THE MOTHER

Questions and Answers

Questions and Answers

The New Year Message

IN the course of one of our classes I spoke of the unlimited abundance of Nature, the inexhaustible creatrix who takes a multitude of form and mixes them, again separates them and forms them again, demolishes and destroys them in order to pass on to ever new combinations. It is a big cauldron, I told you, you stir within there and something comes out of it. If that is not all right, you throw it back and take out another thing. for her one form or two forms or a hundred forms do not matter at all, there are thousands and thousands of forms and then there are years, hundred years, thousand years, millions of years, this is of no consequence, eternity lies before. Evidently, that amuses her and she is not in a hurry. If you speak of rush

The evening I told you these things, I identified myself with Nature, totally, I entered into her play. And this movement of identification called forth a response, a new kind of intimacy between Nature and myself, a long movement of drawing ever nearer until it found its culmination in an experience that came on the 8th November.

All on a sudden Nature understood. She understood that this new consciousness that has taken birth does not intend to reject her, but wishes to embrace her totally. She understood that this new spirituality did not shirk life, did not recoil before the formidable amplitude of her movement, but, on the contrary, wanted to integrate all her aspects. She understood that the supramental consciousness was there not to diminish but to complete her.

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     Then, out of the supreme Reality came this order : "Awake, O Nature, to the joy of collaboration". And all Nature threw herself suddenly into an immense bouncing of joy, saying, "I accept, I collaborate". And at the same time there came a calm, an absolute tranquillity so that this receptacle of the body might receive and hold, without breaking,- without losing anything, the mighty flood of this delight of Nature which has thrown herself as it were into a movement of gratefulness. She accepted, she saw with all the eternity before her that this supramental consciousness was going to fulfil more perfectiy, give a still greater force to her movement, a greater amplitude and further possibilities to her play.

    And suddenly I heard as if coming from all the corners of the earth those great notes that one hears sometimes in the subtle physical, somewhat like those of the Concerto in Re of Beethoven, that come at the hour of great advancement, as if a hundred orchestras burst out all together, without a single false note, to announce the joy of this new communion between Nature and Spirit, of this meeting of old friends who find each other after having been separated for a long time.

    Then came these words : "O Nature, Material Mother, thou hast said that thou wilt collaborate and there is no limit to the splendour of this collaboration".

    And the radiating felicity of this splendour was felt in a perfect peace.

This was how the message of the New Year was born.

    Yet you must not make a mistake on the meaning of this experience and imagine that henceforth everything will happen without any difficulty and always in a way favourable to our personal desires. It is not on that plane. It does not mean that when we do not want rain, it will not rain, when we want a thing to happen in the world, it will happen forthwith, that all difficulties will be abolished and everything will be as if in a fairy tale. It is not that. It is something deeper. Nature has admitted into the play of her forces the new force that has manifested, she has included it within her movements. And as always, things of Nature, movements of Nature are on a scale

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that surpasses infinitely the human scale, that is not visible to the ordinary human consciousness. It is an inner, psychological possibility that has been born on earth rather than a spectacular change in earthly events.

    I say this because you might be tempted to believe that fairy tales are going to be realised on earth. That moment is not yet.

   One must have much patience and a very wide and complex vision to understand how things come to pass. The miracles that happen are not. what might be called literary miracles, in the sense that they happen only in stories. They are visible only to a very profound vision of things, very profound, very comprehensive, very wide.

   One must be already capable of following the methods and ways of the Grace in order to recognise her action. One must be already capable of not being blinded by appearances in order to see a deeper truth of things.

    But this evening we can usefully take a resolution, to try our best during the year not to let the time pass in vain. 

*  *  *

The Examiners

     The integral yoga consists of an unbroken series of examinations which one has to pass without being given any previous intimation, which therefore puts you under the necessity of being always alert and attentive.

    Three sets of examiners hold these tests. Apparently they do not seem to have anything to do with each other; their procedures are so different, sometimes they are even so contradictory that they do not seem to move towards the same goal, and yet they complete each other, they collaborate for the same end and are indispensable for an integral result.

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     The three types of examination are that set by the forces of Nature, that set by the spiritual and divine forces and that set by the hostile forces. The last are the most deceptive in their appearance and if one is not to be taken by surprise or unprepared, one has to be constantly in a state of vigilance and sincerity and humility.

     The most commonplace circumstances, the happenings of everyday life, the persons, the things most insignificant in appearance, all belong to one or another of these three types of examiners. In this huge and complex organisation of tests, it is events generally considered the most important in life are the easiest of examinations to pass, for they find you on your guard and prepared. You stumble more easily on small stones on the way, for they do not attract your attention.

     Endurance and plasticity, cheerfulness and fearlessness are the qualities specially needed for the examinations of physical Nature.

     Aspiration, confidence, idealism, enthusiasm and generosity in self-giving for spiritual examinations.

     Vigilance, sincerity and humility for the examinations coming from adverse forces.

     Do not think that there are on one side those who pass the examinations and on the other those who hold the examinations. One is all at the same time, according to circumstances and the moment, both examiner and examinee and it may even happen that one is simultaneously at once examinee and examiner. And the profit which one derives from that depends on the degree and the kind of the intensity of one's aspiration and of the awakening of one's consciousness.

    To conclude, a last recommendation : never pose as an examiner. For while it is good to remember always that you are perhaps going through a very important examination, it is extremely dangerous, on the contrary, to think that you have the charge of holding examinations for others. That is the open door to the most ridiculous and harmful vanity. It is the Supreme Wisdom that decides these things and not any ignorant human will.

November 12, 1957.

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    Each time you are to make a progress, you have an examination to pass.

November 12, 1957.

*  *  *

    Widen yourself to the extreme limit of the universe...and beyond.

     Take always upon yourself every necessity for progress and resolve them all into the ecstasy of the Unity. It is then that you will become divine.

November 13, 1957.

*

        "I am with you". What does it exactly mean ?

       When we pray or struggle with a problem within ourselves, are we really heard, always, in spite of our clumsiness and imperfection, in spite even of our bad will and our error ? And who hears ? You who are with us?

      And is it you in your supreme consciousness, an impersonal divine force, the force of Yoga or you, the Mother in a body with your physical consciousness? A personal presence that knows our each thought and each act and not some anonymous force ? Can you tell us how and in what way you are present with us?

     Sri Aurobindo and you, it is said, form one and the same consciousness, but is there a personal presence of Sri Aurobindo and your personal presence, two things distinct each playing its own role?

     I am with you because I am you or you are I.

    I am with you, that signifies a world of things, because I am with you on all levels, in all planes, from the supreme consciousness down to the most physical. Here, at Pondicherry, you cannot breathe without breathing my consciousness. It saturates the atmosphere almost materially, in the subtle physical and extends to the Lake, 10 kilometres from here. Farther, my consciousness can be felt in the material vital, then on the mental plane and other higher planes, everywhere. When I came here

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for the first time, I felt the atmosphere of Sri Aurobindo, felt materially, at a distance of ten miles, ten nautical miles, not kilometres. It was very sudden, very concrete an atmosphere pure, luminous, light, light that lifts you up.

    It is now long since Sri Aurobindo had this reminder put up everywhere in the Ashram that you all know : "Always behave as if the Mother was looking at you, for she is indeed always present". This is not a mere phrase, not simply words, it is a fact. I am with you in a very concrete manner and they who have a subtle vision can see me.

    In a general way my Force is there constantly at work, constantly shifting the psychological elements of your being to put them in new relations, denning to yourself the different facets of your nature so that you may see what should be changed, developed, rejected.

    But that apart, there is a special personal tie between you and me, between all who have turned to Sri Aurobindo's and my teaching, — it is well understood, distance does not count here, you may be in France, you may be at the other end of the world or at Pondicherry, the tie is always true and living. And each time there comes a call, each time there is a need for me to know so that I may send out a force, an inspiration, protection or any other tiling, a sort of message comes to me all of a sudden and I do the needful. These communications reach me evidently at any moment, and you must have seen me more than once stop suddenly in the middle of a sentence or work; it is because something comes to me, a communication and I concentrate.

    With those whom I have accepted as disciples, to whom I have said "yes", there is more than a tie, there is an emanation of me. This emanation warns me whenever it is necessary and tells me what is happening. Indeed I receive intimations constantly, but all are not recorded in my active memory, I would be flooded; the physical consciousness acts like a filter. Things are recorded in a subtle plane, they are there in a latent state, something like a piece of music that is recorded without being played. When I need to know with my physical consciousness, I make the con-tart with the subtle physical plane and the disc begins to turn.

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Then I see how things are, their development in time, the actual result.

    And if for some reason or other, you write to me asking for my help and I answer "I am with you", it means that the communication with you becomes active, you come in my active consciousness for a time, for the time necessary.

    And this tie between you and me is never cut. There are people who have long ago left the Ashram, in a state of revolt, and yet I keep myself informed of them, I attend to them. You are never abandoned.

    In fact I hold myself responsible for everyone, even for those whom I have met only for one second in my life.

    Now remember one thing. Sri Aurobindo and myself are one and the same consciousness, one and the same person. Only, when this force or this presence, which is the same, passes through your individual consciousness, it puts on a form, an appearance which differs according to your temperament, your aspiration, your need, the particular turn of your being. Your individual consciousness is like a filter, a pointer, if I may say so, it makes a choice, fixes one possibility out of the infinity of divine possibilities. In reality, the Divine gives to each individual exactly what he expects of Him. If you believe that the Divine is far and cruel, He will be far and cruel, because it will be necessary for your ultimate good that you feel the wrath of God; He will be Kali for the worshippers of Kali, and Beatitude for the Bhakta. And He will be the All-Knowledge of the seekers of Knowledge, the transcendent Impersonal of the illusionists; He will be atheist with the atheist and the love of the lover. He will be brotherly and close, a friend always faithful, always ready to succour for those who feel Him as the inner guide in each movement, at every moment. And if you believe that can wipe away everything, he will wipe away all your faults, all your errors tirelessly and at every moment you can feel His infinite Grace. The Divine is indeed what you expect of Him in your deepest aspiration.

     And when you enter into this consciousness where you see all things in a single look, the infinite multitude of relations between the Divine and men, you see how wonderful all that is, in

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ail details. You can look at the history of mankind and see how much the Divine has evolved according to what men have understood, desired, hoped, dreamed and how He was materialistic with the materialist and how He grows everyday and becomes nearer, more luminous according as human consciousness widens itself. Everyone is free to choose. The perfection of this endless variety of relations of man with God throughout the history of the world is an ineffable marvel And all that together is only one second of the total manifestation of the Divine.

     The Divine is with you according to your aspiration. Naturally that does not mean that He bends to the caprices of your outer nature, — I speak here of the truth of your being. And yet, sometimes he does fashion himself according to your outer aspirations, and if, like the devotees, you live alternately in separation and union, ecstasy and despair, the Divine also will separate from you and unite with you, according as you believe. The attitude is thus very important, even the outer attitude. People do not know how important is faith, how faith is miracle, creator of miracles. If you expect every moment to be lifted up and pulled towards the Divine, He will come to lift you and He will be there, quite close, closer, ever closer.

*  *  *

    The Integral Freedom

    I tell you; "Be absolutely free"; but you must understand the meaning that you give to the word. Indeed, one confuses very often freedom with licence. For the ordinary mind, to be free means to have the chance of doing all kinds of stupidity without check. It goes without saying that we do not speak of that kind of freedom. When I tell you, "be free," I speak of true freedom, which consists in being free from all attachment.

    And it is not an easy thing to reach there.

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     Ask yourself, for example, how much you are above all praise and all blame. Not that you should feel so much superior to others that their opinion seems to you negligible, no, but you should take cognizance of the general state of ignorance, including your own and you would know that no one is capable of judging anybody. It is the Divine Consciousness, in you or in your guru that should be your only guide.

    The only way to be truly free, is to make your surrender to the Divine, total and without reserve. Then you will see that all that ties you, binds you, chains you loses its importance and falls off quite naturally.

    And yet all this does not mean that nothing can be learnt from whatever comes to you through others; on the contrary, even a little child can give you a lesson. Not that the child is less ignorant than you, but he may act as a mirror sending back your image and thus reflecting something of which you were not conscious. You can therefore derive a great benefit from it, provided, however, you know how to take the lesson without undesirable reactions.

    You will have the experience that every hour of your life you can learn something from others. Still you must never feel tied by their opinion but remember always that there is only one supreme Truth that can know and judge.

     Then you are free.

     It is that freedom that I require of you : to be free from all attachment, all ignorance, all reaction, — free from everything except a total surrender to the Divine, for with this surrender comes the supreme spiritual freedom.

    There are many kinds of freedom, mental freedom, vital freedom, spiritual freedom, which are the fruits of successive mastery. But there is quite a new freedom that has become possible with the supramental manifestation, the freedom of the body.

    One of the very first results of the supramental manifestation has been to give to the body a freedom and an autonomy which it had never known. And when I speak of freedom, it is not a matter of a psychological perception or a state of inner consciousness,

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it is another thing and it is much better—it is a new phenomenon in the body, in the cells of the body. The cells themselves have felt for the first time that they are free, that they have a power of decision. When the new vibrations came and were mixed up with the old, that is what I felt immediately and that showed truly to me that a new world was being born.

     Normally as it is, the body lives always with the impression that it is not master in its house : illnesses enter into it without its being really able to oppose them and a thousand factors are there that are forced upon it, press upon it. The only power it has is to defend itself, to react. When an illness has entered, it can fight and vanquish the illness,—modern medical science also recognises that the body is cured if it has decided to be cured; it is not the medicines that cure, for if the illness is conquered for the moment by a medicine, without the will of the body, the illness comes out elsewhere in another form until the body itself takes the decision to be cured. But even then it is a power for defence, a power of reaction against an enemy who has already entered, it is not a true freedom.

     Now, with the supramental manifestation, something new has happened in the body: it feels it is master of the house, autonomous, both the feet planted upon earth, if I may say so. The impression it gives physically is that the whole being is erect, it has lifted its head—one is master.

     We have been living ever with a burden as it were upon our shoulders, something that bends our head, and we feel dragged, led by all kinds of external forces, one does not know by whom or what, towards one does not know where—it is what men call Fate, Destiny. When you do Yoga one of the first experiences you have—the experience of the Kundalini, as it is called here in India—is precisely this, the consciousness rises, it breaks through the hard shell, there, to the crown of the head and you emerge at last into the Light. Then one sees, one knows, one decides and realises—there are difficulties still but you really stand above. Now, with the supramental manifestation, that experience has come in the body. The body has raised its head up and felt its freedom and independence.

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      During the influenza epidemic, for example, I lived daily among people who were carriers of germs. But I felt clearly one day that the body took the decision not to catch the disease. It asserted its autonomy. It was not a question naturally of the Higher Will taking decision, it was not in the highest consciousness that the thing was happening, no, it was the body itself that was deciding. When you are altogether high up in your consciousness, you see things, you know, but in fact, when you descend again into matter it is as it were water that enters into sand. Yes, things have changed. It is the body that has a direct power without any external intervention. I consider this to be a very important result, even if it is not very showy.

     And this new vibration in the body has made me understand the mechanism of the transformation. It is not a thing that comes with a Higher Will, a higher consciousness imposed upon the body, it is the body itself that wakes up in its cells, it is a freedom of the cells themselves, altogether a new vibration, and the disorders are mended, disorders even antecedent to the supramental manifestation.

     Naturally, all this is progressive, but I have good hope that little by little this new consciousness will grow, gain ground and resist victoriously the old forces of destruction and annihilation, the Fate that was believed to be inexorable.

*  *  *

When a serious decision is to be taken, how to know on which side lies one's true destiny?

     You have not one destiny, but several.

     Every one has the right to rejoin his supreme origin, whatever may be his place in the world order—that is the gift the Divine has made to matter and that is your true destiny. It is a gift specially made to earth, it does not exist in other worlds. At

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the same time, everyone has a particular role in the manifestation which is fixed for him by the Supreme, but this role itself again may be situated on different levels according to the degree of evolution of "that" which is within you. If that within you is yet very young, your realisation may be absolute and you may indeed rejoin the Supreme but the field of realisation in the world will be limited, very small. On the vertical plane you may touch directly the Supreme, in spite of your smallness, but on the horizontal plane the extent of your realisation will be infinitesimal. We may take the example of Maheshwari, the Mother of Power and All-Wisdom. This aspect of the Mother may put on different forms according to the degree of evolution of "that" in you, that may be a simple small group leader, a queen, an empress. She will be there equally in the group leader and in the empress, but the field of realisation will evidently be different.

     Thus on the same vertical line that leads you to your divine origin, you may have several external destinies according to your stage of growth. Yoga seeks to make a through run, but that is not always possible. There are psychological combinations in the being that can be resolved by experience only. That experience may be had in a few lives, a few years, a few months, a few minutes.

     When one sees in the supreme consciousness the unrolling of all the destinies and all the possibilities of destiny, that is something infinitely interesting. There are beings who are accused of megalomania, because they have vast projects, big plans which do not always square with the present possibilities of the world. Most often it is simply a want of judgment on their part, a lack of knowledge. They have come indeed in contact with a higher truth, something corresponding perhaps to a future phase of their destiny —and that is why they are so convinced,—but because of lack of judgment they do not see that the time for that truth is not come yet, that circumstances are not ready or that the conditions under which they were born prevent them from carrying out what they feel to be true. There is a time-lag between the vision of the truth and its present possibilities of realisation. But these great dreams should not be killed, it is killing something of your own future. Above all, you must refuse, reject with all energy

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this hideous morality of a Mrs Grundy, this gross shallow common sense of a Sancho Panza. One must know how simply to wait and cherish long one's dreams.

     To conclude, this is what can be said; there is not, there cannot be two similar destinies in the universe.

     Inevitably the destiny of everyone is being worked out for him, and the nearer one is to the Divine the more this destiny puts on divine qualities.

*  *  *

Power and Realisation

      The one truly important thing that modern science has discovered is that from the external and physical point of view things are not what they seem to be. When you look at a body, a human being, an object, a scenery, you have the perception of these things through your eyes, your touch, your hearing, and for the details, through smell and taste. But science tells you now : "all that is illusory, you do not see at all the things as they are; you do not touch them as they are; you do not smell them as they are; you do not taste them as they are. It is the construction of your organs that puts you in relation with the things in a way that is altogether superficial, external, illusory and unreal.

     From the scientific point of view you are a bundle of atoms, not even that, but something infinitely less perceptible than an atom and in perpetual movement. There is absolutely nothing that resembles a figure, a nose, eyes, a mouth, that is all just an appearance. And the scientists have come to the same conclusion, as the most extreme of the ancient spiritualists that the world is an illusion? It is a great discovery, very great...one more step and they will arrive at the truth. Thus when one comes and says : "But I see that, I touch it, I perceive it, I am sure of it", it is from the scientific standpoint a gross blunder. That can be

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said only by one who has never studied things as they are. So scientists and spiritualists both by diametrically opposite ways have arrived at the same conclusion : "the world as you see it is an illusion".

     Now, what is the true thing behind ? They who have sought spiritual knowledge will tell you : "We have the experience of it", but naturally it is a purely subjective experience, there does not yet exist a meeting-ground where there can be an indisputable demonstration for all. For each one the experience is indisputable for him.

    In reality, the value of an experience, of a discovery may perhaps be proved by the power it gives, the power to change the appearance and to transform things, circumstances and the world in respect of what it appears to be to us, in accordance with the will that is manifesting through the experience. It seems to me that the most universal proof of an individual or collective experience would be its power to make things, these appearances that we call the world, other than what they are. From the subjective point of view the effect of the experience on the individual consciousness is an undeniable proof. For him who attains beatitude, sovereign peace, invariable delight, the profound knowledge of things the proof is more than sufficient. The effect on the external form depends on many other things than the experience itself, it depends perhaps on the very first cause of the experience; in any case, what may serve to prove an individual experience to others than he who had the experience, is the power it gives on others, on things, on what is for the ordinary consciousness objective. For example, if someone having attained a certain state of consciousness had the power to communicate it to others, that would be partially, partially only, a proof of the reality of his experience, but if, going farther, the state of consciousness in which the said person is, a state, for example, of perfect harmony, succeeds in creating this harmony in the external world where there is apparently no harmony, it would be, I think, a proof which would be easily accepted even by the materialistically scientific mind; if the illusory appearance were changed into something more beautiful, more harmonious, more happy than

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the world in which we live^now, that would be an undeniable proof. And if we push the thing still farther, if, as Sri Aurobindo promises to us, the supramental force, light and consciousness transform the world and create a new race, then man would not be able to deny the existence of these new beings—on condition that they are sufficiently different from the human race, so that the difference is perceptible even to the deceptive human organs,— any more than apes and animals, if they spoke, could deny the existence of man.

      Following these deductions, it would seem that the most conclusive, the most obvious aspect, and which probably will be the first to appear, will be the aspect of power, more than the aspect of delight and that of truth. In order that the new race may be established and may survive, it would be necessary for it to be protected from other terrestrial elements, and power is protection, not an artificial, external, false power, but the true force, the victorious will. It is not then impossible to think that the supramental action, even before being an action of harmonisation, illumination, delight, beauty, will be an action of power to serve as protection. Naturally, if this action is to be truly effective, it must be based on knowledge and truth, on love and harmony, but these things might show themselves visibly little by little, when the ground will be prepared, so to say, by the action of a sovereign will and power.

     But to make the least of these things possible, a basis of perfect equipoise is needed, the poise given by egolessness, perfect surrender to the Supreme, true purity, that of identification with the Supreme. Without this basis of perfect equality, the supramental power will be dangerous and at no cost must one seek it or want to pull it, for even in an infinitesimal quantity it is so powerful and formidable that it can upset the whole system.

    Since I am speaking of it to you, I would like to recommend one thing to you : in your desire for progress and in your aspiration for realisation, beware of attempting to pull the forces towards yourself. Give yourself, open yourself with as much disinterestedness as you can have through constant self-forgetfulness, increase your receptivity to its maximum, but never try to pull the force

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towards you, because wanting to pull is in itself a dangerous egoism. You may aspire, you may open yourself, you may give yourself but never seek to take. When things go wrong, people put the blame on the Force, but it is not the Force that is responsible, it is the ambition, the egoism, the ignorance and the weakness of the vessel.

     Give yourself generously with a perfect disinterestedness, and from the deeper point of view, nothing evil will happen to you. Try to take and you will walk past the edge of the abyss.

*  *  *

    What one calls individuality, is it not the ego?

    It is a confusion that is often made. If it were so, the ego being a falsehood and an illusion, the individuality itself would be false and illusory, as Buddha and Shankara have asserted. But, in fact, the origin of the individuality is in the Supreme itself. The ego is only a temporary deformation, necessary for a time; it disappears when it is no more useful, when the Truth-Consciousness has been reestablished.

    Consciousness is one, everywhere and in everything the same, that is the great mystery of creation. But the very moment this consciousness is manifested, exteriorised, spread out, it is broken into  innumerable pieces for the sake of expansion and each one of these particles is the beginning, the origin of the individual being.

   The origin of every individual form is the original law of that form or the truth of that form. If each form had not its law, its truth, there would be no possibility of individualisation. There might be concentrated collective formations, but no individual consciousness. Each form represents one element in the change of the Single into the multiple. This multiplicity implies an innumerable quantity of elements of consciousness, of truth, of law, which as they spread out into the universe finally become distinct individualities.

    The individual being seems to move away from its origin

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because of the necessities of individualisation. But when this individualisation, that is to say, this awareness of the inner truth is achieved, then, by an inner identification, the original unity is reestablished in the multiplicity.

     That is the reason for the existence of the universe as we perceive it; the universe has been created in order that this phenomenon may occur. The Supreme manifested himself to himself so that he may become conscious of himself.

*  *  *

     It it possible to judge and know with the help of the mind ?

    Mind should never be allowed to judge, either things or men; to say this is good and that is bad; this is well, that is ill; this man has this fault, that man has that fault. For mind judges in ignorance, it has not the knowledge, the true vision of things.

    Knowledge is infinitely above and beyond the domain of thought, beyond even pure ideas that thoughts serve to express. And even if you are able to rise from thought to pure idea, you do not reach knowledge yet, for pure idea is only a translation.

    Knowledge itself can be gained only by identification.

    And yet this little human mentality, this mentality of physical consciousness, how sure it is of itself, of its judgment, of its vision! How it looks at things and judges them from the height of its ridiculous superiority, giving its decree: "This is bad and should not be" or on the contrary : "This is good".

     If you wish to be a little wiser, observe things attentively, record them without pronouncing any judgment. When you will have contemplated them quietly within yourself, place them before the highest part of your consciousness, trying to keep yourself silently attentive and wait.

     Then perhaps, slowly, as if coming from very far and from very high something like a light will manifest itself. And you will know a little more of the truth.

*  *  *

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If one happens in a higher state of consciousness to perceive something true, how is it that all circumstances combine to deny this truth and prevent its realisation?

     If you look far enough and widen sufficiently your vision, you would be able to see the consequences which the realisation of the truth might have had.

     Imagine you were following the line of your perception.

     I say "line", because your vision is necessarily so far from being what it should be that even if you had a very wide total view, even if you tried to see in the most global way possible, you would necessarily leave behind quite a part of the universe so that your realisation would be almost linear, in any case so small, so narrow that the greater part of the universe will remain unchanged.

     If you advance on the path that is ready—for there are paths as there are beings that are ready—without patiently waiting for the rest of the creation, that is to say, if you realise something which is very near the truth as compared with the present state of the world, what will happen? Dislocation of a whole, a rupture not only in harmony but in balance, for an entire portion of the universe will be there that will not be able to follow. And instead of a total realisation of the Divine, there will be only a small local and infinitesimal realisation and nothing of what finally should be done will be done.

     So do not be impatient, do not be disappointed, depressed, discouraged if you have perceived something that is true, absolutely, essentially true but which the present state of the universe does not allow to be realised. Arm yourself with a great patience, a great understanding and tell yourself that it was true, but it was not totally true, true for the whole of creation, that is to say, it was not a truth in harmony with present possibilities. You have sought to realise the truth prematurely, and because it was premature, the circumstances did not allow its realisation. Wait with patience and perseverance for the time to come.

     The final victory will be for the most enduring.

*  *  *

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       Memory of past lives

      If one were to say things truly, one must say everything, in all detail. For among the innumerable experiences that I have had in the course of eighty years, many were of such variety and apparently so contradictory that one might say, after all, everything is possible. So then if I tell you something about past lives without presenting the thread running through all things, that would be opening the door to dogmatism. You will say one day, "Mother has said this, Mother has said that..." and that is how dogmas alas, are made.

      Given then the multitude of experiences and the impossibility that I should pass my life in talking and writing, you must tell yourself that everything is possible and not be dogmatic. I may, however, give a few general indications.

      Only when one is consciously identified with one's divine origin, that one can in truth speak of a memory of past lives. Sri Aurobindo speaks of the progressive manifestation of the Spirit in the forms in which it dwells. When one reaches the summit of this manifestation, one has a vision that plunges down upon the way traversed and one remembers.

      But this memory is not a thing of the mental kind. Those who claim to have been such a Baron of the Middle Ages or such a person who lived at such a place, at such a time, are fanciful, they are simply victims of their own mental imagination. In fact, what remains of past fives is not a beautiful picture in which you appear as a mighty lord in a castle or a victorious general at the head of an army, that is only romance. What remains is the memory of those instants when the psychic being emerged from the depths of your being, revealed itself to you, that is to say, the memory of those instants when you were wholly conscious. That growth of the consciousness is progressively effectuated in the course of the evolution and the memory of past lives is generally limited to the critical moments of the evolution, to the decisive turns that marked the progress of your consciousness.

     At the time when you live such moments of your life you

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do not care at all about remembering that you were M., such a person, living at such a place and in such an epoch; it is not the memory of your civic status that remains. On the contrary, you lose all consciousness of these petty external things, accessories and perishables so that you may be wholly in the flare of the soul revelation or of the divine contact. When you remember such instants of your past lives, the memory is so intense that it seems to be still very close, still living, and much more living than most of the ordinary memories of our present life. At times, in dreams, when you come into contact with certain planes of consciousness, you may have memories of such intensity, such vibrant colour, so to say, even more intense than the colours and things of the physical world. For these are the moments of true consciousness and everything then puts on an extraordinary brilliance, everything is vibrant, everything is instinct with a quality that escapes the ordinary eye.

      These minutes of contact with the soul are often those that mark a decisive turn of our life, a forward step, a progress in consciousness, and that frequently corresponds with a crisis, an extremely intense situation when there comes a call in the whole being, a call so strong that the inner consciousness pierces the layers of unconsciousness covering it and is revealed all luminous on the surface. This call of the being, when very strong, can also bring about the descent of a divine emanation, an individuality, a divine aspect which joins with your individuality at a given moment in order to do a given work, win a battle, express one thing or another. The work done, the emanation very often withdraws. Then one may retain the memory of the circumstances that were around those minutes of revelation or inspiration, one sees again a scenery, the colour of the dress that one had put on, the colour of one's own skin, the things about you at that time—all that is fixed indelibly with an extraordinary intensity, because the things of the ordinary life revealed themselves then in their true intensity and their true colour. The consciousness that reveals itself in you reveals at the same time the consciousness that is in things. At times with the help of these details you may reconstitute the age in which you lived or the action that

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you did, find out the country where you were, but it is very easy also to make a romance and take imagination for reality.

     Yet you must not believe that all memories of past fives are those of moments of great crisis, of important mission or of revelation. At times they are moments very simple, transparent when an integral, a perfect harmony of the being was expressed. And that may correspond to altogether insignificant external situations.

     Apart from the things that are in your immediate surrounding at that moment, apart from that moment of contact with your psychic being nothing remains. Once the privileged moment passes, the psychic being plunges into an inner somnolence and the whole outer life melts into a grey monotony which does not leave any trace. Besides it is almost the same phenomenon as what happens in the course of the life that you lead at present apart from those exceptional moments when you are at the summit of your being, mental or vital or even physical, the rest of your life seems to melt into a kind of neutral colour which has no great interest, when it matters little whether you were at such a place instead of being in another, whether you did this thing or that. If you try to look at your life all at once, in order to gather, as it were, its essence, the twenty or thirty or forty years behind you, you will see rise up spontaneously two or three images which were the true moments of your life, the rest is effaced. A kind of spontaneous choice works in your consciousness and there is a tremendous elimination. This will give you a little idea of what happens in regard to past lives : choice of a few select moments and an immense elimination.

     It is very true that the earliest lives are very rudimentary, very few things subsist out of that, scattered memories few and far between, but the more one progresses in consciousness, the more the psychic being is consciously associated with the outer activities, the memories grow in number and become more coherent and precise, but still here also the memory that remains is that of the contact with the soul, and at times that of things which were associated with the psychic revelation, not the civic status or the changing scenes around. And this will explain to you why the so-called memories of past animal lives are the most

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fantastic : the divine spark in them is much too buried deep down to be able to come up consciously to the surface and be associated with the outer life. One must become a wholly conscious being, conscious in all its parts, totally united with one's divine origin before one can truly say that one remembers his past lives.

*  *  *

If all that has to be manifested is already involved in Matter, do there exist, hidden within it, other principles than the Supramental which will reveal themselves when the Supramental will have fully manifested itself?

      Logically one can say, yes, because there is an essential identity between Matter and the Supreme.

      Has involution occurred in time and has it a history as evolution has?

      One might almost say that the answer to this question depends on the attitude of the questioner. Scholars would tell you that there are different schools speaking of these things in different ways. There are the metaphysicians who naturally deny any kind of history, minds essentially speculative, philosophical, abstract that consider histories as good only for children. There are' the psychologists who translate everything into movements of consciousness, and finally there are people who are fond of images, for whom the history of the universe is a huge movement that one might call cinematographic, and for them this pictorial development is something more living, more tangible, for even if it were merely symbolic, it makes things understandable more intimately and truly.

     It goes without saying that the three explanations are equally true, the only thing is to be able to synthetise and harmonise them in one's mind. However we will leave aside the metaphysical aridities, for it is preferable to read them in the books written

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by scholars who would tell you things very precisely, very exactly and very dryly. Then the psychological point of view...it is better to live it than to speak of it. So what remains is story for the use of children. It is good to be always a child and even if we should avoid believing in it as a dogma, considering any change in it as a sacrilege, we can at least take these histories as a means of making to our childish consciousness living something which would otherwise be too far from us.

      Here we have a choice among many stories which have been narrated that are more or less true, more or less complete, more or less expressive. If one can re-live this history, at least partially and in its broad lines, by interiorising or exteriorising oneself —which is essentially the same thing from a certain point of view, that helps to understand and then to master the how and wherefore of things. Some have done it and it is they who are usually considered as initiates, occultists or prophets—and very fine stories have been told.

     I am going to tell you very briefly one such story. Do not take it for a gospel, but just as a story.

    When the Supreme decided to exteriorise himself so that he might see himself, the first thing that he exteriorised out of himself was Knowledge of the world and Power to create it. This Knowledge-Consciousness and Force began its work. In the Supreme Will there was a plan and the first principle of this plan was the expression at once of Delight and Freedom, in their essence, which seemed to be the most interesting character of this creation.

     Therefore intermediaries were needed to express this Delight and Freedom through forms. And Four Beings were first brought out to start the world-development which had to be a progressive objectivisation of all that is potentially contained in the Supreme. These beings, in the principle of their being, were, Consciousness and Light, Life, Delight and Love, and Truth.

     You can easily conceive that they felt in them a great strength, a great power, something formidable, because they were essentially the principle of these things. Besides, they had a full freedom of choice, because this creation had to be freedom itself. As soon as they began their work, they started having their own conception

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of the work to be done and how it was to be done. Being wholly free, they chose to do it independently. Instead of taking the attitude of a servitor and instrument, they naturally took the attitude of a master, and this lapse, I may say, was the first cause, the essential cause of all disorder in the world. And as soon as there was separation—for that was the essential cause of separation—as soon as there was separation between the Supreme and that which emanated, consciousness was changed into unconsciousness, Light into darkness, Love into hate, Delight into suffering, Life into death and Truth into falsehood. They proceeded with their independent creations in separation and in disorder.

     The result is the world as we see it. It has been done progressively, step by step, and it would be really too long to tell you all that; however, the culmination at the end was matter, obscure, inconscient, miserable. The creative Force which emanated these Four Beings essentially for the creation of the world observed what was happening and turned to the Supreme and implored Him for the remedy and cure of the evil that was done.

     Then the order was given, Consciousness to precipitate into the Inconscience, Love into the suffering, Truth into the falsehood. And it was a greater consciousness, a more total love, a more perfect truth than what had emanated in the beginning that now plunged into the horror of Matter to awaken there consciousness and love and light, to begin that movement of Redemption which must bring back the material universe to its supreme origin.

     There was thus what might be called successive involutions in Matter and a story of these involutions. The present culmination of the involutions is the manifestation of the supramental emerging from the inconscience, but nothing says that there are not beyond this manifestation other manifestations, because the Supreme is inexhaustible and He will always create new worlds.

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