THE MOTHER
Questions and Answers
by
SRI AUROBINDO
Contents
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THE MOTHER
Questions and Answers
Ski Aurobindo Ashram
Pondicherry
April,
Questions and Answers
I
A stag passes through a forest to drink water, but what is there to prove that he has done so? Most people will see no sign of the thing, perhaps even they do not know what a stag is, and even those who know will not be able to say that he passed that way. But one who has made a special study of hunting, a tracker, will find evident signs and will be able to say not only what type of stag has passed, but also his size, age, sex, etc. Similarly there must be people who have a spiritual knowledge analogous to the knowledge of venery and who can find out that a person is in relation with the supra-mental, while ordinary people who have not trained their mind, will not be able to perceive it. The supra-mental has come down on earth, it is said, it has manifested itself. I have read all that has been written on the subject but I am one of the ignorant who see nothing and feel nothing. Is it not possible for one who possesses a more trained perception to tell me by what signs I could recognise that a person is in relation with the supramental ?
Two irrefutable signs prove that one is in relation with the supramental:
1. A perfect and constant equality
2. An absolute certainty in the knowledge
To be perfect, the equality must be invariable and spontaneous, effortless, towards all .circumstances, all happenings, all contacts, material or psychological, irrespective of their character and impact.
The absolute and indisputable certainty of an infallible knowledge through identity.
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II
A few days ago, during the translation class1, I found a passage in The Life Divine, which I thought would interest you this evening. Sri Aurobindo speaks of the movement of Nature and explains how out of Matter which appeared inert there came life, then how out of life mind came and how out of mind there will come the supramental or the spiritual life; and he makes a kind of brief survey indicating the time that it takes. I will read to you the passage and tell you afterwards its relation with our present situation.
"The first obscure material movement of the evolutionary Force is marked by an aeonic graduality ; the movement of life progress proceeds slowly but still with a quicker step, it is concentrated into the figure of millenniums ; mind can still further compress the tardy leisureliness of Time and make long paces of the centuries ; but when the conscious spirit intervenes, a supremely concentrated pace of evolutionary swiftness becomes possible".
(The Life Divine II. XXVI)
I am reading this text to you, because I was asked a question on the action of the Supramental and I answered comparing the manifestation of the Supramental with the manifestation of the mind which according to all the modern scientific discoveries, is supposed to have taken about a million years to evolve from the animal or simian brain to the first human brain. And I said that one must not expect therefore that the thing will be done in a few months or a few years, and that evidently it would take a longer time. Some persons seem to have believed that I had announced there would be no superman before a rnillion years. I want to correct this impression.
1 Till 1958 Mother used to do three times a week, in a
class of (student) disciples, French translation of some texts of Sri Aurobindo (she translated in this way
The Ideal of Human Unity, The Human Cycle, the last six chapters of The Life Divine
and a part of The Synthesis of Yoga) which were subsequently published in this Bulletin.
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Sri Aurobindo tells us that as evolutionary growth rises in the scale of consciousness, the movement becomes more and more swift and when the Spirit or the Supramental intervenes, it can go much quicker. Therefore we can hope that in a few centuries the first supramental race will appear.
But even that is sufficiently disconcerting to some, because they believe this to be in contradiction with what Sri Aurobindo has always promised, namely, that the time has come when the supramental transformation is possible. But one must not confuse supramental transformation with the appearance of a new race.
What Sri Aurobindo promised and which evidently interests us, who are here now, is this that the time has come when a few select beings out of humanity fulfilling the conditions necessary for spiritualisation will be capable of transforming their body by the help of the supramental Force, Consciousness and Light and ceasing to be animal men will become supermen.
This promise Sri Aurobindo made because he knew that the supramental Force was about to manifest upon earth. In fact, it came into him long ago; he knew it and he knew what its effects were.
Now that it has manifested in a cosmic (I mean, general) way, all the greater is now the certitude of the possibility of transformation. There is no more doubt that those who will fulfil or who are fulfilling the conditions are on the way to this transformation.
The conditions, Sri Aurobindo gives in detail in the Synthesis of Yoga and in still more detail in his last articles on "The Supramental Manifestation". There is nothing more to do than to realise it.
What is the method of realisation, now that the Supramental has manifested ?
What I have read to you today seems to be the most essential starting condition; for, it is the most universal.1
1 "It is then by a transformation of life in its very principle, not by an external manipulation of its phenomena, that the integral Yoga proposes to change it from a troubled and ignorant
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Everyone can follow his way according to his own nature; there is always a bent towards one way rather than another. For one who follows the way of action, it is much more difficult to feel that human personality does not exist and that the divine Force alone acts. For him who follows the path of knowledge it is relatively very easy, even it is that which one discovers almost immediately. For him who follows the path of love, it is elementary, as it is by giving himself that he advances. But for one who follows the path of action, it is much more difficult and therefore for him the first step is to do what has been said here, in the passage from the Synthesis of Yoga that we have read, that is to say, to create in himself this complete detachment from the fruit of his action, to act because it is that which has to be done, to do it in the way that seems to be the best, without being anxious about the consequences and to leave the consequences to a Will higher than his own.
You cannot make a general rule which would decide the order of importance of the different paths; it is something exclusively personal. There comes a time when you understand very well, it becomes obvious that there are no two ways that are similar, there cannot be two similar ways, each one follows his own way and that is the truth of his being. Surely, you can, if you look from a
into a luminous and harmonious movement of Nature. There are three conditions which are indispensable for the achievement of this central inner revolution and new formation; none of them is altogether sufficient in itself, but by their united threefold power the uplifting can be done, the conversion made and completely made. For, first, life as it is is a movement of desire and it has built in us as its centre a desire-soul which refers to itself all the motions of life and puts in them its own troubled hue and pain of an ignorant, half-lit, baffled endeavour: for a divine living, desire must be abolished and replaced by a purer and firmer motive-power, the tormented soul of desire dissolved and in its stead there must emerge the calm, strength, happiness of a true vital being now concealed within us. Next, life as it is is driven or led partly by the impulse of the fife-force, partly by a mind which is mostly a servant and abettor of the ignorant life-impulse, but in part also its uneasy and not too luminous or competent guide and mentor; for a divine life the mind and the life-impulse must cease to be anything but instruments and the inmost psychic being must take their place as the leader on the path and the indicator of a divine guidance. Last, life as it is is turned towards the satisfaction of the separative ego; ego must disappear and be replaced bf the true spiritual person, the central being, and fife itself must be turned towards the fulfilment of the Divine in terrestrial existence; it must feel a Divine Force awaking within it and become an obedient instrumentation of its purpose." {The Synthesis of Yoga 1.2.)
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sufficient height, see a difference in the speed of the advance; but that does not always tally with external signs; and it can be said in a somewhat lighter vein that it is not always the wisest that runs fastest.
(silence)
It is no more possible for me to make general rules... Indeed the Grace is upon all. But what should be done to let it act ? It is very difficult to say.
If you can perceive it, feel it, experience so to say its action, be conscious of its presence and its movement, then you have the delight of the movement, of progress and realisation; but this does not mean that if you do not feel the delight, the action of the Grace does not exist and that the realisation is not there.
In the final account, all ways of being of the Divine, all forms of being of the manifestation are necessary to express the Divine. It is this manifestation in its wholeness, in is totality that is progressing towards a growing, infinite, eternal perfection. It is not each element separately, individually, it is the total whole, as a collective and integral expression of the divine Truth. All that is on the march, constantly, eternally towards a greater perfection. The universe of tomorrow will necessarily be more divine, if one can say so, than the universe of yesterday and the universe of yesterday was more divine than that which preceded it. And so one can say that it is the Divine, in his self-expression, that is progressing perpetually towards a manifestation of himself which is more and more perfect, more and more divine.
Therefore each element has to manifest as perfectly as possible its own law, what it should be in the whole, in order to do to the maximum what it has to do. It is therefore the conscious, illumined, one might almost say disinterested discovery of the truth of each being that is for him the first, the most important necessity.
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III
Is delight the highest state ? If so, then can it be said that if one loses delight, one goes down in consciousness ?
Sri Aurobindo has said that the universe is built upon the delight of being and delight being the foundation of the universe is necessarily its goal also. Therefore this would naturally mean that delight is the highest state.
But is there any need to tell you that the delight spoken of here is not such as the ordinary human consciousness understands it. In fact, this original delight is beyond the states that are generally considered as the highest from the yogic point of view, as for example, the state of perfect serenity, perfect equality, absolute detachment, identity with the Infinite and the Eternal Divine which lifts you necessarily above all contingencies. Parallel to this state one can reach another which is that of perfect, integral, universal love, which is the very essence of compassion and the most perfect expression of the Grace which wipes away the consequences of all error and all ignorance. These two states have always been considered as the summit of consciousness; they are what one may call the frontier, the extieme limit of what individual consciousness may attain when it is united with the Divine.
Still there is something beyond; it is a state of perfect delight which is not static, the delight in a progressive manifestation, in a perfect unrolling of the supreme Consciousness.
The first of these two states of which I have spoken leads almost always to a withdrawal from action, to an almost static condition; quite easily it would lead to Nirvana (indeed, this is the way always prescribed for those who seek Nirvana). But the state of delight that I speak of, being essentially divine, for it is free, totally free from all possibility of oppositions and contraries, is not aloof from action; on the contrary, it leads to an integral action, but perfect in its essence and completely free from all ignorance and all slavery to ignorance.
You may, on the way, when you have made some progress and
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when there is a greater understanding, a more integral opening, a more intimate union with the divine Consciousness, experience this delight, feel that it is something which gives to life its true meaning. But so long as you are in the human consciousness, this delight gets easily deformed and changes into something which does not resemble it at all. Consequently you can hardly say that if you lose the delight, you go down in your consciousness; because the delight of which I speak is something that one cannot lose. If you have reached beyond the two states of which I spoke just now, that is to say, the state of perfect detachment and close union and the state of perfect love and compassion, if you have gone beyond these two states and have found the divine delight, it is practically impossible to come down from there. But in practical life, that is to say, on the way of yoga, if you are touched even in a fugitive way by the divine delight and if it leaves you afterwards, you have necessarily the obvious impression that you have come down from the summit into a somewhat obscure valley.
But the delight without detachment would be a dangerous gift which might be falsified very easily. To seek delight before realising detachment seems not to be a very wise thing. You must first rise above all the possible contraries, above indeed pain and pleasure, suffering and happiness, enthusiasm and depression. If you are above all that, then you can aspire safely for the delight.
But so long as this detachment is not realised, you can easily confuse delight with an exalted state of ordinary human happiness, and it would not be the true thing, not even a counterfeit of the same, because the nature of these two experiences is so different, almost opposite, that you cannot pass from one to the other. So if you want to be safe on the way then to seek for the peace, the perfect calm, the perfect equality, the widening of the consciousness, a vaster understanding, freedom from all desire, freedom from all preference, freedom from all attachment seem certainly to be the indispensable preliminary condition. That is the guarantee of an inner and outer poise; and upon that poise, upon that foundation which must be very solid, you can build all that you want. But first the foundation, the unshakable foundation must be there.
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(silence)
Now someone has asked me what I meant when I said, "one must be calm".
Evidendy when I tell someone, "Be calm", I mean many things, different according to cases. But the first indispensable calmness is mental calmness, because generally it is this that is lacking the most. When I tell anyone, "Be quiet", I mean, "Try not to have an agitated, excited, trepidating mind; try to quiet your brain and stop circling around in all your mental imaginations, observations and constructions."
One can rightly add another question : "You tell me, 'Be calm', but what must I do in order to be calm ?" The answer is almost always the same : One must first of all feel the necessity and will for it, and then aspire and then try !
For trying, there are innumerable ways which have been prescribed and attempted by many. These means are generally long, arduous, difficult; many get discouraged before reaching the end, because the more they try the more their thoughts begin whirling and agitating in their brain.
For each one the means is different, but—first of all, you must feel the need—for some reason or other, either because you are tired or because you are bored, or because you truly want to rise beyond the state you live in—you must understand, feel the necessity of this calmness, this peace in the mind; and then afterwards you may successively try all the means, known or new to arrive at the result.
Now you come to perceive very soon that there is another calmness necessary and even very urgent, it is vital calmness, that is to say, absence of desire. Only when the vital is not sufficiently well developed, as soon as it is told to be calm it goes to sleep or goes on strike; it says, "No, I will not move. If you do not give me the food I need,—excitement, enthusiasm, desire, even passion,— I prefer not to budge, I will do nothing". .Then the problem becomes a little more delicate and perhaps a little more difficult; because to fall from excitement into inertia is certainly very far
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from being a progress ! Calmness should not be confused with inertia or somnolent passivity.
Calmness is a very positive state; there is a positive peace which is not the opposite of conflict—an active peace, contageous, powerful which dominates and quietens, which puts things in order and organises them. It is of this that I speak when I say "Be busy yourself with nothing", far from that---- True calmness is a great force, a great power. In fact, one can say, if the problem is seen from the other side, that all who are truly strong, powerful are always very calm. It is only the weak who are agitated; as soon as you become truly strong you are peaceful, calm and quiet and you have the power of endurance to face the adverse waves that fall upon you from outside in the hope of upsetting you. This true calmness is always the sign of force. Calmness belongs to the strong.
It is true even physically. I do not know if you have observed animals like the lion, the tiger, the elephant; but the fact is that when they are not in action they are so perfectly calm ! A lion sitting and looking at you seems always to say, "How restless you are !" He looks at you with such a peaceful air of wisdom ! And all his power, energy and material force are there collected, assembled, concentrated and without the shadow of agitation, ready for action when the order is given.
I have seen people, many, who cannot keep quiet for half an hour seated without fidgetting. They must move a leg, or move a foot or an arm or their head. All the time they must be restless, because they have not the power or the force to remain quiet. This capacity to remain still when you want, to gather all your energy and spend it as you like, wholly as you like or to dose it as you like in action, with a perfect calm, even in action—that is always the sign of force: it can be physical force, it can be vital force, it can be mental force. But if you are in the least agitated, you may be sure that there is somewhere a weakness; and if your agitation is integral, the weakness also is integral.
Therefore, if I tell someone, "be calm", I may mean very
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different things, that depends upon the person; but evidendy, most often it is, "Keep your mind quiet, do not be restless in your head all the time, do not stir up your ideas as with a shovel, be quiet !"
For most people, an experience exists for them only when they can explain it. The experience in itself (the contact with some force, a widening of the consciousness, a communion with an aspect of the Divine—any experience whatsoever—an opening of the being, the breaking of an obstacle, crossing a stage, opening new doors)—all these experiences, unless they can explain to themselves with words and materialise in exact thoughts, would seem not to exist at all ! Precisely it is this need for expression, this need for translation that is the cause why the major part of the experience loses its power of action on the individual consciousness. How is it that you have a decisive, definitive experience, for example, you have opened the door of your psychic being, you have had communion with it and you know what that means and still that does not remain ? It is because the experience for you has not a sufficiently tangible power unless you can express it to yourself. For you the experience begins only when you can describe it. Well, when you are able to describe it, the greater part of its intensity, its capacity of action for the inner and outer transformation has already evaporated. It is here that one can say that expression, explanation is always a coming down.
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IV
What does Sri Aurobindo mean by "the soul of desire" ?
It is that which makes you live, act, move. The word (in French) comes from another which means, to animate. It is that
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which gives life to the body. If you did not have that, you would be inert matter, something like the stone or the plant that is not quite inert but vegetative.
Some people say that without desires, that is to say, without this desire soul there would never have been any progress.... In ordinary life it is a very useful thing; but when you decide to do yoga, to find the Divine it becomes a little cumbersome.
(silence)
Is that all ?
When we come to you for the distribution1, at times we feel free and glad, but at other times we feel nothing, we become empty. What does that mean ?
When you are glad, it means that you are open and you receive the Force; and when you feel nothing it means that you are closed.
But what is it that makes you open and what is it that makes you shut up ? For each one it is different, it depends upon a number of things. You have not noticed the difference in you, whether it depended on external circumstances or on something within you ? There are all kinds of different reasons why at times you are more livery and full of force and joy.
Generally, in the ordinary life there are people who, because of their very constitution, the way in which they are built, are in some kind of harmony with Nature, as if they breathed the same rhythm; and these people are usually always happy and content; they succeed in everything they do, they avoid a good deal of trouble and catastrophe. It is these that are in accord with the rhythm of life and nature.
1 Formerly, till 1958, Mother made daily a symbolic distribution which permitted all disciples, if they wanted it, to pass before her one by one and receive directly from her the needed spiritual help.
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And then there are days when you are in contact with the divine Consciousness which is at work, with the Grace; in that case everything dyes itself, colours itself with this Presence; and things that generally appear to you dull and without interest become charming, pleasant, attractive, instructive; everything lives, vibrates; all is full of promise and force. Then when you are open to that, you feel stronger, freer, happier, full of energy; everything has a meaning. You understand why things are as they are and you participate in the general movement.
There are other moments when for some reason or other you are obscured, closed, or fallen into a pit; then you feel nothing; all things lose their taste, their interest, their value; you are like a piece of walking wood.
But if you are able to unite consciously with your psychic being, you can always be in the state of receptivity, of inner joy, energy, progress, communion with the divine Presence. And when you are in communion with That, you see it everywhere, in everything; and all things take their true significance.
On what does it depend ? Upon an inner rhythm. Perhaps upon a grace; in any case upon a receptivity towards something which surpasses you.
When a well-developed soul takes a body, has it less difficulty in transforming this desire-soul ?
One cannot say. In principle, yes; but in fact, the more formed is the individuality, the stronger is this false desire-soul. People who have a well-formed individuality, well—coordinated, existing in itself, least depending on the surroundings, have much more difficulty in entering into contact with the divine Presence than others; because they have a separate existence well-coordinated, well organised and generally self-sufficient. It is always much more difficult to convert, if one may say so, a personality that is very much self-existing and very much self-realised than, for example, someone who is full of goodwill but still open to all kinds
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of influences. When an individual is well built and has the sense of his personality and his own existence, he has much more difficulty to conceive that he is a simple instrument of the divine Force than someone who feels himself a little fluid, like that (gesture), not very precise, who possesses no exact limits, no built-up individuality; he understands more easily that by himself he is nothing and that it is some force other than his own which makes him act. So you cannot say that a well-developed soul has less difficulties. It depends upon cases.
I think what you mean to say is this that if you are in relation with your (true) soul, it is relatively easier to get rid of the desire-soul. But that. is a different position. One must first of all have found his psychic being and identified oneself with it; it is only afterwards that you can be busy with your desire soul and convince it of its imbecilities.
(long silence)
In the present state of the sadhana what is the utility of a personal contact with you ? To what extent does this personal contact with you help us?
What do you mean by personal contact? To see me, speak to me, what is it ? Individually, collectively, how ?
Individually
Oh, to have interviews !
That depends on the use one makes of it.
It is very difficult to answer, because it is a purely personal question; it depends upon the moment, upon the condition in which one is and above all, I repeat, it depends upon the use, if you know how to»make the right use of this contact.
(silence)
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If you are open within you, if you are receptive, you receive down to your subtle physical whatever is necessary to make an integral progress. Is it not so ? And according to the order of things, the external contact should come as a crowning, as a help so that the body—the material physical consciousness and the body—might follow the movement of the inner being.
But if you believe that this contact will replace the inner receptivity, you are mistaken, it will not serve much. For example, people who are quite shut up, who receive nothing within, who have no opening to the forces and who imagine that because they pass a half hour or an hour sitting in front of me and chatting, this will help them to get transformed, make a gross blunder.
But if they are open within themselves, if they are in contact with the Force and if they make an effort to get transformed, then at a given moment, a conversation perhaps or a material contact, a presence, may help them to make a more integral progress. .
One can live quite well in close proximity, lead a daily life apparently very near and still not draw anything at all, at least in the active consciousness (perhaps a very slow and deep action occurs, but that I suppose would occur in any case). And if, being by my side, the thought is elsewhere, desires elsewhere, preoccupations elsewhere, it becomes absolutely useless; that leads nowhere.
The important point must establish the inner contact; that truly is the thing that counts. Then in some cases—not perhaps often—it depends on the person—the presence adds something, gives a more concrete, more precise realisation. But if there is nothing within, it is wholly useless.
(silence)
The general error is to believe that one must begin by the outside and arrive inside; it is not like that.'' You should begin by the inside and arrive outside afterwards, when you are ready within.
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When one comes to you, One tries to be at his best possible, that is to say, to have very good thoughts ; but often, on the contrary, all bad impulses, bad thoughts that one had during the day come out all on a sudden.
Perhaps to be got rid of.
If they come, you can make of them an offering and ask to be freed of them. That perhaps is the reason; it is because the Consciousness acts to purify. It serves nothing to hide things, push them into the background and imagine that they are not there, because a veil has been put in front of them. It is much better to see oneself as one is, provided one is ready to abandon this way of being.
If you come allowing all your bad movements to be out on the surface and show themselves, if you offer them up and say, "Well, that is how I am", and if you have at the same time the aspiration to be otherwise, then this second of presence is quite useful; yes in a few seconds you can receive the help necessary to get rid of them. Whereas if you come like a little saint and go away satisfied without having received anything, it is not very useful.
The Consciousness acts automatically; it is like the ray that brings light to the place where there was none. Only what is necessary is to be in a condition when you do want to give up the thing, to get rid of it—not to cling to it and keep it. If you want sincerely to pull it out, efface it, then it is very useful.
(silence)
Indeed on my part I could put a question. Why (I do not know if it is general, but in any case) why do you wish to have good thoughts and be at your best when you come to me, for what reason ?
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To have bad movements in front of you, it is very ugly !
(laughter)
If you want to keep them, yes, it is very ugly ; but if you want to get rid of them ! It is perhaps an opportunity to get rid of them. It is surely an opportunity to get rid of them, because, in front of me, they appear exactiy as they are; whereas away from me they are coloured with all kinds of brilliant and false lights which make you take them for what they are not. When the movement is vile and you see it in my atmosphere, it appears exactly as it is. Then it is the moment to get rid of them.
(silence)
To give the best one has, is quite nice and is much appreciated ; but to give the worst that one has is much more useful; and perhaps it is even an offering that is appreciated more—on condition that you give it to get rid of it, not to take it back again afterwards !
V
What do you mean by the words : "When you have difficulty, widen yourself"?
When I say "difficulty", I speak naturally of the difficulties on the way of Yoga, incomprehensions, limitations, things that are like obstacles preventing you from advancing. When I say "Widen yourself", I mean widen your consciousness.
Difficulties always come from the ege, that is to say, from the personal reaction, more or less egoistic, that you have towards circumstances, events, people that surround you and the details
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of your life. They come also from the feeling of being shut up within a shell as it were whch prevents your consciousness from uniting with the higher and larger realities.
Because you may very well think that you want to be vast, you want to be universal, that all is the expression of the Divine, that you must have no selfishness—you can think many things— but that is not necessarily a cure. Because very often you know what you should do but you do not do it for one reason or another.
But when you have to face an anguish, a suffering, a revolt, a pain or a feeling of powerlessness—does not matter what, all the things that happen to you on the way and that are precisely the obstacles, then if you can physically, that is to say, in your body consciousness, have the impression that you are widening yourself, unfolding yourself (don't you feel that you are something altogether folded, fold upon fold, like a piece of cloth folded, refolded and folded over again), then if you can feel that what immobilises you in your movement is like a piece of cloth folded too tight, too fast or like a packet much too tied up, much too closed and little by little, slowly you straighten the folds and you spread yourself out—you make yourself flat and wide, as large as it is possible for you to be, stretching yourself as far as you can, opening yourself, relaxing in an attitude of complete passivity, with what might be called "the face towards the light", (not to bend double upon one's difficulty, not to fold yourself around it, enclosing it, so to say, within your person, but on the contrary opening yourself out as much as you can, as perfectly as you can, presenting your difficulty to the light, the light that comes from above), if you do that in all the domains—not merely mentally, for sometimes it is difficult and you may not succeed in it—if you imagine that you are doing it physically, almost materially, well, when you have at last unfolded yourself, spread yourself, then you will perceive that three-fourth of the difficulty is gone. After that just a little work of receptivity to the light, and the last quarter will disappear.
This is much more easy than to fight with the difficulty through thought, because if you begin to discuss with yourself,
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you will perceive that there are arguments for and against which are so convincing that it is altogether impossible to extricate yourself without a higher light. In the other case you have not to struggle against the difficulty, you do not try to convince yourself; you simply open yourself out before the light, as if you stretched yourself on the sand in the sun and you allowed the Light to do its work. That is all.
What is the easiest way of forgetting oneself?
Naturally that depends upon each one. Each one has his particular manner of forgetting himself and for him that is the best. But evidently there is a way general enough which can be applied in various forms : it is to be busy with something else. Instead of being busy with yourself you can be busy with somebody else or some others or with some work or with an interesting activity that needs concentration.
Here also it is the same thing : instead of turning back on yourself, contemplating yourself or fondling yourself, if I may say so, as the most precious thing in the world; if you could widen yourself and be busy with something else something which is not exactly yourself, then that would be the simplest and quickest way of forgetting yourself.
There are many others, but this one is within the reach of every one.
That is all, my children.
Now if you have nothing to say on the subject or on any other we may be silent.
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VI
Spontaneity
I suppose most of you come on Friday to hear the reading of Wu Wei1. If you have heard, you may remember that there was a question of being spontaneous and that the true way of living the true life is to live spontaneously.
By spontaneity, Lao Tse means that instead of being moved by a personal will, mental, vital or physical, one should stop all external effort and be guided and moved by what the Chinese call Tao and which they identify with Divinity or God, the supreme Principle, the Origin of all things, the creative Truth, that is to say, all human notions that one can have of the Divine and of the goal to reach.
To be spontaneous means to have no personal will to combine, organise, decide and make an effort to realise.
I will give you two examples to make you understand what true spontaneity is. One, you know it all, surely; it was at the time when Sri Aurobindo began to write the Arya2, in 1914. What he wrote down there was not a mental knowledge or even a mental creation; he silenced his mind and sat down at his typewriter; and from above, from higher regions all that he had to write came down, ready and he had only to move his fingers on the machine for the thing to be recorded. It is in this state of mental silence which allows the knowledge and even the expression to pass through from above that he wrote the whole of Arya with its 64 printed pages every month. Besides, it was for that reason that he could do it, for if it were to be a work of mental construction, the labour involved would have been impossible.
1 Wu Wei : a fiction based on the philosophy of Lao Tse, by Henri Borel (Librairie Fischbacher, 33 rue de Seine, Paris).
1 Let us remind that it is in the Review Arya, in the space of six years, that Sri Aurobindo has published, at a stretch, the major part of his written works : The Life Divine, The Synthesis of Yoga, The Human Cycle, The Ideal of Human Unity, The Essays on the Gita, The Secret of the Veda, The Fature Poetry, The Foundations of Indian Culture, to mention only the principal works,
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That is true mental spontaneity.
And if you go a little farther, you should never think or combine beforehand what you should say or write; you must be able simply to silence the mind, turn it towards the higher consciousness as a receptacle and to express in the mental silence what conies from above. Then that would be true spontaneity. Naturally that is not easy; that requires a preparation.
And if you come down to the domain of action, it is still more difficult; because normally if you want to act with some logic, you must think generally in advance of what you want to do and arrange before doing it. Otherwise you are likely to be driven about by all kinds of desires and impulses which are very far from the inspiration spoken of in Wu Wei; it would simply be the movements of the lower nature pushing you to act.
Therefore, unless you have reached the state of wisdom and detachment to which the Chinese sage of the story has attained, it would be preferable not to be spontaneous in your daily actions, for you would run the risk of being a plaything of your impulses and all disorderly influences.
But once you enter into Yoga and you want to do yoga, it is very necessary not to become the plaything of your own mental formations. If you are to put trust in your experiences, you must take great care not to build within you a notion of the experiences you wish to have, for example, the idea you form of it, the form you expect or hope for. Because the mental formation, as I have told you many times, is a real formation, a real creation, and with your idea you create forms which are somewhat independent of you and which come back to you as if from outside and that gives you the impression that they are experiences. But such experiences that are willed or sought after or foreseen are not the spontaneous experiences and are likely to be illusions, at times, even dangerous illusions.
Therefore when you follow a mental discipline, you must be particularly careful not to imagine or will in advance that you should have certain experiences, for, you may in this way create the illusion of these experiences.
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In the domain of Yoga, this very strict and severs spontaneity is absolutely indispensable. For that naturally one must have no ambition, or desire or excessive imagination or what I call ''spiritual romanticism'' the taste for taste for the miraculous -all that must be very carefully eliminated if you want yo be sure of advancing fearlessly.
Now that I have given you this preliminary explanation, I will read to you what I had written and on which I am asked to comment. They are aphorisms and may require explanations. I had written that, inspired perhaps by what I read of which I spoke just now; but above all as the result of a personal experience.
One must be spontaneous in order to be Divine.
That is what I have just explained to you.
Then comes the question : How to be spontaneous ?
One must be perfectly simple in order to be spontaneous.
And how to be perfectly simple ?
One must be absolutely sincere in order to be perfectly simple.
And now what is it to be absolutely sincere ?
To be absolutely sincere is to have no division, no contradiction in one's being.
If you are made of bits, that are not only different but often altogether contradictory, these bits necessarily create a division in your being. For example, you have a part of you which aspires for the divine life, to know the Divine, to unite with the Divine, to live it integrally, and then another part which has attachments, desires (that are called "needs") and which not only seeks after these things, but is quite upset when it does not have them. There are other contradictions, but this one is the most obvious. There are others, as for example, to want to surrender completely to the Divine, give oneself totally to His Will and Guidance and at the same time when the experience comes that you are nothing, you can do nothing, you do not even exist outside the Divine — that is to say, if He was not there, you could not exist, you Could do nothing, you would be nothing (it is a common experience
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on the way when one tries sincerely to give oneself to the Divine, it comes naturally as a help on the way for the total self-giving) — when there is this experience then another part of the being goes into a terrible revolt and declares : "Excuse me, please, I must exist, I must exist as something, I must do the things by myself, I must have a personality !" Well, there is no doubt that this part undoes what the other had done.
These are not exceptional cases, they happen frequently. I could give you innumerable examples of such contradictions in the being; when one part tries to take a step forward, the other comes in and demolishes everything. Then one has always to do over again and always it is demolished. That is why you must do the work with sincerity; and if you notice in your being a part that pulls you to the other side, you must catch it carefully, train it as you train a child and set it in accord with the central part. That is the work of sincerity and it is indispensable.
Naturally there must be an accord, a harmony among all the wills of the being so that there may be a being which is simple, clear and uniform in its action and tendency. It is only when the whole being is gathered around one single central movement that one can be spontaneous. For, if there is something within you which is turned to the Divine awaiting inspiration and impulsion and if at the same time there is another part of the being which seeks its own ends and works to realise its own desires, then you do not know where you are; and you cannot be sure also of what may happen, for one part may not only undo but completely contradict what the other likes to do.
Finally, if you want to follow the teaching given in Wu Wei, it is recommended that when you have seen clearly what is necessary and what is to be done, you must not put too much violence or ardour into the execution of your programme, because an excess of ardour is harmful to the peace and the tranquillity and the calm necessary for the divine Consciousness to express itself through the individual.
So we come back to this, that balance is indispensable : the way which carefully avoids the extreme opposites is indispensable;
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too great a haste is to be avoided, impatience prevents you from advancing; and at the same time inertia puts heavy weights on your legs.
Thus then in all things it is the Middle Way, as Buddha called it, that is the best.
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VII
How can our thoughts be created by the forces of the universal mind ?
Because the forces of the universal mind enter into our head; we are in a bath of forces and we are not aware of it ! We are not like something shut up in a bag which is independent of everything else—all forces, vibrations and movements enter into us, pass through us. We have therefore some mental force in suspense, at our disposal, that is to say, which can be used by the formative or creative mental power; these are as it were free forces. As soon as some thought coming from outside or some force or some movement enters into our consciousness, we give it a concrete form, a logical appearance and all kinds of precision; but in fact the force belongs to a domain of which we are hardly conscious.
But it is not a special fact happening from time to time, it is something constant. If there is a current of force that passes, with a particular thought-formation, you see it passing from one to another and in each one it forms a kind of centre of light or force in affinity with what is manifested; and the result is what we call "our" thought.
But our thought is something which does not exist so to say. It can be our thought only if instead of being a public place, as we are generally in our natural state, (a public place where all
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forces pass—come, go, enter, depart, push each other and even quarrel), we are a consciousness concentrated, turned upward in an aspiration, and open, beyond the limits of the human mind, to something higher; then, when you are thus open, that brings down something higher through all the successive layers of the being; and this something comes in contact with our conscious brain and there takes a form which is no more the creation of a universal force nor that of a personal mind stronger than ours, but the direct expression and creation of a light that is above us and that can be a light of the first order if our aspiration and opening would allow it. It is the only case when you can say that the thought is our thought. Otherwise, all the rest is a recording of things that pass; we note down, we clothe with words a force which is altogether a universal and collective force, whch enters, comes out, moves, passes from one to another as it likes.
But how is the thought formed in the universal mind ?
Ideas have a higher origin than the mind. There is a region of the mind higher than the ordinary mind, in which there are ideas, ideas that are typal, ideas truly prototypes; these ideas then come down and put on a mental substance. According to the quality of one who receives, they either keep their own virtue, their original nature or they get deformed, they are coloured, transformed in the individual consciousness. But the idea goes much beyond the mind; it is of a much higher origin; and yet whether it is the universal mind or the human mind, the working is the same; the individual movement is only representative of the universal movement. The scale is different, but the phenomenon is the same. Of course, they are no more thoughts as we conceive thoughts; they are universal principles, (but it is the same thing) universal principles on which universes are built.
The universe, after all, is only one person, only one individuality in the midst of the eternal Creation. Each universe is a
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person, which is formed, which lives and which is dissolved and another is formed—it is the same thing. For us the person means the human individual and from the universal point of view, the person is the universal individual; it is a universe in the midst of all universes.
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VIII
Have we the right to put questions if we do not practise what you say ?
One has always the right to do anything. You can put any question you like. Practise ? Well, each one is to choose whether he wishes to practise or not to practise, whether he considers it useful or not, is it not so ? It is a thing that cannot be imposed; it must be done freely. But questions you can always put.
Now I am going to put a question : "Why do not people practise ?" Do you know, you, why people do not practise ? (Mother turns round asking everyone) You ? And You ?...
Perhaps because people are lazy !
Surely, it is one of the chief reasons. And then they cover their laziness with good excuses, of which the first one is to say, "I cannot, I do not know", or, "I have tried and did not succeed", or again "I do not know by which end to begin" ! It does not matter what reason, the very first one that comes up. Well, people do not practise because they do not find it worthwhile to take the trouble—that also is part of laziness, it needs too much effort ! But you cannot live without effort ! if you rejected all effort you would not stand on your legs, nor walk nor even eat.
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I believe that people do not practise, first because it has not got a reality concrete enough to dominate all other things of life, because the effort appears disproportionate to the result. But this kind of effort is only a beginning; once you are inside, it is no longer the same thing.
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You ask me what you must do. It would be better to ask what you must be, because the circumstances and activities in life have not much importance. What is important is our way of reacting towards them.
Human nature is such that when you concentrate on your body you fall ill, when you concentrate on your heart and feelings you become unhappy, when you concentrate on the mind you get bewildered.
There are two ways of getting out of this precarious condition.
One is very arduous; it is a severe and continuous tapasya. It is the way of the strong who are predestined for it.
The other is to find something worth concentrating upon, that diverts your attention from your small personal self. The most effective is a big ideal, but there are innumerable things that enter into this category. Most commonly people choose marriage because it is the most easily available. To love somebody and to love children makes you busy and compels you to forget a little your own self. But it is rarely successful, because love is not a common thing.
Others turn to art, others to science, some choose a social or a political life, etc., etc.
But here also all depends on the sincerity and the endurance with which is followed the chosen path. Because here also there are difficulties and obstacles to surmount.
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So, in life, nothing comes without an effort and a struggle.
And if you are not ready for the effort and the struggle, then it is better to accept the fact that life will be dull and unsatisfactory and submit quietly to this fact.
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Naturally dates are put on these old Talks, but everybody does not pay attention to the dates. How to mix them with the things of today which are on a quite different plane.
There is an experience where you are altogether outside time, that is to say, before, behind, above, below, all that is the same. In this identification, at the moment of the identification there is no more past, present or future. And in truth this is the only way of knowing.
As experiences grow these old Talks give me the impression of someone who walks all around a garden telling what is there within the garden. But there is a time when you enter into the garden and then you know a little better of what is there within. And I have begun entering. I have just begun.
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Reprinted from The Bulletin of S. A. I. C. of Education
April, 1961