Works of Sri Aurobindo

open all | close all

-95_December 27_1969.htm

December 27, 1969

Do you have anything to say? …

I am so immersed in so many practical or material things ….

(Mother laughs)

One feels a bit swallowed up in Matter … no?

These last few days, I’ve rather had the impression of being surrounded by a TOTAL incomprehension – but I’m used to that! But it had become so acute; I’ve received questions, reproaches, anyway, all kinds of things …. It was like a spirit of incomprehension rising up everywhere, and I felt it was rising deliberately because the time had come to do something …. "Why is this done? Why is that done? Why are things like this? …" And most of the time, based on tendentious information or incorrect observations.

(silence)

In spite of this sort of apparent engulfment by problems and prac

tical work, is some yoga or something done, even if outwardly

we are so absorbed that we don’t feel we are doing something?

Oh, but now, the whole being (the body has understood this very clearly), the whole being knows that EVERYTHING comes to make you move forward as fast as possible, everything: obstacles, contradictions, incomprehensions, trivial occupations, everything but everything is to make you move forward. It’s to touch one point, another point, yet another … and make you progress as fast as possible. If we don’t look after this Matter, how is it going to change? <488>

It’s very clear, it’s perfectly obvious that all objections, all contra

Page 488


dictions only come from a superficial mind that sees nothing but the appearance of things. It’s precisely to warn the consciousness against that, so it isn’t deceived by those things and may see clearly that they are wholly external, superficial, and that, behind it all, all that is done is like an advance as rapid as possible towards … the transformation.

(long silence)

Intelligence at its higher level very easily understands that it knows nothing and is very easily in the attitude required to progress, but even those who have that intelligence, when they deal with material things, they instinctively feel all that is quite well known and based on established experiences. So there, one is vulnerable. That’s just what is being taught to the body: the inanity of this present way of seeing and understanding things based on the good and the bad, good and evil, the luminous and the dark … all those contradictions; and the whole judgment, the whole conception of life (material life) is based on that – it’s to teach you the inanity of this base. I see that. The work has become very acute, very persistent, as if with a will to go fast.

Even the practical part which thought it knew how to live and knew what needs to be done and how it should be done, even it must understand that this isn’t true knowledge, it isn’t the true way of using external things.

(silence)

There are some amusing things …. This Consciousness which is at work, it seems to be constantly "teasing" the body; it constantly tells the body, "See, you have this sensation; well, what is it based on? You think you know, but do you really know what’s behind?" With all the small things of life, every minute. So then, the body is like this (Mother opens her eyes wide with astonishment), saying to itself, "It’s true, I don’t know anything!" But its reply is always the same, it says, I don’t pretend to know – let the Lord do as He pleases." That’s the way it is. And then, there is this (if we could get hold of it permanently, it would be fine): the nonintervention in the Lord’s work (to put it quite simply).

(silence)

There is a FACTUAL demonstration – through the experience of every minute – that when you do things with this sensation of accepted wisdom, or accepted knowledge, of an experience that

Page 489


 has been lived and so on, how … "false" it is, if we may say so (or deceptive, at any rate), and that there is something ELSE behind, which uses this (as it uses everything) but isn’t at all tied down to or dependent on this knowledge or what we call the "experience of life" or anything of that sort. It has a much more direct vision, much deeper and farsighted, much wider and much more forward -which no external experience gives …. But that’s a modest development, not flashy, which can’t "show off" anything: it’s a very small thing of each minute – each minute, each second, each thing. As if there were constantly something showing you the ordinary way of living, of seeing and doing things, and then … the true way Both like that. For each and every thing.

To such a point that the attitude towards certain vibrations gives you total well-being, or can make you quite sick! And it’s the same vibration. Things like that, bewildering. And every minute it’s like that – every minute, for everything.

Yesterday, I heard Sunil’s music (and it was so interesting because of that). It’s very fine, his music, and then this Consciousness showed me how … You see, the consciousness here takes a certain attitude, and it has the whole joy and harmony; the thing remains the same, but then … (Mother makes a gesture of a slight tipping to the left) a very slight change in the attitude of the consciousness, and it becomes almost unbearable! Experiences of that sort, all the time, all the time … to show you that in reality, only ONE THING matters, it’s the attitude of the consciousness: the old attitude of the individual being (Mother makes a gesture of contraction into oneself), or this (gesture of expansion). Probably it must be (to put it into words we can understand) the presence of the ego and the abolition of the ego. That’s it.

And then, as I said, for all the most ordinary activities of life, there is the demonstration that if the presence is tolerated (certainly in order to make you understand what it is), it can actually throw you off balance from the standpoint of health, and that the only remedy is the disappearance of the ego – and along with it, the disappearance of the whole discomfort. For the things we regard as the most indifferent, the most … It’s for everything, just everything, all the time, all the time, night and day.

But then, added to that is the complication of all the spots of incomprehension and discontent, which express themselves (gesture as of a truckload being dumped on Mother), as though they were unbridled and were coming out into the open. So all that pours down at the same time so that … the experience may be total in every field.

Page 490


It’s like a practical demonstration, every minute, of the presence of death and the presence of immortality, like this (Mother tips her hand slightly to the right and to the left), in the SMALLEST things, in all things, the smallest as well as the greatest, constantly; and constantly you see … whether you are here or there (same gesture tipping to one side or the other). As if every second you were led to choose between death and immortality.

And I clearly see that the body needs to have a serious and very thorough preparation to bear out the experience without … without any vibration of alarm or recoil or … so it may keep its constant peace and smile.

(long silence)

There are things … most unbelievable.

As if, in each thing, you were made to live the presence of opposites, so as to find … to find what is when opposites are joined instead of running away from one another, they join. It produces a result. And that’s in practical life.

Page 491