THE MOTHER

Questions and Answers

Questions and Answers

The Message of the year 1959

(The experience of November 5, 1958)

'THIS is the origin of the Message.

         Last evening I noticed in the class that the children who had had a whole week to prepare their questions on the text that we are reading, did not find a single one. A terrible somnolence ! A total lack of interest ! When I had finished my reading, I said to myself, "But what is there in these brains that do not take interest in anything but their small personal affairs ? After all, what is happening there within, behind these forms ?"

         Then during the meditation I began going down into the mental atmosphere of the people around me, to find out the small light, the thing that responds. And I was literally dragged down into a hole as it were.

        In this hole I saw what I am still seeing : I went down into a fissure as it were between two steep rocks, rocks made of something harder than basalt, black, metallic at the same time, with edges so sharp that you had the impression that were you simply to touch it, you would be flayed. It was something that seemed to have no bottom and no end and it became narrower and narrower like a funnel, so narrow that there was no more room even for the consciousness to pass. The bottom was invisible, a black hole, and that went down and down and down, without air, without light, only a kind of glimmer, like a reflection on the top of the rocks, a glimmer that came from beyond, from something that could be the heavens, but something invisible. I was slipping along the fissure and I saw the edges, the black rocks, cut with scissors, as it were, shining like a fresh cut, the edge so sharp that it looked like a knife. Here was one, there another, there another, everywhere, all around. And I was being dragged, dragged, dragged,

Page-2

—I went down, down, down and there was no end of it, it was becoming more and more compressing, stifling, suffocating.

       Physically the body followed and participated in the experience. The hand on the arm of the chair had slipped down, then the other hand, then the head bent down in an irresistible movement. Then I said to myself, "But that must stop, for if it continues, my head will be down on the ground !" (the consriousness was elsewhere, but I was looking at my body from outside.) And I asked myself, "But what is there at the bottom of the hole ?"

      Hardly had I formulated the question, it was as if I had touched a spring that was there at the very bottom of the hole, a spring I had not noticed, which however acted immediately with a tremendous force and at one bound tossed me up straight into the ' air; I was cast out of the fissure into a limitless formless immensity which was infinitely comfortable—not exactly warm, but which gave a comfortable impression of an inner warmth. After a sufficiently painful descent, it was a kind of super-comfort, an ease, an ease at its maximum. And my body immediately followed the movement, the head at once became straight again. And I lived all that without objectifying it at all; I was not taking stock of what it was, I did not look for any explanation of what was happening; it was what it was, I lived it and that was all. The experience was absolutely spontaneous.

     It was all-powerful, infinitely rich; it had no form at all, no limit—naturally as I was identified with it, I knew that it had neither limit nor form. It was as if—I say "as if" because it could not be seen—the immensity was, as it were, made of countless imperceptible points, points that did not occupy any place in the space (there was no space, is it not ?) which had a deep warm golden colour; this was however an impression, a translation. And all that was absolutely living, living with a power that seemed infinite. And yet it was immobile, with an immobility so perfect as to give the feeling of eternity, but with an unbelievable intensity of movement and life within—it was within, contained in oneself and immobile (immobile, in relation to the outside, if there was an outside). It was in an innumerable life, it may only be spoken

Page-3

of as an infinite by way of an image, it has an intensity, a strength, a force, a peace—the peace of eternity—a silence, a calm, a power capable of everything.

      I was not thinking of it, I did not objectify it, I lived it comfortably, very comfortably. This lasted very long during the rest of the meditation.

      That contained as it were all the wealth of possibilities. And all that had no form had the power to become forms.

     Immediately I asked myself, "what is this, to what does it correspond ?" Naturally I found it afterwards, and finally this morning I told myself, "well, it is just to give me my message for the coming year". Then I transcribed the thing—naturally, you cannot make a description, it is indescribable. It was a psychological phenomenon and the forms were nothing but a way of describing the psychological state to oneself. And this is what I noted evidently in a mental way. I have described nothing, I have only stated a fact :

     "At the very bottom of the inconscience most hard and rigid and narrow and stifling I struck upon an almighty spring that cast me up forthwith into a formless limitless Vast vibrating with the seeds of a new world".

     Generally the inconscience gives an impression of something amorphous inert formless, neutral and grey—when I entered formerly into the zones of inconscience, it was the first thing that I met; but in my experience of yesterday, it was an inconscience hard, rigid, coagulated, as if coagulated for a resistance : it was a mental inconscience, all efforts slip away, nothing can penetrate. And this inconscience is much worse than the purely material inconscience. It was not the original inconscient; it was, if one might say so, a mentalised inconscient. All this rigidity, hardness, narrowness, fixity, opposition comes from a mental presence in the creation, that is what the mind has brought into the inconscient. When the mind had not manifested, the inconscient was not like that: It was formless and it had the plasticity of formless things—that plasticity has disappeared.

Page-4

     The beginning of the experience is a very expressive image of the mind's action in the inconscient; it has made the inconscient aggressive—it was not that before—aggressive, resisting, obstinate. That was precisely the starting-point of my experience, I was in fact looking into the mental inconscience of the people, and this mental inconscience refuses to change while the other did not. The purely material inconscience has no mode of being, it does not exist, it is not organised in any way, while the other one is organised inconscience, organised by the beginnings of a mental influence —and that is hundred times worse ! It has become now a much greater obstacle than before. Before, that had not even the power to resist, it had nothing, it was truly inconscient. Now it is an inconscience organised in its refusal to change ! So I wrote, "the most hard and rigid and narrow"—the idea is of something which presses you, presses you—most suffocating.

      Then I wrote, "I struck upon an almighty spring". That means exactly this : in the deepest depths of the inconscient, there is a supreme sovereign spring that enables us to touch the Supreme. Because at the very bottom of the inconscience there is the Supreme. It is the Supreme that enables us to touch the Supreme. That is the almighty spring.

     It is always the same idea that the highest height touches the deepest depth. The universe is like a circle; it is represented by a serpent that bites its own tail. That means that the supreme height touches the most material matter without any intermediary. I have said this many times, but here it is an experience of the thing as I had it.

     Finally I have said, "a formless limitless immensity vibrating with the seeds of the new world". There is no question of the primary creation, but of the supramental creation. This experience does not correspond to a return into the Supreme, origin of all; I had altogether the impression that I was projected into the origin of the supramental creation : something of the Supreme that has already been objectified in view of the supramental creation.

    There was in fact all this impression of power, warmth and gold colour. It was not fluid, but like a pulverisation. And each

Page-5

one of these things (they cannot be called particles or fragments nor even points, unless point is taken in the mathematical sense, a point that does not occupy any place in space) was something like living gold, a scattering of warm gold—one cannot call it bright, nor can one call it dark, neither was it light: a multitude of small points of gold, nothing but that,—It could be said that they touched my eyes, my face. ..and with a tremendous force At the same time, there was the feeling of a plenitude, of an all-powerful peace—it was rich, it was full. It was movement at its maximum, infinitely more swift than anything that one can imagine and at the same time it was peace absolute, stillness perfect.

      And this almighty spring was a perfect image of what happens, is bound to happen and will happen for everybody : all at once you leap up into the immensity.

      The experience that I have just described was followed by another which was also noted down at the time. Here it is—

Experience of November 13, 1958

     To say the truth, you are never freed from hostile forces unless and until you come out into the Light, for good, above the inferior hemisphere. There the phrase "hostile forces" loses its meaning; only the forces of progress are there which compel you to progress. But you must come out of the lower hemisphere in order to see things in that way. For below they are very real in their opposition to the divine plan.

      It used to be said in the older traditions that one could not live more than twenty days in that higher state without leaving the body and returning to the supreme origin. Now that is no longer true.

     It is precisely this state of perfect harmony beyond all attacks that will become possible with the supramental realisation. It is that which will be realised for all who are destined for the supramental transformation. The adverse forces know it very well that in the supramental world they will automatically disappear.

Page-6

Being no more useful they will be dissolved without the need of anything being done for that, simply through the presence of the supramental force. That is why they rush in a rage negating everything, everything.

      But it is just the link between the two worlds that has not yet been built, it is in the course of being built. That was the meaning of the experience of February 3 '57, namely, to establish a link between the two worlds. For the two worlds are in fact there—not one above the other—one within the other, in two different dimensions, but there is no communication between the two. They cover each other without being joined together. In the experience of February 3, I saw some of the persons here and elsewhere belonging already to the supramental world in one part of their being, but there is no connection, no junction. Just the moment is now come in the history of the universe when that link can be established.

     The experience of November 5 was a new step in the construction of the link between the two worlds. I was indeed projected into the very origin of the supramental creation : all that warm gold, that living tremendous power, the sovereign peace. I saw once again that the values prevailing in the supramental world have nothing to do with our values here below, even our values of highest wisdom, even those that we consider most divine when living constantly in the divine Presence; it is altogether different.

    Not only in our state of worship or surrender to the Lord, but even in our state of identification the quality of the identification is different according as we are on this side, advancing in this hemisphere below or have passed on to the other and emerged into the other world, the other hemisphere, the higher hemisphere.

    The quality or the kind of relation that I had with the Supreme at that moment was quite different from that which we have here, and even the identification had a different quality. With regard to the lower movements one understands very well that they must be different. But that which is the summit of our experience here, that identification because of which the Supreme rules and lives —well, he rules and lives quite differently according as we are in this

Page-7

lower hemisphere or in the supramental life. And at that moment (the experience of 13 November) what gave intensity to the experience was that I just came to perceive, vaguely, the two states of consciousness at the same time. It is almost as if the Supreme himself was different, that is to say, our experience of him. And yet in either case there was the contact with the Supreme. Probably what differs is what we perceive of him or the way in which we translate it; the quality of the experience, however, is different.

      There is in the other hemisphere an intensity and a fullness which is translated into quite a different power of him here. How to express ? You cannot. The quality of the very consciousness seems to change. It is not something just higher than the peak to which we can rise here, it is not one more step : here we are at the end, at the summit. ...It is the quality that is different, the quality, in the sense that there is a plenitude, a richness, a power—that is a translation in our way—but there is something that escapes us... it is truly a new reversal of consciousness.

     When we begin to live the spiritual life, a reversal of consciousness happens which is for us the proof that we have entered the spiritual life; well, another reversal of consciousness happens when one enters the supramental world.

      Besides, perhaps each time a new world opens, there will be a new reversal of this kind. Thus even our spiritual life which is such a total reversal in respect of ordinary life, is and appears, in relation to the supramental consciousness, the supramental realisation something so totally different that their values are almost opposite.

     One can put it in this way (it is however very imprecise, more than diminished, deformed) : it is as if our entire spiritual life were made of silver whereas the supramental is made of gold, as if the whole spiritual life here below were a vibration of silver, not gold, but merely a light, a light that goes up to the summit, a light altogether pure, pure and intense, but in the other one, the supramental, there is a richness and a power that makes all the difference. All this spiritual life of the psychic being and our present consciousness that appears so warm, so full, so wonderful, so sparkling to the ordinary consciousness, indeed, all this splendour appears poor in relation to the splendour of the new world.

Page-8

      The phenomenon can be very well explained in this way : A series of reversals bringing about by stages an ever new richness of creation so that whatever has preceded appears poor in comparison. What for us, in relation to our ordinary life, is a supreme wealth, appears a poverty in relation to this new reversal of consciousness. This was my experience.

     Last night when I tried to understand what was lacking in order that I might bring you out of your difficulties wholly and truly, the effort reminded me of what I told you the other day about the Power, the power of transformation, the true power of realisation, the supramental power. Once you enter there, rise into that state, then you see that it is truly the All-Power in respect of what we are here. So once more I perceived, felt the two states at the same time.

     But as long as this realisation is not an accomplished fact, it will still be an advance—an advance, an ascent, you win your ground, you climb more and more; as long as it is not the new reversal, it is as if everything needed to be done over again. It is the repetition of the experience of here below—it is reproduced up there.

     And every time you have the impression that you have lived on the surface only. It is an impression that is repeated and repeated. At each new conquest you have the impression, "until now I had lived on the surface only—on the surface of realisation, the surface of surrender, the surffce of power—it was merely the surface of things, the surface of experience. Behind the surface there is a depth, and it is only when you enter into the depths that you touch the etrutishe same ex- thing And every time it perience : what appeared as depth becomes a surface, a surface with all that it means, something inaccurate, artificial, an artificial transcription, something that gives the impression that it is not truly living, it is a copy, an imitation,—it is an image, a reflection, not the thing itself. You pass into another zone and you have the impression that you have discovered the Source and the Power, the Truth of things; and ever so, this source, this power and this truth become in their turn an appearance an imitation, a transcription in reference to the new realisation.

Page-9

     Meanwhile, we must indeed recognize that we have not got the key yet, it is not within our hands. Or rather we know quite well where it is and we have only one thing to do : the perfect surrender of which Sri Aurobindo speaks, the total self-giving to the Divine Will, whatever happens, even in the midst of the night.

    There is the night and there is the sun, the night and the sun, again the night, many nights, but one must cling to this will to surrender, cling to it, as through a tempest and give up everything into the hands of the Supreme Lord, until the day when the Sun comes for ever, the total victory.

To keep silent

      From the point of view of individual growth and for those who are still at the beginning of the path, to be able to keep silent when faced with some thing that you do not know is one of the things that are most helpful to progress. You must be able to keep silent not merely externally, not merely not to utter a word, but to be silent within, so that the mind does not assert blatantly its ignorance as it does always, does not try to understand by means of an instrument which is incapable of understanding but knows its weakness and opens itself simply, quietly awaiting the time to come for it to receive the Light, for it is only the Light, the true Light which can give it understanding. This is not all that it has learnt all that it has observed, all the so-called experience that it has had in life, but something else wholly transcending it. And before this something else—which is the expression of the Grace—manifests in it, if it keeps silent very quietly, very modestly and does not attempt to understand, especially to judge, things would go much quicker.

     The noise that all the words, all the ideas make in the head is a noise so deafening that it prevents you from hearing the truth if it wants to manifest.

Page-10

      Learn to be quiet and silent. When you have a problem to solve, if instead of turning in your head all the possibilities, all the consequences, all the things that should be done or not done, you remained quiet with an aspiration for good will, a need for good will, the solution would come quickly, and as you are silent you will be able to hear it.

     When you fall into a difficulty, try this method. Instead of becoming restless; instead of rummaging all ideas, actively looking for solutions, getting anxious and troubled, running hither and thither in your head—I do not say externally, for externally people have probably the good sense not to do it, but I mean internally, within the head—remain quiet and, according to your nature, with ardour or peace, with intensity or wideness or all that at once, call for the Light and await its coming.

     The path would then be considerably shortened.

Can there be intermediary states between man and superman ?

      There will probably be many.

     Man and superman ? You do not speak of the new supra-mental race ? You are speaking really of what we, here, call superman, that is to say, man born in the human way trying to transform his physical being as he has received it through his ordinary human birth. You ask, are their steps ? There will certainly be a countless number of partial realisations. The degree of transformation will differ according to the capacity of each one and it is sure that there will be a large number of more or less fruitless attempts or more or less fruitful before something like superman is reached and even among them there will be attempts more or less successful.

     All who try to surmount the ordinary nature, all who try to realise materially the inmost experience which has put them in

Page-11

relation with the divine Truth, all who, instead of turning their gaze towards the Beyond or Above, try to realise physically externally the change of consciousness which they realised within themselves are apprentice supermen. And there, there are countless differences in the success of their effort. Each time we endeavour not to be ordinary men, not to live the ordinary life and try to express in our movements, actions and reactions the divine Truth, when we are ruled by this Truth and not by the general ignorance, we are apprentice supermen and in the measure of the success of our effort, we become apprentices more or less good, more or less advanced on the way.

      All these are stages. In reality the question is to know, in this race for the transformation which of the two will come first, that which wants to transform one's body into the image of the divine Truth or the old habit of this body going into decomposition until it is so deformed that it can no more continue to five in its external integral form. It is a race between Transformation and Decadence, because there are only two things that could be the final points for judging as to how far one has succeeded : either success, that is to say, become a superman—when one can naturally say, "Now I have reached the result"—or death. Till that one is normally on the way.

     It is one of these two things, the goal won or the sudden break in life that puts for the time an end to the forward march. And on the way all are more or less far; and until one reaches the goal one cannot say at which stage one exactly is. It is the final stage that will count. It is only he who will come after a few hundred or a few thousand years and cast a look behind that will be able to say : "there was such a stage, such another stage, such a realisation and such another"...That is history, all that. That will be a historic perception of the event. Until then, we are all on the move and at work.

    We had better not think too much of where we are and where we are arriving, because that hamstrings you and you cannot run well. Better to think of running only and not of any other thing. That is the only way to run well. You look where you want to go and put all your effort into the movement to go forward.

Page-12

We are not concerned with where we are. I say, that is history, it will come later on.

     The historians of our endeavour will tell us—perhaps we shall be still there—will tell us what we have done, how we have done it...for the moment what is needed is to do it—that is the only important thing.

The Anti-Divine

      I have noticed one thing that at least in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred this is an excuse which people give to themselves. I have seen that practically almost all who write to me, "1 am violently attacked by adverse forces" give that as an excuse. The truth is that there are many things in their nature which do not want to yield and so they put all the blame on the adverse forces.

     In reality I am turning more and more towards something where the role of the adverse forces will be reduced to that of an examiner—that is to say, they are there to test the sincerity of your spiritual seeking. These are things that have their reality in the action and for the work—that is their great reality—but when you have gone beyond a certain region, all that thins itself out to such a degree that they are no longer so distinct and clear cut. In the occult world or rather if you look at the world from the occult point of view, the adverses are very real, their action very real, quite concrete and their attitude towards the divine realisation is positively hostile, but as soon as you pass beyond this domain and enter the spiritual world where there is only the Divine who is everything and where there is nothing that is not the Divine, these "adverse forces" become part of a total play and they can no longer be called adverse forces : it is only an attitude that they have taken; to say more exactly, it is just an attitude that the Divine has taken in his play.

Page-13

      That also forms part of the dualities of which Sri Aurobindo speaks in The Synthesis of Yoga, the dualities that are reabsorbed. I do not know if he has spoken of this particular one, I do not think so, but it is the same thing. This is also a way of seeing. He has spoken of the dualities, Personal-Impersonal, Ishwara-Shakti, Purusha-Prakriti...there is one more, the Divine and the Anti-Divine.

What is the role of the spirit?

       One can say that it is at once the conscious intermediary between the Supreme and the manifestation and also the meeting-place of the manifestation and the Supreme.

       The spirit is able to understand the highest godhead and commune with it; at the same time it is the purest, or the least deformed intermediary between the highest godhead and the most external manifestation. It is the spirit, with the help of the soul, that turns the consciousness towards the high, towards the Divine and it is in the spirit that consciousness begins to understand the Divine.

      It might be said that what one calls "spirit" is the atmosphere brought by the Grace into the material world so that it might awake to the consciousness of its origin and aspire to return to it. It is truly a kind of atmosphere which liberates, opens the doors, releases the consciousness. It is this that brings in the realisation of the truth and gives to the aspiration all its power of fulfilment.

      Seen from a higher level, one might say that the name spirit has been given by man to this action, this luminous and liberating influence, to all that clears the way to supreme realities, drags us out of the slime of ignorance into which we are bogged, opens the doors, shows us the path, leads us there where we should go, in brief, the atmosphere that the Divine Grace creates in the universe to save it from the darkness into which it has fallen.

Page-14

       The soul is, as it were, its individual concentration, its individual representation in the human being. The soul is a thing special to humanity; it exists in man only. It is like a special expression of the spirit in the human being. Beings of other regions do not possess a soul, but they can live in the spirit. It might be said that the soul is a delegation of the spirit in the human species, a special help to make it move quicker. It is the soul that makes the individual progress possible. The spirit, in its original form has a more general, more collective action.

     The spirit, for the moment, plays the role of a helper and a guide, but it is not the all-powerful master of the material manifestation; when the Supramental will organise itself in a new world, then only the spirit will become the master and rule over Nature in an evident and visible manner.

     What is called "new birth" is the birth into the spiritual life, into the spiritual consciousness, it is bearing in itself something of the spirit which, in the individual, through the soul, can begin to govern the life and be the master of existence. But in the supramental world it is the spirit which will become the master of this world in its entirety and of all its manifestations and all its expressions consciously, spontaneously, naturally.

     As long as one can speak about the spirit, as long as it is a thing that one has read about, whose existence one knows only vaguely but which is not a very concrete reality to the consciousness, it means that one is not born in the spirit. When one is born in the spirit, it becomes something much more concrete, much more living, much more real, much more tangible than the whole material world. And that is what makes the essential difference between being and being. When the world of the spirit is spontaneously real, when the true, the concrete existence becomes the atmosphere in which one can breathe freely then one knows that one has passed on to the other side. But so long as it is a thing somewhat vague and imprecise—when one has of course heard much of it, one knows that it exists but it has not a concrete reality, well, that means that the new birth has not yet taken place. As long as you say to yourself, "yes, what I see, what I touch, the ills I suffer from, the hunger that torments me, the sleep that weighs

Page-15

me down, that is true, that is concrete", it means that you have not yet passed over to the other side, you are not born in the spirit.

      In reality, the immense majority of men are like prisoners with all the doors and windows closed; so they feel suffocated, which is natural, but they have the key with themselves that opens the doors and the windows and they do not make use of it. Certainly there is a period when they do not know that they have the key, but long after they have known that they have the key, long after they have been told about, they hesitate to use it and doubt whether they have the power to open the doors and the windows or even whether it is good to open them, and even when they have an impression that after all it might be good to open them they have a fear, "what will happen when these doors and windows are opened ?" And they are afraid. They are afraid of losing themselves in this light and this freedom. They wish to remain what they call themselves. They like their falsehood and their slavery; something in them loves it and remains clinging to it. The impression continues with them that without their limits they would not exist any more.

      That is why the journey is so long, that is why it is so difficult; because, if you truly agreed not to be any more, everything would become very easy, quick, luminous, delightful—although perhaps not in the way man conceives delight and easiness. In fact there are very few people who do not love battle. There are very few who would agree to there being no night any more, who do not conceive the light but as the opposite of darkness; "Without shadow there would be no picture. Without struggle there would be no victory. Without suffering there would be no delight". That is how they think, and as long as you think like that, you are not born in the spirit.