March 11, 1964
I’ll read you something.
It concerns an American who came here full of all the American ideas, who did a survey of everything (the way the services are organized and so on), and who sent me his report in which he says that everything lacks organization, a mental structure…. I didn’t intend to answer him, but the day before yesterday, just when I was going to retire for the night, Sri Aurobindo told me insistently – he came and told me, “Here is what you must say to T.” And he insisted until I had written it down – I was forced to write it!
Sri Aurobindo has told us (it’s he himself who said it) and we are convinced by experience that above the mind there is a consciousness much wiser than the mental wisdom, and in the depths of things there is a will much more powerful than the human will.
All our endeavour is to make this consciousness and this will govern our lives and action and organise all our activities. It is the way in which the Ashram has been
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created. Since 1926 when Sri Aurobindo retired and gave me full charge of it (at that time there were only two rented houses and a handful of disciples) all has grown up and developed like the growth of a forest, and each service was created not by any artificial planning but by a living and dynamic need. This is the secret of constant growth and endless progress. The present difficulties come chiefly from psychological resistances in the disciples who have not been able to follow the rather rapid pace of the sadhana and the yielding to the intrusion of mental methods which have corrupted the initial working.
A growth and purification of the consciousness is the only remedy.
***
(Then Mother refers to the preceding conversation, of March 7, and to her experience of the ananda of progress in life.)
I feel it as something decisive, because, for me, things have changed. It’s not one of those things that come and then go away.
Well … now we have to go farther.
Perhaps that’s what I meant when I said “another four years,” because I was in a rather strange state when I came back from the balcony on the 29th…. Wait, I’ll show you a photo: they have given me photos of that balcony.
(Mother goes and gets a photo, then looks at it)
With the cloak flapping like a wing …
I wasn’t seeing physically…. But that expression … that’s the state I was in when I said (I was concentrated and something came out of here [gesture to the heart] and said to the Lord), “Well, we will wait another four years.”
Four years, that means 1968. Sri Aurobindo said there would be a beginning of supramental manifestation in ’67; so perhaps in ’68 the two experiences will meet. It’s possible.
The photo is clear.
An expression of yours that I didn’t know.
That you didn’t know …
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You see, it isn’t a woman, it isn’t a man; very clearly there’s neither woman nor man here.
And to me, as I see it, the eyes are the will, while the lower part of the face is the struggle, the difficulty – it represents the difficulty with the earth. But the eyes are the will to make contact (Mother pulls from above downward to make high and low meet).
They aren’t eyes of entreaty, look at them closely: they are eyes of will – almost eyes of command.
Yes, as if you were saying, “So?”
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