profoundly stupid. That is done everywhere ! But that is exactly the reason why it should not be done; because if we do as the others do, it is not worth doing at all. We want precisely to bring into the world something which is not there. But if we keep all the habits of the world, all the preferences of the world, all the constructions of the world, I do not see how we can come out of the rut and do something new. My children, I have told you, repeated in all tones and in all modes : "If you wish truly to profit by your stay here, try to look at things and understand them with a new eye and a new understanding based on something higher, something deeper, something wider, something more true, something which is not today but will be one day. And it is because we want to build this future that we have taken a special attitude." I tell you that we have had proofs, absolutely material proofs of the correctness and the truth of our position. But they do not last. Why ? For it is extremely easy to fall back into the ordinary consciousness and there is nothing more difficult than to hold oneself on the top of the ladder and try to look at the world from up there. We do not want to obey the orders of Nature, even if these orders have behind them habits of thousands and thousands of years. But one thing is certain, it is about the argument of Nature when she opposes that things should change saying, "It has always been so". No, I assert it is not true. Whether she wants it or not Well, admit if only for a time, in a way appertaining to faith and trust, that we are exactly in the course of making this change, we have reached a moment when things are making a turn about and taking a new direction. You are asked simply to have a little faith and trust and allow yourself to be guided. Otherwise you will lose the advantage of being here, that is all. And you will start again with the same weaknesses and hajjits that you see in life as it is outside us. Page-6
Side by side with this talk we publish some extracts from a booklet by the Mother entitled, "To women about their body" written in answer to questions on Sports Education of Women. This booklet opens with these lines : For God’s sake can’t you forget that you are a girl or a boy and try to become a human being ? What is the ideal of Physical Education for a girl? I do not see why there should be a special ideal of physical education for girls and another for the education of boys. The aim of physical education is to develop all the possibilities of a human body, possibilities of harmony, strength, plasticity, skill, agility, endurance, and to increase the control over the functioning of the limbs and the organs, and to make of the body a perfect instrument at the disposal of a conscious will. This programme is excellent for all human beings equally, and there is no point in wanting to adopt another for girls.
What roles should man and woman play in the new life ? What shall be the relation between them? Why make at all a distinction between them ? They are all equally human beings, trying to become fit instruments for the Divine Work, above any question of sex, caste, creed and nationality, they are all children of the same Infinite Mother and aspirants to the one Eternal Godhead.
What should be the ideal of a woman’s physical beauty?
A perfect harmony in the proportion, suppleness and strength, grace and force, plasticity and endurance and above all, ex-
Page-7 cellent health, unvarying and unchanging, which is the result of a pure soul, a happy trust in life and an unshakable faith in the Divine Grace. This booklet ended with these words: One word to conclude : I have told you these things, because you needed to hear them, but do not make of them absolute dogmas, for that would take away their truth. * * * IV
Sri Aurobindo writes : "A psychic fire within must be lit into which all is thrown with the Divine Name upon it". (Synthesis of Yoga, VJ-i8j). Is not the psychic fire always lighted ? It is not always lighted. Then how is it to be lighted ? By aspiration, by the will to progress, by the urge towards perfection. Particularly it is the will to progress, to purify oneself that lights the fire. Those who have a strong will, if they turn it towards spiritual progress and purification, automatically kindle the fire within them.
And each defect that you want to cure or each progress that you want to make, if you throw all that in
to the fire, it burns with a new intensity. This is not an image, it is a fact in the subtle
Page-8 physical. You can feel the heat of the flame; you can see, in the subtle physical, the light of the flame. And when there is something in the nature which prevents you from advancing and you throw it into the fire, it begins to burn and the flame becomes more intense. Is that all ? How to feel sweetness and delight when one is in a difficulty ?
Precisely if the difficulty is of an egoistic or personal order and if you make an offering of it and throw it into this fire of purification, immediately you feel the delight of progress. If you do it sincerely, at once there is an uprush of delight. Evidently this is what is to be done instead of despairing and lamenting. If you make an offering of it and if you aspire sincerely for the transformation and purification, immediately you feel delight born in the core of your heart. Even when the difficulty is a big sorrow, you can do the thing with great success. You perceive behind the grief, however intense it is, there is a divine delight. * * * V
Is it possible without conscious occult powers to help or protect from a distance someone who is in difficulty or in danger ? If so, what is the practical way of proceeding ? What can thought do?
We will not speak of occult procedures, although, to say the truth, everything that happens in the invisible world is occult, by definition. However there are practically two procedures, which do not exclude, which complete each other, but which can be used separately according to one’s inclination.
Page-9 Evidently thought forms part of one of the means, a sufficiently important part. I have already told you several times that if you think clearly and strongly, you make a mental formation and every mental formation is an entity independent of its maker, which has its own life and tends to realise itself in the mental world (I do not mean that you see your formation with your physical eyes, but that it exists in the mental world, it has its own independent existence). If you have made a formation with a definite aim, the whole of its life will tend to realise this aim. Therefore, if you wish to help someone from a distance, you have to form very clearly and in a very precise and strong manner, the kind of help you wish to render and the result you wish to obtain. That will have an effect. I cannot say that it is all-powerful, because the mental world is full of innumerable formations of this kind and naturally they knock against each other and contradict each other. Therefore it is the strongest and the most persistent that wins. Then what is it that gives force and persistence to the mental formations ? It is emotion and will. If you know how to add to your mental formation an emotion, an affection, a kindliness, a love and an intensity of will, a dynamism, it will have much greater chance of success. This is the first method. It is within the reach of everyone who knows how to think and still more of those who know how to love. But as I have said the power is limited and there is much competition in the world. But even if you do not have knowledge, but have trust in the Divine Grace, if you have the faith that there is something in the world which is Divine Grace and this something can answer a prayer, an aspiration, an invocation, then when you have made your mental formation, you offer it to the Grace and ask it to intervene and if you have the faith that it will intervene, then you have truly a chance of success. Just try and you will see very well the result. Page-10
But, Mother, when one prays sincerely for the intervention of the Grace, one expects a particular result, is it not so ? Excuse me, that depends on the tenor of the prayer. If simply you invoke the Grace or the Divine and leave it to him, you cannot expect a particular result. If you are to expect a particular result, you must formulate your prayer, you must ask for the thing. If you have only a great aspiration for the Divine Grace and you invoke it, implore it, without asking anything precise, then it is the Grace that will choose what it will do for you and not you.
is better so, no? Oh that, it is another question. Evidently it is perhaps of a higher quality ! But surely if you want a precise thing, it is better to formulate it. If you have a special reason for invoking the Grace it is better to formulate what you want exactly and clearly. Naturally, if you are in a state of complete surrender and you give yourself entirely, you simply offer yourself to the Grace and let it do what it wants—that is very good. But after that you must not discuss what it does ! You must not tell it: "Oh, I did that with the idea of getting this"; because if you have really the idea of obtaining something, it is better to formulate it in all sincerity and simplicity, as you see it. Afterwards it is for the Grace to choose whether to do or not to do : in any case, you would have formulated clearly what you wanted. And there is no harm in it.
It becomes wrong when the prayer is not granted and you revolt. Then naturally it becomes wrong. It is at this moment that you must understand that the desire that you have or the aspiration may not be very enlightened and you might have asked something which^was not exacdy good for you. You must be wise then and say simply : "well, let thy will be done".
Page-11 But so long as you have an inner perception and preference, there is no harm in formulating it. It is quite a natural movement. For example, if you have done a stupid thing or committed a fault and truly and sincerely you want not to do it again—well, I do not see anything wrong in asking for it. Indeed, if you ask with sincerity, a true inner sincerity, there is much chance of its being granted. Do not believe that the Divine likes to contradict you. He has no liking for it at all ! He can see better than you what is your good; but it is only when it is altogether indispensable that he contradicts your aspiration. Otherwise He is always ready to give what is asked. Is that all ? (silence) There are three texts here for which commentaries or explanations have been asked from me. The last one is like a continuation of what we have just said. I shall begin with that :
"If we were in union with the Grace, if we saw it everywhere, our life would be a life of exultation, of all power and infinite happiness. And it would be the best possible collaboration with the Divine Work".1 The first condition is not easy to realise. It is the result of a conscious growth, a constant observation and a continuous experience in life. I have told that to you several times. Often a set of circumstances or certain events occur that contradict your desire or what seems to you the best and you happen to regret and say to yourself, "Ah how it would have been good if it were otherwise, like this or like that". For small things as well as for big things. Then years pass, events roll on; you progress, you become more conscious and understand better, and when you look back you
1 Questions and Answers
Page-12 perceive, at first in astonishment, then later on, with a smile, that the famous circumstances which appeared to you unfortunate and unfavourable were precisely the best thing that could have happened to you to make you progress in the way you had to. And if you were in the least wise you would say, "Indeed, the Divine Grace is infinite". So when this phenomenon happens to you several times, you begin to understand that in spite of the blindness of men and misleading appearances, the Grace is at work everywhere and that every minute it is the best possible that happens, under the conditions in which the world is at that moment. It is because our vision is limited or because we are blinded by our own preferences that we are unable to discern and see that it is so. But when we begin to see it, we enter into one of those wonders which nothing can describe…. Because behind the appearances you perceive this Grace infinite, wonderful, all-powerful that knows everything, organises everything, arranges everything and leads us—whether we want it or not, whether we know it or not—towards the supreme goal, that is to say, union with the Divine, the awareness of the Divine and union with Him. Then you see in the action and in the Presence of the Grace, a life full of joy and wonder and marvellous power, and at the same time full of a trust so calm, so total that nothing can shake it. And when you are in such a state of perfect receptivity and adhesion, you diminish in that measure the resistance of the world to the divine action. Therefore this is the best collaboration that you can bring to the action of the Divine. You understand what He wants and in full consciousness you adhere to His Will. *
* *
Page-13 VI Is the state of trance or Samadhi a sign of progress ? To enter into Samadhi is to pass into a state of which no conscious memory remains on awakening. In ancient times this was considered as a very high condition. It was even thought that it was the sign of a great realisation— people who wanted to do yoga or sadhana always tried to enter into a state like this. People have said all kinds of marvellous things about this state. You can say anything you like, because you just do not remember and those who have entered into it are not able to say what happened to them. I have read in all kinds of so-called spiritual literature marvellous things about this state of trance or samadhi; and it happened that I had never had it. I did not know if it was a sign of inferiority. And when I arrived here, one of my first questions to Sri Aurobindo was, "What do you think of Samadhi, this state of trance which one does riot remember ? One enters into a condition which seems to be blissful, but when one comes out of it one never knows what happened". He looked at me, he saw what I meant and told me, "It is unconsciousness". I asked him for an explanation. I exclaimed, "What !" He answered, "Yes, you enter into what is called Samadhi, when you come out of your conscious being and enter into a part of your being which is completely unconscious or rather into a domain where you have no corresponding consciousness—you go beyond the field of your consciousness and enter into a region where you have no more consciousness. You are in the impersonal state. That is to say, a state in which you are unconscious; that is why naturally you remember nothing, because you have not been conscious of anything"1. That reassured me
1 At the time of the publication of this Talk, the Mother added the following remark : "There are people who enter into domains where they have a consciousness, but between this conscious
state and their normal wakeful consciousness there is a gap: their individuality
does not exist between the waking state and the deeper state: then in the
passage they forget. They cannot carry the consciousness they had there in to
the consciousness here because there is a gap between the two. There is even an
occult discipline which consists in building the intermediary fields, so that
one may be able to remember things. Page-14 and I told him, "well, the thing never happened to me"; he replied "to me also it did not !" (laughter) From that moment, when people speak of Samadhi, I tell them, "Well, try to develop your inner individuality and you can enter into these very regions in full consciousness, with the delight of communion with the highest regions without losing consciousness for that and returning with a zero instead of an experience". So you have the reply. The sign of progress is when there is no more unconsciousness, when you can rise to the same regions without entering into a trance. (silence) But there is a confusion in the words. When you leave one part of your being (for example, when you enter fully conscious into the vital world), your body, body alone may go into trance, but it is not samadhi.
There are examples, spontaneous and involuntary, of a state which is not altogether this but something analogous : such are the states of somnambulism. That is to say when you are in deep sleep, when you have gone out of your body and when the body
Page-15 obeys automatically the will and the action of the vital part which has gone out. Only, because it is not the result of a willed action, a regulated and progressive education, such a state is not desirable, for it may lead to disorders in the being. But this is an illustration of what I have just said, of a body that can while three-fourths of it remains asleep obey the part of the being which has gone out and which is itself fully awake and altogether conscious. That is the true trance. I have already told you many times, I believe, that when you undergo such an occult discipline you may be able to leave your physical body, go out vitally and move about consciously in the vital world; and then to leave the vital being asleep and come out of it mentally, act and live in the mental world altogether consciously and with similar relations—for the mental world is in relation with the mental being, as the physical world is in relation with the physical being. And so on, progressively and through a regular discipline. I knew a woman who had trained herself in this way and had faculties of her own altogether remarkable. She was conscious in all her states of being and she was able to come out twelve times from her body, that is to say, twelve consecutive bodies till she reached the summit of individual consciousness, what one might call the threshold of the Formless. She remembered everything and narrated everything in detail. She was an English woman; I have even translated from English a book where there was a description of all that she saw and did in all those domains. Evidently it is the sign of a great mastery over one’s being, the sign of having reached a high degree of conscious growth. But it is almost the opposite of the other experience, which consists in coming out of one’s consciousness in order to enter into a state where one is no more conscious; it is so to say the very opposite. (silence)
This brings me to something which is a^recommendation and an advice.
Page-16 We have read in The Synthesis of Yoga and also translated recently passages from The Life Divine where Sri Aurobindo gives details, explanations and instructions to those who do the sadhana and try to have experiences, that are at times too strong for their state of consciousness, bringing about unfortunate consequences. I made a reflection on this subject and I am asked to explain to you my reflection. I said , ”One must always be greater then one’s experience”. Here is what I wanted to say: Whatever be the nature, power and wonder of an experience, you must not be dominated by it to the extent that it governs your whole being and you lose balance and the contact with a reasonable and quiet attitude. That is to say when you enter, in whatever way, in relation with a force or consciousness which surpasses yours, instead of being entirely dominated by this consciousness or force, you must remember always that it is only one experience out of thousands and thousands of others and therefore it has not the character of the absolute, it is relative. However beautiful it may be you can and ought to have better ones. However exceptional it may be, there are others that are still more wonderful. However high it may be you can rise higher still in the future. Then instead of losing your head, you place the experience in the chain of your self-development and you keep a sane physical balance, so that you do not lose the sense of relativity. Like that you do not risk anything. The way ? He who knows how to do that will always find it very easy, but for him who does not know, perhaps it is a little embarrassing. There is one way. Never to forget the sense of total self-giving to the Grace which is the expression of the Supreme. When you give yourself, you abandon, resign entirely to That which is above and beyond all creation. And instead of seeking a personal advantage out of the experience, you make an offering of it to the Divine Grace and you know that it is from the Grace that the experience comes and it is to that Grace that the result of the experience should be given back. Then you are safe. Page-17 In other words : no ambition, no vanity, no pride. Sincere self-giving, sincere humility and you are protected from all danger. There, that is what I call being greater than one’s experience. VII
"A principle of dark and dull inertia is at its base ; all are tied down by the body and its needs and desires to a trivial mind, petty desires and emotions, an insignificant repetition of small worthless functionings, needs, cares, occupations, pains, pleasures that lead to nothing beyond themselves and bear the stamp of an ignroance that knows not its own why and whither. This physical mind of inertia believes in no divinity other than its small earth-gods ; it aspires perhaps to a greater comfort, order, pleasure, but asks for no uplifting and no spiritual deliverance. At the centre we meet a stronger Will of life with a greater gusto, but it is a blinded Daemon, a perverted spirit and exults in the very elements that make of life a striving turmoil and an unhappy imbroglio. It is a soul of human or Titanic desire clinging to the garish colour, disordered poetry, violent tragedy or stirring melodrama of the mixed flux of good and evil, joy and sorrow, light and darkness, heady rapture and bitter torture. It loves these things and would have more and more of them or, even when it suffers and cries out against them, can accept or joy in nothing else; it hates and revolts against higher things and in its fury would trample, tear or crucify any diviner Power that has the presumption to offer to make life pure, luminous and happy and snatch from its lips the fiery brew of that exciting mixture. Another Will-in-life there is that is ready to follow the ameliorating ideal Mind and is allured by its offer to extract some harmony, Page-18
beauty, light, nobler order out of life, but this is a smaller part of the vital nature and can be easily overpowered by its more violent or darker duller yoke-comrades ; nor does it readily lend itself to a call higher than that of the Mind unless that call defeats itself, as Religion usually does, by lowering its demand to conditions more intelligible to our obscure vital nature. All these forces the spiritual seeker grows aware of in himself and finds all around him and has to struggle and combat incessantly to be rid of their grip and dislodge the long-entrenched mastery they have exercised over his own being as over the environing human existence. The difficulty is great; for their hold is so strong, so apparently invincible that it justifies the disdainful dictum which compares human nature to a dog’s tail,—for, straighten it never so much by force of ethics, religion, reason or any other redemptive effort, it returns in the end always to the crooked curl of Nature. And so great is the vim, the clutch of that more agitated Life-Will, so immense the peril of its passions and errors, so subtly insistent or persistently invasive, so obstinate up to the very gates of Heaven the fury of its attack or the tedious obstruction of its obstacles that even the saint and the Yogin cannot be sure of their liberated purity or their trained self-mastery against its intrigue or its violence…" (The Synthesis of Yoga, I. VI. pp. 194-95) When one begins to see things like that, when things appear to you as they are described here, you are already near, very near the solution. The worst thing is that generally the whole material reality only appears to be real and everything which is not that appears quite secondary. And the right of this material consciousness to govern, to direct, to organise life, to rule over the rest is so much justified that if anybody tries to touch this sacrosanct authority, he is considered a half crank or a very dangerous person. It seems one must travel already^ very long way in order to be able to view material life as Sri Aurobindo has described here. And I am fully Page-19 convinced that if you feel and see it like this, as he has described, you are quite near, very near the remedy. Hardly other natures than those of the elite, those who have already a contact with a higher reality, with something of the divine consciousness, can feel the earthly existence in that way. And when one is able to be so wholly conscious of all such infirmities and stupidities of the external consciousness, of such falsehoods of the so-called material knowledge and of these so-called physical laws, these so-called necessities of the body, of the "reality" of one’s needs, if one begins to see how false, stupid, illusory, obscure, imbecile this is, then one is truly very near the solution. That is the impression I had on reading it. Comparing with the atmosphere that usually comes to me from the people who are around me, I have the impression that if one is to see things like that one must first rise to a very high summit and that you are at the door of liberation. It was because I felt this so strongly that I wanted to tell you. If you can re-read this passage and be convinced of its reality and its absolute truth, then you have taken indeed a big step. (silence) Nobody has any question to ask ?…I have some there (Mother shows a packet of questions), Someone has put to me recently a question about the Supra-mental, and asked me what its effect will be upon the earth…. Probably, one of the first effects will be exactly to make you see earthly things like that, as I have just read out to you. I am asked also another question, I thought that too I had answered, because I had said immediately that before the effects of the supramental manifestation become visible and tangible, perceptible to everyone thousands and thousands of years might have to pass; but I am afraid such notions are troublesome to the human consciousness with the sense of its short duration and the kind of impatience it gives; so I am asked if it would be long before the Page-20 Supramental, that is involved in earthly Nature emerged into the external consciousness and had visible results. That depends on the state of consciousness in which one is; because for the human consciousness evidently I think it would be quite long. For another consciousness, it would be very quick, relatively; for still another consciousness it is already done. It is a thing done, but if one is to perceive it, one must be able to enter into a consciousness other than the ordinary physical consciousness. Sri Aurobindo spoke (I think I have read it to you, it seems to me to be in the Synthesis of Yoga) Well, for a developed consciousness the Supramental is already realised somewhere; in a domain of the subtle physical it is already existing, visible, concrete and expresses itself in forms and activities. And if you are in relation with this domain and live there, you have a very strong impression that you have only, so to say, to condense this world to make it visible to everybody. What would be interesting then is to develop this inner perception enabling you to be in relation with the supramental truth which is already manifested, which is veiled to you only because you are lacking in proper organs to enter into relation with it. (silence) It may be that those who are conscious of their dreams can have dreams of a new kind, which put them in relation with this world, because it is accessible to the subtle physical for those who have the corresponding organs in themselves. And there is bound to be a subtle influence of this physical upon external matter—if one is ready to receive the impressions and admit them in his consciousness.
Now, if no one has any question to put, we will be silent.
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Something to say, over there ? (Mother looks at a disciple) Mother, after realising all that, one still surrenders to the lower mind to seek for a solution. After having understood one falls back again into the same wanderings ? It is a pity ! And day after day. Day after day ! Still more pity ! And then what remedy do you propose ? I ask it? Oh, you ask it ! But to me it seemed that when one has seen things like that, well, if one is sensitive enough, one cannot admit them any longer as they are. Truly you must be insensitive, when you see to what an extent they are degrading, to continue to accept them. (silence)
Yes, it is yet another thing I have noticed and that has always surprised me. It appeared to me always quite normal, easy, almost elementary to eliminate from one’s consciousness and nature things that are considered unacceptable. The moment you know, you see them as they are, and do not want them any longer, that seemed to me to be as simple as a child’s simplicity. But I noticed that in most cases—in almost all cases—when I tell anyone things as they are, I give him a true picture of the condition in which he is, or of the nature of a movement or what it represents
Page-22 and I express it with force so that, as I see it, he may have instantaneously the reaction that seems to me the normal reaction and that he may say, "Ah, if it is like that, I do not want it any more !" And every time I find myself in the presence of something that collapses and tells me, "Ah, you are not encouraging !" I admit that, for me, that cuts away arms and legs. So, to see, is it not enough ? To know that things should not be there, is it not enough ? That should give you that kind of an inner spring, a dynamic force which makes you reject the error in such a way that it cannot come back. But to fall back into an error which one knows to be an error, to repeat a fault that one has already committed and which one knows to be a fault, that seems to me fantastic ! It is now long —long relatively in the human measure—it is now long since I have been on the earth and yet I have not been able to understand that. That seems to me… that seems to me impossible. Wrong thoughts, wrong impulses, falsehoods within, outside, things ugly, mean, so long as you do them or have them by ignorance— ignorance is in the world—one understands, one has the habit of doing that; it is an ignorant thing, one does not know that it should be otherwise. But the moment knowledge is there, light is there, and you have seen the thing as it is, how can you recommence ? That I do not understand. Then you are made of what ! You are made of rags ? I do not know with what you are made, gelatine ? It cannot be explained. But, is there no spring, no will, nothing ? an inner dynamism ? We exploit the Grace ! Yes, like a mollusc ! But the Grace is there, it is there always. It seeks only to help—but it is not allowed.
(silence’)
Page-23 And nothing but this feeling, "Oh, I cannot…" That suffices to prevent it from working. How to accept the idea that one cannot ? One does not know —it may be one may not know—but once one knows, it is finished ! (silence) Well….
Let nothing short of Perfection be your ideal in work and you are sure to become a true instrument of the Divine.
The Mother Page-26
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