1958 – Kein Datum
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When the
hostile forces want to attack those around me but do not succeed in making
them overtly hostile to Sri Aurobindo’s work or in making them turn
against me personally, they always use the same tactic, with the same
argument: ‘You may have all the inner realizations you want,’
they say, ‘the most beautiful experiences possible inside your four
Ashram walls, but as far as the outer world is concerned, your life is
wasted, lost. There is an abyss you will never bridge between your inner
experience and a concrete realization in the world.’ 1) The Divine alone
is true—all the rest is falsehood. 2) The Divine alone
is real—all the rest is illusion. 3) The Divine alone
is life—all the rest belongs to the kingdom of death. 4) The Divine alone
is light—all the rest is semi-obscurity. 5) The Divine alone
is love—all the rest is selfish sentimentality. And yet the Divine
is everywhere, in the ignorant man as well as in the sage. And yet the Divine
is everywhere, in the sinner as well as in the saint. |
1. Januar 1958
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O Nature, Material
Mother, thou hast said that
thou wilt collaborate and there is no
limit to the splendour of
this collaboration. We must not
misinterpret the meaning of this experience and imagine that henceforth
everything will take place without difficulties or always in accordance with
our personal desires. It is not at this level. It does not mean that when we
do not want it to rain, it will not rain! Or when we want some event to take
place in the world, it will immediately take place, or that all difficulties
will be abolished and everything will be like a fairy tale. It is not like
that. It is something more profound. Nature has accepted into her play of
forces the newly manifested Force and has included it in her movements. But
as always, the movements of Nature take place on a scale infinitely
surpassing the human scale and invisible to the ordinary human consciousness.
It is more of an inner, psychological possibility that has been born in the
world than a spectacular change in earthly events. |
22. Januar 1958
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It is an
error to confuse Joy and Felicity. They are two very different things. Not only
are their vibrations different, but their colors are different. The color of
Felicity is blue, a clear silvery blue (the blue of the Ashram flag), very
luminous and transparent. And it has a passive and fresh quality that
refreshes and rejuvenates. Whereas
Joy is a golden rose color, a pale gold with a tinge of red, a very pale red.
It is active, warm, fortifying, intensifying. The first is sweetness, the
second is tenderness. And Bliss—what
I spontaneously call Bliss—is the synthesis of both. It is found in the
very heights of the supramental consciousness, in a diamond light, an
uncolored, sparkling light containing all the colors. Joy and Felicity form
two sides of a triangle that has Bliss at its apex. |
3. Februar 1958 (Supramental World)
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The
supramental world exists in a permanent way, and I am there permanently in a
supramental body. I had proof of this today when my earthly consciousness
went there and consciously remained there between two and three o’clock
in the afternoon: I now know that for the two worlds to join in a constant
and conscious relationship what is missing is an intermediate zone between
the existing physical world and the supramental world as it exists. This zone
has yet to be built, both in the individual consciousness and in the
objective world, and it is being built. When formerly I used to speak of the
new world that is being created, I was speaking of this intermediate zone.
And similarly, when I am on ‘this’ side—that is, in the
realm of the physical consciousness—and I see the supramental power,
the supramental light and substance constantly permeating matter, I am seeing
and participating in the construction of this zone. I found
myself upon an immense ship, which is the symbolic representation of the
place where this work is being carried out. This ship, as big as a city, is
thoroughly organized, and it had certainly already been functioning for quite
some time, for its organization was fully developed. It is the place where
people destined for the supramental life are being trained. These people (or
at least a part of their being) had already undergone a supramental
transformation because the ship itself and all that was aboard was neither
material nor subtle-physical, neither vital nor mental: it was a supramental substance.
This substance itself was of the most material supramental, the supramental
substance nearest the physical world, the first to manifest. The light was a
blend of red and gold, forming a uniform substance of luminous orange.
Everything was like that—the light was like that, the people were like
that—everything had this color, in varying shades, however, which
enabled things to be distinguished from one another. The overall impression
was of a shadowless world: there were shades, but no shadows. The atmosphere
was full of joy, calm, order; everything worked smoothly and silently. At the
same time, I could see all the details of the education, the training in all
domains by which the people on board were being prepared. This
immense ship had just arrived at the shore of the supramental world, and a
first batch of people destined to become the future inhabitants of the
supramental world were about to disembark. Everything was arranged for this
first landing. A certain number of very tall beings were posted on the wharf.
They were not human beings and never before had they been men. Nor were they
permanent inhabitants of the supramental world. They had been delegated from
above and posted there to control and supervise the landing. I was in charge
of all this since the beginning and throughout. I myself had prepared all the
groups. I was standing on the bridge of the ship, calling the groups forward
one by one and having them disembark on the shore. The tall beings posted
there seemed to be reviewing those who were disembarking, allowing those who
were ready to go ashore and sending back those who were not and who had to
continue their training aboard the ship. While standing there watching
everyone, that part of my consciousness coming from here became extremely
interested: it wanted to see, to identify all the people, to see how they had
changed and to find out who had been taken immediately as well as those who
had to remain and continue their training. After awhile, as I was observing,
I began to feel pulled backwards and that my body was being awakened by a
consciousness or a person from here—and in my consciousness, I
protested: ‘No, no, not yet! Not yet! I want to see who’s there!’
I was watching all this and noting it with intense interest … It went on
like that until, suddenly, the clock here began striking three, which
violently jerked me back. There was the sensation of a sudden fall into my
body. I came back with a shock, but since I had been called back very
suddenly, all my memory was still intact. I remained quiet and still until I
could bring back the whole experience and preserve it. The nature
of objects on this ship was not that which we know upon earth; for example,
the clothes were not made of cloth, and this thing that resembled cloth was
not manufactured—it was a part of the body, made of the same substance
that took on different forms. It had a kind of plasticity. When a change had
to be made, it was done not by artificial and outer means but by an inner
working, by a working of the consciousness that gave the substance its form
or appearance. Life created its own forms. There was ONE SINGLE substance in
all things; it changed the nature of its vibration according to the needs or
uses. Those who
were sent back for more training were not of a uniform color; their bodies
seemed to have patches of a grayish opacity, a substance resembling the earth
substance. They were dull, as though they had not been wholly permeated by
the light or wholly transformed. They were not like this all over, but in
places. The tall
beings on the shore were not of the same color, at least they did not have
this orange tint; they were paler, more transparent. Except for a part of
their bodies, only the outline of their forms could be seen. They were very
tall, they did not seem to have a skeletal structure, and they could take on
any form according to their needs. Only from their waists to their feet did
they have a permanent density, which was not felt in the rest of their body.
Their color was much more pallid and contained very little red, it verged
rather on gold or even white. The parts of whitish light were translucid; they were not absolutely
transparent, but less dense, more subtle than the orange substance. Just as I
was called back, when I was saying, ‘Not yet … ,’ I had a
quick glimpse of myself, of my form in the supramental world. I was a mixture
of what these tall beings were and the beings aboard the ship. The top part
of myself, especially my head, was a mere silhouette of a whitish color with
an orange fringe. The more it approached the feet, the more the color
resembled that of the people on the ship, or in other words, orange; the more
it went up towards the top, the more translucid and white it was, and the red faded. The
head was only a silhouette with a brilliant sun at its center; from it issued
rays of light which were the action of the will. As for the
people I saw aboard ship, I recognized them all. Some were here in the
Ashram, some came from elsewhere, but I knew them as well. I saw everyone,
but as I realized that I would not remember everyone when I came back, I
decided not to give any names. Besides, it is unnecessary. Three or four
faces were very clearly visible, and when I saw them, I understood the
feeling that I have had here, on earth, while looking into their eyes: there
was such an extraordinary joy … On the whole, the people were young;
there were very few children, and their ages were around fourteen or fifteen,
but certainly not below ten or twelve (I did not stay long enough to see all
the details). There were no very old people, with the exception of a few.
Most of the people who had gone ashore were of a middle age—again,
except for a few. Several times before this experience, certain individual
cases had already been examined at a place where people capable of being
supramentalized are examined; I had then had a few surprises which I had
noted—I even told some people. But those whom I disembarked today I saw
very distinctly. They were of a middle age, neither young children nor
elderly people, with only a few rare exceptions, and this quite corresponded
to what I expected. I decided not to say anything, not to give any names. As
I did not stay until the end, it would be impossible for me to draw an exact
picture, for it was neither absolutely clear nor complete. I do not want to
say things to some and not say them to others. What I can
say is that the criterion or the judgment was based EXCLUSIVELY on the
substance constituting the people—whether they belonged completely to
the supramental world or not, whether they were made of this very special
substance. The criterion adopted was neither moral nor psychological. It is
likely that their bodily substance was the result of an inner law or an inner
movement which, at that time, was not in question. At least it is quite clear
that the values are different. When I
came back, along with the memory of the experience, I knew that the
supramental world was permanent, that my presence there is permanent, and
that only a missing link is needed to allow the consciousness and the
substance to connect—and it is this link that is being built. At that
time, my impression (an impression which remained rather long, almost the
whole day) was of an extreme relativity—no, not exactly that, but an impression
that the relationship between this world and the other completely changes the
criterion by which things are to be evaluated or judged. This criterion had
nothing mental about it, and it gave the strange inner feeling that so many
things we consider good or bad are not really so. It was very clear that
everything depended upon the capacity of things and upon their ability to
express the supramental world or be in relationship with it. It was so
completely different, at times even so opposite to our ordinary way of
looking at things! I recall one little thing that we usually consider bad …
actually how funny it was to see that it is something excellent! And other
things that we consider important were really quite unimportant there!
Whether it was like this or like that made no difference. What is very
obvious is that our appreciation of what is divine or not divine is
incorrect. I even laughed at certain things … Our usual feeling about
what is anti-divine seems artificial, based upon something untrue, unliving
(besides, what we call life here appeared lifeless in comparison with that
world); in any event, this feeling should be based upon our relationship
between the two worlds and according to whether things make this relationship
easier or more difficult. This would thus completely change our evaluation of
what brings us nearer to the Divine or what takes us away from Him. With
people, too, I saw that what helps them or prevents them from becoming
supramental is very different from what our ordinary moral notions imagine. I
felt just how … ridiculous we are. In
ordinary life, EVERYTHING is artificial. Depending upon the chance of your
birth or circumstances, you have a more or less high position or a more or
less comfortable life, not because it is the spontaneous, natural and sincere
expression of your way of being and of your inner need, but because the
fortuity of life’s circumstances has placed you in contact with these
things. An absolutely worthless man may be in a very high position, and a man
who might have marvelous capacities of creation and organization may find
himself toiling in a quite limited and inferior position, whereas he would be
a wholly useful individual if the world were sincere. |
Februar 1958
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Everyone
carries with him, in his atmosphere, what Sri Aurobindo calls the ‘Censors’;
in a way, they are the permanent delegates of the hostile forces. Their role
is to criticize mercilessly each act, each thought, the least movement of the
consciousness, and to place you before the most hidden motives of your
behavior, to expose the least lower vibration accompanying your apparently
purest or highest thoughts or acts. And each
time that you have made some progress or passed to a higher level, they put
you back in the presence of all the actions of your past and in a few months,
a few days or a few minutes make you pass all the tests again, at a higher
level. And it does not help to brush aside the thought, saying, ‘Oh, I
know!’ and throw a little cloak over it so as not to see. You have to
face and conquer, keep your consciousness filled with light, be unwavering,
uncomplaining, without a single vibration in the cells of the body, and then
the attack dissolves. But our
conceptions of Good and Evil are so ridiculous! Our ideas of what is near to
the Divine or far from the Divine are so absurd! The experience of the other
day [February 3] was quite a revelation to me, and I came out of it utterly
changed. I suddenly understood a great many things from the past—certain
actions parts of my life that had remained inexplicable—in truth, the
shortest path from one point to another is not the straight line we imagine! When I came back down (‘came back
down’ is a manner of speaking, for it is neither high nor low, nor
within nor without, it is … somewhere), it took me a while to readjust.
I even recall having said to someone, ‘Now we are going to regress into
our usual stupidity.’ But I understood a lot of things, and I came back
from there with a decisive force. Now I know that our way of seeing things
here, our petty moral values, have nothing to do with the values of the
supramental world. |
Februar 1958 – Kein
Datum
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For me,
the subtle physical is far more real than this distorted world, but to see it
you have to be conscious there, whereas people want to get effects which give
them the impression of the marvelous and the miraculous and they want the
subtle physical to become visible in the material world IN SPITE OF the
falsehood. What makes the great difference for the ordinary physical
consciousness is this: it wants to come into contact with that in spite of
the falsehood, whereas the universal law is, get out of the falsehood and
that will become true for you. It applies
to everything: every true thing in the world, including all the fairy tale
miracles. Things that appear miraculous to the physical consciousness happen
in an altogether different way, but to it they are indeed miraculous since
they don’t depend on any physical processes. As I have said, to travel
from one place to another there is no need for any means of transport, to
feed ourselves it is not necessary to put external things into the body, to
dress ourselves we have no need to put on clothes, etc … . The play of
forces is the spontaneous expression of Truth and of the true Will, the true
vision. |
25. Februar 1958
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Only, one has to climb higher in
consciousness: the deeper into matter you want to descend, the higher must
you ascend in consciousness. It will take time. Sri Aurobindo was
surely right when he spoke of a few centuries. |
10. Mai 1958
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This body
has neither the uncontested authority of a god nor the imperturbable calm of
the sage.’ ‘It
is as yet only an apprentice in supermanhood.’ Afterwards,
when he left and I had to do the Yoga myself, to be able to take his physical
place, I could have adopted the attitude of the sage, which is what I did
since I was in an unparalleled state of calm when he left. As he left his
body and entered into mine, he told me, ‘You will continue, you will go
right to the end of the work.’ It was then that I imposed a calm upon
this body—the calm of total detachment. And I could have remained like
that. In a considerable number of people, it is
their body, the physical body, that obstinately resists. The
European substance seems steeped in rebellion; in the Indian substance this
rebelliousness is subdued by an influence of surrender. The other day, someone
was telling me about some Europeans with whom he corresponds, and I said, ‘But
tell them to read, to learn, to follow The Synthesis of Yoga!—it leads
you straight to the path.’ Whereupon he replied, ‘Oh, but they
say it’s full of talk on surrender, surrender, always surrender …’
and they want none of it. They want none of it! Even if the mind
accepts, the body and the vital refuse. And when the body refuses, it refuses
with the stubbornness of a stone. …It
is a hard path. I try to make it as comfortable as possible, but
nevertheless, it is a hard path. And it is obvious that it cannot be
otherwise. You are beaten and battered until you understand. Until you are in
that state in which all bodies are your body. But at that point, you begin to
laugh! You were upset by this, hurt by that, you suffered from this or that—but
now, how laughable it all seems! And not only the head, but the body too
finds it laughable! When it is a question of movements like
anger, desire, etc., you recognize that they are wrong and must disappear,
but when material laws are in question—laws of the body, for example,
its needs, its health, its nourishment, all those things—they have such
a solid, compact, established and concrete reality that it appears absolutely
unquestionable. To be able to see the problem as it is,
it is absolutely indispensable, as a first step, to get out of the mental
consciousness, even out of a mental transcription (in the highest mind) of
the supramental vision and truth. A thing cannot be seen as it is, in its
truth, except in the supramental consciousness, and if you try to explain, it
immediately begins to escape you because you are obliged to give it a mental
formulation. Therefore,
if we do not want to oppose the supramental action by an obscure, inert and
obstinate resistance, we have to admit once and for all that none of these
things should be legitimized. |
11. Mai 1958
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Because
people here are so afraid of following tradition, of being the slaves of the
old things, that they cast out anything closely or remotely resembling
religion. |
30. Mai 1958
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I have noticed that in at least ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, it
is an excuse people give to themselves. I have seen that practically, in the case
of almost all the people who write to me saying, ‘I am being violently
attacked by hostile forces,’ it’s an excuse they are giving. It
means that certain things in their nature do not want to yield, so they put
all the blame on the hostile forces. |
6. Juni 1958
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It’s
all the same thing, but the word realization can be reserved for something
that is durable, that does not wear off. Because everything on earth fades
away—everything fades away, nothing remains. In this sense, there has
never been any realization, for everything fades away. Nothing is ever
permanent. And I know for myself: I am doing the sadhana at a gallop, as it
were; never are two experiences identical nor do they recur in the same way.
As soon as something is established, the next thing begins immediately. It
may appear to fade away, but it doesn’t fade away; rather, it is the
basis upon which the next thing is built. As it was
the first experience, it started to fade slightly when I began having contact
with people; but I really had the feeling that it was a first experience, new
upon earth. For I have experienced an absolute identity of the will with the
divine Will ever since 1910, it has never left me. It isn’t that,
it’s SOMETHING ELSE. It is MATTER BECOMING THE DIVINE. And it
really came with the feeling that this thing was happening for the first time
upon earth. It is difficult to say for sure, but Ramakrishna died of cancer,
and now that I have had the experience, I know in an ABSOLUTE way that this
is impossible. If he had decided to go because the Divine wanted him to go,
it would have been an orderly departure, in total harmony and with a total
will, whereas this illness is a means of disorder. All that
is transformable will be permeated more and more with this new substance and
this new consciousness to such an extent that it will rise towards it and
serve as a link between the two but all that belongs incorrigibly to
falsehood and ignorance will disappear. This was also prophesied in the Gita:
among what we call the hostile or anti-divine forces, those capable of being
transformed will be uplifted and go off towards the new consciousness,
whereas all that is irrevocably in darkness or belongs to an evil will shall
be destroyed and vanish from the Universe. And a whole part of humanity that
has responded to these forces rather too … zealously will certainly
vanish with them. And this is what was expressed in this concept of the Last
Judgment. |
Juni 1958
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One thing
seems clear: humanity has reached such a generalized state of tension—tension
in effort, tension in action, tension even in daily life—with such an
excessive hyperactivity, such an overall restlessness, that the species as a
whole seems to have reached a point where it must either burst through the
resistance and surge forth into a new consciousness, or else sink back into
an abysm of obscurity and inertia. This struggle, this conflict between the
constructive forces of an ascending evolution, of an increasingly perfect and
divine realization, and the more and more destructive forces—powerfully
destructive, forces of an uncontrollable madness—is becoming more
obvious, unmistakably visible, and it is a kind of race or battle as to which
will be first to reach its goal. All the hostile, anti-divine forces, these
forces of the vital world, seem to have descended upon earth and are using it
as their field of action; and at the same time, a new, higher, more powerful
spiritual force has also descended upon earth to bring a new life to it. This
renders the battle more bitter, violent and visible, but apparently more
decisive, too, which is why we may hope to arrive at an early solution. One must
rise above, surge forth into the Light and the Harmony, or sink back down
into the simplicity of a wholesome, unperverted animal life. But those
who cannot be lifted up, who refuse to progress, will automatically lose the
use of the mental consciousness and fall back into an infrahuman stage. …those who have faith in the sacrifice
of the Divine in Matter will automatically be saved, in another world—faith
alone, without understanding, without intelligence. They never saw the
supramental world, nor did they see that the great Sacrifice of the Divine in
Matter is that of an involution which will lead to the total revelation of
the Divine in Matter itself. |
6. Juli 1958
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Then the
war and all the difficulties came, bringing a tremendous increase of people
and expenditure (the war cost a fortune—anything at all cost ten times
more than before), and suddenly, finished, nothing more. Not exactly nothing,
but a thin little trickle. And when I asked, it didn’t come. So one day, I put the question to
Ganesh through his image (! ), I asked him, ‘What about your promise?’—‘I
can’t do it, it’s too much for me; my means are too limited!’—‘Ah!’
I said to myself (laughing), ‘What bad luck!’ And I no longer
counted on him. The first
time I came here and spoke with Sri Aurobindo about what was needed for the Work,
he told me (he also wrote it to me) that for the secure achievement of the
Work we would need three powers: one was the power over health, the second
was the power over government, and the third was the power over money. A personal
realization is very easy, it is nothing at all; a personal realization is one
thing, but the power to control it among all men—that is, to control or
master such movements at will, everywhere—is quite another. I don’t
believe that this … condition has been fulfilled. If what the serpent
said is true and if this is really what will vanquish these hostile forces
that rule over money, well then, it has not been fulfilled. It has
been fulfilled to a certain extent—but it’s negligible. It is
conditional, limited: in one case, it works; in another, it doesn’t. It
is quite problematic. And naturally, where terrestrial things are involved (I
don’t say universal, but in any case terrestrial), when it is something
involving the earth, it must be complete; there cannot be any approximations. Therefore,
it’s an affair between the asuras and the human species. To transform
itself is the only solution left to the human species—in other words,
to tear from the asuric forces the power of ruling over the human species. There is a
whole vital world that has nothing to do with the earth, it is entirely
independent or prior to earth’s existence, it is self-existent—well,
they have brought that down here! They have made … what we see! And
such being the case … This is what terrestrial Nature told me: ‘It
is beyond my control.’ So
considering all that, Sri Aurobindo came to the conclusion that only the
supramental power … (Mother brings down her hands) as he said, will be
able to rule over everything. And when that happens, it will be all over—including
Nature. For a long time, Nature rebelled (I have written about it often). She
used to say, ‘Why are you in such a hurry? It will be done one day.’
But then last year, there was that extraordinary experience.5 And it was
because of that experience that I told her, ‘Well, now that we agree,
give me some proof; I am asking you for some proof—do it for me.’
She didn’t budge, absolutely nothing. In effect,
according to tradition, the first divine forces that emanated for the
creation were the Asuras, who turned into demons. The gods were created later
to repair the disorder engendered by the demons. |
Juli 1958
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Yes, it
shows through in the face; this kind of dignity, beauty, harmony of an
integral realization. When the soul shows through in the physical, it imparts
this dignity, this beauty, this majesty, the majesty that comes from being
the Tabernacle. Thus, even things that have no particular beauty assume a
sense of eternal beauty, of THE eternal beauty. In this
way, I have seen faces change from one extreme to the other in a flash. Thus I saw
how horrible is the sense of sin, how much it belongs to the world of
falsehood. |
19. Juli 1958
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It is man’s
mental consciousness that has filled all Nature with the idea of sin and all the
misery it brings. Animals are not at all unhappy in the way we are. Not at
all, not at all, except—as Sri Aurobindo says—those that are
corrupted. Those that are corrupted are those that live with men. Dogs have
the sense of sin and guilt, for their whole aspiration is to resemble man.
Man is the god. Hence there is dissimulation, hypocrisy: dogs lie. But men
admire that. They say, ‘Oh! How intelligent they are!’ I say that every fruit should be eaten in
its own way. The being who lives according to his own nature, his own truth,
must spontaneously find the right way of using things. When you live
according to the truth of your being, you don’t need to learn things:
you do them spontaneously, according to the inner law. When you sincerely
follow your nature, spontaneously and sincerely, you are divine. As soon as
you think or look at yourself acting or start questioning, you are full of
sin. It is an ascending curve, but a
curve that swerves away from the Divine. So naturally, one has to climb much
higher to find a higher Divine, since it is a conscious Divine, whereas the
others are divine spontaneously and instinctively, without being conscious of
it. All our moral notions of good and evil, all of that, are what we have
thrown over the creation with our distorted and perverted consciousness. It
is we who have invented it. |
21. Juli 1958
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Human beings don’t know how to keep
energy. When something happens—an accident or an illness, for example—and
they ask for help, a double or a triple dose of energy is sent. If they
happen to be receptive, they receive it. This energy is given for two
reasons: to restore order out of the disorder caused by the accident or
illness, and to impart a transformative force to repair or change the source
of the illness or accident. In fact,
the immense majority of human beings feel they are living only when they
waste their energy. Otherwise, it does not seem to them to be life. |
23. Juli 1958
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But the Supreme
Lord answers that the comedy is not entirely played out, and He adds: ‘Wait
for the last act; undoubtedly you will change your mind. |
9. August 1958
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...men can
have as much power as the gods, and even more—when they are not
egoists, when they can overcome their egoism. |
September 1958
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Truth is like a white light
recomposed, for it contains all that is, but the milieu is unfit to manifest
all the elements or all the colors—and it can be said that the best escape.
So, instead of seeing a white light, you see a number of colors of something
from which they derived. |
16. September 1958
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The
physical seems to be more open to something that is repetitious—for
example, the music we play on Sundays, which has three series of combined
mantras. The first is that of Chandi, addressed to the universal Mother: Ya devi sarvabhuteshu matrirupena sansthita Ya devi sarvabhuteshu shaktirupena sansthita Ya devi sarvabhuteshu shantirupena sansthita Namastasyai namastasyai namastasyai namo namah The second is addressed to Sri
Aurobindo (and I believe they have put my name at the end). It incorporates
the mantra I was speaking of: Om namo namah shrimirambikayai Om namo bhagavateh shriaravindaya Om namo namah shrimirambikayai. And the third is addressed to
Sri Aurobindo: ‘Thou art my refuge.’ Shriaravindah sharanam mama. For me, on
the days when I have no special preoccupations or difficulties (days I could
call normal, when I am normal), everything I do, all the movements of this
body, all, all the words I utter, all the gestures I make, are accompanied
and upheld by or lined, as it were, with this mantra: OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH … OM NAMO BHAGAVATEH … 4. Oktober 1958
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When you left on your journey, for example, I made a special
concentration for all to go well so that nothing untoward happen to you. I
even made a formation and asked for a constant, special help over you. Then I
renewed my concentration every day, which is how I came to notice that you
were invoking me very regularly. I Saw you everyday, everyday, with a very
regular precision. It was something that imposed itself on me, but it imposed
itself’ only because l had initially made a formation to follow you. There is
an interdependence between the individual progress and the collective
progress, between that which works and that which is worked upon. It proceeds
like this (gesture of intermeshing), and as one progresses, the other
progresses. The progress above not only hastens the progress below but brings
the two nearer together, thus changing the distance in the relationship; that
is, the distance will not remain the same, the ratio between the progress
here and the progress above won’t always be identical. Money belongs to the one who
spends it; that is an absolute law. You may pile up money, but it doesn’t
belong to you until you spend it. Then you have the merit, the glory, the
joy, the pleasure of spending it! Money is meant to circulate.
What should remain constant is the progressive movement of an increase in the
earth’s production—an ever-expanding progressive movement to
increase the earth’s production and improve existence on earth. It is
the material improvement of terrestrial life and the growth of the earth’s
production that must go on expanding, enlarging, and not this silly paper or
this inert metal that is amassed and lifeless. Money is not meant to generate
money; money should generate an increase in production, an improvement in the
conditions of life and a progress in human consciousness. This is its true
use. What I call an improvement in consciousness, a progress in
consciousness, is everything that education in all its forms can provide—not
as it’s generally understood, but as we understand it here: education
in art, education in … from the education of the body, from the most
material progress, to the spiritual education and progress through yoga; the
whole spectrum, everything that leads humanity towards its future
realization. Money should serve to augment that and to augment the material
base for the earth’s progress, the best use of what the earth can give—its
intelligent utilization, not the utilization that wastes and loses energies.
The use that allows energies to be replenished. |
6. Oktober 1958
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Each time
we try to realize something and we encounter a resistance or an obstacle, or
even a failure—what appears to be a failure—we should know, we
should NEVER forget, that it is exclusively, absolutely, to make the
realization more perfect. So this
habit of cringing, of being discouraged or even feeling ill at ease or
abusing oneself, saying, ‘There,
I’ve done it again …’ All this is absolute foolishness. |
10. Oktober 1958
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If we
consider the body as the tabernacle of the Lord, then medical science, for
example, becomes the initiatory ritual of the service of the temple, and
doctors of all kinds are the officiating priests in the different rituals of
worship. Thus, medicine is really a priesthood and should be treated as such. On the one
hand, there is what Sri Aurobindo—who, as the Avatar, represented the
supreme Consciousness and Will on earth—declared me to be, that is, the
supreme universal Mother; and on the other hand, there is what I am realizing
in my body through the integral sadhana. I could be the supreme Mother and
not do any sadhana, and as a matter of fact, as long as Sri Aurobindo was in
his body, it was he who did the sadhana, and I received the effects. These
effects were automatically established in the outer being, but he was the one
doing it, not I—I was merely the bridge between his sadhana and the
world. Only when he left his body was I forced to take up the sadhana myself;
not only did I have to do what I was doing before—being a bridge
between his sadhana and the world—but I had to carry on the sadhana
myself. When he left, he turned over to me the responsibility for what he
himself had been doing in his body, and I had to do it. So there are both
these things. Sometimes one predominates, sometimes the other (I don’t
mean successively in time, but … it depends on the moment), and they
are trying to combine in a total and perfect realization: the eternal,
ineffable and immutable Consciousness of the Executrice of the Supreme, and
the consciousness of the Sadhak of the integral Yoga who strives in an
ascending effort towards an ever increasing progression. Depending
upon each one’s nature and position and bias, and because human beings
are very limited, very partial and incapable of a global vision, there are
those who believe, who have faith, or to whom the eternal Mother is revealed
through Grace, who have this kind of relationship with the eternal Mother—and
there are those who themselves are plunged in sadhana, who have the
consciousness of a developed sadhak, and thereby have the same relationship
with me as one has with what they generally call a ‘realized soul.’
Such persons consider me the prototype of the Guru teaching a new way, but
the others don’t have this relationship of sadhak to Guru (I am taking
the two extremes, but of course there are all the possibilities in between),
they are only in contact with the eternal Mother and, in the simplicity of
their hearts, they expect Her to do everything for them. If they were perfect
in this attitude, the eternal Mother would do everything for them—as a
matter of fact, She does do everything, but as they aren’t perfect,
they cannot receive it totally. But the two paths are very different, the two
kinds of relationships are very different; and as we all live according to
the law of external things, in a material body, there is a kind of annoyance,
an almost irritated misunderstanding, between those who follow this path (not
consciously and intentionally, but spontaneously), who have this relationship
of the child to the Mother, and those who have this other relationship of the
sadhak to the Guru. So it creates a whole play, with an infinite diversity of
shades. |
4. November 1958 (Frühere
Mythologien)
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Es besteht eine gewisse Ähnlichkeit zwischen den Göttern
der Puranas und den Göttern der griechischen oder ägyptischen Mythologie: The gods
of the Puranas are merciless gods who respect only power and have nothing of
the true love, charity or profound goodness that the Divine has put into the
human consciousness—and which compensate psychically for all the outer
defects. They themselves have nothing of this, they have no psychic.1 The
Puranic gods have no psychic, so they act according to their power. They are
restrained only when their power is not all-powerful, that’s all. You go out through successive exteriorizations into more
and more subtle bodies or worlds. Each time it is rather like passing into
another dimension. In fact, the fourth dimension of the physicists is only
the scientific transcription of an occult knowledge. In Sri Aurobindo’s and Mother’s terminology, ‘psychic’
or ‘psychic being’ means the soul or the portion of the Supreme
in man which evolves from life to life until it becomes a fully
self-conscious being. The soul is a special capacity or grace of human beings
on earth. |
8. November 1958
(Supramentale Schöpfung)
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Auf dem tiefsten Grund
der härtesten, starrsten, engsten, erstickendsten Unbewusstheit berührte ich
eine allmächtige Feder, die mich mit einem Stoß in eine Unermesslichkeit ohne
Form und Grenzen schleuderte, die Quelle aller Schöpfung, die supramentale
Schöpfung. |
15. November 1958 (Quality of the Consciousness)
In the other hemisphere, there is an
intensity and a plenitude which result in a power different from the one
here. How can I explain it? One cannot. The quality of the consciousness
itself seems to change. It is not something higher than the summit we can
attain here, it is not one MORE rung. Here, we have reached the end, the
summit, but… it’s the quality that is different. The quality, in
the sense that there is a plenitude, a richness, a power (this is all a translation,
you see, in our language), but there is a ‘something’ that…
that eludes us. It is truly a new reversal of consciousness. When we begin living the spiritual life,
a reversal of consciousness takes place which for us is the proof that we
have entered the spiritual life; well, yet another one occurs when we enter
the supramental world. And in fact each time a new world opens
up, there will perhaps be a new reversal of this kind. It’s as if our entire spiritual
life were made of silver, whereas the supramental life is made of gold—as
if our entire spiritual life here were a silvery vibration, not cold but
simply a light, a light that goes right to the summit, an absolutely pure
light—pure and intense—but in the other, in the supramental
world, there is a richness and a power that makes all the difference. This
whole spiritual life of the psychic being and of all our present
consciousness, which seems so warm, so full, so wonderful, so luminous to the
ordinary consciousness, well, all this splendor seems poor in comparison to
the splendor of the new world. I can explain the phenomenon like this:
successive reversals will bring about such an EVER-NEW richness of creation
from stage to stage, that it will make whatever came before seem very poor in
comparison. What to us seems supremely rich compared to our ordinary life
appears very poor when compared to this new reversal of consciousness. 26. November 1958 (Men are like Prisoners)
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Basically, the vast majority of men are
like prisoners with all the doors and all the windows shut, so they suffocate
(which is quite natural), but they have with them the key that opens the
doors and the windows, and they don’t use it… Certainly, there is
a period when they don’t know that they have the key, but even long after
they do know it, long after they have been told, they hesitate to use it and
doubt that it has the power to open the doors and windows, or even that it
may be advisable to open them. And even once they feel that ‘After all,
it might be a good thing,’ a fear pursues them: ‘What is going to
happen once all these doors and these windows open?…’ They become
afraid—afraid of losing themselves in this light and in this freedom.
They want to remain what they call ‘themselves.’ They love their
falsehood and their slavery. Something in them loves it and remains clinging
to it. They feel that without their limits, they would no longer exist. That is why the journey is so long, so
difficult. For if one would truly consent no longer to be, everything would become
so easy, so swift, so luminous, so joyous—though perhaps not in the way
men conceive of joy and ease. At heart, there are very few beings who are not
enamored of struggle. There are very few who would consent to having no
darkness or who can conceive of light as anything other than the opposite of
obscurity: ‘Without shadow, there would be no painting. Without
struggle, there would be no victory. Without suffering, there would be no
joy.’ That is what they think, and as long as they think like that, they
are not yet born to the spirit. |
28. November 1958 (Lügen
und Grenzen)
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Sie
wollen bleiben, was sie sich selbst nennen. Sie lieben ihre Lüge und ihre
Sklaverei. Etwas in ihnen liebt das und klammert sich daran. Ihr Eindruck
bleibt, dass sie ohne ihre Grenzen nicht mehr existieren würden. |