Questions and Answers

Why is not the universe a place of perfect bliss ?

IF the Divine had not conceived His creation as a progressive state, one could have been, from the beginning, in an immobile and immutable bliss. But by the very fact that the universe is made to be progressive, the perfect identity, the bliss of this identity, the full consciousness of this identity had necessarily to be veiled, otherwise nothing would have moved.

    One can conceive of a static universe, something which would be all together and at the same time a kind of space or objectivisation, not a progressive manifestation of things, one after another, in accordance with a special rhythm. Then all would be in a blissful state; the universe would not be as we see it, there will be missing in it an element of unfoldment which is the characteristic of the world we live in.

    But if once this principle is admitted that the universe is progressive, that the unfoldment is progressive and that instead of perceiving the whole together and at once, our perception is progressive, then obviously the perfection to come must appear as something higher than the perfection that went before it.

     And that opens the door to every possibility.

     Sri Aurobindo used to say often that what appears beautiful, good, even perfect and marvellous and divine at a given moment of the universe cannot appear so now. And what appears to us beautiful, marvellous, divine and perfect now will be obscurity at another time. In the same way, the gods who were all-powerful in a certain age will belong to a reality lower than the gods who are to manifest tomorrow.

      That is the sign that the universe is a progressive universe.

      It follows that if one enters into a state where the whole as it is, appears perfectly divine, by that very act goes out of the universal

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march. It is thus persons like the Buddha and Shankara understood. They expressed in their own way that if you are able to realise this condition in which all appears to you perfectly divine or perfectly perfect, necessarily you go out of the universal movement and enter into the Unmanifest, the Nirvana.

    If you want to remain in the universe, you must recognise the principle of progress; for it is an universe of progress. If you want to realise a static perfection, well, you will necessarily be thrown out of the universe, because you will no longer belong to its principle.

    It is a choice.

    Only Sri Aurobindo was saying often: "When you choose the static perfection, you forget that you lose by that very action the consciousness by which you could congratulate yourself on your choice".

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                   Why has the Divine so many enemies ?

     But why are there so many human beings completely inconscient? I find that more astonishing. Because it is simply an act of unconsciousness; to be the enemy of the Divine is nothing else than to be unconscious.

     But the enemy of the Divine is the enemy of what ?

     That depends exclusively upon each one. Generally one is the enemy of one's own conception of the Divine.

     That is why it is said that very often the greatest believer is one who denies the Divine or hates the Divine. For if he had not, far within himself, the certainty that the Divine exists, how could he deny or hate Him?

      In India there are these legends and stories in which you find someone who wants to be identified with the Divine choosing to be his enemy, because the path of the enemy is according to him more direct than the path of the worshipper. This is simply

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an illustration of the fact that one who has never put to himself the problem, who has never given one thought to the existence of the Divine is certainly farther away from the Divine than one who hates Him or denies Him.

    If one says or writes: "I declare, I certify, all my experience goes to prove that the Divine does not exist, that he is the creation of man's imagination", that means that he has already thought of the problem many a time and that there is in him something that is tremendously interested in the problem.

    And this is much more true in the case of the enemy of the Divine, one who hates Him: you are not the enemy of an illusion.

   After all, this is also perhaps a form of meeting which has its own interest. You sometimes say in a lighter vein: "my intimate enemy"; it may not be quite wrong. There is perhaps more intimacy in hatred than in ignorance; you are nearer to what you hate than a thing which you ignore.

    I do not say all this in order to recommend hatred; but it is a fact that I had very often to see more love in a look or expression of fury than in an absolutely dull and inert attitude. It is deformed, tarnished, disfigured, it is all that, if you like, but there is something there, a flame that burns.

    Evidently, even in the inconscience and immobility, in the apparently complete inertia of a stone, one can find a dazzling light, the light of the Divine Presence. You can see it everywhere, meet it everywhere and in such a multifarious and wonderfully harmonised manner that all negations disappear.

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  What does this sentence mean: "This liberation, perfection, fulness too are not to be for our own sake, but for the sake of the Divine". (Lights on Yoga, p. 6.)

     It means one should not acquire all this perfection for a personal and egoistic end, but for the sake of the Divine, in order to be able to manifest the Divine, be placed at the service of the

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Divine. You do not pursue this growth with the intention of perfecting yourself, that you should not. You do it because it is the Divine Work that is to be done, because it is the Divine's Will.

     As long as a personal desire, an egoistic movement mixes up with your aspiration, your movement is not the exact expression of the Divine Will.

     The only thing that should count is the Divine, His Will, His manifestation, His expression. You are for that, you are that, nothing else. As long as a feeling of self, the ego, the person intervenes, well, that means you are not yet what you should be.

      I do not say that this can be done in a day, but that is the truth.

      There are too many people—I might even say the majority of those who take up the spiritual life and do some kind of Yoga —there are too many who do it for personal reasons, for all sorts of personal reasons; they are disgusted with life, they are unhappy, they want to have more knowledge, they want to become spiritually great, they want to learn how to teach others. There are a thousand personal reasons for taking up Yoga.

       But this simple act of giving oneself to the Divine so that the Divine may take you up and do whatever he wills and that with all one's purity and constancy, well, there are not many who do it. And yet that is the truth; and with that you go straight to the goal and you do not run the risk of ever making a mistake.

      All other motives are mixed, tainted with ego; and naturally they can take you here and there, very far from the goal. But this feeling that there is only one reason for existence, one goal, one purpose: the perfect, complete and entire self-consecration to the Divine to the extent of not being able to distinguish oneself from Him, to be Himself wholly, totally, completely without any personal reaction intervening, that is indeed the ideal attitude. Besides, that is the only attitude which will make you advance in life and in the work absolutely protected from all things— protected even from your own self which is of all dangers the greatest.

      Indeed for one's own self there is no greater danger than I, the egoistic I.

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We should be instruments for the divine manifestation: but why does the Divine wish to manifest itself upon the earth in the chaos ?

      Because it is for that that He has created the earth, not for any other reason.

      The Earth is not a thing that is separate from Him and foreign to Him. It is Himself, but a deformation of Himself which must be reestablished in its truth, must become what it is in its essence, that is to say, the Divine.

But then why is the Divine foreign to us ?

       Foreign ? But He is not foreign, my child. You imagine that He is foreign but he is not that in the least; He is the essence of your being. Without the Divine you would not exist, you would not exist even for the millionth part of a second.

      Only, you are not conscious since you live in a kind of false illusion and deformation. You are not conscious of yourself, you are conscious of something which you believe to be yourself, but which is not yourself.

Then what is myself?

       The Divine.

       But to realise that, you must enter into the true consciousness. It is a revolution, but a revolution that can be done in a quarter of a second. That may take years also, even centuries, even many lives.

       When you begin to realise what you are now, what you consider to be yourself is not true, that the truth of your being is something you do not know, then the question arises :

       "But after all what is this I ? If what I feel to be I is only an illusory formation, what is I then ? ."

       This questioning becomes more and more intense, more and more intimate, more and more acute. Gradually everything appears strange to you, not true, this feeling that one had of oneself, of being oneself takes a character of unreality.

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    "But what is the I ?"

    Then comes a moment when this question rises with such concentratedness, with such intensity that all on a sudden a reversal is effected. Everything changes in a second : you know, you are, you live you see the unreality of what seemed so real.

    It may be you have to wait for this moment through days and months and years and centuries. But if you intensify your aspiration, the pressure becomes so great and the intensity of the question so strong that something veers round in your consciousness. Instead of being outside and trying to look inside, you are inside, and as soon as you are inside, all change absolutely, completely. All that seemed to you true, natural, normal, real, tangible, all, all immediately appears to you as very grotesque, extremely funny, quite unreal, quite absurd.

    Yes, you have touched something which is supremely true and eternally beautiful, and that you never lose any more.

    Once this reversal has happened you can slip into the outer consciousness, you may in dealing with others fall back somewhat into their ignorance and blindness; but always there will be something living, erect, that moves no more, until that thing enters everywhere, goes through to the very end, the blindness disappears for ever.

     And this is an experience absolutely tangible, absolutely concrete.

     I am sometimes asked, "How does one know that he is in contact with his psychic being ?" or, "How does one know that one has found the Divine?" But once the experience happens to you, there is an end of the matter, you put no more any question, it is done. You no longer ask how it has come about, it is done.

     It is done.

I think I am sometimes on the point of having this experience but I always fall back into the ordinary consciousness. Why ?

      Probably you have still maintained a division in you. One part of your being refuses to advance with the rest, a part that

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clings to itself, does not want to move, insists on being what it is. It is this that pulls you back.

    One part of yourself delays, stops; and, instead of compelling it to follow, you leave it on the way. You close your eyes, you blind yourself, you do not want to see that you have this defect, this difficulty, this ignorance or this stupidity. You do not want to see, because it is not very pretty to see, you prefer to ignore it. But simply because you ignore it, it does not cease to exist.

     It serves no purpose to play the ostrich; one day or another you must face it, you have to.

     Otherwise, you see the goal there approaching, something in you moves forward, you are about to touch it, but never will you touch it if you have these fetters dragging you back.

     A day comes when you have to clear up the place; otherwise you move in a circle, you proceed by small steps till the end of your life and when the moment of departing arrives you are obliged to say, "it will be another time". More so, if you had known nothing, understood nothing, had tried nothing—people are born, they live, they die and are born again and live again and die again and that continues indefinitely, they do not even raise the problem ! But once you have had the taste, a foretaste of what life truly is, once you have discovered the very reason of your existence and tried for its realisation, such a thing should not be pleasant, it must be frightful.

     Better do your work when you can do it consciously. That is exactly the meaning of the proverb, "Do not put off till tomorrow what you can do today". Today, that means here in this life. For the occasion is there, the opportunity is there and perhaps you will have to wait thousands of years to find it again. Better do the work, cost what it may and lose as little time as possible.

     Each time you are afraid of looking straight at yourself and hide carefully from yourself what prevents you from advancing, you erect as it were a wall on the way; afterwards you have to demolish it, in order to pass on.

      Better take up your task forthwith, look straight, straight in the face. Do not try to put a sugar coating over the bitter pill.

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Yes, it is bitter, all the weaknesses, uglinesses, all the vile little things you have in you. They are there and they are many. If you do not force yourself to open your eyes at each step, at every minute, you will always give yourself an excuse, what one calls "the mental understanding of oneself", and always and always.

      Now then, as I told you, you are about to attain a realisation, about to touch a Light and to have an illumination, suddenly you find something pulling you back. Some people weep at that time, others lament and say, "oh, poor me ! Once again the same thing has happened !"

      These are ridiculous weaknesses. You have only to look straight at youself and say, "What is this little meanness, stupidity, vanity, ignorance bad will that is there hiding in a corner, preventing me from crossing over the threshold to the new discovery? What is there in me so small, so mean, so obdurate, that hides like a worm in the fruit so that I may not see it ?

      If you are sincere, you do find it and pull it out.

Sri Aurobindo writes: "One must not enter on this path, far vaster and more arduous than most ways of Yoga, unless one is sure of the psychic call and of one's readiness to go through to the end". ("Lights on Yoga", p. 6.)

      One can have a very good will, a fife directed towards a divine realisation, a kind of self-consecration, more or less superficial to a divine work; but between that and doing Yoga there is a great difference.

      To do Sri Aurobindo's Yoga means to ask for an integral transformation, to have one single aim in life so that nothing else exists except that.

     When you say, "I want to do Yoga", you must know what you have decided upon. To all who come to me and want to enter on this path, I say, unless I am absolutely sure of them, because it is written in their destiny that they are come for that— I say always, "Think over, be quite sure that it is this that you

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want and that you have the inner certainty that it is for this purpose that you have come upon earth".

      For it is not an easy path. Time is needed, patience is needed, much endurance and much perseverance and courage and an indefatiguable good will. If you feel capable of having those qualities, start on the way. But once you have started, it is finished, you do not fall back, you must go to the end. That is why one must take a resolution knowing fully what he is doing.

     As soon as you have set your foot on the path, everything changes within you. Outwardly the conditions remain similar to those of others, but within there is a great difference : a consciousness is there that works constantly to correct your position, places in the light the obstacles that impede or stop your progress, causes you to get, so to say, a knock on your nose against your own error and blindness. There is a kind of absoluteness in the consciousness which does not allow you to deviate from the path.

      But it is so only for those who have decided to do Yoga.

     For others the Consciousness acts like a Light, a Knowledge, a Protection, a Force of progress so that they may reach the maximum of their capacities, grow as far as possible in an atmosphere as favourable as possible, leaving them completely free in their choice.

     All of you here, my children, you live in an exceptional liberty. Outwardly there are a few petty limitations, because you are numerous and you have not the entire earth at your disposal, you must submit to some discipline to a certain extent so that there may not be too much disorder. But within yourself you live in marvellous liberty.

      There are no social or moral or intellectual compulsion, no principles even; only a Light is there. If you wish to profit by it, you profit; if you do not wish to profit by it, you are free not to profit.

      But the day you have made your choice and you have made it in all sincerity, when you have felt within you a radical decision, then it is different: there is the Light and the way to follow— all straight. There is no turning aside.

      Yoga is not a joke; when you choose it you must know

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what you do. Once you have chosen it, you must stick to it. You have no right to waver, you must go through.

      All that I ask of those who do not take up Yoga is the will to do their best, an effort towards progress and the desire to be in life something better than what ordinary humanity is. You have grown up, you have developed under condition, exceptionally luminous, conscious, harmonious and full of good will; in response to such conditions be in the world an expression of this Light, this Harmony, this Good Will.

      To do this yoga, the Yoga of transformation which is the most arduous of all things, is possible only if you feel that you have come here for that—I mean here upon earth—that for you nothing else is worth doing, that this is the very reason of your existence. Even if you have to labour, suffer, struggle, it is of no importance; for you want that realisation and nothing else.

      Once you have set your foot on the path of Yoga, you must have an iron resolution and walk straight to the goal at any cost.

When one stops on the way, one falls back—is it for the whole of the present life?

       There are many different cases, and that depends upon the nature of the falling back. If it is a small falling back, a small stoppage, you can start again, but it is ten times more difficult than before.

Why?

       Why? Because it is like that; because you have accumulated the obstacles in you by your slackness and your weakness.

       All the difficulties that you meet and that you have to conquer are so many spiritual examinations which you must pass; if you fail in your examination, the next one will become much more difficult. It is a general occult law and none can escape it.

       Note also that under present conditions you are not informed beforehand and that makes it more difficult to pass the examination. In old times the aspirants were told: "Now prepare yourself, you

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have now to go through terrible trials". A man forewarned is worth ten men, they say. One knew that it was a trial and that made it much easier.

     At present it is life itself, the everyday circumstances that are the trials that one has to pass.

     Some feel instinctively that they are in front of a decision that is to be taken, a special effort that is to be made. They make this effort within themselves and they take the step. They have then a much greater force to meet the next trial.

    On the other hand, if you are blind, ignorant, stupid or of bad will, and instead of accepting the trial that presents itself, you revolt and refuse, then you have failed in your examination. On the next occasion you will have not only to put an effort to surmount the obstacle, you have also to repair the harm you have done to yourself, and naturally it will be much more difficult.

    It is better to go forward at any cost and endeavour not to stop too often on the way. For it is easier to continue, even if it is hard, than to begin again once you stop.

    When you are at a critical moment of your self-development and when it is absolutely necessary for you to surmount the obstacle in order to advance, then there are always two possibilities: take the forward step and immediately you make a tremendous progress; otherwise, you leave it alone and then there happens more than a stoppage, even more than a falling back; it may be a serious downfall into a precipice, and there are falls from which one cannot rise again. In that case it is one fife lost.

    Yet, even in such extreme cases, if there is somewhere in the being besides the part that has wavered and fallen, a burning flame and if one is ready for everything, for whatever suffering, whatever endeavour, whatever sacrifice possible to mend what one has done, to climb back from the bottom of the precipice and find again the way, one can do it. That flame is capable of calling down the Grace and with Grace nothing is impossible.

     But the flame must be truly mighty, for when one is down at the bottom of the pit, it is not easy to get out of it.

     If you abandon the path, it is difficult even to find it again. What is strange is that if you leave it you lose it. There are legends

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to that effect in all countries, of people who abandoned the pa and then have been seeking it again and have never regained It is as if it has vanished.

    When you are on the path, do not leave it. Before you take: it . hesitate, you may hesitate as long as you like. But as soon as you may hesitate as long as you like. But as soon as you have taken it , it is finished , do not leave it anymore; for that has consequence that may extend even to several lives. And that is extremely grave..

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How to unite one's will with the divine Will? 

     First of all, you must will it.

     Next, continue to will it, always continue, never waver when there are difficulties, continue till you succeed. That is all.

     And a few other things are necessary, as for example:

Not to be egoistic,

Not to have a small narrow mind,

Not to five in one's preferences,

Not to have desires,

Not to have mental opinions etc.

      It is a long process, because one must change the ordinal nature.

      Break all mental limits, break all the vital desires, break a physical preferences—after that you can hope to be in contac with the divine Will.

      And when you are in contact with it, you must five it integrally, that is to say, you must be unified in your whole being, a in one single will; for a unified will alone is capable of identifying itself with the divine Will.

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     It appears there has been some misunderstanding in the matter of what I told you about the supramental manifestation.

    When I compared it with the appearance of man upon earth and reminded you that it must have taken almost a million years for the human race to appear, I said that without doubt it would take at least a thousand years for the supramental race to appear on earth. But I did not think it necessary to recall what Sri Aurobindo has written on the subject of the intermediary realisation of a higher human race that would cease to be animal in order to become superhuman. Sri Aurobindo has told us that this possibility is realisable now and that they who fulfil the necessary conditions are assured of a supramentalisation sufficient enough to secure a radical transformation of their body that would free them from all animal bondage and allow them to prolong their life indefinitely.

    It goes without saying that the manifestation of the supramental Force far from abolishing this possibility makes it much more real and tangible. The only requiremen then is to fulfil the necessary conditions which Sri Aurobindo has described in detail in all his teachings on the Integral Yoga.

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