December
December 3, 1963
(Regarding the difficulties of certain disciples)
… But anyway, it’s settling down – we are in the years of settling down. Everyone is caught by his own illusion – it’s always the mirage of an illusion. She [Y.] is convinced, it is her very deep belief, that she is causing the Supermind to descend upon earth. And many, many people among those I know are caught by that illusion; so they go off at a tangent far away from the Truth, towards a “fabulous” realization.
Pride, vanity – that’s the worst trap. And when they feel that sort of vital force in them [as Y. does], they believe all at once that they have caught the Thing….
The farther I go, the more I feel the opposite: I find everything poor – so very poor.
Oh, but when you are sincere and look at things straight, you find yourself frightfully poor to express what has to be expressed.
For sure!
But that’s the ego’s last days, the last stage. When it’s gone, you are no longer anything! (Mother laughs) In other words, you don’t have that feeling of being something bad or good – it’s all gone. You have such a feeling of ONE existence, and all the rest … all the rest is something that has become twisted like that, twisted in the consciousness. That’s becoming so concrete….
(silence)
December 2nd was interesting – sports day[[ The Ashram's yearly sports performance, which took place this year in a lashing rain. ]]: the day before, the 1st, the weather was wonderful, and insofar as I gave it thought I was convinced that on the 2nd it would be just as fine. But in the morning I saw it was nothing of the sort, and as the day went by, it became worse and worse. In the beginning my first movement was to say to myself, “Well, I didn’t see to it, I should have given
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it thought,” but then I saw that was absurd. Then I told the Lord, “Why are You doing this? It’s not very nice! Those children have worked so hard, they have taken great pains….” And just as I said it, the consciousness was looking at what I said, smiling, “Oh, my! How silly still to be that way!” And then there was yet another thing (it’s becoming very, very complete), something that wasn’t exactly the Lord, but like an expression of the Lord, telling me (not with words, of course, but … how can I explain? … Sri Aurobindo describes it very well in the “Yoga of Self-Perfection”: it’s a very new thing which has to do with action, feeling, sensation and consciousness all at the same time; it’s all of them together – none of those things, yet all of them), so it was there, telling me (I am putting it into words, but that distorts it entirely), “So what! What if it’s a test, what do you have to say about it?” So immediately in the consciousness here – the consciousness at work here – the thought awakened, “Ah, it has to become a test, then. In THEIR consciousness it has to become a test.” (Because at first I had made a kind of attempt to stop the rain; then I saw it didn’t correspond to the Truth and that the rain had to be accepted – why accepted? … To do nothing after having worked so hard? And to accept is easy, it’s nothing, it’s not interesting, nothing new.) So a test, all right. If they take it as a test, they will go through it victoriously and it will be very good. And all the time, I was so concentrated on them [at the sports ground] that I no longer knew what I was doing or where I was. It lasted from 4 P.M. to 8 P.M. Around 8 P.M., I received the news: they had gone on with the performance just the same, the important visitors had remained till the end, so ultimately it was a real success.
There was only one difficulty: the little children, who cannot be conscious of a test, of course, and who remained four and a half hours in the rain…. I didn’t want it to do any damage – there were about a hundred small ones, tiny tots. I spent the night in concentration to bring into their material sensation the true reaction (because, for a short while, children love rain, they have a lot of fun in it), so I said to myself, “That part of their consciousness should predominate so there is no damage.” And I waited for the day after. The day after, no one was sick.
Then I received a letter from M., the captain, saying that they had felt it was a test, the lila [[Lila: the divine play. ]] of the Lord (he called it “the lila of the universal Mother") and asking me if it was true. I was happy
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and answered him that it was true and that I was happy. And everyone told me, "They were wonderful." As if doing that performance in the rain had given rise to a kind of will in them, and they were remarkable: everybody was enthusiastic. So instead of saying to the Lord, "That’s not nice," I thanked Him heartily! And I laughed, I thought, "There you have it! It’s always that way…."
And all the experiences come in that way (Mother makes a round, global gesture). It can’t be expressed with words; there are a hundred things that come together like that, and which … (gesture of round movements within that round totality), and then there is the sense of a light (which might be like a will, but not a will formulated with words), a light that moves within it all and arranges it all, then produces a result – which isn’t one small thing, one point or one thing: it’s a mass of things; and it’s always moving, always in motion, always in a kind of progression towards a more perfect reorganization. And the sense of individual action, of individual participation, of individual will, seems so IDIOTIC that it’s absolutely impossible to have it. Even if one tried, one couldn’t. Once one LIVES that … the whole sense of individual importance in all that seems so STUPID, you know, that it’s absolutely impossible to think that way or feel that way.
I would like to be able to pass this experience on to others, because, well, it’s definitive: once you LIVE that for several hours, it’s over, you can no longer entertain any illusion, [[The egoistic illusion. ]] it’s not possible – it’s impossible, it’s so STUPID, you know! Above all, so silly, so flat – it’s impossible (Mother makes the same gesture of a round, moving totality). But then you cannot say, “I said this, the other answered that”! How can we express ourselves? … Our language is still truly inadequate. It’s not that way … it’s … (same round gesture) and there isn’t even either sense or direction: it’s not that this goes that way and that goes this way (gesture from one person to another, or from inside to outside), or that it goes this way and comes back that way (gesture from low to high and high to low), that’s not it; it’s … a whole … a whole that moves, moves always forward, and with internal vibrations, internal movements. So according to the given point of concentration, this or that action is done.
Very long ago, many times over, when I looked at the universe (I don’t mean the earth: the universe), it was that way (same gesture of a round totality). How can I put it? … It gave the feeling of moving forward, of moving forward towards a progressive perfection. For
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years on end, my perception of the earth has been that way; and now, it takes place completely at will, in the sense that it takes only just a small movement in the consciousness (gesture of a trigger or a slight reversal, a drawing within) for the whole earth to move that way, along with the events and the inner complications. But now, that same consciousness of the whole works that way: when it thinks of something (for some reason of work, not because of an arbitrary decision), the thing imposes itself; it’s a whole set of things that presents itself as the TOTALITY on which the action must take place. So it may be a small thing like this sports festival, it may be the Ashram (very often the Ashram as a whole), it may be a part of the earth, or sometimes even a single individual (who is no longer an “individual” but a set or a world of things, a totality[ [Mother often said that every individual belongs to a particular type and that through a single individual she could reach thousands of individuals of the same type. ]]). A totality of things (round gesture) that move within themselves in … (Mother draws within that totality small movements, individual and local, like waves or currents of force). Oh, it’s most interesting! And even there, there is no more notion of this person, that person, so-and-so – all that vanishes.
But when you have to speak, what can you do?… You can’t spend all your time explaining it all; besides, it’s unintelligible for whoever hasn’t lived it.
Look, we were just talking about Y. I was seeing a kind of small world (again that same round, moving gesture), and there were all sorts of things within it that went like this and like that (Mother draws spirals within that roundness), and then there was a falsehood (laughing): it was the consciousness she had of herself! It took hold of everything and distorted the movement.
But when you express yourself, you speak with the usual words and the usual language…. Because to express one minute of that consciousness, it would almost take a book to make yourself understood – even then you wouldn’t be understood.
But in this case, on December 2nd, the thing was observed very attentively, because it was a limited field, and it lasted a certain number of hours (all the other occupations went on automatically, without interfering with the active consciousness, with the observation).
(silence)
I had another interesting example, with a visitor: a German
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industrial magnate, it seems. I had seen his photo and found there was something in him – I had him come. He entered the room and came in front of me: he didn’t know what to do (no one had told him anything). So I looked at him and put some force (Mother slowly lowers her hand), a little, progressively. And all at once … (at first he was quite official, it was MISTER So-and-so who was there), all at once his left hand began to rise, like this (gesture of a hand clenched as in trance), all the rest was absolutely still. When I saw that, I smiled and withdrew the force, then let him go. It seems he went downstairs, went into Sri Aurobindo’s room and started weeping. Afterwards, the next day, he wrote to me and told me in German English that I had been “too human”: “Why have you been too human?” He wanted his being to be DESTROYED in order to be born again to the true life.
That interested me. I thought, “Oh, he felt it, he was conscious both of the force and of my withdrawing it.” I answered him, “True, I spared you, but because it was your first visit! Prepare yourself, I will see you again.”
You see, he came in as a big industrial person with a remarkable power of mental creation that organizes events – that’s what entered the room – and then … it melted. And I didn’t put the full charge: I simply put some power like this (Mother lowers her hand), and I was looking him in the face. Then I felt something going on lower down; I looked: his hand was tightly clenched. So I stopped.
But the remarkable thing is that he was CORRECTLY conscious.
And he complained.
***
(Just before leaving)
We still have two difficult months ahead. Because it’s not going to change abruptly on January 1st (people think that everything will change at one stroke – that’s not true). Two difficult months; afterwards, I think we’ll begin to … (gesture of loosening a grip).
You feel that the slightest slackening and, plop! you go tumbling down again. So then you have to climb up again. Anyway …
But you climb faster – you climb faster.
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