AGENDA 1961

July 1961


04. July 1961 – Mother on Sri Aurobindo and Savitri

Sri Aurobindo told me he had been French in a previous life and that French flowed back to him like a spontaneous memory - he understood all the subtleties of French.

You know, Savitri is an exact description – not literature, not poetry (although the form is very poetical) – an exact description, step by step, paragraph by paragraph, page by page; as I read, I relived it all. Besides, many of my own experiences that I recounted to Sri Aurobindo seem to have been incorporated into Savitri. He has included many of them – Nolini says so; he was familiar with the first version Sri Aurobindo wrote long ago, and he said that an enormous number of experiences were added when it was taken up again. This explained to me why... suddenly, as I read it, I live the experience – line by line, page by page. The realism of it is astounding.

And the more you read, the more marvelous it becomes.

07. July 1961 – Mother: "On Himself"

‘On Himself’?

Yes – the explanation of his yoga and of what he wants us to realize.

After reading it yesterday evening I said to him, ‘How do you expect it to be done in this!’(Mother laughingly indicates her own body.) ‘No, no, no!’ he replied, ‘That’s not it! What is needed now is to learn how to last. We’ll speak of this again,’ he told me, ‘in two or three hundred years.’ Ah! (laughing) ‘Very well!’ I said. ‘Learn to last,’ he told me.

Well, we’re going to learn how to last.

That’s why I gave you ‘Integral Endurance’ – it is his message.

(silence)

Unless one is ABSOLUTELY indifferent, truly one cannot last. This is quite clear. That is the way it must be (gesture of a becalmed sea). For suddenly you find yourself in a state which feels like it could last forever – nothing matters, it goes on and on and on (Mother stretches out her arms, as if floating on a vast, infinite sea)... like this, forever. I have been in this state very often, and you truly feel that.... But the experience must not be in the head (that can be easily had); it has to be HERE (Mother slaps her knees), here in the body. When the body catches on to this, nothing is either disagreeable or agreeable to it – it takes no pleasure, feels no disgust, no uneasiness, no anything. It’s in a state, ah!... (same gesture of a becalmed sea)

It’s very interesting.

This happens quite often on the balcony, because there I am concentrated on... the descending Light. Then, very often, the body becomes completely still, like this.

That way one can last. Very well. Let’s work.

07. July 1961 – Mother on Aphorisms 63-65 and 68

63 – God is great, says the Mahomedan. Yes, He is so great that He can afford to be weak, whenever that too is necessary.

64 – God often fails in His workings; it is the sign of His illimitable godhead.

65 – Because God is invincibly great, He can afford to be weak; because He is immutably pure, He can indulge with impunity in sin; He knows eternally all delight, therefore He tastes also the delight of pain; He is inalienably wise, therefore He has not debarred Himself from folly.

Can God truly be said to be weak or to fail? Does this actually happen, or is it simply the Lord’s play?

This is precisely how the modern Western attitude has become twisted compared to the ancient attitude, the attitude – it isn’t exactly ancient – of the Gita. It’s extremely difficult for the Western mind to comprehend vividly and concretely that ALL is the Divine. It is so impregnated with the Christian spirit, with the idea of a ‘Creator’ – the creation on one side and God on the other! Upon reflection, one rejects this, but... it has entered into our sensations and feelings, and so – spontaneously, instinctively, almost subconsciously – one credits God with all one considers to be the best, the most beautiful, and especially with what one wishes to attain, to realize. (Each individual, of course, changes the content of his God according to his own consciousness, but it’s always what he considers to be the best.) And just as instinctively, spontaneously and subconsciously, one is shocked by the idea that things one doesn’t like or doesn’t approve of or which don’t seem to be the best, could also be God.

I am putting this purposely into rather childish terms so that it will be clearly understood. But this is the way it is. I am sure of it because I have observed it in myself for a VERY long time, and I had to.... Due to the whole subconscious formation of childhood – environment, education, and so forth – we have to DRUM into this (Mother touches her body) the consciousness of Unity : the absolute, EXCLUSIVE unity of the Divine – exclusive in the sense that nothing exists apart from this Unity, even the things which seem most repulsive.

Sri Aurobindo also had to struggle against this because he too received a Christian education. And these Aphorisms are the result – the flowering – of the necessity to struggle against the subconscious formation which has produced such questions (Mother takes on a scandalized tone): ‘How can God be weak? How can God be foolish? How....’ But there is nothing but God! He alone exists, there is nothing outside of Him. And whatever seems repugnant to us is something He no longer wishes to exist – He is preparing the world so that this no longer manifests, so that the manifestation can pass beyond this state to something else. So of course we violently reject everything in us that is destined to leave the active manifestation. There is a movement of rejection.

Yet it is He. There is nothing other than He! This should be repeated from morning to night, from night to morning, because we forget it every minute.

There is only He, there is nothing other than He. He alone exists, there is no existence without Him. There is only He!

68 – The sense of sin was necessary in order that man might become disgusted with his own imperfections. It was God’s corrective for egoism. But man’s egoism meets God’s device by being very dully alive to its own sins and very keenly alive to the sins of others.

(Mother laughs) Marvelous!

In any case, there it is – asking that kind of question is still taking the attitude of those who make a distinction between what is Divine and what is not Divine, or rather what is God and what is not God. ‘How can He be weak?’ It’s a question I could never ask.

I quite understand. But when one speaks of the Lila, the divine play, it implies that He in some way remains in the background and doesn’t really ‘get into the act,’ as they say – that He’s no really part of the game, but simply watches.

Yes, yes He is! He is totally involved in it. He Himself is the Play.

It must be remembered that there are all these gradations of consciousness: when we speak of God and his Play we are speaking of God in his transcendent state, beyond everything, beyond all the degrees of matter; when we speak of the Play we are speaking of God in his material state. So we say that God transcendent is watching and playing – in Himself, by Himself, with Himself – his material game.

But all language – all language! – is a language of Ignorance. All means of expression, all that is said and all the ways of saying it, are bound to partake of that ignorance. And that’s why it’s so difficult to express something concretely true; to do so would require extremely lengthy explanations, themselves, of course, fully erroneous. Sri Aurobindo’s sentences are sometimes very long for precisely this reason – he is trying to get away from this ignorant language.

Our whole way of thinking is wrong!

All the believers, all the faithful (those from the West in particular) think in terms of ‘something else’ when they speak of God – He cannot be weak, ugly, imperfect, He is something immaculate – but this is wrong thinking. They are dividing, separating. For subconscious thought (I mean thinking without reflecting, instinctively, out of habit, without observing oneself thinking), what is generally considered ‘perfection’ is precisely what is seen or felt or postulated as being virtuous, divine, beautiful, admirable – but it’s not that at all! Perfection means something in which nothing is missing. The divine perfection is a totality. The divine perfection is the Divine in his wholeness, with nothing left out. The divine perfection is the whole of the Divine, with nothing subtracted from it. For the moralists it is the exact opposite: divine perfection is nothing but the virtues they stand for!

From the true standpoint, the divine perfection is the whole (Mother makes a global gesture), and the fact that within this whole nothing can be missing is precisely what makes it perfect. (Mother later clarified this point: ‘It is impossible for anything to be missing because it is impossible for anything not to be part of the whole. Nothing can exist apart from the whole. But I am taking this now to its extreme limit of meaning – not down-to-earth, but to the heights, to the extreme limits of meaning. I will explain: everything is not necessarily contained within a given universe, because one universe is only one mode of manifestation – but all possible universes exist. And so I always come back to the same thing: nothing can exist apart from the whole. If we give the whole the name of “God,” for example, then we say that nothing can exist apart from Him. But words are so earthbound, aren’t they?’ (Mother makes a down-to-earth gesture.))

Consequently, perfection means that each thing is in its place, exactly what it should be, and that relationships among things are also exactly what they should be.

Perfection is one way to approach the Divine; Unity is another. But Perfection is a global approach: all is there and all is as it should be – that is to say, the perfect expression of the Divine (you can’t even say ‘of His Will,’ because that still implies something apart, something emanating from Him!).

It could be put like this (but it brings it down considerably): He is what He is and exactly as He wants to be. The ‘exactly as He wants to be’ takes us down quite a few steps, but it still gives an idea of what I mean by ‘perfection’!

Divine perfection implies infinity and eternity – all is coexistent beyond time and space.

(silence)

While ‘walking’ in my room, a series of invocations or prayers have come to me (I didn’t choose them – they were dictated to me) in which I implore the Lord to manifest his Perfection (and I am quite aware of how foolish this expression is, but it does correspond to an aspiration). When I say ‘manifest,’ I mean to manifest in our physical, material world – I’m asking for the transformation of this world. And the moment I utter one of these invocations, the sense of the particular approach it represents is there; that’s why I am now able to give such a lecture on Perfection – Perfection is one of these approaches. ‘Manifest this,’ I tell Him, ‘Manifest that, manifest Your Perfection....’ (The series is very long and it takes me quite a while to go through it all.) Well, each time I say ‘Manifest Your Perfection,’ I have an awareness of what constitutes Perfection – it is something global.

It’s like the word ‘purity’ – one could lecture endlessly on the difference between divine purity and what people call purity. Divine purity (at the lowest level) is to admit but one influence – the divine Influence (but this is at the lowest level, and already terribly distorted). Divine purity means that only the Divine exists – nothing else. It is perfectly pure – only the Divine exists, nothing other than He.

And so on.

This is the third year [of japa] – so it’s becoming very clear.

***

Speak about your experience.

It’s a new experience each time – it’s never the same.

Yes. I marvel at people who have the same experience several times over, who hold on to their realizations – I have never been able to do so. There was a time when I tried, but I realized it was stupid, so I don’t try anymore. I have never had the same experience twice – never could.

The experience I described the day I said ‘I have something to tell you’ [January 24, 1961] was truly very pleasant and I did try to relive it – but I never could. Whenever I try, whenever something in me insists on recapturing the experience, I always see a Smile and something tells me, ‘No, no! Let go! You’ll see, you’ll see. So I let go. All right, that’s enough-enough for you! And you – what are you doing?

12. July 1961 – Manifest Your Love!

(Regarding the last conversation, where Mother spoke of divine Perfection and of the series of invocations in her japa imploring the Lord to manifest his various aspects.)

...But Perfection is only one side, one special way of approaching the Divine. There are innumerable sides, angles, aspects – innumerable ways to approach the Divine. When I am walking, for example, doing japa, I have the sense of Unity (I have spoken to you of all the things I mention when I am upstairs walking: will, truth, purity, perfection, unity, immortality, eternity, infinity, silence, peace, existence, consciousness – the list goes on). And when one follows a particular tack and does succeed in reaching or approaching or contacting the Divine, one realizes through experience that these many approaches differ only in their most external forms – the contact itself is identical. It’s like looking through a kaleidoscope – you revolve around a center, a globe, and see it under various aspects; but as soon as the contact is established, it’s identical.

The number of approaches is practically infinite. Each one senses the path which accords with his temperament.

This japa, you know, didn’t at all come from here (Mother points to her head). It’s something I received fully formed, and to such an extent that I couldn’t even change the place of a single thing – a will seemed to oppose any change. It’s a long series unfolding according to a law that probably corresponds to what is needed to develop this consciousness and the work it has to do (I suppose – I don’t really know and I haven’t tried to know). But a sort of law makes it impossible to change the position of even a single word, because these are not words – they are fully formed states of consciousness. And the whole series culminates with:

‘Manifest Your Love.’

This is the highest summit of the possibility of manifestation.

15. Jul 1961 – Mother about Sri Aurobindo's work (Transformation)

Before coming downstairs I felt like writing a few words. These words... are the result of everything now being done. They almost expressed a protest. After all, I thought, to be a saint or a sage is not very difficult! (Mother laughs) But the supramental transformation is another affair. Oh!

And it has become acute since.... No, I don’t read these days, because I’ve had a hemorrhage in this eye. There have been too many letters, and it’s difficult for me to decipher handwriting – the result is this hemorrhage. So I have gone on strike. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I won’t read any letters for a week. People can write as much as they please, it’s all the same to me – I’m not reading any more.’ But just before stopping (I stopped reading for only three days), I read a passage where Sri Aurobindo speaks of his own experience and his own work and explains in full what he means by the ‘supramental transformation.’ This passage confirmed and made me understand many experiences I had after that experience of the body’s ascent [January 24, 1961] (the ascent of the body-consciousness, followed by the descent of the supramental force into the body); immediately afterwards, everything (how to put it?)... outwardly, according to ordinary consciousness, I fell ill; but it’s stupid to speak this way – I did not fall ill! All possible difficulties in the body’s subconscient rose up en masse – it had to happen, and it surely happened to Sri Aurobindo, too. How well I understood! How well, indeed. And it’s no joke, you know! I had wondered why these difficulties had hounded him so ferociously – now I understand, because I am being attacked in the same relentless fashion.

Actually, it springs from everything in material consciousness that can still be touched by the adverse forces; that is, not exactly the body-consciousness itself but, one could say, material substance as it has been organized by the mind – the initial mentalization of matter, the first stirrings of mind in life making the passage from animal to human. (The same complications would probably exist in animals, but as there is no question of trying to supramentalize animals, all goes well for them.) Well, something in there protests, and naturally this protest creates disorder. These past few days I have been seeing.... No one has ever followed this path! Sri Aurobindo was the first, and he left without telling us what he was doing. I am literally hewing a path through a virgin forest – it’s worse than a virgin forest.

For the past two days there has been the feeling of not knowing anything – NOTHING at all. I have had this feeling for a very long time, but now it has become extremely acute, as it always does at times of crisis, at times when things are on the verge of changing – or of getting clarified, or of exploding, or.... From the purely material standpoint – chemically, biologically, medically, therapeutically speaking – I don’t believe many people do know (there may be some). But it doesn’t seem very clear to me – in any case, I don’t know. Yogically (I don’t mean spiritually: that was the first stage of my sadhana), it’s very easy to be a saint! Oh, even to be a sage is very easy. I feel I was born with it – it’s spontaneous and natural for me, and so simple! You know all that has to be done, and doing it is as easy as knowing it. It’s nothing. But this transformation of Matter...! What has to be done? How is it to be done? What is the path?

Is there a path? Is there a procedure? Probably not.

(silence)

To be in a condition in which all is the Supreme, all is wonderful, all is marvelous, all is marvelous love, all is... all is profound Joy – an unchanging, immutable, ever-present condition. To live in That, and then to have this bodily substance contradict it through every possible stupidity – losing sight, losing strength, pains here, pains there, disorders, weaknesses, incapacities of every type. And at the SAME TIME, the response within this body, no matter what happens to it, is, ‘O Lord, Your Grace is infinite.’ The contradiction is VERY disconcerting.

From experience, I know perfectly well that when one is satisfied with being a saint or a sage and constantly maintains the right attitude, all goes well – the body doesn’t get sick, and even if there are attacks it recovers very easily; all goes very well... AS LONG AS THERE IS NOT THIS WILL TO TRANSFORM. All the difficulties arise in protest against the will to transform; while if one says, ‘Very well, it’s all right, let things be as they are, I don’t care, I am perfectly happy, in a blissful state,’ then the body begins to feel content!

That’s the problem: something totally new is being introduced into Matter, and the body is protesting.

After my ‘interview’ with Nature, when she told me that she would collaborate, I thought this difficulty would cease; many things have improved considerably (ONE part of Nature is collaborating), but not this. Plainly and clearly, it comes from the subconscient and the inconscient (wherever there is consciousness, all is well); it’s rising up all the time, all the time, and with – oh, disgusting persistence!

And then of course it’s accompanied by all the usual suggestions (but that’s nothing, it comes from a domain which is easily controlled). Suggestions of this type: ‘Well, but Sri Aurobindo himself didn’t do it!’ (I know why he didn’t. but people in general don’t know.) And every adverse vibration naturally takes advantage of this: ‘How do you expect to succeed where he didn’t!’ But... my answer is always the same: ‘When the Lord says it’s all over with, I will know it’s all over with; that will be the end of it, and so what!’ This stops them short.

But it doesn’t keep them from starting up again! They did so particularly after I read the passage where Sri Aurobindo affirms, ‘THIS time I have come for THAT – and I shall do it.’ The day when I read this I turned towards him, not actually putting the question to him but simply turning towards him, and he told me, ‘Read the book through to the end.’ And I know, I know it’s true – when I have read the book through to the end I will understand what he has done and I will even have the power to reply to all these suggestions. But meanwhile, everything that wants to keep me from doing it, all this obscure and subconscious ill will, tries its best to keep me from reading, including giving me this eye hemorrhage.

Well, since I believe – rightly or wrongly, I don’t know – that the doctor has more experience than I, that from the therapeutic and biological standpoint he knows a bit more, I showed him the eye and asked, ‘Can I read?’ ‘Better not read until it’s finished,’ he replied, and told me to wash my eyes with glucose. (It’s a useful piece of information for those with tired eyes: mix the glucose – liquid glucose, the kind that comes in ampoules for injection – with something like the ‘blue water’ we make here, half and half. Open the ample, put a third of it in the eye-cup, then add the ‘blue water.’) I have already tried it once and found that it gives a great deal of strength to the eyes. Tomorrow I’m going to start doing it regularly. There you are.

He decided he had to go.

We tried, oh – myself in particular! I concentrated all my power to prevent him from going, and it made him suffer greatly, because... he WANTED to go, he had decided – ‘he’ – the Supreme Lord had decided that he would go.

Yes, but why exactly was there this halt? He had come for that.

But nothing has stopped! That’s precisely the point – he refuses to acknowledge that anything has stopped. Nothing has stopped. He came for that, and he arranged things to... to give a maximum number of chances (‘chance’ is one way of putting it), of possibilities – to put all the winning cards on our side.

(long silence)

Obviously, were I to leave now I can say there would be a halt, because I don’t see anyone at the moment who could continue. But there’s a good chance that.... We will see....

Yes, we will see.

Everything depends upon the balance (not the equilibrium, the proportion) between the amount of resistance in physical substance, and the Power.

But are these merely material resistances or are they rather hostile forces?

No; outside Matter, the hostile forces don’t have even a BIT of power: NONE.

Their power is in Matter?

In Matter; practically inconscient Matter.

They are in inconscient Matter?

More accurately, they represent the unconsciousness of Matter. Hostile – we say ‘hostile,’ but of course this is just a manner of speaking.

You see... (Mother is about to say something, then decides not to). Now is not the time to speak of these things.

We will see.

(silence)

For example, as I was saying at the beginning, the body’s formation has a very minimal, a quite subordinate importance for a saint or a sage. But for this supramental work, the way the body is formed has an almost crucial importance, and not at all in relation to spiritual elements nor even to mental power: these aspects have no importance AT ALL. The capacity to endure, to last is the important thing.

Well, in that respect, it is absolutely undeniable that my body has an infinitely greater capacity than Sri Aurobindo’s had.

That was the basic problem – because the identification of the two [Sri Aurobindo and Mother] was almost child’s play, it was nothing: for me to merge into him or him to merge into me was no problem, it wasn’t difficult. We had some conversations on precisely this subject, because we saw that... (there were many other things, too, but this isn’t the time to speak of them) the prevailing conditions were such that I told him I would leave this body and melt into him with no regret or difficulty; I told him this in words, not just in thought. And he also replied to me in words: Your body is indispensable for the Work. Without your body the Work cannot be done. After that, I said no more. It was no longer my concern, and that was the end of it.

This was said in... 1949, just a little more than a year before he left.

And that’s really how it is.

(silence)

But now I am set face-to-face with the fact... the immensity, or the... something.... This work is so formidable!

In the final analysis, everything obviously depends upon the Supreme’s Will because, if one looks deeply enough into the question, even physical laws and resistances are nothing for Him. But this kind of direct intervention takes place only at the extreme limit; if His Will is to be expressed in opposition, as it were, to the whole set of laws governing the Manifestation – well, that only comes... at the very last second. Sri Aurobindo has expressed this so well in Savitri, so well! At least three times in the book he has expressed this Will that abolishes all established laws, all of them, and all the consequences of these laws, the whole formidable colossus of the Manifestation, so that in the face of it all, That can express itself – and this takes place at the very last ‘second,’ so to speak, at the extreme limit of possibility.

I must say that there was a time when, as Sri Aurobindo had entrusted his work to me, there was a kind of tension to do it (it can’t be called an anxiety); a tension in the will. This too has now ended (Mother stretches her arms into the Infinite). It’s finished. But there MAY still be something tense lurking somewhere in the subconscient or the inconscient – I don’t know, it’s possible. Why? I don’t know. I mean I have never been told, at any time, neither through Sri Aurobindo nor directly, whether or not I would go right to the end. I have never been told the contrary, either. I have been told nothing at all. And if at times I turn towards That – not to question, but simply to know – the answer is always the same: ‘Carry on, it’s not your problem; don’t worry about it.’ So now I have learned not to worry about it; I am consciously not worried about it.

(silence)

Oh, it’s measured out with such wisdom! I mean the... awareness – not exactly consciousness, but a state between consciousness and perception – the awareness of the stupendous difficulty of the ‘thing’ is given to me drop by drop... so that it won’t be crushing.

But there has evidently been some rather considerable progress, because lately the enormity of the thing has been shown to me far more... concretely, oh!... I tell you, it has reached the point where all spiritual life, all these peoples and races who have been trying since the beginning of the earth, who have made so many efforts to realize something – it all seems like nothing, like child’s play. It’s nothing: you smile and then... you are joyous. It’s nothing at all, nothing at all!...

To put things in ordinary terms, mon petit, this work is without glory! You get no results, no experiences filling you with ecstasy or joy or wonder – none of that. It is... hideous, a hideous labor.

If there weren’t this clear vision and constant aspiration within – oh, it’s so dreary and exasperating... so dull, so gray... ugh!

Some months ago, when this body had once again become a battlefield and was confronting all the obstacles, when it was suspended, asking itself whether... it wasn’t wondering intellectually, but asking for a kind of perception, wanting to touch something: it wondered which direction it was taking, which way things were going to tilt. And suddenly, in all the cells, there was this feeling (and I know where it came from): ‘If we are dissolved out of this amalgam, if this assemblage is dissolved and can no longer go on, then we shall all go straight, straight as an arrow’ – and it was like a marvelous flame – ‘straight to rejoin Sri Aurobindo in his supramental world, which is right here at our door.’ And there was such joy! Such enthusiasm, such joy flooded all the cells! They didn’t care at all whether or not they would be dissociated.... ‘Oh,’ they felt, ‘so what!’

This was truly a decisive stage in the work of illuminating the body.

All the cells felt far more powerful than that stupid force trying to dissolve them; what is called ‘death, left them entirely indifferent: ‘What do we care? We shall go THERE and consciously participate in Sri Aurobindo’s work, in the transformation of the world, one way or the other – here, there, like this, like that – what does it matter!’

This came more than a year ago, I think. It has never left. Never. All anxiety and all conscious tension have gone.

Only – there is an ‘only’ in all this – if there were a more liberal proportion between the ‘refreshing’ (if I may say so) freedom of solitude and the necessity for collective work, there would probably be fewer difficulties.... Towards the end of the first year after I retired upstairs (perhaps even before, but anyway, some time after I began doing japa while walking), I recall having such sessions up there!... Had there been a personal goal, this goal was clearly attained; it is indescribable, absolutely beyond all imaginable or expressible splendor.

And that was when I received the Command from the Supreme, who was right here, this close (Mother presses her face). He told me, ‘This is what is promised. Now the Work must be done.’

And not individual but collective work was meant. So naturally, because of the way it came, it was joyously accepted and immediately implemented.

But when I remember that experience and consider what I have now....

(silence)

Well, what Sri Aurobindo did by leaving his body is somewhat equivalent, although far more total and complete and absolute – because he had that experience, he had that, he had it; I saw him, I saw him supramental on his bed, sitting on his bed.

(silence)

He has written: I am not doing it individually, for myself, but for the whole earth. And it was exactly the same thing for me – but oh, that experience! Nothing counted for me anymore: people, the earth – even the earth itself had absolutely no importance.

But you know, this present state gives me the feeling that actually we know nothing at all, at all, at all – nothing at all. Everything else, everything leading to the spiritual life, to liberation and so forth – well, yes, it’s all very well, all very well. But compared to what one must know to do this work....

Perhaps it’s better not to know.

Because evidently I can’t say that my experiences are the result of a mental aspiration or will or knowledge – I don’t know, I don’t know at all. I don’t know how it should be, nor what it should be, nor anything at all. I don’t know what should be done, I don’t know what should not be done – nothing. It’s truly a blind march (gesture of groping along), in a desert riddled with all possible traps and difficulties and obstacles – all this heaped together. Eyes blindfolded, knowing nothing (same gesture of groping blindly), one plods on.

The only thing to do is to be like this (Mother turns her hands towards the Heights in a gesture of abandonment). Provided you don’t fall asleep! You mustn’t enter into a beatific state where you.... No, we must keep moving on.

I don’t know what to do. It’s not easy.

18. July 1961 – Mother on Aphorism 66 & the New World

66 – Sin is that which was once in its place, persisting now it is out of place; there is no other sinfulness.

I don’t feel any inspiration.

Exactly what came to me – I receive all the questions people ask. The question arises immediately: if one kills out of cruelty, for instance, or inflicts pain out of cruelty, did that ever have a place?... For even though deformed in appearance, it is nevertheless (we always come back to the same thing) an expression of the Divine.

What lies behind, tell me?

Sri Aurobindo always said that cruelty was one of the things most repugnant to him, but he explained it as the deformation of an intensity. We could almost call it the deformation of an intensity of love – something not satisfied with half-measures, something driven to extremes (which is legitimate) – it’s the deformation of the need for extremely strong sensations.

I have always known that cruelty, like sadism, is the need to cut through a thick layer of totally insensitive tamas by means of extremely violent sensation – an extreme is needed if anything is to be felt through that tamas. I was always told, for example (in Japan it was strongly emphasized to me), that the people of the Far East are very tamasic physically. The Chinese in particular are said to be the remnants of a race that inhabited the moon before it froze over and forced them to seek refuge on earth (this is supposed to account for their round faces and the shape of their eyes!).... Anyway (laughing), it’s a story people tell! But they’re extremely tamasic; their physical sensibility is almost nil – appalling things are required to make them feel anything! And since they naturally presume that what applies to them applies to everyone, they are capable of appalling cruelty. Not all of them, of course! But this is their reputation. Have you read Mirbeau’s book? (I believe that’s his name.) I read it sixty years ago – something on Chinese torture.

When I read that book (it was very well written), I understood the problem, and my understanding was confirmed when I went to Japan. Many Japanese also have a blunted sensibility (‘blunted’ in the sense that to feel anything they need extremely violent stimuli). Perhaps an explanation could be found along these lines.

But behind it all, the original problem remains unresolved:’ Why has it become like this? Why this deformation? Why has it all been deformed?...’ There are some very beautiful things behind, very intense, infinitely more powerful than we ourselves can even bear, marvelous things. But why has it all become... so dreadful here? That’s what comes up immediately – it’s why I told you I had no inspiration.

It is....

The notion of sin is something I don’t understand, that I have never understood. To me, original sin seemed to be one of the most monstrous ideas people have ever had – sin and I just don’t go together!

So, of course, I fully agree with Sri Aurobindo when he says there’s no such thing as sin – that’s understood, but....

Certain things can be called ‘sin,’ if you like, such as cruelty. Well, the only explanation I see for such things is the deformation of the need or taste for extremely strong sensations. I have noticed that cruel people experience an Ananda in their cruelty – they find an intense joy in it. It is thereby legitimized. Only it’s in such a deformed state that it’s repugnant.

The idea that things are not in their place, mon petit, is something I understood even as a youngster, and it was eventually explained to me by Théon.

In his cosmogony, Théon accounted for the successive pralayas (Pralaya: The destruction of a universe at the end of a cycle. According to Hindu cosmology, the formation of each universe begins with an ‘age of truth’ (satya-yuga) which slowly degenerates, like the stars, till there is no truth left at all; it becomes a ‘dark age’(kali-yuga) like ours, and ends with a cataclysm. Then a new universe is reborn out of this cataclysm and the cycle begins again. There is a correspondence here with a modern cosmological theory according to which a phase of contraction, of galaxies collapsing upon themselves, follows a phase of expansion and precedes a new explosion (‘Big Bang’) of the ‘primal egg’ – and so on, in a recurring and apparently endless and aimless series of cosmic births which, like our own human births, develop, attain some sort of ‘summit,’ then collapse, always to begin again. According to Théon, our present universe is the seventh – but where is the ‘beginning’?) of the different universes by saying that each universe was an aspect of the Supreme manifesting itself: each universe was built upon one aspect of the Supreme, and all, one after the other, were withdrawn into the Supreme. He enumerated all the successively manifested aspects, and what an extraordinarily logical sequence it was! I have kept it some place, but I no longer know where. Nor do I remember exactly what number this universe has in the sequence, but this time it was supposed to be the universe which would not be withdrawn, which would, so to speak, follow an indefinite progression of Becoming. And this universe is to manifest Equilibrium, not a static but a progressive equilibrium. Equilibrium, as he explains it, is each thing exactly in its place: each vibration, each movement, each... and so on down the line – each form, each activity, each element exactly in its place in relation to the whole.

This is quite interesting to me because Sri Aurobindo says the same thing: that nothing is bad, simply things are not in their place – their place not only in space but in time, their place in the universe, beginning with the planets and stars, each thing exactly in its place. Then when each thing, from the most colossal to the most microscopic, is exactly in place, the whole Will PROGRESSIVELY express the Supreme, without having to be withdrawn and emanated anew. On this also, Sri Aurobindo based the fact that this present creation, this present universe, will be able to manifest the perfection of a divine world – what Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind.

Equilibrium is the essential law of this creation – it is what permits perfection to be realized in the manifestation.

One thing must inevitably cease: the Deformation, the veil of falsehood covering Truth, because all we see existing here is due to that. If the veil is removed, things will necessarily be completely different, completely: they will be as we experience them when we emerge individually from that deformed consciousness. When one comes out of that consciousness and enters the Truth-Consciousness, one is incredulous that such things as suffering, misery and death can exist; it’s amazing, in the sense that (when one is truly on the other side)... one doesn’t understand how all this can be happening. And, although this state of consciousness is habitually associated with the experience of the unreality of the world as we know it, Sri Aurobindo tells us that this perception of the world’s unreality need not exist for the supramental consciousness: only Falsehood is unreal , not the world. And this is most interesting – the world has its own reality, independent of Falsehood.

I suppose this will be the first effect of the Supermind – perhaps even its first effect in the individual, because it will begin in individuals first.

This state of consciousness probably has to become constant, but that would pose a problem: how could one then keep in contact with the world as it is in its deformation? Because I have noticed that when this state is very strong in me, very strong, so strong that it can withstand everything bombarding it from outside, people don’t understand a thing I say, NOTHING! Therefore, it would seem to cut off a useful contact.

What would it be like, for instance, to have a small supramental creation as a nucleus of action and influence radiating upon earth (to limit it to the earth)? Is it possible? It’s easy to conceive of a superhuman nucleus – a creation of supermen, that is, of men who by virtue of evolution and transformation (in the true sense of the word) have succeeded in manifesting the supramental forces; yet since their origin is human, there is inevitably a contact; even if everything is transformed, even if their organs are transformed into centers of force, a sort of human coloration still remains. These are the beings who, according to tradition, will discover the secret of direct, supramental creation, bypassing the process of ordinary Nature. Then through them the true supramental beings will be born, who will necessarily have to live in a supramental world. But how would contact be made between these beings and the ordinary world? How to conceive of a transformation of nature sufficient to enable this supramental creation to take place on earth? I don’t know.

Of course, we know that such a thing will require a considerable amount of time to be done, and it will probably go by stages, by degrees, with faculties appearing that at the moment we can’t know or imagine, and which will change the conditions of the earth – this is looking ahead a few thousand years.

There is still this problem: is it possible to make use of the notion of space – I mean space on the planet earth? Is it possible to find a place where the embryo or seed of the future supramental world might be created?

What I myself have seen... was a plan that came complete in all details, but that doesn’t at all conform in spirit and consciousness with what is possible on earth now (although, in its most material manifestation, the plan was based on existing terrestrial conditions). It was the idea of an ideal city, the nucleus of a small ideal country, having only superficial and extremely limited contacts with the old world. One would already have to conceive (it’s possible) of a Power sufficient to be at once a protection against aggression or bad will (this would not be the most difficult protection to provide) and a protection (which can just barely be imagined) against infiltration and admixture.... From the social or organizational standpoint, these problems are not difficult, nor from the standpoint of inner life; the problem is the relationship with what is not supramentalized – preventing infiltration or admixture, keeping the nucleus from falling back into an inferior creation during the transitional period.

(silence)

All who have considered the problem have always imagined some place like a Himalayan gorge, unknown to the rest of humanity, but this is no solution. No solution at all.

No, the only solution is occult power. But that.... Before anything at all can be done, it already demands a certain number of individuals who have reached a great perfection of realization. Granting this, a place is conceivable (set apart from the outside world – no actual contacts) where each thing is exactly in its place, setting an example. Each thing exactly in its place, each person exactly in his place, each movement in its place, and all in its place in an ascending, progressive movement without relapse (that is, the very opposite of what goes on in ordinary life). Naturally, this also means a sort of perfection, it means a sort of unity; it means that the different aspects of the Supreme can be manifested; and, necessarily, an exceptional beauty, a total harmony; and a power sufficient to keep the forces of Nature obedient: even if this place were encircled by destructive forces, for example, these forces would be powerless to act – the protection would be sufficient.

It would all require the utmost perfection in the individuals organizing such a thing.

It must be similar to what happened when the first men appeared.

(long silence)

Have we ever really known how the first humans were formed, the first mental realization? Were they isolated individuals, or were they in groups – did the phenomenon take place in a collective milieu or in isolation? I don’t know. It may be analogous to the case of the coming supramental creation.

It isn’t difficult to conceive of an individual in the solitude of the Himalayas or in a virgin forest beginning to create around himself his miniature supramental world – this is easy to imagine. But the same thing would be necessary: he would need to have attained such perfection that his power would act automatically to prevent any outside intrusion.

Because such beings would automatically become the target of outside attacks?

They would need to be automatically protected; that is, any foreign or opposing element should be kept from approaching.

There are stories like this, you know, about people who lived in an ideal solitude, and it’s not at all impossible to imagine. When one is in contact with this Power, when it is within you, you can see that such things are... child’s play! It even reaches the point where there is the possibility of changing certain things, of influencing vibrations and forms in the surrounding environment by contagion, so that automatically they begin to be supramentalized. All that is possible – but confined to the individual scale. While if we take the example of what is happening here, where the individual remains right in the midst of all this chaos.... That’s the difficulty! Doesn’t this very fact make a certain perfection in realization impossible to attain? But the other case, the individual isolated in the forest, is always the same thing – an example giving no proof that the rest will be able to follow; while what’s happening here should already have a much broader radiating influence. At some point this has to happen – it MUST happen. But the problem still remains: can it happen simultaneously with or even before the supramentalization of the single individual?

(silence)

The realization under community or group conditions would clearly be far more complete, integral, total and probably more perfect than any individual realization, which is always, necessarily – necessarily – extremely limited on the external material level, because it’s only one way of being, one mode of manifestation, one microscopic set of vibrations that is touched.

But for the facility of the work, I believe there’s no comparison!

(silence)

But the problem remains: Buddha and all the rest have FIRST realized, then resumed contact with the world. That makes it very simple. But for the total realization of what I envisage, isn’t it indispensable to remain in the world?...

(Mother is absorbed for a while, gazing into the distance)

I am constantly seeing images! Not images, living things – like answers to questions. A magnificent peacock was taking shape (it’s the symbol of victory here in India) and its tail opened out, and on it a construction appeared, like this construction of an ideal place.... It’s a pity this subtle world can’t be photographed! There ought to be photographic plates sensitive enough to do it. It has been tried. It would be interesting because it moves, it’s like a movie.

In my experience, it is; and it has come to the point where the more concentrated the Force, the more things turn up at the very moment they ought to, people come just when they should and do just what they ought to be doing, the things around me fall into place naturally – and this goes for the LEAST little detail. And simultaneously it brings with it a sense of harmony and rhythm, a joy – a very smiling joy in organization, as if everything were joyously participating in this restructuring. For example, you want to tell someone something and he comes to you; you need someone to do a particular work and he appears; something has to be organized – all the required elements are at hand. All with a kind of miraculous harmony, but nothing miraculous about it! Essentially it’s simply the inner force meeting with a minimum of obstacles, and so things get molded by its action. This happens to me very often, VERY often; and sometimes it goes on for hours.

But it’s rather delicate, like a very, very delicate clockwork, like a precision machine, and the least little thing throws everything out of gear. When someone has a bad reaction, for instance, or a bad thought, or an agitated vibration, or an anxiety – anything of this nature is enough to dissolve all the harmony. For me, it’s translated straight-away into a malaise in my body, a very particular type of malaise; then disorder sets in, and the ordinary routine returns. So again I have to gather up, as it were, the Presence of the Lord and begin to infuse it everywhere. Sometimes it goes quickly, sometimes it takes longer; when the disorganization is a little more radical, it takes a little longer.

This eye [hemorrhage], for instance, resulted from such a disorder, a very dark force that someone allowed to enter, not deliberately, not knowingly, but through weakness and ignorance, always mingled, of course, with desire and ego and all the rest. (Without desire and ego, such things would find no access – but desire and ego are very widespread.) At any rate, that was plainly the cause and I sensed it immediately. Sometimes when it comes, it creeps up like this (Mother brings her hand to her throat), a black shadow strangling you. Yet inwardly nothing is affected at all, to such an extent that if I didn’t pay attention to the purely external reaction, I wouldn’t know anything had happened (it’s the great Play); but externally the indication is immediate: half an hour later I had this eye hemorrhage. I was struggling against a wholly undesirable intrusion, and I knew it – although from an outer point of view, the cause was insignificant. It’s not always the events we consider serious or important that produce the most harmful effects – far from it. Sometimes it’s an altogether INSIGNIFICANT intrusion of falsehood, for some quite insignificant reason – what is commonly labeled a stupidity. This stems from the fact that the adverse forces are always lying in wait, ready to rush in at the least sign of weakness.

The incomprehension generated by doubt (the kind of doubt that always results from an egoistic movement) is very dangerous. Very dangerous. It’s not even necessary to be in a psychic consciousness – even for an enlightened vital consciousness, it produces no effect; but HERE, in this material swarm....

But I don’t see how all this work could be done in the solitude of the Himalayas or the forest. There’s a great risk of entering into that very impersonal, universal consciousness where things are relatively easy – the material consequences are so far below that it doesn’t much matter! One can act directly only in the MIDST of things.

Anyway, at the moment I have no choice – and I am not looking for any. Things are what they are and as they are; and taking them as they are, the work has to be done. The manner of working depends on the way things are.

But it’s so lovely when this Harmony comes. You know, puttering about, arranging papers, setting a drawer in order.... It all sings, it’s lovely, so joyous and luminous... so delightful! And all, all, all.... All material things, all activities, eating, dressing, everything becomes delightful when this harmony is there, delightful. Everything works out smoothly, it’s so harmonious, there’s no friction. You see... you see a joyous, luminous Grace manifesting in all things, ALL things, even those we normally regard as utterly unimportant. But then, if this Harmony withdraws, everything – exactly the SAME conditions, the SAME things, the SAME circumstances – becomes painful, tiresome, drawn out, difficult, laborious, oh!... It’s like this, and like that (Mother tilts her hand from side to side as on a narrow frontier) like this, like that.

It makes you sense so clearly that things in themselves don’t count. What we call ‘things in themselves’ are of no true importance! What really counts is the relationship of consciousness to these things. And there’s a formidable power in this, since in one instance you touch something and drop or mishandle it, while in the other it’s so lovely, it works so smoothly. Even the most difficult movements are made without difficulty. It’s an unheard-of power! We don’t give it importance because it has no grandiose effects, it’s not spectacular. Yes, there are indeed states of grace when one is in the presence of a great difficulty and suddenly has all the power needed to face it – yes, but that’s something else. I am speaking of a power active in ordinary life.

There was an instance of this the other day: someone in a completely detestable mood wrote me a letter; it was impossible, I couldn’t reply – I didn’t know what to say. I simply applied the Force and remained like this (gesture of an offering to the Light). I said, ‘We shall see.’ Several hours later (I knew I was going to see this person) I didn’t even know if I was going to say I had read the letter – or rather if what I was going to say would result from having read it. I had come to that point – nothing. But that very morning a little circumstance occurred that... changed everything! And when I met the person I knew immediately what had to be said, what had to be done, and everything worked out.

That is ONE example. I mention it because it happened the day before yesterday, but this goes on all the time.

I have made it a habit to always do this (gesture of abandonment to the Light). When a problem comes up, I offer it to the Lord and then leave it. And the moment the solution is required, it comes – it comes in facts, in deeds, in movements.

I would be satisfied only if.... Can one ever be satisfied? At any rate, I would begin to be satisfied only if this were a constant and total condition, active in all circumstances and at every moment, day and night. But is it possible with this INUNDATION pouring in from outside? Constantly! While walking this morning I was (how to put it?) something of a witness, watching what was coming in from outside. One thing after another, one thing after another – what a mixture! From all sides, from everyone and everything and everywhere. And not only from here, but from far, far away on the earth and sometimes from far back in time, back into the past – things out of the past coming up, presenting themselves to the new Light to be put in their place. It’s always that: each thing wanting to be put in its place. And this work has to be done constantly.... It’s as if one keeps catching a new illness to be cured.

A fresh disorder to be straightened out.

Actually, we are very lazy.

Sri Aurobindo wrote that he was very lazy – that consoled me! We are very lazy. We would like (laughing) to settle back and blissfully enjoy the fruit of our labors!

28. July 1961 – The whole Story of Creation

Isn’t it in the Essays on the Gita? He explains what Krishna says and how the two [descent and evolution] are combined. I read it not long ago because I was interested in this very question. And I even said something myself about the difference between what evolves (what emerges from this involution) and the Response from what already exists above in all its glory.

We’ll have to find this passage.

There are two lines in the ancient traditions, two ways of explaining this. One says it is by the ‘descent’ of what already exists in all its perfection that what is involved can be awakened to consciousness and evolution. It’s like the old story: when what Sri Aurobindo calls the universal Mother or the Shakti (or Sachchidananda) realized what had happened in Matter (that is, in what had created Matter) and that this involution had led to a state of Inconscience, total unconsciousness, the ancient lore says that at once the divine Love descended straight from the Lord into Matter and began to awaken what was involved there.

Other traditions speak of the Consciousness, the divine Consciousness, instead of Love. One even finds accounts full of imagery depicting a Being of prismatic light lying in deep sleep in the cave of the Inconscient; and this Descent awakens him to an activity which is still (how to put it?) inner, an immobile activity, an activity by radiation. Countless rays issue from his body and spread throughout the Inconscient, and little by little they awaken in each thing, in each atom, as it were, the aspiration to Consciousness and the beginning of evolution.

I have had this experience.

I have had the experience of being ‘missioned,’ so to speak, in a form of Love and Consciousness combined – divine Love in its supreme purity, divine Consciousness in its supreme purity – and emanated DIRECTLY, without passing through all the intermediate states, directly into the nethermost depths of the Inconscient. And there I had the impression of being, or rather of finding a symbolic Being in deep sleep... so veiled that he was almost invisible. Then, at my contact, the veil seemed to be rent and, without his awakening, there was a sort of radiation spreading out.... I can still see my vision.

(silence)

There is always what could almost be called a popular way of presenting things. Take the whole Story of the Creation, of how things have come about: it can be told as an unfolding story (this is what Théon did in a book he called The Tradition – he told the whole story in the Biblical manner, with psychological knowledge hidden in symbols and forms). There is a psychological manner of telling things and a metaphysical manner. The metaphysical, for me, is almost incomprehensible; it’s uninteresting (or interesting only to minds that are made that way). An almost childish, illustrative way of telling things seems more evocative to me than any metaphysical theory (but this is a personal opinion – and of no great moment!). The psychological approach is more dynamic for transformation, and Sri Aurobindo usually adopted it. He doesn’t tell us stories (I was the one who told him stories! Images are very evocative for me). But if one combines the two approaches.... Actually, to be philosophical, one would have to combine the three. But I have always found the metaphysical approach ineffective; it doesn’t lead to realization but only gives people the IDEA that they know, when they really know nothing at all. From the standpoint of push, of a dynamic urge towards transformation, the psychological approach is obviously the most powerful. But the other [the symbolic approach] is lovelier!

In The Hour of God, there’s a whole diagram of the Manifestation made by Sri Aurobindo: first comes this, then comes that, then comes the other, and so forth – a whole sequence. They published this in the book in all seriousness, but I must say that Sri Aurobindo did it for fun (I saw him do it). Someone had spoken to him about different religions, different philosophical methods – Theosophy, Madame Blavatsky, all those people (there was Théon, too). Well, each one had made his diagram. So Sri Aurobindo said, ‘I can make a diagram, too, and mine will be much more complete!’ When he finished it, he laughed and said, ‘But it’s only a diagram, it’s just for fun.’ They published it very solemnly, as if he had made a very serious proclamation. Oh, it’s a very complicated diagram!

But the trouble is that people will say: what’s the need for a ‘descent’ if all is involved and then evolves? Why a descent? Why should there be an intervention from a higher plane?

I beg your pardon, but what was built up through this involution had to be unbuilt. The CAUSE of this involution had to be undone.

The way Théon told it, there was first the universal Mother (he didn’t call her the universal Mother, but Sri Aurobindo used that name), the universal Mother in charge of creation. For creating she made four emanations: Consciousness or Light; Life; Love or Beatitude and (Mother tries in vain to remember the fourth)... I must have cerebral anemia today! In India they speak only of three: Sat-Chit-Ananda (Sat is Existence, expressed by Life; Chit is Consciousness, expressed by Power; Ananda is Bliss, synonymous with Love). But according to Théon, there were four (I knew them by heart). Well, these emanations (Théon narrated it in such a way that someone not a philosopher, someone with a childlike mind, could understand), these emanations, conscious of their own power, separated themselves from their Origin; that is, instead of being entirely surrendered to the supreme Will and expressing only.... Ah, the fourth emanation is Truth! Instead of carrying out only the supreme Will, they seem to have acquired a sense of personal power. (They were personalities of sorts, universal personalities, each representing a mode of being.) Instead of remaining connected, they cut the link – each acted on his own, to put it simply. Then, naturally, Light became darkness, Life became death, Bliss became suffering and Truth became falsehood. And these are the four great Asuras: the Asura of Inconscience, the Asura of Falsehood, the Asura of Suffering and the Asura of Death.

Once this had occurred, the divine Consciousness turned towards the Supreme and said (Mother laughs): ‘Well, here’s what has happened. What’s to be done?’ Then from the Divine came an emanation of Love (in the first emanation it wasn’t Love, it was Ananda, Bliss, the Delight of being which became Suffering), and from the Supreme came Love; and Love descended into this domain of Inconscience, the result of the creation of the first emanation, Consciousness – Consciousness and Light had become Inconscience and Darkness. Love descended straight from the Supreme into this Inconscience; the Supreme, that is, created a new emanation, which didn’t pass through the intermediate worlds (because, according to the story, the universal Mother first created all the gods who, when they descended, remained in contact with the Supreme and created all the intermediate worlds to counterbalance this fall – it’s the old story of the ‘Fall,’ this fall into the Inconscient. But that wasn’t enough). Simultaneously with the creation of the gods, then, came this direct Descent of Love into Matter, without passing through all the intermediate worlds. That’s the story of the first Descent. But you’re speaking of the descent heralded by Sri Aurobindo, the Supramental Descent, aren’t you?

Not only that. For example, Sri Aurobindo says that when Life appeared there was a pressure from below, from evolution, to make Life emerge from Matter, and simultaneously a descent of Life from its own plane. Then, when Mind emerged out of Life, the same thing from above happened again. Why this intervention from above each time? Why don’t things emerge normally, one after another, without needing a ‘descent’?

You may as well ask why everything has gone wrong!

No, with experience it becomes easy to understand.

Take the experience of Mind, for example: Mind, in the evolution of Nature, gradually emerging from its involution; well – and this is a very concrete experience – these initial ‘mentalized forms,’ if we can call them that, were necessarily incomplete and imperfect, because Nature’s evolution is slow and hesitant and complicated. Thus these forms inevitably had an aspiration towards a sort of perfection and a truly perfect mental state, and this aspiration brought the descent of already fully conscious beings from the mental world who united with terrestrial forms – this is a very, very concrete experience. What emerges from the Inconscient in this way is an almost impersonal possibility (yes, an impersonal possibility, and perhaps not altogether universal, since it’s connected with the history of the earth); but anyway it’s a general possibility, not personal. And the Response from above is what makes it concrete, so to speak, bringing in a sort of perfection of the state and an individual mastery of the new creation. These beings in corresponding worlds (like the gods of the overmind, – in Sri Aurobindo’s terminology, the ‘Overmind’ represents the highest level of the mind, the world of the gods and origin of all the revelations and highest artistic creations – the world that has ruled mental man till now. in his gradations of the worlds, Sri Aurobindo speaks of two hemispheres, the upper hemisphere and the lower. The Overmind is the line between these two hemispheres, ‘This line is the intermediary overmind which, though luminous itself, keeps from us the full indivisible supramental Light, but in receiving it divides, distributes, breaks up into separated aspects, powers, multiplicities of all kinds.’ In the words of the Upanishad, ‘The face of the Truth is covered by a golden lid.’ – or the beings of higher regions) came upon earth as soon as the corresponding element began to evolve out of its involution. This accelerates the action, first of all, but also makes it more perfect – more perfect, more powerful, more conscious. It gives a sort of sanction to the realization. Sri Aurobindo writes of this in Savitri – Savitri lives always on earth, with the soul of the earth, to make the whole earth progress as quickly as possible. Well, when the time comes and things on earth are ready, then the divine Mother incarnates with her full power – when things are ready. Then will come the perfection of the realization. A splendor of creation exceeding all logic! It brings in a fullness and a power completely beyond the petty shallow logic of human mentality.

People can’t understand! To put oneself at the level of the general public may be all very well (personally I have never found it so, although it’s probably inevitable), but to hope that they will ever understand the splendor of the Thing.... They have to live it first!

I myself would NEVER try to deal with the ‘why’; I would always say ‘this is how it is.’ When people ask me, ‘Why did it happen like this? Why is the world so unhappy? Why does it have to be dark before growing luminous? Why has there been this “accident” (if it can be called an “accident”)? Why did the Lord permit You can say it’s because of this, because of that – there are fifty thousand replies and they’re all worthless.

It’s like this because that’s the way it is!

It wasn’t so much a question of the ‘why’ as of the process.

The process? I am giving you an historical process that I know through experience.

Both are needed.

Yes. The earth is a representative and symbolic world, a kind of crystallization and concentration of the evolutionary labor giving it a... more concrete reality. It has to be taken like this: the history of the earth is a symbolic history. And it is on earth that this Descent takes place (it’s not the history of the universal but of the terrestrial creation); the Descent occurs in the individual TERRESTRIAL being, in the individual terrestrial atmosphere.

Let’s take Savitri, which is very explicit on this: the universal Mother is universally present and at work in the universe, but the earth is where concrete form is given to all the work to be done to bring evolution to its perfection, its goal. Well, at first there’s a sort of emanation representative of the universal Mother, which is always on earth to help it prepare itself; then, when the preparation is complete, the universal Mother herself will descend upon earth to finish her work. And this She does with Satyavan – Satyavan is the soul of the earth. She lives in close union with the soul of the earth and together they do the work; She has chosen the soul of the earth for her work, saying, ‘HERE is where I will do my work.’ Elsewhere (Mother indicates regions of higher Consciousness), it’s enough just to BE and things Simply ARE. Here on earth you have to work.

There are clearly universal repercussions and effects, of course, but the thing is WORKED OUT here, the place of work is HERE. So instead of living beatifically in Her universal state and beyond, in the extra-universal eternity outside of time, She says, ‘No, I am going to do my work HERE, I choose to work HERE.’ The Supreme then tells her, ‘What you have expressed is My Will.’.... ‘I want to work HERE, and when all is ready, when the earth is ready, when humanity is ready (even if no one is aware of it), when the Great Moment comes, well... I will descend to finish my work.’

That’s the story.

So if people ask ‘why,’ we can tell them, ‘I don’t know, but that’s how it is.’ Why? (Mother shrugs her shoulders) How can a small human brain understand why! When you live it, you know! There’s no problem, it’s clear; it’s like that because it’s like that. It had to be that way – that’s how it is.

You can find all sorts of explanations for it: consciousness would never have been so complete, joy would never have been so full, the realization would never have been so total, if one had not passed through... all that. But these explanations are just to satisfy the mind. When you live in it, there’s no need for explanations.

As for hoping to make people understand!... The only thing that really matters is that they read your book with interest. Let them read it with interest; each one will imagine he has understood (and of course he will have ‘understood’!), and through (I was going to say under) their interest, well, something will be awakened in their consciousness, a kind of first aspiration towards the need to realize – that’s all. If you do that, good Lord, you have done a great thing!

Make them understand! How to understand? As long as one is there [at the mind level], one does not understand. One can imagine all sorts of things, explain all sorts of things, but... with a pinch of common sense, you see very well that you don’t explain a thing.

28. July 1961 – Mother's Vision from 1906

(Extract from the ‘Cosmic Review’ of 1906)

From sleep, I now emerge awakened.

I slept upon the westward waters and now I plunge into the ocean to fathom its depths. Its surface is the green of beryl, silvered by moonbeams. Below, the water is the blue of sapphire and already faintly luminous.

Reclining on the waves’ silken folds, I descend; rocked from one undulating wave to another in a gentle rhythm, I am borne straight towards the west. The deeper I go, the more luminous the water becomes, great silvery currents coursing through it.

Cradled from wave to wave, for a long while I descend deeper, ever deeper.

All at once, as I gaze above me, I glimpse something roseate; I draw nearer and discern what appears to be a shrub, as large as a tree, held fast to a blue reef. The denizens of the waters glide to and fro, myriad and diverse. Now I find myself standing upon fine, shining sand. I gaze about me in wonder. There are mountains and valleys, fantastic forests, strange flowers that could as well be animals, and fish that might be flowers – no separation, no gap is there between stationary beings and mobile. Colors everywhere, brilliant and shimmering, or subdued, but always harmonious and refined. I walk upon the golden sands and contemplate all this beauty bathed in a soft, pale blue radiance, tiny, luminous spheres of red, green and gold circulating through it.

How marvelous are the depths of the sea! Everywhere the presence of the One in whom all harmonies reside is felt!

Ever westward I advance, without weariness or hesitation. Spectacle succeeds spectacle in incredible variety; here upon a rock of lapis lazuli stretch fine and delicate seaweed like long blond or violet tresses; here great, rose-hued fortress walls, all streaked with silver; here flowers seem chiseled from enormous diamonds; here goblets, as beautiful as if carved by the most gifted sculptor, are filled with what appear to be droplets of emerald, alternately vibrant with light and shadow.

Presently I find myself between two rock walls of sapphire blue, upon a path flecked with silver; and the water becomes ever purer and more luminous.

A sudden turn in the path and I come to a grotto which seems fashioned of crystal, scintillating in prismatic radiance.

Standing there between two iridescent pillars is a very tall figure; his face, framed in short blond curls, is that of a very young man; his eyes are sea-green; he is clad in a pale blue tunic, and like wings upon his shoulders are great, snow-white fins. Beholding me, he steps aside against a pillar to let me pass. Scarcely have I crossed the threshold when an exquisite melody strikes my ears. The waters are all iridescent here, the ground aglow with glossy pearls; the portico and the vault, hung gracefully with stalactites, are opaline; delectable perfumes hover everywhere; galleries, niches and alcoves open out on all sides; but directly ahead of me I perceive a great light and towards it I turn my steps. There are great rays of gold, silver, sapphire, emerald and ruby, radiating outward in all directions, born from a center too distant for me to discern; to this center I feel drawn by a powerful attraction.

Now I see that these rays emanate from a recumbent oval of white light encircled by a superb rainbow, and I sense that the one whom the light hides from my view is plunged into a profound repose. For long I remain at the outer edge of the rainbow, trying to pierce through the light and see the one who is sleeping encircled by such splendor. Unable to discern anything, I enter the rainbow, and thence into the white and shining oval. Here I see a marvelous being: stretched on what seems to be a mass of white eiderdown, his supple body, of incomparable beauty, is garbed in a long, white robe. His head rests on his folded arm, but of that I can see only his long hair, the hue of ripened wheat, flowing over his shoulders. A great and gentle emotion sweeps through me at this magnificent spectacle, and a deep reverence as well.

Has the sleeper sensed my presence? For now he awakens and rises in all his grace and beauty. He turns towards me and his eyes meet mine, mauve and luminous eyes with a gentle, an infinitely tender expression. Wordlessly he bids me a sublime welcome and my whole being joyously responds. Taking my hand, he leads me to the couch he has just left. I stretch out on this downy whiteness, and his harmonious visage bends over me; a sweet current of force enters wholly into me, invigorating, revitalizing each cell.

Then, wreathed by the splendid colors of the rainbow, enveloped by lulling melodies and exquisite perfumes, beneath his gaze so powerful, so tender, I drift into a beatific repose. And during my sleep I learn many beautiful and useful things.

Of all these marvelous things, understood without the noise of words, I mention only one.

Wherever there is beauty, wherever there is radiance, wherever there is progress towards perfection, whether in the Heaven of the heights or of the depths, there, assuredly, is found the form and similitude of man-man, the supreme terrestrial evolutor.