classes ::: Agenda Vol 02, The Mother, Satprem, Integral Yoga, chapter,
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object:1961-07-15
book class:Agenda Vol 02
author class:The Mother
author class:Satprem
subject class:Integral Yoga
class:chapter


1961 Sat 15 July
July 15, 1961

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.1 No, I dont read these days, because Ive had a hemorrhage in this eye. There have been too many letters, and its difficult for me to decipher handwriting the result is this hemorrhage. So I have gone on strike. All right, I said, I wont read any letters for a week. People can write as much as they please, its all the same to me Im 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 bodys 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 its stupid to speak this way I did not fall ill! All possible difficulties in the bodys subconscient rose up en masseit had to happen, and it surely happened to Sri Aurobindo, too. How well I understood! How well, indeed. And its no joke, you know! I had wondered why these difficulties had hounded him so ferociouslynow 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 forestits worse than a virgin forest.

For the past two days there has been the feeling of not knowing anythingNOTHING 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 changingor of getting clarified, or of exploding, or. From the purely material standpointchemically, biologically, medically, therapeutically speaking I dont believe many people do know (there may be some). But it doesnt seem very clear to mein any case, I dont know. Yogically (I dont mean spiritually: that was the first stage of my sadhana), its very easy to be a saint! Oh, even to be a sage is very easy. I feel I was born with itits 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. Its 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 Joyan unchanging, immutable, ever-present condition. To live in That, and then to have this bodily substance contradict it through every possible stupiditylosing 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 doesnt 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, its all right, let things be as they are, I dont care, I am perfectly happy, in a blissful state, then the body begins to feel content!

Thats 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,2 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); its rising up all the time, all the time, and withoh, disgusting persistence!

And then of course its accompanied by all the usual suggestions (but thats nothing, it comes from a domain which is easily controlled). Suggestions of this type: Well, but Sri Aurobindo himself didnt do it! (I know why he didnt. but people in general dont know.) And every adverse vibration naturally takes advantage of this: How do you expect to succeed where he didnt! But my answer is always the same: When the Lord says its all over with, I will know its all over with; that will be the end of it, and so what! This stops them short.

But it doesnt 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 THATand 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 its truewhen 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 believerightly or wrongly, I dont 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 its finished, he replied, and told me to wash my eyes with glucose. (Its a useful piece of information for those with tired eyes: mix the glucoseliquid glucose, the kind that comes in ampoules for injectionwith 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 Im going to start doing it regularly. There you are.

What made Sri Aurobindo stop?

He hasnt stopped.

Stopped him physically, you mean?

Yes. What made him stop?

He decided he had to go.

We tried, ohmyself 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 decidedhe 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! Thats precisely the poin the 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 possibilitiesto 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 dont see anyone at the moment who could continue. But theres 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 dont 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. Hostilewe 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 bodys 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 Aurobindos had.

That was the basic problembecause the identification of the two [Sri Aurobindo and Mother] was almost childs play, it was nothing: for me to merge into him or him to merge into me was no problem, it wasnt difficult. We had some conversations on precisely this subject, because we saw that (there were many other things, too, but this isnt 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.

(silence)

And thats really how it is.

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 Supremes 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 Manifestationwell, 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 cant be called an anxiety); a tension in the will. This too has now ended (Mother stretches her arms into the Infinite). Its finished. But there MAY still be something tense lurking somewhere in the subconscient or the inconscient I dont know, its possible. Why? I dont 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 Thatnot to question, but simply to know the answer is always the same: Carry on, its not your problem; dont worry about it. So now I have learned not to worry about it; I am consciously not worried about it.

(silence)

Oh, its measured out with such wisdom! I mean the awarenessnot 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 wont 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 somethingit all seems like nothing, like childs play. Its nothing: you smile and then you are joyous. Its 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 wondernone of that. It is hideous, a hideous labor.

If there werent this clear vision and constant aspiration withinoh, its so dreary and exasperating so dull, so gray ugh!

(silence)

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 wasnt 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 flamestraight 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 didnt 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 Aurobindos work, in the transformation of the world, one way or the otherhere, there, like this, like thatwhat 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.

Onlythere is an only in all thisif 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 upstairs3 (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 absolutebecause 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 eartheven the earth itself had absolutely no importance.

(The clock strikes.)
***

Later, just before leaving:

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

Perhaps its better not to know.

Because evidently I cant say that my experiences are the result of a mental aspiration or will or knowledge I dont know, I dont know at all. I dont know how it should be, nor what it should be, nor anything at all. I dont know what should be done, I dont know what should not be donenothing. Its truly a blind march (gesture of groping along), in a desert riddled with all possible traps and difficulties and obstaclesall 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 dont fall asleep! You mustnt enter into a beatific state where you. No, we must keep moving on.

I dont know what to do. Its not easy.

(Mother rises)

Ah, I have something for you, but I forgot to bring it! (Mother laughs)4

Its part of an experience. I was told that NOTHING joyful should be rejected but its an entirely different kind of joy, it has nothing to do with what is called joy when one lives in the vitalnothing of that! (Laughing) Its a funny kind of joy!

Since Mother began reading Sri Aurobindo's letters in On Himself, which seemed to put her into contact with all the difficulties of the Work.

Experience of November 8, 1957. Mother has commented on this experience in 'Questions and Answers' of January 1, 1958. See Agenda I, p. 131.

End of 1958.

If memory serves, it was a tin of foie gras!

***


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