September 25, 1968
(Mother gives Satprem a flower called “Transformation.”)
I give you the right one.
Why the “right one”?
I say that because there is confusion in many people’s minds. When, from the standpoint of progress, for instance, I speak of progress, I mean “going from the mental consciousness to a higher consciousness,” but people generally understand “to make progress materially or mentally or …” So when they are told of transformation, all kinds of queer things come to their minds…. As for us, when we speak of transformation, we mean the supramental transformation.
That’s why.
* * *
Soon afterwards
I have found some old papers (I can’t read anymore, I don’t see clearly), I don’t know what they are. There’s an envelope from you.
It’s a question on Sri Aurobindo’s Aphorisms.
“When I hear of a righteous wrath, I wonder at man’s capacity for self-deception.”
Wonderful!
There was a question: “Our self-deception is always ‘in good
faith’; we always act for the good of others or in the interest of
humanity – and to serve you, that goes without saying! How
exactly do we deceive ourselves, and how can we truly know?”[[This question and Mother’s answer are from 1961: see Agenda 2 of January 17, 1961. ]]
It’s terribly true.
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Just yesterday, even before I read this (I didn’t read it), I had a long vision on the subject, that’s the surprising thing!
But on such a different plane …
Yes, when we regard the higher part of our mind as the judge of our action, that’s how we can deceive ourselves “in good faith.” In other words, the mind is incapable of seeing the truth and it judges according to its own limited capacity – not only limited but unconscious of the truth; so then, as far as it’s concerned, the mind is “in good faith,” it does the best it can. It’s like that.
Naturally, those who are fully conscious of their psychic cannot possibly deceive themselves, because if they refer their problem to the psychic, they can find the divine answer there. But even for those who are in contact with their psychic, the answer doesn’t have the same character as the mental answer, which is precise, categorical, absolute, and imposes itself – the psychic answer is more a TENDENCY than an assertion. It’s something that can still have different interpretations in the mind.
Which brings me back to my experience of yesterday. After looking at the problem, I reached the conclusion that it’s impossible to reproach a human being who does the best he can according to his consciousness, because how can he go beyond his own consciousness? … That’s precisely the error most people make: they judge someone else according to their own consciousness, but the other person doesn’t have their consciousness! Therefore they can’t judge (I am only talking about people of goodwill, of course). To the vision of a more complete or higher consciousness, someone else is in error, but to the person himself, he’s doing as best as he can what he thinks he has to do.
Which amounts to saying that it’s absolutely impossible to blame someone who acts sincerely according to his own limited consciousness. And in fact, seen from that standpoint, everyone has a limited consciousness, except THE Consciousness. It’s only THE Consciousness that isn’t limited. But all manifestations are necessarily limited, unless they emerge from themselves and unite with the supreme Consciousness – then … In what conditions can that happen?
It’s the problem of identification with the Supreme, which is the Supreme One – One that is all.
(silence)
There is a whole side of human thought which has held the conception that identification with the supreme Consciousness could only come through the abolition of the individual creation,
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but in fact Sri Aurobindo said it was possible WITHOUT doing away with the creation. They hold the conception that the creation must be done away with because they don’t take the creation beyond the human creation – it’s impossible for man, but possible for the supramental being. And that will be the essential difference of the supramental being: being able, without losing a limited form, to unite his consciousness with the supreme Consciousness.
But it’s impossible for man. That I know.
As I said, you have it [union with the supreme Consciousness], but as soon as you want to express it, it’s finished, it becomes again … (gesture as if shut up in a box). That means the substance we are built with isn’t sufficiently purified, illumined, transformed (anything, any word) to express the supreme Consciousness without distorting it.
(silence
Mother enters an experience)
It’s a certain opacity of Matter, of the substance, which prevents it from being able to manifest the Consciousness … and that same opacity (I don’t know what to call it), that opacity is what gives Matter the sense of existing.
It’s part of the experience of these last few days. For … I don’t know, for weeks I lived in a sort of fluidity – a transparent fluidity – and as that transparent fluidity is replaced by this something I now call “opacity,” a sort of concretization of the body’s existence comes back.
You understand, the psychic being’s direct contact with the bodily substance, without intermediary, gives the sensation … (is it “sensation”? I don’t know; it’s neither sensation nor perception), it’s a sort of “felt vision” – and that vision is very precise, very precise – of the value of the vibrations in comparison with a higher vibration which is (this is as much as I can say) more directly expressive of the supreme Vibration.
It’s difficult to express, but the body is now living an experience it had never had, like going from an imprecision to a precision, from a sort of fluidity to … it’s not something concrete, but from something fluid – fluid and imprecise – to something precise. Any event (any small event that happens to the body) is an occasion for a new perception. Previously, everything was fluid and imprecise; now it’s beginning to grow more precise – more precise, more accurate. But it loses a little of its fluidity.
It’s very hard to express.
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I had never thought about it. Strangely, it’s not deliberate, I’ve just now had the experience. So it’s not very clear yet. In reality, the mind provides a precision which is lacking when it’s not there. Its role in the creation has been, as a matter of fact, to make things precise, to explain them, and at the same time to limit them.
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