December 1966

Index

07. December 1966 – Message: Compassion and Grace

Would you like a second Grace?... There's never too much of it!

Oh, the other day someone asked me a question on the message for November 24, and Sri Aurobindo replied. It was so interesting! I saw something all of a sudden. While he was speaking it was absolutely marvelous. I saw the Compassion and the Grace, the "law" and the Compassion, and how the Compassion acts on everyone — on everyone and everything, without distinction and without condition — and how the Compassion consists in bringing them to a state in which they can receive the Grace.

I found that wonderful.

That was the experience: I saw and felt this Compassion working through the meshes of the net, and how the Grace is all-powerful, meaning that the "Law" isn't an obstacle any longer. I saw this Compassion touching everyone and giving everyone their chance; I understood what he really meant when he said that it "gives everyone their chance" — equally, without the slightest distinction of importance or condition or anything, or of state: exactly the same chance to all. So then, the result of this Compassion was to awaken them to the existence of the Grace, to make them feel that there is in the universe something like the Grace. And with those who aspire and have trust, the Grace acts immediately — it always acts, but with those who have trust it becomes fully effective.

17. December 1966 – The Sense of Science; Mother's protection

A child from the School asked me, "How can mathematics, history or sciences help me to find you?"

I found that quite amusing!

I answered:

"They can help in several ways:

(1) To be able to receive and bear the light of Truth, the mind must be strengthened, broadened and made supple. These studies are an excellent way to achieve this.

(2) Sciences, if you study them deeply enough, will teach you the unreality of appearances and will thus lead you to the spiritual reality.

(3) The study of all aspects and movements of physical Nature will bring you into contact with the universal Mother, and you will thus be nearer to me."

I still remember my impression when I was quite small and was told that everything is "atoms" (that was the term they used in those days). They said to me, "You see this table? You think it's a table, that it's solid and it's wood — well, it's only atoms moving about." I remember, the first time I was told that, it caused a kind of revolution in my head, bringing such a sense of the complete unreality of all appearances. All at once I said, "But if it's like that, then nothing is true!" I couldn't have been more than fourteen or fifteen.

His question called this to mind. I said to myself, "It opens a door onto another reality."

It's not even a mental question: one should FEEL here (gesture to the heart), be convinced that "it" [Mother's presence] is really active, that it's something real, that it really does protect. Not a thought "just like that," a metaphysical thought: a feeling.

17. December 1966 – Mother's prophecy of England and Italy

I've seen photographs of the floods in Florence.... It seems the water was rushing at forty-five miles an hour! Cars were washed away and dashed against houses. They say it was a tidal wave... yet the water was flowing towards the sea (or was it flowing back?). It's very mysterious, at any rate.

The water was at head level. All the palaces and museums were flooded and they say they were full of grime. So the students are now working to scrape everything clean. They're trying to dry the manuscripts. But lots of things have been definitively lost.

That was one of the prophecies of the beginning of the century — that Italy and England would go underwater.

But the strange thing is that Florence and Naples were affected, not Rome, which is in between....

But why Italy? If it were England alone, I wouldn't mind at all, but Italy?

That was because of Mussolini.

Mussolini's death might have mitigated things. But it's not out of "punishment": there's never any punishment, never any "fault" — never the shadow of a "fault" anywhere! It's purely a question of vibrations.

Why not Rome, then?

Oh, they won't have the last laugh!

Naturally, they are puffing themselves up with conceit: "God" protected them....

24. December 1966 – Truth

Truth cannot be formulated, it cannot be defined, but it can be LIVED.

And one who has completely dedicated himself to the Truth, who wants to live the Truth and serve the Truth, will know EVERY MINUTE what he has to do: it will be a sort of intuition or revelation (more often than not wordless, but sometimes also expressed in words), which will every minute let him know the truth of that minute. And that's what is so interesting.... They want to know "the Truth," but as something well defined, well sorted out, well established; and then you are nice and quiet, you no longer need to seek! You adopt it and say, "This is the Truth," and then it's rigidly set — that's what all religions did, they set up their truth as a dogma. But that's not the Truth anymore.

Truth is a living, changing thing, which expresses itself every second and is ONE way of approaching the Supreme. Everyone has his own way of approaching the Supreme. There may be some who can approach Him from every side at the same time, but there are those who approach through Love, those who approach through Power, those who approach through Consciousness, and those who approach through Truth. And each of these aspects is as absolute, imperative and indefinable as the supreme Lord himself is. The supreme Lord is absolute, imperative and indefinable, ungraspable in his entirety, and his attributes have that same quality.

Once he knows this, one who puts himself at the service of one of these aspects will know (it's translated in life, in Time, in the movement of time), he will know every moment what the Truth is — that's very interesting — or he will know every minute what Consciousness is, or he will know every minute what Power is, or he will know every minute what Love is. And it's a multiform Power, Love, Consciousness, Truth, which express themselves innumerably in the manifestation, just as the Lord expresses himself innumerably in the manifestation.

31. September 1966 – To prolong life at will!

My feeling (it's a sort of feeling-sensation) is that intermediary stages are necessary.

And then, when you see how man has had to fight against all of Nature in order to exist, you get the feeling that those who will understand and love those beings will have with them a relationship of devotion, attachment, service, as animals have with man; but those who won't love them... will be dangerous beings. I remember, I once had a very clear vision of the precarious situation of those new beings, and I said (this was before 1956, before the descent of the supramental power), I said, "The Supramental will first manifest in its aspect of Power, because that will be indispensable for the safety of the beings." And it was indeed Power that descended first — Power and Light. The Light that gives Knowledge and Power.

That's something I feel more and more clearly: the necessity of intermediary phases.... It's perfectly obvious that something is going on, but it's not the "something" that was seen and foreseen and will be the ultimate outcome: what's going to take place is ONE of the stages, not the ultimate outcome.

Sri Aurobindo also said, "There will first come the power to prolong life at will" (it's far more subtle and marvelous than that). But that's a state of consciousness which is now being established: it's a sort of constant and settled relationship and contact with the supreme Lord, which abolishes the sense of wear and tear; it replaces it with a sort of extraordinary flexibility, an extraordinary plasticity. But the SPONTANEOUS state of immortality isn't possible — at least not for the time being. This structure must be changed into something else, and judging from the way things are going on, it will take a long time before it's changed into something else. It may go much faster than in the past, but even assuming that the movement is speeding up, it still takes time (according to our notion of time). And the rather remarkable thing is that to be in the state of consciousness in which wear and tear no longer exists, you must change your sense of time: you enter a state in which time no longer has the same reality. It's something else. It's very peculiar... it's an innumerable present. I don't know.... Even that habit we have of thinking ahead of time or foreseeing what's going to happen or... it hinders, it reconnects you with the old way of being.

So many, so many habits that have to be changed.