They’ve asked me for a message…. On the 19th, the prince of Kashmir, K.S., is holding a big meeting in Delhi of all the members of the parliament and the government to tell them that there is only one policy worth following, that of Sri Aurobindo. And he wants a message from me. Here it is:
“O India, land of Light and spiritual knowledge, wake up to your true mission in the world. Show the way to union and harmony.”
I deliberately didn’t use the word peace; I said harmony. I don’t want to say peace, because for them, peace means to utter platitudes to other nations so as not to fight (!). So I don’t want to use that word.
(silence)
Things are very bad. But in reality … in reality it’s just as well, because it awakens them to the necessity of doing something. There’s no security anywhere anymore, people who left from Calcutta to come here for the 15th have been stopped on the way, their train had to be diverted because there were, I don’t know, bandits somewhere.
No, they weren’t bandits at all! That’s what’s more serious: it’s not bandits, it’s students who stopped the trains! And to cap it all, the Chief Minister of Bengal has declared their “grievances” to be “legitimate.”
They may be legitimate, but not their action.
And he said their action should be regarded “sympathetically.” I read that in this morning’s papers, it’s astounding!
(Mother laughs) Charming!
They’re not bandits at all!
In any case, those who were expected here are forty-eight hours late…. No, there’s no longer any security: someone we know was sitting at his window in Calcutta—sitting at his table and writing—and from the street they threw a bowlful of acid at him!… Why? Nobody knows.
They’ve lost all their values. Yesterday I met the Vice-chancellor of Bangalore University1; can you guess what they teach in psychology at the university? They teach Freud and Jung! European psychoanalysis! In this country where there is THE knowledge, where there is everything, they go after …
They’re mad. No, the English have thoroughly spoiled them. Those two hundred years of British rule spoiled them completely. Naturally, another effect is that some people have awakened, but they don’t know anything; they know nothing either of administration or of government or anything—they’ve lost everything, and whatever they know is what they were taught by England, which means an absolutely corrupt affair. So they don’t know anything, they don’t even know how to take a decision.
But still, they are beginning to think that they should ask for help from those who know…. So that opens the door.
We’ll see.
If things had gone quite well … Now the country is ruined, people are completely ruined, there are only a few bandits (that I know) who, on the contrary, are puffed up, but all the others are ruined because … because the government doesn’t know how to do things, it governs with ideas, and what ideas! Ideas picked up in the West again, which they don’t understand and which are already bad enough for the West, but here they become pestilential.
But now they’re beginning to think that perhaps that’s not the way! (Mother laughs) And that perhaps they should try another way…. In a month I have already seen four ministers. One is from here, the Chief Minister; it seems I saw him when he was a child (I don’t remember, but he remembers that I had caressed him), and when he came the other day he told me (I gave him a flower and a “blessings packet”), he said, “There, I will wear it on me, and with it I will do your work in the government.” And quite resolute. A young man, about forty, I think, and rather strong.2
From Madras?
No, no, from here, Pondicherry.
But I saw others, from the central government. And they don’t come out of curiosity or casually, they come because they really feel the need for something.
So perhaps we’ll be able to do something…. We’ll see.
***
(Mother comes across the note she wrote on Christianity and commented on July 29)
“Christianity deifies suffering to make it the instrument of the earth’s salvation.”
You know, it came to me as a discovery…. The whole religion, instead of being seen like this (gesture from below), was seen like that (gesture from above)…. Here is what I mean: the ordinary idea of Christianity is that the son (to use their language), the “son of God” came to give his message (a message of love, unity, fraternity and charity) to the earth; and the earth, that is, those who govern, who weren’t ready, sacrificed him, and his “Father,” the supreme Lord, let him be sacrificed in order that his sacrifice would have the power to save the world. That is how they see Christianity, in it’s most comprehensive idea—the vast majority of Christians don’t understand anything whatsoever, but I mean that among them there may be (perhaps, it’s possible), among the cardinals for instance who have studied occultism and the deeper symbols of things, some who understand a little better … anyway. But according to my vision (Mother points to her note on Christianity), what happened was that in the history of the evolution of the earth, when the human race, the human species, began to question and rebel against suffering, which was a necessity to emerge more consciously from inertia (it’s very clear in animals, it has become very clear already: suffering was the means to make them emerge from inertia), but man, on the other hand, went beyond that stage and began to rebel against suffering, naturally also to revolt against the Power that permits and perhaps uses (perhaps uses, to his mind) this suffering as a means of domination. So that is the place of Christianity…. There was already before it a fairly long earth history—we shouldn’t forget that before Christianity, there was Hinduism, which accepted that everything, including destruction, suffering, death and all calamities, are part of the one Divine, the one God (it’s the image of the Gita, the God who “swallows” the world and its creatures). There is that, here in India. There was the Buddha, who on the other hand, was horrified by suffering in all its forms, decay in all its forms, and the impermanence of all things, and in trying to find a remedy, concluded that the only true remedy is the disappearance of the creation…. Such was the terrestrial situation when Christianity arrived. So there had been a whole period before it, and a great number of people beginning to rebel against suffering and wanting to escape from it like that. Others deified it and thus bore it as an inescapable calamity. Then came the necessity to bring down on earth the concept of a deified, divine suffering, a divine suffering as the supreme means to make the whole human consciousness emerge from Unconsciousness and Ignorance and lead it towards its realization of divine beatitude, but not—not by refusing to collaborate with life, but IN life itself: accepting suffering (the crucifixion) in life itself as a means of transformation in order to lead human beings and the entire creation to its divine Origin.
That gives a place to all religions in the development from the Inconscient to the divine Consciousness.
It isn’t simply a little remark noted down in passing: it’s a vision. One can always present it as something conceived mentally, but it’s not that; it’s not that, but it was, if you like, a necessity in the development. And that PLACES things.
Islam was a return towards sensation, beauty, harmony in the form, and the legitimization of sensations and joy in beauty. From a higher viewpoint, it wasn’t of a very superior quality, but from a vital viewpoint, it was extremely powerful, and that’s what gave them so much power to spread, to appropriate, to seize, to dominate. But what they did is very beautiful—all their art is magnificent, magnificent! It was a flowering of beauty…. Then there were others—it all came one after the other. And every religion came as a stage in the development and the relationship with the Divine, to lead the consciousness towards a union which is a totality and not a removal from a whole reality so as to obtain another. The need for totality, completeness, is what caused those religions to come like that, one after another.
Seen in that light, it’s very interesting.
Instead of looking at it from below, there was all of a sudden an overall vision from right above of how it was all organized with such a clear consciousness, such a clear will, each thing coming just when it was necessary so nothing would be overlooked and everything might come out, emerge from that Unconsciousness, and become increasingly conscious…. And so, in this immense history, the earth history, Christianity finds its place—its legitimate place. That has a double advantage: for those who despise it its value is restored, and as for those who believe it’s the unique truth, they are made to see that it’s only one element among others in the whole. There.
That’s why I found it interesting—because it was the result of a vision, and that vision came because I started concerning myself with religions (started again, to tell the truth, because I was very familiar with that subject in the past). And when I was asked questions on the Israelites and the Muslims, I looked and said, “Here is their place. Here is their place and their raison d’être.” Then, one day I said to myself, “Well, it is true! Seen in that way, it’s obvious: Christianity is like a rehabilitation of suffering as a means of development of the consciousness.”
And so Sri Aurobindo’s sentence assumes its full value…. Christianity came because men were rebelling against pain and trying to escape from the world in order to escape from pain…. Then, as the years went by and with the unfolding, men took a liking to suffering! And because they love it (see how Sri Aurobindo’s sentence becomes clear), “Christ still hangs on the cross in Jerusalem.” It assumes its full significance.
***
Soon afterwards
Couldn’t we publish in the Bulletin what you’ve just said about Christianity?
I am not very fond of talking about religions, it’s too early. People are still too full of passion when you speak to them about religion.
But here, it’s said so objectively.
You understand, the trouble is that everyone thinks his religion is the exclusive truth!
We’ll see next year. Next year, maybe for the month of February, we’ll see.
There may be something for the month of February….
V. K. Gokak. ↩
Farooq Marecar. ↩
***
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