Mother reads a few extracts from letters of Sri Aurobindo:
I have here three quotations on difficulties. They apply so marvelously now! Sri Aurobindo wrote them in 1946, 47, 48the dark hours. And things are repeating themselves now:
The Mothers victory is essentially a victory of each sadhak over himself. It can only be then that any external form of work can come to a harmonious perfection.
November 12, 1937
Then this one, which is very interesting:
I know that this is a time of trouble for you and everybody. It is so for the whole world. Confusion, trouble, disorder and upset everywhere is the general state of things. The better things that are to come are preparing or growing under a veil and the worse are prominent everywhere. The one thing is to hold on and hold out till the hour of light has come.
(XXVI. 168, June 2, 1946)
This we could repeat to people endlessly, but it is extraordinarily true just now!
To hold on and hold out.
Till the hour of light has come.
So be it!
(Laughing) Things have never been so bad! And strangelystrangely enough there is behind all that a kind of SOLIDITY that has never been there before. I have noticed this since yesterday. Outwardly, things have never been so confused, so complicated, so unpleasant, so difficult, yet there is somewhere (as if underneath or within, I dont know how to explain) a solidity, something that has a solid evenness like a base that NOTHING can shake. This I have never felt previously. I have felt it for the last two days.
As though something were established that is UNSHAKABLE. And outwardly, things have never been so catastrophic. I find this interesting.
And then, even from the point of view of light, there was (till the last few days) a sort of bright light of a more or less childlike trust and a more or less childlike hope (especially among the people here), which (its rather comical to say) suddenly went out when the food supplies were cut at the dining room!
(Satprem, in disbelief:) No!
I assure you, it sounds like a joke, but its true! The supplies were cutmore as a demonstration than as a necessity, that is to say, it didnt save much money: it made a lot of noise, a big hoo-ha, a lot of changes, but it didnt save in proportion; but D. felt that the demonstration was necessaryvery well. But what an effect it had! That sort of childlike trust, like a light of childlike unconcern which was hanging in the atmosphere here: pff!swallowed up (Mother laughs). So I was watching it, thinking, But this is wonderful! I watched carefully for that reason and I saw that that kind of surface sheencom-plete-ly gone! People were dismayed. At the same time, in the consciousness, such a solidity and stability as I had never seen before, as if it were decided (Mother brings her hands down in a sovereign gesture), This is now established.
And its connected to February 29.
For a long time people have been like bubbling champagne, you know, always wanting to know, Whats going to happen? What can we expect? A big to-do. I answered, I dont know. I dont know I am not trying to know, I am not looking at it, I am not concerned with it: when it comes, it will come. Then, several times (while I was writing birthday cards or letters), several times, it was as if clearly dictated to me, Prepare yourself for the Truth-Light that is descending. And its clearly this: the Truth-Light that is going to manifest the Truth-Light that is descending the Truth-Light that is preparing its manifestationall sorts of sentences kept coming to me like that, but always the Truth-Light. Then I understood that this was what was going to happen.
And now its something as solid as cement (which means its material) and ab-so-lute-ly EVEN, you know, even, not one ripple of form, absolutely flat as a slab of marble, and without beginning or endlimitless, you cant see its end: its everywhere. Everywhere, and everywhere the same. Everywhere the same. A color like a sort of gray (a gray, the gray of Matter) that would contain a golden light, yet doesnt shine: it doesnt shine, it doesnt have a luminosity of its own, but it contains light. It doesnt radiate, it isnt luminous, yet its a gray with a golden light in it the gray of the most material Matter, of stone; gray, you know. But it contains that light: its not inert, not insensitive, not unconscious, yet it is MATTER.
I have never seen that before.
It has been there for two days. What is it going to be? What is it going to bring about? I dont know.
Listen, Sujata had a dream thats exactly what youve just described.
Oh, but shes wonderful, your Sujata!
She was looking at the sky, then she started seeing stars falling down everywhere, like a rain of stars over the earth. And then the ground had turned into an even mass of ice, like at the poles: it wasnt bright, but it was like ice everywhere on the ground. And a sort of ship rose on it, with a slightly gray color, with passengers, whose color was also not bright, but slightly gray, slightly blue, as though they had escaped from old thingsas though they had escaped from some catastrophe or were coming out of some catastrophe.1
Really!
And everywhere, like at the poles, there was that ice.
Thats it. Well, its odd. And the rain of stars Oh, its interesting.
(silence)
A solid base, you know, and its there (Mother makes a gesture at ground level). The feeling of a solid, un-shak-a-ble base.
As if
Inertia transformed into its conscious principle of immortal stability.
It is evidently a change in Inertia itself.
***
Then Mother reads another letter by Sri Aurobindo:
The extreme acuteness of your difficulties is due to the yoga having come down against the bed-rock of Inconscience which is the fundamental basis of all resistance in the individual and in the world to the victory of the Spirit and the Divine Work that is leading toward that victory. The difficulties themselves are general in the Ashram as well as in the outside world.
The description follows. You would think it was happening now:
Doubt, discouragement, diminution or loss of faith, waning of the vital enthusiasm for the ideal, perplexity and a baffling of the hope for the future are the common features of the difficulty. In the world outside there are much worse symptoms such as the general increase of cynicism, a refusal to believe in anything at all, a decrease of honesty, an immense corruption, a preoccupation with food, money, comfort, pleasure, to the exclusion of higher things, and a general expectation of worse and worse things awaiting the world. All that, however acute, is a temporary phenomenon for which those who know anything about the workings of the world-energy and the workings of the Spirit were prepared. I myself foresaw that this worst would come, the darkness of night before the dawn; therefore I am not discouraged. I know what is preparing behind the darkness and can see and feel the first signs of its coming. Those who seek for the Divine have to stand firm and persist in their seeking; after a time, the darkness will fade and begin to disappear and the Light will come.
(XXVI.169-170, April 9, 1947)
Very appropriate.
Very well, we have to stand firm.
Oh, it doesnt even make a slight dent! All those things are exactly like watching a spectacle.
(silence)
It has become absolutely concrete, you know, as concrete as can be.
And yet, difficulties pour in from everywhere, not only with regard to health (which is still linked to moral things: the mood, the state of consciousness, the thoughts and mental formations, etc.), but to money, the paper money which refuses to come! And in this connection, lately I have seen in a fairly interesting way the difference in the material mental atmosphere: there was a sort of certainty that all that was necessary would come somehowit was impossible for it not to come (I am referring to the general atmosphere); then it was replaced by you know, like when you bang your nose against a wall! That sort of very childlike, carefree trustvanished! It just vanished So I had to look deeply at it, at what was behind, and thats how I saw this change in the Inertia (how is it going to express itself? I dont know; in what way?), which I had never seen before.
It is something there, down below. Before, it was here (gesture to the level of the forehead), like this, in the atmosphere; now, its there (gesture at ground level), that is to say, very low.
Its something that has happened in the Inconscient.
Its interesting. Well see.
Sujata added: "The stars started falling into the sea, but there wasn't any more water! It was a solid surface, it was ice, a sea of ice like at the poles. And that ice was not dazzling white, but rather gray-white, somewhat like frosted glass, not transparent but translucent. And the passengers wore a kind of blue belt."
***
January 28, 1964
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