Here is something important. Sri Aurobindo says that everything is involved down here - the mind, the vital, the supermind - and that what is involved evolves. But if everything is involved, including the supermind, what is the need for a 'descent'? Can't things evolve by themselves?
Ah! He has explained this somewhere.
But I don't remember seeing anything that satisfied me.
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 [[Sachchidananda is the Supreme Consciousness in its triple aspect of Existence (Sat), Consciousness (Chit) and Bliss (Ananda). ]] ) 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. [277]
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. [[See the addendum following this conversation for a transcription of Mother's vision as she noted it down for publication in Theon's Cosmic Review in 1906. ]]
(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 Theon 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). [278] 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!
Relation of Auroville and Africa
withdrew! On the Indian side a few were touched andSince World War II, I have been keeping Kali[[Kali: the warrior aspect of the supreme Mother. ]] quiet, but she is restless! Times are critical, anything may happen. If people will only give up their ego!
they told me of terrible conditions.
Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy
Sart Chandra Bose
Rabindranath Tagore
Jean Racine
December 15, 1971
I sent you this note, can it be used for something?
Yes, Mother, certainly.
"Difficult periods come on earth to compel men to overcome their small personal egoism and to turn exclusively to the Divine for help and light. The wisdom of men is ignorant. Only the Divine knows."
It came imperiously.
What wants Peace and Harmony was in me and....[[Mother is alluding to the Bangladesh war. Mother's note was probably written in reference to that war. ]] I was feeling a sort of pressure, and that came. It came imperatively -- plain, imperative. Without that, men would never have progressed -- they would never progress.
(silence)
That war is very absorbing.
The war?
Yes, it's day and night, day and night....
Unfortunately you get the impression that in the west [the western front with Pakistan, i.e., Kashmir and Rajasthan], they don't want to do anything. Indira has declared that India had absolutely no interest in the breakup of Pakistan: "Not at all interested."[[Mrs. Gandhi stated that India has nothing against Pakistan. The government and people of India are not at all interested in the breakup of Pakistan." (The Hindu, 11 December 1971) ]] They just want to liberate Bangladesh and that's all.
(Mother sits absorbed for a very long time)
There's nothing?
No, it's late, Mother.
What time is it?
Twenty-two past eleven.
Twenty-two past ten.
No, twenty-two past eleven!
Oh!...
This war is.... I am busy all the time, all the time.
We get letters from the front; several generals and high-ranking officers say they feel my presence all the time. And it's true, I am busy all the time.
Did they tell you that the Americans are there with their "nuclear ship"?
They're not there yet, it seems. It's not quite sure -- they've sent it, but it's not quite sure.[["Not sure" that they will go as far as Bangladesh to help the retreating Pakistani army. ]]
They're completely mad.
Yes, that would be a disaster.
They're mad -- and stupid.
Yes. That president should be toppled.[[Watergate will break out six months later, on June 17, 1972. ]]
Oh, yes! Yes.
The one they want to put in his place is a friend of India. But no one likes that ... [Nixon], only a minority supports him -- not everyone.
They should just ... (gesture of sweeping clean).
Can't you arrange that?
(Mother laughs a lot)
... I am constantly busy.
Vishnucitta discovering Andal. Scultpure above the tulasi garden in Srivilliputtur 
