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THE MOTHER Questions and Answers
Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry November, 1962
Questions and Answers I
It is said: "To become conscious of Divine Love, all other love has to be abandoned’". What is the way of rejecting the other love that is so obstinate and never leaves us easily ? Go through; see what is behind; do not stop at the appearance; do not be satisfied with the outside form, look for the principle that is behind this love; do not be satisfied until you have found the origin of the feeling in itself. Then the external form will fall away by itself and you will be in contact with the Divine Love which is behind everything. This is the best way. To want to reject one in order to find the other is very difficult. It is almost impossible. For human nature is so limited, so full of contradictions and so exclusive that if you want to reject love in its lower form, that is to say, human love as human beings feel, if you make an inner effort to reject that, generally you reject entirely the capacity of the feeling of love and you become as it were a stone. And then, sometimes you have to wait for years, even for centuries for the capacity of receiving and manifesting love to reawaken in you. Therefore, the best way is, when love comes in whatever form, to try to pierce through its external appearance and find the divine principle that is behind it and causes it to exist. Naturally, it is full of snares and difficulties, but it is most effective. That is to say, instead of ceasing to love^because one loves wrongly, one must cease to love wrongly and seek to love rightly. For example, the love between human creatures, in all its Page-1 forms, love of the parents for their children, of children for then-parents, of brothers and sisters, of friends and lovers, is everywhere tainted with ignorance and selfishness and all other defects that are the ordinary defects of man. So, instead of wholly ceasing to love, which is besides a very difficult thing to do, as Sri Aurobindo says, which only dries up the heart and serves no purpose, one must learn to love in a better way—love with devotion, self-giving and self-abnegation and to fight not against love itself but against its deformations. Against all forms of appropriation, attachment, possession, jealousy and all the feelings which accompany these principal things. Not wanting to possess, to dominate, not wanting to impose one’s will, one’s whims and desires; not wanting to take, receive but to give; not to insist on the response from the other, but to be satisfied with one’s own love; not to seek one’s own interest and one’s personal delight and the fulfilment of one’s personal desire, but to be satisfied with giving one’s love and affection,, not to demand response. To be happy simply by loving, nothing more. If you do that, you have taken a big step and you can through this attitude, little by little, progress further in the feeling itself and discover one day that love is not a personal thing; love is a universal divine feeling that is manifesting through you more or less fairly, but which is in its essence a thing divine. The first step then is to cease to be selfish. For everybody it is the same, not only for those who want to do yoga, but in ordinary life too. If you want to love truly, you must not love yourself first and foremost and especially in a selfish way. You must give yourself to your object of love without demanding anything in return. It is an elementary discipline for you to surmount yourself, to lead a life which is not altogether gross.
For Yoga, some other thing can be added. It is as I have said at the beginning, the will to pierce through this limited and human form of love, to discover the principle of divine Love that is behind. Then one is sure of arriving at a result. That is better than drying up the heart. It is perhaps a little more difficult, but it is better in any case, because that way instead of making others suffer
Page-2 egoistically, you can leave them quiet in their own movement and endeavour only to transform yourself—without imposing your will upon others and that is, even in ordinary life, a step towards something a little higher, something a little more harmonious. * * * II
Mother, I have not understood this passage: "…Will, Power, Force are the native substance of the Life-Energy, and herein lies the justification for the refusal of Life to acknowledge the supremacy of Knowledge and Love alone,—-for its push towards the satisfaction of something far more unreflective, headstrong and dangerous that can yet venture too in its own bold and ardent way towards the Divine and Absolute. Love and Wisdom are not the only aspects of the Divine, there is also its aspect of Power". (The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 153-154) What is it that you have not understood ?
Sri Aurobindo says that the vital part, the vital being is the greatest obstacle, because it is unregenerated and that it would be possible to transform it if it could submit wholly to Love and Knowledge; but as its predominant quality is force, energy, power, it does not like to submit to the other parts of the being; and that justifies its refusal to submit, because those virtues, in their essence, are as high as the others. But it has not the same power or the same capacities, as it is not surrendered, and not being surrendered it cannot develop itself. There lies the dilemma : it does not surrender, because it has power, and this power is unutilisable, because it is not surrendered. Then how to come out of it ? The vital, if it were surrendered, would be a very powerful, an extremely useful help; it would advance the process much more
Page-3 quickly. But because it feels its power, it refuses to submit to others, and because it does not submit, its power is unutilisable. What is to be done ? Sri Aurobindo puts the problem, he will solve it presently—if we continue to read, he will tell us after a time how to come out of the problem—but first of all he puts it before you so that you may understand fully the situation.
If the vital were a mediocre being, without any quality of its own, there would be no difficulty in the way of its surrender, but it would be altogether useless. While on the contrary, the vital is a kind of fortress of energy and power—of all the powers. But generally this power is deviated; it is not in the service of the Divine, it is in the service of the vital itself, for its own satisfaction. So, as long as it is like that, it cannot be made use of. It must understand that the energy and the power it feels in itself can be useful only if it is perfectly in accordance with the divine plan of realisation upon earth. If it understands that, then it becomes quiet and allows itself to be marshalled, so to say, in the total being, and it takes its full strength and its full importance. Otherwise it is unserviceable. And generally, all its activities are always activities that complicate things and take away their simplicity, purity, very often their beauty, and their effectivity, because its action is blind, ignorant and very egoistic.
Page-4 III
How to come out of the physical consciousness which keeps us preoccupied all the time, exclusively, with physical circumstances ? There is a considerable number of means. There are intellectual means, means that may be called emotive, artistic means and spiritual means. Generally it is preferable that each person should take up the way most easy to him, because if one were to begin immediately by the most difficult, one would arrive at nothing at all. And always we come back to the same thing, that which Sri Aurobindo describes in The Synthesis of Yoga : the way of knowledge, the way of devotion, or the way of works. But the way of works is just that which keeps you in the physical life and which liberates you while in it. And perhaps it is the way, of all others, the most effective, but also the most difficult. For the majority of aspirants, the way of meditation, concentration, withdrawal from physical life, rejection of physical activities is certainly more easy than the way of action. But they leave the physical consciousness as it is, without ever changing it, and unless you become like the Sadhu or the ascetic who comes out of all active life and remains constantly in meditation or concentration, you reach nowhere. That is to say, an entire portion of the being is never transformed. And for them the solution is not to transform it, but simply to reject it, to come out of the body as quickly as possible. That was how Yoga was conceived in those days, because obviously it is much easier. But that is not what we want.
What we want is the transformation of the physical consciousness, not its rejection. So, in that case, what Sri Aurobindo has commended as the most direct and most complete means is surrender to the Divine; a surrender made more and more integral progressively, including the physical consciousness and the physical activities. If you succeed in that, then the physical instead of being an obstacle, becomes a help.
Page-5
What does this phrase mean: "Look life in the face from the soul’s inner strength and become master of circumstances" ? It is just the opposite of the method that consists in rejecting all physical consciousness and all physical happenings. "Look life in the face", that means, "Do not turn your back to it"! That means, face life as it is instead of running away from it, and call to your help the inner psychic force—that is what Sri Aurobindo says, "the soul’s inner strength", the inner psychic force—and with the help of this psychic consciousness lift yourself above the circumstances and master them. That is to say, instead of submitting to all that happens and suffering all the consequences, you rise above the circumstances and let them pass as things that do not touch you at all, which do not impair your consciousness. That is the meaning. IV
The Logic of the unexpected I have here a shower of questions ; but before I begin to answer them, I will explain something to you. You must have already noted that my way of talking to you is not always the same. I do not know if you are sensitive to this difference, but for me it is quite considerable.
At times, because of what I have read or for quite another reason—sometimes in the wake of a question, but that rather rarely —I happen to get what is called an experience, but it is simply the fact of entering into a certain state of consciousness and describing it when once there. In such a case, the Force, the Consciousness which expresses itself passes through the individual mind, using it as a simple "store of words" and draws by a sort
Page-6 of affinity the necessary words for its expression. This is the true teaching, what one finds with difficulty in books ; it can be in books, but one must be in that state of consciousness oneself to be able to find it there. Whereas with words, the vibration of the sound transmits something at least of the experience that may spread automatically to others who are sensitive. In the other case, the question put or the subject chosen is transmitted by the mind to the higher Consciousness; then the mind receives an answer and transmits it through the word. This is what generally happens in all teaching—provided of course the teacher has the capacity to transmit the question right up to the higher Consciousness, which is not always the case. I must say the second method does not interest me much. Very often, when the question put or the subject treated does not give me the possibility of entering into a state of consciousness that interests me, I would like infinitely better to keep silent; what makes me speak is a kind of duty to fulfil. I forewarn you, for it has happened to me to cut short the conversation—if conversation it can be called—and pass abruptly into meditation; it was in such a case. Someore happens to have asked me to explain this difference, that is why I am speaking about it to you this evening. (silence) Besides this, I have received other questions of a practical order, and in connection with these questions I have seen something of which I will speak to you. But it is not a vision with images, you must not expect something very amusing, no, it is not that. I am asked ( I translate, it is not the exact text of the question) what difference the presence of the Supramental would really make ? In what way it would change the tenor of the problems and how it would be necessary to reconsider life after this manifestation ? I am asked practical examples ; I do not know what that exactly means, but in any case, here is what I saw in a rather mathematical mood—although the language of mathematics Page-7 is somewhat foreign to me—but I might call that a mathematical mood, that is to say, a mathematical way of looking at the problem. I think all of you have done enough mathematics to know the complexity of the combinations at which you arrive when you take for your basis a number of elements chosen from out of a whole. I give you an example to make it clearer, and as I do not want to use the terms with which you were taught, I will take the letters of the alphabet. There is a certain number of letters in the alphabet, and if you want to calculate all the combinations possible by taking all the letters together, in how many ways they can be organised, you know to what degree the figure becomes fantastic. But if you take the material world and come down to the minutest particle (they have arrived at absolutely invisible—isn’t it—and innumerable things, you know it) and if you take this particle as the basis and the material world as the whole, imagine a Consciousness or a Will that would amuse itself with these particles making all possible combinations, never repeating the same combination. In mathematics you are told the number of the elements is finite and consequently the number of combinations is also finite; but it is purely theoretical, for, if you come to the practical, and the combinations have to be in succession to each other, then even if they follow each other with such a rapidity that the change is hardly perceptible, it is evident that the time necessary for making all these combinations would be apparently at least infinite. That is to say, the number of combinations would be so immense that an end could not be fixed. A practical end, at least—theory does not interest us—practically it would be like that.
Imagine then that what I tell you is true, in this sense that there is truly a Consciousness, a Will which manifests these combinations successively, indefinitely, without repeating even twice the same thing—then we come to the conclusion that the universe is new at each instant of eternity. "And if the universe is new at each instant of eternity, that compels us to conclude that
Page-8 there is absolutely nothing which is impossible. Not only that, but what we call logic is not necessarily true; logic, one might almost say, the fantasy of the Creator has no limit. Consequently, if for any reason whatever, which may be difficult perhaps to express, a combination is not followed by the one nearest to it, but by another, chosen freely by the supreme Freedom, all our external certitudes and all our external logic will break down instantaneously. For, the problem is even much more complicated than you think. It is not on one single plane, in one single domain, that is to say, what might be called one surface of things, that there is this practically infinite quantity of elements permitting eternally new combinations ; there is besides depth, that is to say the other dimensions. And creation is the result not merely of the combinations of the surface, but combinations also of the depth of the surface—what in other terms is called psychological factors. So here we come to the problem : each time a new element is introduced into the whole of possible combinations, the result is a tearing down of the limits—all the past limits disappear, new possibilities intervene and indefinitely multiply the old possibilities. Thus you had a world which, according to the ancient knowledge, possessed twelve successive depths or dimensions; and into this world of twelve dimensions, suddenly new dimensions precipitated, so that all the old formulas are instantaneously transformed and all the possibilities of the unrolling that has been going on are, how to say ?— accentuated, increased by an almost infinite number of new possibilities, and that in such a way that all older logic becomes illogical before the new logic.
I do not speak at all of the universe as human mind has conceived it, for that is a reduced dimension. I speak of the fact as it is, of a sum of combinations which realise themselves successively according to an order and a choice which evidently escape completely the human consciousness, but to which man has somehow adapted himself. and which he has succeeded after much assiduous study, as pursued by humanity during centuries, in formulating in a way tangible enough for him to grasp.
Page-9 It is evident that the modern scientific perception is very much nearer to something corresponding to the universal reality than the perceptions, say, of the Stone Age; there is no shadow of doubt. But that also is about to be completely surpassed and probably upset by the intrusion of something which was not in the universe that has been studied. This change, this sudden transformation of the universal element is certainly going to bring about a chaos in the perceptions out of which a new knowledge will emerge. That, in a most general way, is the result of the new Manifestation. (silence) From one point of view, quite restricted, external and limited, one may note certain things which are not those of my experience, but which I have heard people saying; for example, there is now a larger number of what they call "child prodigies". I have not met them, so I cannot tell you in what way exactly these children are "prodigious". But according to the stories recounted there are evidently various new types which seem surprising to the ordinary human consciousness. It is examples of this kind, I believe, which one would like to know in order to understand what is happening. It is quite possible indeed that things are happening which one does not usually witness. But it is a question of interpretation. The only fact of which I am sure is what I have just told you, that the quality, the quantity and the nature of the possible universal combinations are going to change suddenly in such a considerable way that it will probably be astounding for those who are doing researches in life. Now we shall see.1
1 At the time of the publication of this Talk, Mother added the following commentary about the "new element" : "There is not question of "new things in the sense that they did not exist, but that they were not manifested in the universe. If they were not already there, involved, they could never come about ! It is obvious. Nothing can exist which does not already exist for eternity in the Supreme, but in the Manifestation it is new.
Page-10 (silence) I might add just a little practical word. It is only an illustration in respect of a detail, but it would be an indirect answer to questions that have been put to me about the so-called laws of Nature, causes and effects, consequences supposedly inevitable in the material domain, and more particularly from the point of view of health. It has been said that if one does not take certain precautions, if one does not eat as one should, if one does not follow certain rules, necessarily there would be certain consequences. It is true. But if you look at that in the light of what I have just told you, that there are no two universal combinations that are alike, how can one establish laws then, and what is the absolute truth of these laws ? It does not exist. For if you are logical, with a little higher logic, then since two things, two combinations, two manifestations in the universe are never the same, how can any thing repeat itself ? That can only be an appearance, but it is not a fact. And to fix rigid laws in that way is not obeying the true laws (because the mind makes many laws, and the surface, in a very obliging manner appears to satisfy these laws. But it is only an appearance) and, in any case, that cuts you away from the creative Power of the Spirit, that cuts you away from the true Power of the Grace. For you can understand that if by your aspiration or by your attitude, you introduce a higher element, a new element—what we can now call a supramental elemept—into the existing combinations, you can certainly change their nature. And all these so-called necessary and unescapable laws become absurdities. It is you yourself who with your conception, your attitude and your acceptance of certain so-called principles, close the door
The element is not new, but manifested newly, it is newly come out of the Non-manifest. New, but what does it mean ? It does not mean a new thing ! It is new for us in the manifestation, that’s all.
Page-11 against the possibility of miracles (they are not miracles when you know how they are produced; but evidently for the external consciousness that has the miraculous air), and it is you yourself, when you say with a logic which seems quite reasonable : "If I do this, that necessarily will happen, or if I do not do that, necessarily this other thing will happen", you close the door—it is as if you were putting an iron curtain between yourself and the free action of the Grace. How good would it be to imagine that the Supreme Consciousness, essentially free, who presides over the universal Manifestation, can be fanciful in its choice and make things succeed each other not according to a logic accessible to human thought, but according to another kind of logic, the logic of the unforeseen! Then there would be no limit to the possibilities, to the unexpected, to the marvellous and one could expect the most splendid, the most delightful things from this Will, free sovereignly, playing eternally with all the elements, ceaselessly producing a new world, which might have absolutely nothing to do in a logical way with the preceding world. Don’t you believe it would be charming ! We have enough of the world as it is ! Why not let it become at least what we conceive that it should be ! And all that I tell you about it is in order that every one of you may put as few barriers as he can to the coming possibilities. This is my conclusion.
I do not know if I have made myself understood; but I suppose a day will come when you will know what I wanted to say.
Page-12 V
Would you comment for us on what you have written here : "For you the experience begins ‘only when you are able to describe it;’ well, when you are able to describe it, the major part of its intensity and of its capacity of action for the inner and outer transformation has already evaporated". I meant that experience precedes and transcends by far the formulation you make of it in your mind. The experience often preceded by far the capacity of formulating. The experience has a fullness, a force, a power for direct action upon nature which is immediate and instantaneous. Say, for example, under given circumstances or through an exceptional grace, you were suddenly put in contact with a supramental light or power or consciousness ; it is like a sudden opening in your closed shell, a tearing in the opaque envelope which separates you from the Truth and the contact is established. Immediately this Force, this Consciousness, this Light acts even upon your physical cells ; it acts in the mind, it acts in the vital, it acts in the body, changes the vibrations, organises the substance and begins its work of transformation. You are under the shock of this sudden contact and this action; for you it is a kind of indescribable, inexpressible state which seizes you and of which you have no clear, precise, definite notion, it is "something happening". That may give you the impression of being a wonderful or stupendous thing, for you it is inexpressible and incomprehensible. That is the experience in its essence and its true power.
Gradually, as the action is prolonged and the external being begins to assimilate this action, the capacity of observation awakens, at first in the mental consciousness; a kind of objectivisation occurs, something in the mind looks, observes and translates in its own way. That is what you call undrestanding and it is this which gives you the impressiqn (Mother smiles) that you have an experience. But that is already a considerable diminution of the experience itself, it is a transcription for the use of your mental,
Page-13 vital and physical dimension, that is to say, something narrowed and shrunken, at the same time giving you the impression that the thing has become clear. In other words, it has come down to the measure of your understanding. It is a phenomenon that always happens and even in the best cases. I do not speak of cases where the force of the experience is absorbed by the inconscience of your being and is translated by a more and more unconscious movement; I speak of the case where your mind is clear, your aspiration is clear, where you have already advanced considerably on the way; even when your mind begins to be transformed, when it has got the habit of receiving this light, when it can be penetrated by it, when it is sufficiently receptive to absorb it, even then the moment it wants to translate in a way comprehensible to the human consciousness (I do not mean the ordinary ocnsciousness, but the enlightened human consciousness), the moment it seeks to formulate, to make precise and understandable, it reduces, diminishes, limits ; it attenuates, weakens, blurs the experience, admitting that it remains pure enough not to falsify it. Because, if there is anywhere in the being, in the mental or in the vital some insincerity which is tolerated, well, the experience is falsified, deformed completely. But I speak of the best cases, where the being is sincere, under control, and functions most favourably. The formulation in words understandable to the human mind is ne-ces-sa-ri-ly, inevitably a restriction, a diminution of the power of action of the experience. When you are able to say in a clear and conscious way, "This and that and yet that has happened", when you are able to describe in a comprehensible manner the phenomenon, it has already lost its power of action, its intensity and truth and force. This does not mean that the intensity, the power of action and the force were not there. They were there, and probably in the best cases the maximum effect of the experience is produced before you began to give it a comprehensible form.
Here I speak of the best cases. I do not speak of the innumerable cases of those who just begin to have an experience and whose mind becomes curious, wakes up and says, "Oh! What is
Page-14 happening ?" Then everything vanishes; or you catch the deformed tail of something that has lost all force and all reality. The first thing to do is to teach your mind not to stir : "Above all do not sitr, allow the thing to develop fully without wanting to know what is happening. Do not be an imbecile, keep quiet, still and wait. Your turn will come always too soon, never too late". You must be able to live an experience for hours and days without feeling the necessity of formulating it to yourself. When you do that, then you have the full profit. It works, it churns the nature, transforms the cells—it begins its work of transformation. But as soon as you begin to see and understand and formulate, it is something that belongs to the past. * * * VI For sometime past it has always been the question of progress, how to progress, what prevented one from progressing and how to use the Supramental Force, etc. That continues. I have yet a whole packet of them. But we can change our subject for once. Someone has put to me a question about death : what happens after death and how one takes up a new body again. Needless to tell you that it is a subject that might fill up volumes, that there are no two cases similar, that practically everything is possible in this life after death, as everything is possible on earth when one is in a physical body and that all affirmations if they want to be generalised become dogmatic. However one may look at the problem in some details and sometimes one makes interesting discoveries.
Here is the question :
Page-15
"When a specially developed soul leaves the body, does it take with it its subtle physical sheath ? When it reincarnates how does it enter into the new body ?" An answer to this would need, as I have already said, volumes to write or to talk for hours together ! Because to say the truth there are no two cases alike. There are analogies, you can make classifications, but that is purely arbitrary. What I wanted is just to read out to you what follows, because it is very amusing (oh, I do not want to be serious, let us say, it is very interesting) :
These questions are put in relation to an old Indian tradition and the occult knowledge of the wise king Pravahana of whom the Upanishads speak (Chhandogya and Brihadaranyakd). It is said that after death the soul of those who have done good deeds take the way of the forefathers (pitryana), become smoke, night etc., come to the world of the ancestors and finally to the lunar paradise. The Brahmasutra concludes from this that the soul takes with it all the elements, even those of the subtle physical, that w W. be necessary for the next incarnation". One question then : "Is it so ? Is the subtle physical sufficiently conscious in such a case?" We keep aside the questions, I continue : "Then the Upanishads add : ‘After exhausting its stock of good actions, the soul leaves the lunar paradise, reaches the sky, then the air, then the clouds, takes up the nature of each of these things, throws itself upon earth as rain, enters into seeds, enters into the body of the father as food and finally builds up the body of the child’."
Truly it is a somewhat complicated process, isn’t it ! (laughter). But I found it very amusing. And now the question (laughing) :
Page-16
"Is it necessary to follow this uncertain and hazardous process? Does not the soul animate the body directly with all the mental, vital and subtle physical elements organised around it and which are necessary for the next life ? Does it take elements from the subtle physical world ? In that case, how are these harmonised with the hereditary characters? Particularly, must it pass through the body of the father ?" There you are ! The only thing I can say is that it may be that things happen like that at times- It is probable that he who has given these descriptions observed some phenomenon of this kind. I hope it is not a mere mental construction of his occult imagination. That gives rise to some practical problems !…However there is nothing impossible. Only, one sees with difficulty the soul entering into the rain which enters into the seed which grows into the plant, which again enters into the stomach of the father as more or less cooked food and finally proceeds to the the conception of the child. I do not say that it is impossible, but it is very, very, very, very complicated !
I may say I witnessed a countless number of incarnations of developed souls in beings either in preparation or already born. …As I have said, the cases are markedly different. It depends on psychological conditions more than on material conditions but it depends also on material conditions. It depends on the state of the growth of the psychic being that wants to reincarnate (we take the word soul here in the sense of the psychic being, what we call the psychic being). It depends on the state of its growth, it depends on the environment in which it is going to incarnate itself, it depends on the mission it has to fulfil. That indicates great many different conditions. It depends enormously on the state of the consciousness of the parents ; because, it goes without saying that there is a stupendous difference between forming a child voluntarily, with a conscious aspiration, a call towards the invisible world and a spiritual ardour and to form a child accidentally, without having wanted it, sometimes even
Page-17 without wishing it at all. I do not say that in the latter case there cannot be a psychic incarnation, but generally it occurs later on, not at the conception. For the formation of the child, that makes a great difference. If the incarnation happens at the conception the whole formation of the child who is going to be born is directed and governed by the consciousness that is about to incarnate : the choice of the elements, the attraction of the substance, the choice of the forces and even that of the substance of the matter assimilated; there is already a selection and that naturally produces altogether special conditions for the formation of the body which may be already more or less developed, evolved, harmonised even before its birth. I must say that it is altogether, altogether exceptional, but after all that happens. There are more frequent cases where exactly at the moment of its birth, that is to say, from the very first gesture of independence, when the child begins to work its lungs by crying as much as it can, at that time, very often this kind of call of life makes the psychic descent more easy and effective. Sometimes days, even months pass, the preparation is slow and the entry is done progressively, in a very subtle and almost imperceptible way At times it comes much long after, when the child himself becomes somewhat conscious and feels a very subtle, but very real relation with something from above, from high above which is like an influence weighing upon him; and then he can himself begin to feel the need of being in relation with this thing which he does not know, does not understand, but which he feels only; this aspiration draws the psychic and makes it descend into him. I give you here only a few cases that are somewhat frequent, there are many others, it can happen in innumerable ways. The cases I have described are those that I have seen happening most frequently.
Also sometimes the soul about to incarnate remains in a domain of the higher mind, near to the earth, when has chosen its future dwelling. Or it can descend further, into the vital and from there
Page-18 have a more direct action. Or again it can enter into the subtle physical and govern from very near the development of its future body. Now the other question, the one concerning departure. That also depends upon the degree of development, the conditions of death and above all, on the unification of the being and its attitude at the time of leaving the body. The question was about beings fully developed, that is to say, fully developed psychic beings. If you speak of a psychic being who has profited by its presence in a physical body by doing yoga, the conditions are altogether different. But in a more general way, I have told you often that all depends, in the matter of the external envelope of the being, on his attitude at the time of death. And this attitude necessarily depends on his inner development and his unification.
If we take the very best case, someone, for example, who has completely unified his being around the divine presence in him, who is nothing else than one will, one consciousness, such a being will have grouped around his central psychic being, a fully developed and organised mind, an absolutely surrendered and collaborating vital, and an obedient, docile, supple body. This physical being fully developed will have a subtle body (what Sri Aurobindo calls the "true physical") which goes infinitely beyond the limits of his body and which will have a suppleness, plasticity, balance enabling it to adhere to the inner parts of the being and follow the movement of the soul (I do not want to say, in its ascension but in its peregrinations outside the body). What will the soul do, where will it go ? All depends on what it has decided before leaving the body. And this capacity to maintain around itself the being which has been fully organised and unified in the physical life will allow it effectively to choose what it would like to do—that also represents a field of very different possibilities; it may pass consciously from one body into another directly (there are cases in which such a being, fully conscious and fully developed has slowly prepared ^another being that will be able to receive it, assimilate it and, in order not to stop its material work when it will come out of the body, it will go and join with
Page-19 another psychic being, melt into it, be added to it in another physical body). It is an extreme case, extremely rare also, but it forms part of an occult knowledge that is absolutely traditional. Or at the other extreme it may go to the other end where the psychic being, after finishing its bodily experience, desires to assimilate in rest, prepare for another physical existence later on—sometimes very much later on. Then what happens is this, among many other possibilities, it leaves in each domain—in the subtle physical domain, in the vital domain, in the mental domain—the corresponding beings; it leaves them with a sort of link between them, but each one keeps its independent existence and itself enters the zone, the reality, the world of psychic proper and goes into an assimilative beatific rest until it has (laughing) as it is described in this paper, assimilated, digested all his good deeds and becomes ready to begin a new experience. Then, if his work has been well done and the parts of his being or the sheaths of his being left in the different domains conducted themselves well as they should, then when he comes down again he puts on one after the other all these parts that lived with him in his past life and with this wealth of knowledge and experience he will prepare to enter into a new body. This perhaps may be after hundreds or thousands of years, because in those domains all that is organised is no longer necessarily subject to the decomposition which we call here death. As soon as a vital being is fully harmonised, it becomes immortal. What dissolves it, disintegrates it are all the inner disorders, all the tendencies, precisely of decomposition and destruction; but if it is fully harmonised and organised and, so to say, divinised, it becomes immortal. It is the same for the mind. And even the subtle physical of beings who are fully developed and who have been impregnated with spiritual forces does not necessarily dissolve after death. It can continue an activity or it can take healthy rest in some elements of Nature, like water; generally it is in a liquid—in water or in the sap of trees or it may be, as it is written here, in the clouds (laughing). But it may also remain active and continue to act on the material elements of physical Nature. .
I have given you here a few examples. I could speak to you
Page-20 for hours and there would always be new examples to give ! However, this covers the subject in a general way and opens the door to imaginations. * * * VII Here it is written : "Transform enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy". (Thoughts and Glimpses p. 5) Yes, it means that it is causeless. Usually you have pleasure or joy or enjoyment because of this or because of that—beginning from the most material things up to psychological or even mental things. For example, to take a mental thing, you read a sentence that gives you a great delight, because it brings you a light, a new understanding; then this delight is delight that has an object, it is because you have read the sentence that you have the delight, if you had not read the sentence you would not have had the delight. Similarly, when you hear a beautiful music or see a beautiful painting or a beautiful scenery, that gives you delight; without those things you would not have had the delight; it is those things that gave you the delight. It is a delight that has an object, that has a cause.
What Sri Aurobindo says is that this enjoyment, this delight, this pleasure, whatever its degree, higher or lower, should be replaced by an inner felicity which imparts itself to the whole being and is continuous, that is to say, it has no need of any reason or cause for existing. The cause is the contact with the divine Bliss which is everywhere and in everything. Therefore once you are in relation with this universal and eternal Bliss, you need no more an outer object, an external cause to have the delight; it is objecdess, and being objectless it can be continuous. Whatever
Page-21 the outer circumstances, whatever one does, one is always in the same state of delight, because this delight does not depend on external things, it depends on one’s inner condition. You have found the source of the delight itself, that is to say, the divine Presence, the communion with the Divine; and having found the source of the delight itself you have need of nothing else to have the delight. And as that has no cause, it does not cease, it is a constant condition.
"Transform the animal into the Driver of the Herds ; let all thyself be Krishna". Oh, it is an image.
The animal means all the instincts of the physical being, the needs of the physical being and all the habits, impulses, movements of the physical being, the need of food, the need of sleep, the need of activity, in fact, all that constitutes the animal part of the being. And then Sri Aurobindo takes the image of Krishna whom he describes as the driver of the herds—it is only an image. It means that the Divine Consciousness takes possession of all the activities of the physical being and it directs and guides all these activities and needs, it controls and governs all the movements of the physical animal in man. Sri Aurobindo uses what might be called the Indian mythology, taking Krishna as the symbol of the Divine and the herds as the symbol of the instincts and animal needs of man. Therefore instead of being one among the animals of the herd you become one who leads them, one who governs all their movements instead of allowing himself to be dominated by them. In ordinary life, you are bound to all these activities of the physical life and to all the needs they represent—the need for food, sleep, activity, rest etc.—well, instead of being on the level of the animal, that is to say, subject to these things, compelled to yield to them, you become the leader of the herds, whom Sri Aurobindo calls Krishna, that is to say, the Divine who takes possession of all the movements of the being and guides them according to the Divine Truth.
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"Transform the divided individual into the world personality". When one has a universal personality, one has no more need of • of the individual personality—is it not so ? But it is the individual personality that is transformed into the universal personality. Instead of having the sense of the individual as it is ordinarily understood—this individual which is altogether limited, a small person in the midst of so many millions and millions of others, a separate small person, instead of feeling like that, it is this separate isolated individual, this small person in the midst of all others, that becomes conscious of the universal individuality, the universal personality and naturally becomes divine. It is a transformation. It is one thing getting transformed into another. Sri Aurobindo does not mean that one loses the body, he does not speak of the body; he speaks of the vital consciousness, the psychological consciousness, the sense of the separate individual. You, for example, you are a person in the midst of so many others, is it not so ? Well, instead of being like that you feel yourself as the universal person. The sense of division and separation goes away, the limit disappears. But you remain in the body, you do not necessarily lose the body. The body is another thing. But it is precisely about the body he speaks in the last paragraph : "Transform the animal into the Driver of the herds". When you become a divine consciousness, a divine personality then you may become the master of all the bodily activities, because you are above them; you are not bound, you are not subject to these activities, you rule over them, you have a consciousness greater than the consciousness of the individual, the little separate individual; and instead of being subject to all these animal needs of the being you dominate them. But they are not two consciousnesses superimposed ^>ne upon another, it is a consciousness that transforms itself into another.
(Looking at the disciple) I am afraid he understands nothing.
Page-23 He looks at me absolutely dumbfounded. You are asking yourself, how can one, in a body like this, be other than what one is ? Well, one can ! (laughing). It is a thing that can happen. (silence) (Mother looks at written questions) Here is something just complementary to your question. I am asked what are the characteristic traits of a universal personality. The most characteristic trait is precisely this change of consciousness. Instead of feeling like a small isolated person, you feel you are a universal person containing all others and intimately united and identified with them. I am asked also how does this personality speak and act ? Speak ! The question is not very well put, because if I am asked how he speaks, well, he speaks as everybody speaks, with his voice, his tongue, his mouth and with words ! If it was asked what is the nature of what he says—evidently if he expresses the state of consciousness in which he is, he expresses a state of universal consciousness, and as he sees things in a manner different from that of the ordinary humanity, he will express it differently, according to what he sees and feels. As for acting, if all the parts of his being are in accord, obviously his action will express his state of consciousness.
Now there are people who have decisive experiences in one part of their being, but which are not necessarily translated, hi any case not immediately, in the other parts of their being. Someone, for example, might very well, by his sadhana or concentration, or by the Grace, have reached the consciousness of a universal personality, but he might continue to act physically in a very ordinary common manner, because he has not taken care to unify his entire being, so that one part of his being is conscious universally, but as soon as he begins to eat, sleep, walk, act, he does that like any
Page-24 human animal. That can happen. Therefore, this also is a purely personal question, and it depends on each one, on his degree of development. . But if it is a being who has taken care to unify himself, to identify all the parts of his being with the central truth, then naturally he will act with an entire absence of egoism, with an understanding of others which will come to him through his identification with thern—he will act like a sage. But that depends on the care that one has taken to unify all his being around the central consciousness. For example, taking things most positively material like food or sleep, he might not have taken care to infuse, so to say, his new consciousness into his body, then his need of food and his need of sleep might remain almost the same, he might not have much control over them. On the contrary, if he has taken care to unify his being and if he has infused this new consciousness into the constituent elements of his body, then his sleep will be a conscious sleep and of the universal order; he will be able at will to know what is happening here or there, in this one or in that one, in this corner of the earth or in another. And his consciousness, being universal, will naturally put that in contact with all things he would like to know. Instead of having an unconscious and useless sleep, excepting from the purely material point of view, he will have a productive and fully conscious sleep. For food it will be the same thing. Instead of being the slave of one’s needs, generally in an almost total ignorance of what one needs, he will be perfectly conscious, at once of the needs of his body and the way of dominating them. He will be able to control and govern his needs, transform them according to the necessity of what he wants to do.
But that requires a great self-mastery and the realisation of what Sri Aurobindo says in the last paragraph, that is to say, instead of being under, subject to the laws of Nature, ruled by these laws and forced to obey them, thus becoming wholly unbalanced, you are the master, you look at things from above, you know the truth of these things and you impose it upon your body, which
Page-25 normally should accept it without difficulty. Anything else on the subject ?
What does this mean: "Transform reason into ordered intuition" ? Ordered intuition ? At the beginning when you come in contact with the domain of intuition, it is a sort of spasmodic contact, that is to say, from time to time, for more or less explicable and conscious reasons, all on a sudden you have an intuition, or you are penetrated by the spirit of intuition; but it is not a phenomenon produced at will, organised and obeying a central will. Whereas Sri Aurobindo says that if the reason is wholly transformed—he is speaking of transformation, isn’t it—into its very essence, the substance of intuition, then all the inner movements, the inner mental, becomes a movement of intuition which is organised, as one organises his reason, that is to say, it becomes active at will, answers according to the needs and occurs according to a methodical system. It is no more a thing that appears and disappears, one does not know why or how. That is the result of the transformation of reason which is the higher part of the human mind into a light higher than the mental light, a light of intuition. Then it becomes ordered, organised instead of being spasmodic and uncoordinated.
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