THE MOTHER

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM

PONDICHERRY

1957

Reprinted from the Bulletin of Physical Education

April, 1957

SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM PRESS,

PONDICHERRY

Questions and Answers

THE reality of the universe is what one calls God and God is essentially delight. The universe was created in delight and for delight; but this delight can exist only in the perfect unity of the creation with its creator.

     This unity Sri Aurobindo describes¹ as a kind of mutual possession. The Possessor, that is to say, the Creator, who possesses the creation is at the same time possessed by it. That is the very essence of unity, the source of all delight. But because of division, because the possessor possesses no more and the possessed also no longer possesses the possessor, the essential delight is changed into ignorance. I say ignorance and not nescience; I speak here of true ignorance of which nescience is only a consequence, the ignorance of the unity, the union, the identity, the ignorance which is the cause of all suffering. As soon as the creation lost direct contact with its creator, ignorance ruled and suffering was its result. Everyone who has a spiritual realisation has this experience also that the very minute union is established with the divine origin, all suffering disappears.

     However, a whole succession of seekers and sages, particularly the entire line of Buddhism saw at the origin of creation, not the essential divine delight, the delight to create, manifest, express, but desire. And instead of seeing the solution of the problem in the reestablishment of the unity bringing back with it the essential delight of manifestation and becoming, they considered that the end and the means at the same time were the total rejection of all desire to be and the return to non-existence.

      This conception is a profound misunderstanding. The

¹ "Thoughts and Glimpses".

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methods recommended for liberation are methods of self-development which can be very useful, but this conception of a world essentially bad because it is the product of desire, a world out of which one must escape at any cost and as soon as possible has been the greatest and the most serious deformation of all spiritual life in the history of mankind. The conception was perhaps useful at a particular moment, for in the history of the world everything is useful; but at present it is out of date. The time is come when one must surpass it and return to a higher and more essential truth, climb back to the delight of being, the delight of the divine union and the divine manifestation.

     It is this new orientation, I mean new in its terrestrial realisation, which must now replace all former spiritual orientations and open the way to a new realisation which will be a supramental realisation.

     It is Delight alone, the Divine Delight that will bring the victory. But one must not confuse delight and delight. The divine delight of which I am speaking here is quite the opposite of what is usually called joy, pleasure. One must completely renounce the one in order to be able to know the other and enter into the beatitude which is precisely the result of the manifestation of this true delight.

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Does the new force that is at work now act through individual effort or independently of it ?

     Why this opposition ? The force acts independently of all individual effort and, so to say, automatically in the world; but its action sets up individual effort and makes use of it. It is an illusion to believe that the individual effort is due to the individual. Yet if the individual refuses to make an effort under the pretext that there is an universal action independent of him, he refuses then the collaboration. The force wants to make? use of and indeed does make use of the individual effort as one

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of the most powerful means at its disposal, the most powerful perhaps. It is the force, the force itself which is your individual effort.

    But here the reaction of vital self-love comes in : "Ah ! if it is not I who do the things, if it is not my will that expresses itself, if it is not my own power that works, well then, I do not move !" In other words, "If the merit does not come to me, I do nothing any more": it is a reaction I come across very often, but it is simply a way of showing one's vexed self-love.

    On the contrary, the true reaction, the pure reaction is a joyful urge for collaboration, it is to play the game with all energy, with all the will-power that one can command in one's consciousness, with the feeling that you are supported, carried by something infinitely greater than yourself and whose action is infallible, something which makes use of you as the most precious instrument and which gives you at the same time all the necessary force and protects you. You feel that, you feel that you are working in safety, that you can no longer make a mistake, because it is the supreme wisdom which is acting; what one does one does with the maximum efficacy and in joy.

     That is the true movement, to feel one's will intensified to its maximum by the fact that it is no longer a small microscopic person that wills in you but an infinite universal power; the force of the Truth.

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What must one do to get rid of a bad movement altogether ?

     Become more and more conscious. Observe how the movement is produced, by which way the danger approaches, stand on the way and see that it does not reach its aim. If you want to be cured of a defect or to eliminate a difficulty, there is only one procedure : have a very wakeful consciousness, be perfectly vigilant.

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     First of all, you have to see clearly your goal. But do not rely upon your mind, for you will note that it wavers constantly. No sooner you take a decision than it puts forward all possible arguments to make you doubt about it; you will be tossed about, you will hesitate and finally you will arrive at nothing. Therefore at the very outset, you must know exactly what you want to do —know, not mentally, but through concentration, through aspiration and a fully conscious will. This is a very mportant point.

    Next, little by little, through observation, through a constant and sustained vigilance, you must work out a method which will be personal to you and which, I may say by the way, will be valid for you alone. Everyone must find out his own procedure which will get more and more clear and precise gradually as it is put to practice; you rectify one point, make another precise and so on. For a certain time all goes well.

    But one fine morning the difficulty will appear before you, insurmountable, and you will despair and think that all has been in vain. Nothing of the kind; I tell you that when you find yourself in front of a wall like that, it is the beginning of something new. By a still more accentuated, sustained, obstinate concentration you will pass through the wall to the other side and there will come to you a new consciousness, a new force, a new power, a new procedure that will take you further on.

    That will happen often and after a time you will get into the habit. Far from being discouraged and giving it up, every-time you will increase your concentration, your aspiration, your trust and with the new help that will come to you, you will develop other means to replace those you have overpassed.

    It is thus that you progress from step to step. But you must take great care to realise at each step as perfectly as possible what you have gained or learnt. If you do not apply materially your inner progress, a time will come when you will not be able to move at all; for your unchanged external being will be like a chain that will not only prevent you from advancing but will pull you back.

    So a very important point; put into practice what you know

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and if you are persevering you will succeed. The difficulty will come again and again. It is only when you reach the goal that all obstacles will fall away at one stroke and for good.

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Difficulties and obstacles that one meets when one undertakes something — / speak of the little things of life, work, sports — are they indications of the value of the activity? Do they signify that one must not persist or on the contrary one must persevere, because it is an occasion for progress and victory ?

     If one wants to follow a Yogic discipline, one must naturally before undertaking anything try to find whether the inspiration one receives is a genuine inspiration coming from the Divine or is simply a reaction to outer circumstances, a vital or a mental impulse. It is sufficiently important, indeed it is very important to try to see clearly and act in the fullness of consciousness.

     But there is a very large number of things that one generally does without prehminary reflection; when a circumstance occurs, you obey, so to say. In fact, these things, as almost every thing that one does in life, have no importance in themselves. It is the attitude that one takes which is important. You may have to do a certain thing, because it is there before you and when one is in external life one has to act: that has an importance if it is an act whose consequences may profoundly affect your life: to marry, for example, to go and live at some place or other, take to particular occupation. These are things which are generally considered important and which are so to a certain extent. But even for these things, all depends, from the point of view of Yoga, much more on the attitude you take than on the action itself. It is well understood that when it is a question of the little things of daily life, their importance is almost nothing.

     There are certain scrupulous persons who raise problems and find it very difficult to solve them, because the problems are

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badly set. I knew, for example a young woman, a theosophist, who was trying to practise and told me one day: "We are taught that the divine will must prevail in everything that we do; but in the morning, when I take my early breakfast, how am I to know whether God wants me to put two lumps of sugar in my coffee or only one". It was touching; and I had some difficulty in making her understand that the spirit in which she drank her coffee, her attitude towards the food that she was taking was much more important than the number of sugar lumps that she took.

    It is so with all the little things that one does every moment. The divine Consciousness does not act in the human way and does not decide the number of sugar lumps that you are to put in your coffee. What it does is to put you gradually into the true attitude towards all things, an attitude of consecration, suppleness, adhesion, aspiration, good will, plasticity, effort for progress. It is that which counts, much more than the small decisions that you may have to take at each second.

    Before you act, you can try to see what is the right action; but you will not be able to do it by any mental discussion or through a mental problem. It is only when you take an inner attitude creating an atmosphere of harmony, a progressive harmony that whatever you do becomes necessarily, under the given circumstances, the best thing that could be done.

    The ideal would be an attitude so total that the action becomes spontaneous, dictated by something other than the external reason. But it is an ideal, an ideal to which one should no doubt aspire, but which cannot be realised all at once; a certain time is needed for that. Till then it is much more important to take care about keeping the right attitude and the true inspiration than to decide whether one should do gymnastics or not, whether one should follow a particular course of study or not, because all that has no importance in itself. The only important thing is to maintain the right orientation in one's aspiration and the living will to progress.

    As a general rule and in order that the experience may be fully profitable, when one has undertaken something, he should do it with persistence without caring for obstacles and difficulties

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unless and until a thing absolutely imperative happens which tells you that you are not to continue any more. But that happens rarely. Generally things follow their course and when they come to an end—having terminated or produced the desired result—then only one sees why they were there. Obstacles, contradictions, encouragements should not be considered as signs to which you must conform, for they may have quite a different signification according to the case and it is not by these external events that you should judge the tightness of what you have undertaken.

     When you are very attentive and very sincere, you may have an indication, inner yet quite perceptible, of the value of the action you are doing. If you are fully of good will, that is to say, if you want to do the right thing in the right way in all sincerity, with every part of your conscious being, and if, for some reason or other, you take up an undesirable work, you feel almost immediately a kind of uneasiness in the region of the solar plexus, which is not violent, which does not force itself in a dramatic manner, but which is very perceptible to one who is attentive, something like a regret, a lack of adhesion. That may go even to some sort of refusal to collaborate; but I repeat, it has no violence, no brutal self-assertion, it does not make any noise, it does not give a pain : it is at most a little uneasiness and if you pass it over, instead of increasing as the error persists and grows, it disappears soon altogether and the consciousness gets veiled. This small indication therefore cannot be a sure sign, because if you ignored it on many occasions, if you did not take it into account, it does not come back any more. But, on the contrary, if you are very attentive to it in all your sincerity, then it will be a sure and precious guide.

    In any case, when this uneasiness is not there, it is better to pursue to the end whatever one undertakes, so that the experience may be completed, unless you receive, as I was telling you just now, an absolutely precise and categorical indication that the thing should not be done.

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How can one receive from the Divine what one is in need of?

     What do you mean by what one has need of ? You turn towards the Divine and you say : "I am in need of this relation, I am in need of this affection, I am in need of this knowledge, I am in need of this material advantage". But are you sure that it is a need, I mean a true need and not rather an impression, a desire, a movement altogether ignorant ? You know nothing about it.

     Not only that, but generally you do not make the experiment sincerely. You expect the Divine to give you what you believe to be your need—most often you do not even ask it of him — and at the same time you look for the satisfaction of your need in the life around you through all sorts of external means.

     And also, have you formed a relation between the Divine and yourself ? Do you think of him ? Do you turn to Him with at least a certain sincerity in your attitude ? No, you do not.

     And in fact you reverse the roles. Far from trying to know and obey the Divine Will, it is your will that you want to impose on the Divine when you tell him : "I have need of that". And you do not ask him even whether he would like to give the thing to you; you say, "I have need of that, therefore that must come to me, I have a right to it, the task of the Divine is to give me whatever I am in need of, otherwise—well, otherwise he is not the Divine."

     But the Divine, being the Divine, knows a little better than you what you are in need of, your true need. And it is that that He will give you.

     All the same, if you insist upon imposing your will, he may grant what you desire, to enlighten you, so that you may become conscious of your error, you may understand that it was not a need according to truth. In such a case, generally more evil than good results and you protest: "Ah ! why has the Divine given me a thing which hurts me ?"—forgetting wholly that it was you who asked for it. And if, on the contrary, the Divine does not give what you desire, you protest still: "How is it ! I asked for it,

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I have need of it and I do not get it !" Whatever the Divine may do, you protest, protest always.

    But if instead of all that, you have in you simply an aspiration, an urge, an intense and ardent need to find what you conceive, more or less rightly, to be the truth of your being, the source of all things, the supreme good, the answer to all seekings, the solution of all problems; if you have in you this intense need and aspire sincerely for its realisation, then you will not say to the Divine any more : "Give me this or give me that or I need this, I need that". You will say : "Do for me what is required and lead me towards the truth of my being; give me what you in your supreme wisdom see the thing needed".

    Then you are sure of not making a mistake and not receiving anything that may harm you.

    One can take another step forward towards the truth, but that implies such perfection in self-surrender and self-giving that it is irrelevent to mention it here. The attitude of trust of which I spoke to you just now is already in itself a very much truer approach than the attitude which consists in telling the Divine : I need this, give me.

     For in reality very few people know truly what they need, very few. The proof is that they are always in pursuit of the fulfilment of their desires, all their effort is towards this end and each time a desire is fulfilled, they pass to another.

    And when you have sought much, made many mistakes, suffered more or less, met much disappointment, then sometimes you begin to be wise and ask if there was not some way to get out of the ignorance of desires and needs.

     It is then the moment to open wide your arms and say : "Here I am, take me and lead me to the true path."

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    "In each pain and torture of our being is the secret of a flame of rapture compared with which our greatest pleasures are only as dim flickerings".

(Sri Aurobindo—Thoughts and Glimpses)

     What is the secret towards which pain leads ?

     To a superficial and incomplete understanding it may appear that it is pain itself which the soul seeks. It is not so. The very nature of the soul is the divine joy constant, invariable, unconditioned, ecstatic.

     But it is true that if you can meet pain with courage, endurance, an unshakable faith in the divine Grace, if instead of running away when it comes to you, you can enter into it with a will and aspiration to go through it from end to end to find the luminous truth, the invariable joy which is in the heart of everything, then pain becomes very often a more direct and immediate door to it than satisfaction or contentment.

     I do not speak of pleasure; for pleasure turns its back constantly and completely on this profound divine Joy. It is a misleading and perverse disguise which turns us away from our goal and which we must not certainly seek if we want to find the truth speedily. Pleasure makes us light, it deceives us, it leads us astray. Pain, on the contrary, brings us back to the deeper truth by compelling us to concentrate so that we may be able to endure, to face the thing that grinds us. It is through pain that one regains most easily the true force, when one is strong. It is through pain that one regains also most easily the true faith, the faith in something above and beyond pain.

     When you seek pleasure, when you dissipate and divert yourself in order to avoid looking at life in the face, to forget—forget that there is a problem to solve, there is something to find, there is a reason for being and living other than that of simply passing the time and you go away without having learnt anything or done anything; then indeed you lose your time, you lose the occasion that was given to you, an occasion, I cannot say unique, but marvellous, of an existence which is the place for progress which is a

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