October 10, 1958
(The disciple asks to know what he must do and
what his place is in the universal manifestation)
In all religious and especially occult initiations, the ritual of the different ceremonies is prescribed in every detail; all the words pronounced, all the gestures made have their importance, and the least infraction of the rule, the least fault committed can have fatal consequences. It is the same in material life – if one had the initiation into the true way of living, one could transform physical existence.
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If we consider the body as the tabernacle of the Lord, then medical science, for example, becomes the initiatory ritual of the service of the temple, and doctors of all kinds are the officiating priests in the different rituals of worship. Thus, medicine is really a priesthood and should be treated as such.
The same can be said of physical culture and of all the sciences that are concerned with the body and its workings. If the material universe is considered as the outer sheath and the manifestation of the Supreme, then it can generally be said that all the physical sciences are the rituals of worship.
We always come back to the same thing: the absolute necessity for perfect sincerity, perfect honesty and a sense of the dignity of all we do so that we may do it as it should be done.
If we could truly, perfectly know all the details of the ceremony of life, the worship of the Lord in physical life, it would be wonderful – to know, and no longer to err, never again to err. To perform the ceremony as perfectly as an initiation.
To know life utterly … Oh, there is a very interesting thing in this regard! And it’s strange, but this particular knowledge reminds me of one of my Sutras’ (which I read out, but no one understood or understood only vaguely, ‘like that’):
‘It is the Supreme Lord who has ineluctably
decreed the place you occupy in the universal con
cert, but whatever be this place, you have equally
the same right as all others to ascend the supreme
summits right to the supramental realization.’
There is one’s position in the universal hierarchy, which is something ineluctable – it is the eternal law – and there is the development in the manifestation, which is an education; it is progressive and done from within the being. What is remarkable is that to become a perfect being, this position – whatever it is, decreed since all eternity, a part of the eternal Truth – must manifest with the greatest possible perfection as a result of evolutionary growth. It is the junction, the union of the two, the eternal position and the evolutionary realization, that will make the total and perfect being, and the manifestation as the Lord has willed it since the beginning of all eternity (which has no beginning at all! ).
I see Agenda 1957, p. 119.
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And for the cycle to be complete, one cannot stop on the way at any plane, not even the highest spiritual plane nor the plane closest to matter (like the occult plane in the vital, for example). One must descend right into matter, and this perfection in manifestation must be a material perfection, or otherwise the cycle is not complete – which explains why those who want to flee in order to realize the divine Will are in error. What must be done is exactly the opposite! The two must be combined in a perfect way. This is why all the honest sciences, the sciences that are practiced sincerely, honestly, exclusively with a will to know, are difficult paths – yet such sure paths for the total realization.
It brings up very interesting things. (What I am going to say now is very personal and consequently cannot be used, but it may be kept anyway:)
There are two parallel things that, from the eternal and supreme point of view, are of identical importance, in that both are equally essential for the realization to be a true realization.
On the one hand, there is what Sri Aurobindo – who, as the Avatar, represented the supreme Consciousness and Will on earth – declared me to be, that is, the supreme universal Mother; and on the other hand, there is what I am realizing in my body through the integral sadhana.’ I could be the supreme Mother and not do any sadhana, and as a matter of fact, as long as Sri Aurobindo was in his body, it was he who did the sadhana, and I received the effects. These effects were automatically established in the outer being, but he was the one doing it, not I – I was merely the bridge between his sadhana and the world. Only when he left his body was I forced to take up the sadhana myself; not only did I have to do what I was doing before – being a bridge between his sadhana and the world – but I had to carry on the sadhana myself. When he left, he turned over to me the responsibility for what he himself had been doing in his body, and I had to do it. So there are both these things. Sometimes one predominates, sometimes the other (I don’t mean successively in time, but … it depends on the moment), and they are trying to combine in a total and perfect realization: the eternal, ineffable and immutable Consciousness of the Executrice of the Supreme, and the consciousness of the Sadhak of the integral Yoga who strives in an ascending effort towards an ever increasing progression.
1 Sadhana: yogic discipline. Sadhak: seeker.
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To this has been added a growing initiation into the supramental realization which is (I understand it well now) the perfect union of what comes from above and what comes from below, or in other words, the eternal position and the evolutionary realization.
Then – and this becomes rather amusing like life’s play … Depending upon each one’s nature and position and bias, and because human beings are very limited, very partial and incapable of a global vision, there are those who believe, who have faith, or to whom the eternal Mother is revealed through Grace, who have this kind of relationship with the eternal Mother – and there are those who themselves are plunged in sadhana, who have the consciousness of a developed sadhak, and thereby have the same relationship with me as one has with what they generally call a ‘realized soul.’ Such persons consider me the prototype of the Guru teaching a new way, but the others don’t have this relationship of sadhak to Guru (I am taking the two extremes, but of course there are all the possibilities in between), they are only in contact with the eternal Mother and, in the simplicity of their hearts, they expect Her to do everything for them. If they were perfect in this attitude, the eternal Mother would do everything for them – as a matter of fact, She does do everything, but as they aren’t perfect, they cannot receive it totally. But the two paths are very different, the two kinds of relationships are very different; and as we all live according to the law of external things, in a material body, there is a kind of annoyance, an almost irritated misunderstanding, between those who follow this path (not consciously and intentionally, but spontaneously), who have this relationship of the child to the Mother, and those who have this other relationship of the sadhak to the Guru. So it creates a whole play, with an infinite diversity of shades.
But all this is still in suspense, on the way to realization, moving forward progressively; therefore, unless we are able to see the outcome, we can’t understand a thing. We get confused. Only when we see the outcome, the final realization, only when we have TOUCHED there, will everything be understood – then it will be as clear and as simple as can be. But meanwhile, my relationships with different people are very funny, utterly amusing!
Those who have what I would call the more ‘outer’ relationship compared to the other (although it is not really so) – the relationship of yoga, of sadhana – consider the others superstitious; and the others, who have faith OI perception, or the Grace to have
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understood what Sri Aurobindo meant (perhaps even before knowing what he said, but in any event, after he said it), discard the others as ignorant unbelievers! And there are all the gradations in between, so it really becomes quite funny!
It opens up extraordinary horizons; once you have understood this, you have the key – you have the key to many, many things: the different positions of each of the different saints, the different realizations and … it resolves all the incoherencies of the various manifestations on earth.
For example, this question of Power – THE Power – over Matter. Those who perceive me as the eternal, universal Mother and Sri Aurobindo as the Avatar are surprised that our power is not absolute. They are surprised that we have not merely to say, ‘Let it be thus’ for it to be ‘thus.’ This is because, in the integral realization, the union of the two is essential: a union of the power that proceeds from the eternal position and the power that proceeds from the sadhana through evolutionary growth. Similarly, how is it that those who have reached even the summits of yogic knowledge (I was thinking of Swami) need to resort to beings like gods or demigods to be able to realize things? – Because they have indeed united with certain higher forces and entities, but it was not decreed since the beginning of time that they were this particular being. They were not born as this or that, but through evolution they united with a latent possibility in themselves. Each one carries the Eternal within himself, but one can join Him only when one has realized the complete union of the latent Eternal with the eternal Eternal.
And … this explains everything, absolutely everything: how it works, how it functions in the world.’ I was saying to myself, ‘But I have no powers, I have no powers!’ Several days ago, I said, ‘But after all, I KNOW WHO is there, I know, yet how is it that … ? There, up to there (the level of the head), it is all-powerful, nothing can resist – but here … it is ineffective.’ So those who have faith, even an ignorant but real faith (it can be ignorant but nevertheless it is real), say, ‘What! How can you have no powers?’ … Because the sadhana is not yet over.
1. Mother added: ‘The most beautiful part of the experience is missing … When I try to formulate something in too precise a way, all the vastness of the experience evaporates. The entire world is being revealed in all its organization down to the minutes” details – but everything simultaneously – how can that be explained? It’s not possible.’
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The Lord will possess his universe only when the universe will have consciously become the Lord.
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