May 3, 1969
This Consciousness is very interesting. It has (smiling) ... it's not
scorn, it's a sort of faraway indifference for all human ideas - all
conventions, all principles, all moralities, it finds all of that ...
absolutely grotesque. Now and then, it comes into contact with human
ideas (Mother takes a surprised tone of voice): "Ooh! So that's what
they think ..." It's amusing!
There are two things. Death, it doesn't at all understand what we
mean by that, the importance we attach to it - but not at all. And
then, money, to this consciousness, is buffoonery: this system of money,
the invention of this system, which prevents you from doing anything
unless you pull out a banknote, to it, really it's buffoonery. Strange, I
suddenly realize that the psychic being (dominating gesture behind) ...
the psychic being is almost like a witness, it's a witness to the whole
evolution of things, and it KNOWS (it understands the deeper reasons,
it knows how things are). It's in the body that this Consciousness is so
active, and so, every time the body goes on with the little habits from
the time when there was a mind and a vital, really it feels it as
buffoonery. And the attitude with regard to money is like ... Death,
food and money: this Consciousness feels those are the three "awesome"
things in human life, that human life revolves around those three
things-eating, (laughing) dying, and having money - and to it, the three
are ... they are passing inventions which derive from a wholly
transitory state that doesn't correspond to anything very deep or very
permanent. That's its attitude. And then, it teaches the body to be
otherwise.
It tolerates food, provided it doesn't take up too big a place
and isn't too cumbersome or too important; it says, "Very well, that's
the way you're built, too bad for you, you've got to eat." (Mother
laughs)
And then, death ... Just yesterday (yesterday afternoon), I had
an example. An accident took place, have you heard about it? [[A teenage
girl drowned in the Ashram's swimming pool in the presence of her whole
group. ]] They're really wondering how it happened. As for me, I
INSTANTLY saw that there was in the girl a psychic will (which she
wasn't conscious of: she only felt an unease), but there was a psychic
will to die (why? I don't know, I haven't yet seen why). That was clear.
<165>
And how everything was arranged to favor that, it's almost
miraculous (you don't talk about it because people will say you're going
mad if you call such a misfortune "miraculous"). But habitually, all
those who go into the swimming pool have to put their name down when
they go out (that's the rule). Yesterday, the man who kept the register
had asked to go to Madras at 6, so he wasn't there and no one's name was
noted down, and so they didn't know ... Things like that. She went to
see the group's captain and told her, "I am tired, I don't feel well, I
want to go"; the captain said, "Yes, yes, you can go." (Of course, it
was foolish not to check that she had left; the captain was busy and
just thought, "All right, she's leaving.") The girl was then at the
shallow end of the pool - impossible to get drowned there, unless you do
it quite deliberately (they found her at the other end). But the pool
was full of people - nobody saw anything. You see, everything was
arranged just to ... force her to die. [[Let us note that the girl's
sister, who was very close to her, should have accompanied her to the
swimming pool, but was away on that day And when the girl's body was
taken to the hospital and put under an oxygen tent, after two minutes
the oxygen was exhausted and there was none left in the whole hospital.
]] Every precaution is in place, and not one worked .... And as soon as
they told me the news of the accident, as soon as I was told, I
immediately looked, and I saw, in the place of her psychic, a peaceful
will, like this (Mother stretches out her two arms in an immutable
gesture). They were working hard: they worked for hours; first they took
all the water out (they know how to do that), they drained the body of
the water, then started working-tractions and all that to try to make
her breathe again - they worked for hours (they were ready to work the
whole night), they did all they could. And the psychic was like this
(same gesture), that is, immutable, determined. But she didn't know
[that she was going to die]: it came through her vital to reach her, and
she felt quite ill at ease, she said, "Oh, I want to go out." So they
told her, "Yes, that's right, you should go ...." And because she had
said that, naturally no one was worried when they didn't see her (no one
had put their names down, so they couldn't check); it's only when they
found her clothes ... She had been under water for over an hour.
This Consciousness was so conscious of the movement in everyone,
of every reaction, it was extraordinary! And it's this Consciousness
that saw this, that showed me this: a psychic like this (same immutable
gesture), like an irrevocable decision. And for this Consciousness, you
understand, it's like someone who decides to move to a new house, or to a
new room, or even to change clothes .... "Why do you make so much, so
much fuss about that?" <166>
I haven't said any of this, because ... I haven't said anything to anyone.
(silence)
Last year, you remember, there was a boy who drowned at Gingee:
[[It was three years ago, in a pond, during an outing. See Agenda VII of
17 December 1966. ]] that was with P. [the group's captain]; and this
little one, it was with B., R's sister [also a captain]. So I looked:
outwardly, they are vitally very strong and very egocentric, which would
be the external, material reason that allows the accident to take
place-that is, no intuition of other's needs or state: no contact,
they're like this (gesture closed in on oneself), but with an inner
solidity on which, the psychic was leaning, for both of them [the two
captains].
The other one too [the boy who drowned in the pond] wanted to go,
but in his case it was very interesting: I saw Sri Aurobindo come and
fetch him under water, and Sri Aurobindo said, "He will be born in the
family" (he came back in a child), "he will come back in the first child
to be born in the family." And this girl, I don't know yet what will
happen, but her psychic being WANTED to go (for some reason or other).
[[See in addendum Mother's comments to a disciple regarding this
"accident." ]]
(silence)
The strange thing is that when you see things with this
Consciousness, the PERFECTION of the organization is so TREMENDOUS that
you are ... you're almost terrified! Normally, when she went down to the
bottom they should have noticed it immediately-they would have brought
her up and it would have been over (they know very well how to do that,
nothing would have happened).
(silence)
For this Consciousness, apart from a few individuals, human
beings are weak. They are weak beings. Highly speculative, imaginative,
very highly active in the mind, oh, tremendously active; that gives it a
sense of ... oh-oh, what agitation! But like that, from the
psychophysical standpoint, weak.
Since it began, I've told you several times about this sense of a
FORCE, an absolutely unusual force (I am not the only one: all those
who are in contact with this Consciousness say they feel a force ... an
extraordinary force). And it's this Consciousness. But it has a
different character: it's a force that sees things differently, wholly
differently. <167>
So then, for instance, these two I mentioned [P. and his sister,
the two captains], from a human standpoint, you would say they're really
insensitive - it's because they're insensitive and too egocentric that
the accident took place. In other words, a reproach. In this light, "Oh,
these are good instruments, one can lean on them [[Let us note that P.
and his sister are both very muscularly solid. ]] (solid gesture), they
won't sag, they're strong enough for one to lean on them." And all that
is shown to the body, which is really beginning ... (laughing) to know
things no body had ever learned before - ever. And to see life quite
differently It feels ... (laughing) you know, it feels stupid, that is,
consciously it's in one way, and then out of atavism, out of
construction, it's tied down in the other way. So it feels very silly,
very silly But the Consciousness held it (with yesterday's event), it
HELD it in its Consciousness like that, present, until it had really
understood everything in detail, and once it had really understood,
poff! the thing was gone, finished. So it understands that when
something is held like that, it means there's something to understand,
it has a lesson to learn, and when the lesson has been learned, when it
has understood, seen clearly-once it has seen clearly and it's all
simple and very clear - that's it, poff! it's gone, finished (gesture
showing the Consciousness letting go of the body), as though the thing
were quite taken away That was taking place at night, while I am not
disturbed (the night hours are the only ones when I am not disturbed
every minute; I can carry on with my work untroubled), and then I saw.
And that night was so peaceful, but with such peace! ... It's ten rungs
above the ordinary material "peace," completely You know, the peace of a
psychic will so powerful (Mother stretches her arms in a sovereign
gesture), so tranquil ... that all our emotions, our reactions, all that
absolutely looks like childishness. But the body understands very well
(since this Consciousness came it has begun to understand lots of
things), it understands that all that [emotions, reactions] was a
necessary path to prepare receptive instruments.
It's really interesting.
There are all the vibrations, the little tensions in beings, and
this Consciousness shows (it shows very clearly) how that is the cause
of disorganizations, illnesses, distortions ... that vibration of
constant trepidation - a vibration of weakness.
(silence)
<168>
There was one thing. This little one, they're going to cremate
her now. So they came to me with a tray of flowers to show me the
flowers they were going to place on her body And there [with the tray],
there was something of the little one - a psychic embryo; it was there,
and it made a slight movement ... suddenly, a movement of such a deep
tenderness. She was like this (gesture in front of Mother, with the tray
of flowers), I took a rose, and it was as though I gave it to her in
her hand; I gave it and said, "Here, it's for you." And all that, all
those vibrations, it was all luminous, lovely, and she (the conscious
part in her) was so per-fect-ly happy! ...
How can you tell that to the parents? They would say, "You're crazy ..."
But that's the FACT, the plain fact: I saw Champaklal come with
the tray of flowers, and it [the psychic embryo] was floating above,
like that; so when I saw her, I took a rose and ... there was something
so lovely, so luminous, like that (a very small thing, not a great force
or anything), but so lovely, so luminous, so happy, with such a sense
of repose ....
And how many times it must happen like that!
Mon petit, we don't know anything! Day after day after day, I am
increasingly convinced that WE KNOW NOTHING. We think we know, we think
... and we know nothing. We are in the presence of hidden wonders that
elude us completely because we're idiots. There.
But with this Consciousness, there is the why of everything:
everyone's reaction, why he acts in that way, and ... And since it's
been there, not once have I seen in this Consciousness a reproach-not
once did it reproach anyone. It has explained everything in such a way
that it becomes so luminous, so understanding as to make you wonder,
"Why should one reproach anyone? ..." Oh, for it, moral notions are
something ... something ultra-stupid. But I told it (I am still telling
it) that they were necessary in the course of evolution to refine matter
and open the way to certain forces: if people had been from the
beginning wholly satisfied with themselves, they would never have
progressed. But now, it's time to see-time to see.
The vast majority of humanity is unconscious (what I call
unconscious, that is, without contact with the Consciousness, not
CONSCIOUSLY in contact with Consciousness), the vast majority; but for
one who is capable of being above circumstances with a clear and precise
vision of the why and the how ... it's wonderful.
There.
It's what Sri Aurobindo wrote in Savitri: God grows up on earth
-God grows-but man ... (laughing), the wise man talks and <169>
sleeps ... and no one will notice it till the work is over. [[Savitri,
I.IV.55. ]] That's how it is. And he knew it.
(silence)
Do you have any news? ... Nothing?
Do I have a contact with this Consciousness?
Do you ...?
Have a contact with this Consciousness?
(Mother opens her eyes wide) I never even asked myself the question! I took it for granted.
But I can't make out the difference: for me there's always "the force," so ... I can't tell the difference between forces.
No, but I ... Mind you, if I hadn't had that experience of January
Is', when I felt it come - I felt it, saw it come, it was wholly
concrete, like ... like someone coming into the room, you understand,
that concrete. So that's what made me take notice, otherwise I would
have found it to be the normal course of the development. But that
experience alerted me; that, and the fact that three people felt it
before I said anything, and those three people told me about it before I
even said a word. They told me about it while asking me, "What has
happened?" That's what I found interesting. But, for me, it was the same
thing as for them, there was no difference; I told them there wasn't
any difference in gradation - it wasn't that this Consciousness was more
intimate with me than with you all: it's the same thing, it was like
someone coming in. But a someone ... superlatively conscious. That's
what caused me to note the fact; otherwise I would have taken it as the
course of the development, like you.
And it did that thing ... (it was the first time it happened to me ...
You see, I was asked, "What is the condition one should be in to
fully receive this Consciousness?" So I was here, sitting like this, and
the person was sitting where you are (a little more to the side), and I
saw with my open eyes the Consciousness (not this consciousness: the
Supreme Consciousness) come down (gesture like a column of light before
Mother) ... That, mon petit, it can't be described .... <170>
I was like this (eyes wide open), and I saw it come (same gesture
like a column) and settle down on the wooden floor like that, about
this size (gesture: about five feet wide). All the rest was as usual
(Mother shows the furniture, her bed, which she could see as usual), and
there was "that" which I saw with these very eyes. Then this
Consciousness took my consciousness (revolving gesture starting from
Mother's left side, going through the column of light in front of
Mother, and returning on the right side): I didn't see anything [i.e.,
any shadow]. I wondered whether it had gone through the column (yet I
FELT it while going through). And then, so I would understand clearly it
took the consciousness of the person sitting there and made it go
through [the column of light], and I saw a slight form, I saw a blue
form in the place of the head .... That was a weakness. For a long while
I saw, I looked, then it went away all of a sudden. You know, it's so
independent of one's will, aspiration, movements of consciousness - of
everything. And like this: visible for this body - on its scale, you
understand. Fantastic!
This body was accustomed to having experiences under the
psychic's influence, in its adoration for ... the Supreme Conscious
Truth - in adoration. Its whole joy was there, it was fully satisfied.
But since that time, it has had experiences - which the other parts of
the being had IN THEIR OWN WAY, but now this way this physical way is so
concrete! ... So concrete and tangible .... The body can say, "I have
SEEN the Supreme Consciousness," like people in the past who said, "I
have seen God." - This body doesn't believe in God ... it believes in
something much better than God! (laughter)
There. Is that all? Do you have anything to ask?
No, Mother.
Nothing? ... Mon petit, I can tell you (I don't like to tell things
that look like compliments or flattery, that's why I don't say anything,
but since you've asked me ...). As a matter of fact, I feel that this
Consciousness moves about in you without meeting obstacles. It's only
materially: the physical needs a slight encouragement to let itself ...
be kneaded, so to speak, so you may become physically really receptive -
but in my case, my body can't say anything, because it too is like
that: it has that same difficulty, a pain here, a pain there, this here,
and that ... all the time small things that ... For them to disappear,
it has to remember. It's the only thing, it's analogous to you. But the
Consciousness moves about (Mother makes a wavy gesture, pointing to
Satprem's body), I see it move <171> about, always unhindered -
unhindered, like something natural. You understand, it's like something
natural: it goes through like this (same wavy gesture), perfectly
natural. So it's all right! (Mother laughs)
***
ADDENDUM
(Mother's comments, noted down from memory by a disciple, in English, about the teenage girls drowning in the swimming pool.)
P. spoke to the Mother in detail at 1:30 p.m. today about the
findings of his inquiry of yesterday's incident. To that the Mother
said:
"I can tell you about the result of 'my' inquiry - the inner
inquiry. Last night I was busy all the time looking at this incident. I
found that it was her soul that took this decision - she was not
conscious - but her soul wanted to go ... to leave her body. From the
facts that I gather from you it seems that there was not enough reason
for her drowning - in spite of it her soul managed to leave her body.
"This fact was further supported when this morning Champaklal
brought a dish of flowers to be burnt on her body. I saw a pretty little
flame in the center of the dish. Generally I do not give any flowers on
the dish; I send it as it is. But today I was specially interested, I
took a rose and put it on the flame of the dish. The flame grew big and
it was glowing wonderfully - it was very beautiful."
HE
three parts of the perfection of our instrumental nature of which we have
till now been reviewing the general features, the perfection of the intelligence,
heart, vital consciousness and body, the perfection of the fundamental
soul powers, the perfection of the surrender of our instruments and action
to the divine Shakti, depend at every moment of their progression on a
fourth power that is covertly and overtly the pivot of all endeavour and
action, faith, Sraddha. The perfect faith is an assent of the whole being
to the truth seen by it or offered to its acceptance, and its central working
is a faith of the soul in its own will to be and attain and become and
its idea of self and things and its knowledge, of which the belief of the
intellect, the heart's consent and the desire of the life mind to possess
and realise are the outward figures. This soul faith, in some form of itself,
is indispensable to the action of the being and without it man cannot move
a single pace in life, much less take any step forward to a yet unrealised
perfection. It is so central and essential a thing that the Gita can justly
say of it that whatever is a man's Sraddha, that he is, yo yacchraddhah
sa eva sah, and, it may be added, whatever he has the faith to see as possible
in himself and strive for, that he can create and become. There is one
kind of faith demanded as indispensable by the integral Yoga and that may
be described as faith in God and the Shakti, faith in the presence and
power of the Divine in us and the world, a faith that all in the world
is the working of one divine Shakti, that all the steps of the Yoga, its
strivings and sufferings and failures as well as its successes and satisfactions
and victories are utilities and necessities of her workings and that by
a firm and strong dependence on and a total self-surrender to the Divine
and to his Shakti in us we can attain to oneness and freedom and victory
and perfection.
The enemy of faith is doubt, and yet doubt too is a utility and necessity,
because man in his ignorance and in his progressive labour towards knowledge
needs to be visited by doubt, otherwise he would remain obstinate in an
ignorant belief and limited knowledge and unable to escape from his errors.
This utility and necessity of doubt does not altogether disappear when
we enter on the path of Yoga. The integral Yoga aims at a knowledge not
merely of some fundamental principle, but a knowing, a gnosis which will
apply itself to and cover all life and the world action, and in this search
for knowledge we enter on the way and are accompanied for many miles upon
it by the mind's unregenerated activities before these are purified and
transformed by a greater light: we carry with us a number of intellectual
beliefs and ideas which are by no means all of them correct and perfect
and a host of new ideas and suggestions meet us afterwards demanding our
credence which it would be fatal to seize on and always cling to in the
shape in which they come without regard to their possible error, limitation
or imperfection. And indeed at one stage in the Yoga it becomes necessary
to refuse to accept as definite and final any kind of intellectual idea
or opinion whatever in its intellectual form and to hold it in a questioning
suspension until it is given its right place and luminous shape of truth
in a spiritual experience enlightened by supramental knowledge. And much
more must this be the case with the desires or impulsions of the life mind,
which have often to be provisionally accepted as immediate indices of a
temporarily necessary action before we have the full guidance, but not
always clung to with the soul's complete assent, for eventually all these
desires and impulsions have to be rejected or else transformed into and
replaced by impulsions of the divine will taking up the life movements.
The heart's faith, emotional beliefs, assents are also needed upon the
way, but cannot be always sure guides until they too are taken up, purified,
transformed and are eventually replaced by the luminous assents of a divine
Ananda which is at one with the divine will and knowledge. In nothing in
the lower nature from the reason to the vital will can the seeker of the
Yoga put a complete and permanent faith, but only at last in the spiritual
truth, power, Ananda which become in the spiritual reason his sole guides
and luminaries and masters of action.
nd
yet faith is necessary throughout and at every step because it is a needed
assent of the soul and without this assent there can be no progress. Our
faith must first be abiding in the essential truth and principles of the
Yoga, and even if this, is clouded in the intellect, despondent in the
heart, outwearied and exhausted by constant denial and failure in the desire
of the vital mind, there must be something in the innermost soul which
clings and returns to it, otherwise we may fall on the path or abandon
it from weakness and inability to bear temporary defeat, disappointment,
difficulty and peril. In the Yoga as in life it is the man who persists
unwearied to the last in the face of every defeat and disillusionment and
of all confronting, hostile and contradicting events and powers who conquers
in the end and finds his faith justified because to the soul and Shakti
in man nothing is impossible. And even a blind and ignorant faith is a
better possession than the sceptical doubt which turns its back on our
spiritual possibilities or the constant carping of the narrow pettily critical
uncreative intellect, asuya, which pursues our endeavour with a paralysing
incertitude. The seeker of the integral Yoga must however conquer both
these imperfections. The thing to which he has given his assent and set
his mind and heart and will to achieve, the divine perfection of the whole
human being, is apparently an impossibility to the normal intelligence,
since it is opposed to the actual facts of life and will for long be contradicted
by immediate experience, as happens with all far-off and difficult ends,
and it is denied too by many who have spiritual experience but believe
that our present nature is the sole possible nature of man in the body
and that it is only by throwing off the earthly life or even all individual
existence that we can arrive at either a heavenly perfection or the release
of extinction. In the pursuit of such an aim there will for long be plenty
of ground for the objections, the carpings, asuya, of that ignorant but
persistent criticising reason which founds itself plausibly on the appearances
of the moment, the stock of ascertained fact and experience, refuses to
go beyond and questions the validity of all indices and illuminations that
point forward; and if he yields to these narrow suggestions, he will either
not arrive or be seriously hampered and long delayed in his journey. On
the other hand, ignorance and blindness in the faith are obstacles to a
large success, invite much disappointment and disillusionment, fasten on
false finalities and prevent advance to greater formulations of truth and
perfection. The Shakti in her workings will strike ruthlessly at all forms
of ignorance and blindness and all even that trusts wrongly and superstitiously
in her, and we must be prepared to abandon a too persistent attachment
to forms of faith and cling to the saving reality alone. A great and wide
spiritual and intelligent faith, intelligent with the intelligence of that
larger reason which assents to high possibilities, is the character of
the sraddha needed for the integral Yoga.
