AGENDA 1961

September 1961


10. September 1961 – The dryness of languages

I don’t know, but Sri Aurobindo spoke of it at the end of the book on the Vedas, in the chapter on the origin of languages. He seems to be saying that it’s better if one goes back to the origin of the vibrations. Ultimately, as a language grows more intellectual, it hardens and dries up. Perhaps when we had only sounds (the A’s and the O’s; the O’s especially are very flexible, the whole gamut of O’s), perhaps it was more... supple.

I feel this so often now. How to put it.... I always try not to talk – talking bothers me. Yes, it’s a real nuisance. When I see someone, the first thing I do is to avoid talking. Then, when the Vibration comes, it’s good; there is a sort of communication, and if the person is the least bit receptive, what comes is like a... it’s subtler than music; it’s a vibration bringing its own principle of harmony. But people usually get impatient after a while and, wanting something more ‘concrete,’ oblige me to talk. They always insist on it. Then, being in a certain atmosphere, a certain vibration, I immediately feel something going like this (gesture of a fall to another level), and then hardening. Even when I babble (you see, the very effort of trying to be more subtle makes me babble), even my babblings (laughing)... become dry by comparison. There are all sorts of things that are so much fuller – full, packed with an inner richness – and as soon as this is put into words, oh!...

The night before last, around 3 in the morning, I was in a place where there were a lot of people from here (you were there), and I was trying to play some music, precisely in order to SAY something. There were three pianos there, which seemed to be interlocked into each other, so I leaned over sideways to get at one of the three and began playing on it. It was in a large hall with people seated at a distance, but you were just at my left alongside a young lady who was a symbol figure (that is, the vibration or impression I received from her and the relationship I had with her could be applied as well to four or five persons here: it was like relating to an amalgam – something that is very interesting and often happens to me). Anyway, I was leaning over one of the keyboards and trying... trying to work something out, to illustrate how ‘this’ would translate into ‘that.’ Finally I realized that playing half- standing, half-leaning was unnecessary acrobatics, because a grand piano was right there in front, so I sat down before it. Well, the most amusing part of it was that the keys (there were two keyboards) were all blue – like the marbled paper we are making now, all blue, and with every possible marbled effect. Black keys, white keys, high keys, low keys (all of them were the same width, quite wide, like this), all seemed to be coated – but it wasn’t paper – with this blue. Facing the piano I said to myself, ‘Well now, this can’t be played with physical eyes – it has to be played FROM ABOVE.’

While I was playing, I kept telling myself, ‘But this is what I’ve tried to do with music all my life – play on the blue keyboard!’

It was great fun, you know.

Suddenly, along came a SOUND! Not physical, but so complete, so full, as if... as if something exploded, like a.... I don’t know what, much more resounding than an orchestra – something exploding. It was overwhelming!

I was so sorry to have to get up. Because (laughing) I thought, ‘At least I would have heard something good for once!’ It was such an outburst of sound! So extraordinary and so powerful that.... But it was 4 o’clock and time to get up.

16. September 1961 – BE SIMPLE!

You know, we are surrounded by complications, but there is always a place where it all opens out simple and straight – this is a fact of my experience. You go around in circles, seeking, working at it, and you feel stuck; then something in the inner attitude gives way, and all of a sudden it opens out – quite simply.

I have had this experience very often. So I have asked Sri Aurobindo to give it to you.

And he says repeatedly, insistently: Be simple, be simple. Say simply what you feel. Be simple, be simple, insistently. These are only words, but as a matter of fact, when he spoke these words it was like a path of light opening up, and everything became very simple: ‘Just take one step after another, that’s all we have to do!’ – that’s how it seemed to me.

It’s curious, all the complications seemed to be there (Mother touches her temples), very complicated and very difficult to adjust; and then when he said, Be simple – how strange – it was like a light coming from his eyes, as if one had suddenly emerged into a garden of light.

It gave that impression – like a garden bathed in light.

Such great insistence on the simple thing: say simply what you see or what you know – simple, simple.

A simplicity... it was altogether the impression of a joyous garden.

Be simple, be simple.

The complications are there (same gesture), it is hard and complicated – and then a door opens: Be simple.

As if there were too much mental tension: something here at the temples.

(silence)

I have to face a similar difficulty, mind you, although it’s on another level. There is such a tremendous accumulation of people to see, things to do, questions to be resolved – everything. The accumulation is So TIGHTLY packed – so compact! Too compact for the life – for the hours, the time, the forces – of an ordinary body. Yet behind it all, there is a sort of constant ‘active immobility,’ in the sense that the consciousness has the impression of being immobile, of being borne along on the stream of progress and evolution. But this immobility.... If I should try to do what I have to do, you know, everything I have to do, well... it becomes impossible, things clog up, it gets painful. And here his answer is the same: Be simple, be simple.

This morning when I was ‘walking,’ the program of the day and the work ahead of me was so formidable that I felt it to be impossible. And yet simultaneously there was this... immobile inner POSITION in me; as soon as I stop my movement of formation and action, it becomes like a dance of joy: all the cells vibrating (there is a sort of vivacity, and an extraordinary music), all the cells vibrant with the joy of the Presence – the divine Presence. But when I see the outside world entering and attacking, well... this joy doesn’t exactly disappear, but it retreats. And the result is that I always feel like sitting down and keeping still – when I can do that it is marvelous. But of course, all the suggestions from outside come in: suggestions of helplessness and old age, of wear and tear, of diminishing power, all that – and I know positively that it’s false. But calm in the body is indispensable. Well, for me also Sri Aurobindo’s answer is always the same: Be simple, be simple, very simple.

And I know what he means: to deny entry to regimenting, organizing, prescriptive, judgmental thought – he wants none of all that. What he calls being simple is a joyous spontaneity; in action, in expression, in movement, in life – be simple, be simple, be simple. A joyous spontaneity. To rediscover in evolution that condition he calls divine, which was a spontaneous and happy condition. He wants us to rediscover that. And for days now he has been here telling me (and the same goes for your work): Be simple, be simple, be simple. And in his simplicity was a luminous joy.

A joyous spontaneity.

What’s terrible is this organizing mind. It’s terrible! It has us so convinced that we can’t do without it that it’s very difficult to resist. Indeed, it has convinced all humanity. The whole so-called elite of humanity has been convinced that nothing worthwhile can be achieved without this mental organizing power.

But Sri Aurobindo wants us to have the same simple joy as a blossoming rose: Be simple, be simple, be simple. And when I hear it or see it, it’s like a rivulet of golden light, like a fragrant garden – all, all, all is open. Be simple.

23. September 1961 – The Power of Savitri

This analogy between the ancient form of spiritual revelations and Savitri, this blossoming into poetry of his prophetic revelation is... what could be called the most exceptional part of his work. And what is remarkable (I saw him do it) is that he changed Savitri: he went along changing it as his experience changed.

It is clearly the continuing expression of his experience.

There were whole sections he redid completely, which were like descriptions of what I had told him of my own experiences. Nolini said this. When I recently reread Savitri, some phrases were very familiar and I said to Nolini, ‘How odd, these are almost my very words!’ And he replied, ‘But this has been changed, it was written differently; it has BECOME like this.’ As the thing became more and more concrete for him, he changed it. The breath of revelatory prophecy is extraordinary! It has an extraordinary POWER!

What struck me is that he never wanted to write anything else. To write those articles for the Bulletin (Mother had asked Sri Aurobindo to write something for the Ashram ‘Bulletin.’ It was later published as The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth.) was really a heavy sacrifice for him. He had said he would complete certain parts of The Synthesis of Yoga, (The third section, ‘The Yoga of Self-Perfection,’ which was never completed.) but when he was asked to do so, he replied, ‘No, I don’t want to go down to that mental level’! Savitri comes from somewhere else altogether. And I think that Savitri is the most important thing to speak about.

30. Sept 1961 – The two kinds of opposites in Nature & Life

I had a clear vision of the two kinds of opposites in nature (not only in nature but in life) which almost everyone carries within himself: one is the possibility of realization, the other is the path chosen to attain it. There is always (it’s probably inevitable) the stormy path of struggle, and then there is the sunlit path. After much study and observation, I have had a sort of ‘spiritual ambition’ (if it can be called that) to bring to the world a sunlit path, to eliminate the necessity for struggle and suffering: something that aspires to replace this present phase of universal evolution with a less painful phase.

It greatly interested me when I read your letter. I was looking at why you have so many difficulties; twice in your note you wrote that it [writing] is a ‘suffering.’ You have very often written this word, very often spoken it, and it seems dominant in one aspect of your being – while in the other is the glory of a supreme joy, the very stuff of the future realization.