A divine force shall flow through tissue and cell
And take the charge of breath and speech and act
And all the thoughts shall be a glow of suns
And every feeling a celestial thrill.
Often a lustrous inner dawn shall come
Lighting the chambers of the slumbering mind;
A sudden bliss shall run through every limb
And Nature with a mightier Presence fill.
Thus shall the earth open to divinity
And common natures feel the wide uplift,
Illumine common acts with the Spirit’s ray
And meet the deity in common things.
Nature shall live to manifest secret God,
The Spirit shall take up the human play,
This earthly life become the life divine.
(XI.I.710)
(Then Mother holds out a small desert flower:)
Look! It grows in the desert, without water, and it doesn’t die.
Oh, how pretty!
You know, it looks like edelweiss which grows in the ice. And this is in the desert. It’s like velvet. It’s not fragrant, but it doesn’t die. It’s a flower without water. Someone has sent it to me. I find it very interesting. There are marvels in Nature. And see this small red dot….
(Sujata:) Yes, Mother, it’s like a small flower of immortality.
I’ll give you one, but you must keep it carefully….
(Satprem:) Basically, it’s the water of life that makes things rot.
Yes, it’s water that rots things. Edelweiss doesn’t die; I had one which was intact after ten years. When things are dehydrated, they no longer die.
Wait, I’ll show you something (laughing), because you are really very nice…. See this (Mother shows a big red rose of a particular kind), it’s Sri Aurobindo. Wherever people grow this rose on earth, it’s Sri Aurobindo. It grows as big as this.
(Sujata holds out to Mother a variety of white hibiscus)
When you switch the light on (I have a light in a tube, a fluorescent tube), they don’t fade. When you put those flowers under the light, they don’t fade, I even saw some that were half closed that opened. They like that light. In the afternoon I put some in a bowl of water (when they are already nearly closed), I put one or two there, under the light—and they open!
They have a sensitiveness unknown to us.
Sometimes in the mornings, I have a closed rose bud, then I take it out of the water like this (gesture of caressing the flower all around), without touching it … and it opens!
And people say it’s not conscious!
***
(The rest of the time is spent in meditation. Towards the end, Satprem feels a little guilty that he hasn’t made Mother speak:)
I rarely ask you questions because I don’t make my mind work too much.
But you know I see more and more how horrible the mind’s action in life is. Of course, in the long run, at the end of the curve, the mind will bring a precision and accuracy that didn’t exist without it, but men come to regard that precision and accuracy as the truth, and that has spoilt everything. When it becomes nothing more than an INSTRUMENT of manifestation, it will be very useful. But for the moment it’s still … I am beginning to see in small details how its action is to add something to the manifestation, but in its daily labour it’s horrible.
And people flood me with questions more and more—a flood, at the rate of twenty-five, thirty, forty letters a day, and on top of it all, not even two are worthwhile; even those are from beginners trying to find the way, so you can give them a little push, like that. Otherwise I take great care to keep the mind quiet.
Anyway, we can see this boy’s notebook (the notebook of a young disciple who regularly puts questions to Mother). What does he ask?
“Sweet Mother, why are we, in the Ashram itself, inclined to create small groups and societies, such as ‘World Union’, ‘New Age’, etc.? What is their purpose?”
Purpose! (Laughing) Do they have a purpose?… I’ll simply answer him, “Because men are fond of forming groups.” Quite simply, nothing else to say.
(Mother writes, then stops; after a silence)
I am going to shock him a bit, no?
Yes.
(Mother finishes writing and holds out the notebook)
“Because men still imagine that in order to do anything useful, they must gather together in groups. It is the caricature of organization.”
It will do, won’t it?
World Union!… They really did imagine they were going to make humanity progress!… But when I tell people that the creation of a city like Auroville has more weight in the earth’s history than all the groups in the world, they don’t believe me. They don’t believe me, to them it’s totally unimportant, a fancy.
Once I asked Sri Aurobindo (because we had talked about Auroville a great deal, there were lots of difficulties), I asked him (because it was an idea I had—not an “idea” but a need that expressed itself some thirty years ago—more than thirty, almost forty years ago), so I asked him, and he answered me this (I think I told you): “It is the best chance men have to avoid a general conflict.“1 There.
So, since he told me that, I have been working very seriously. Of course, it wasn’t “said,” it was SEEN.
Only, I see quite clearly that they don’t believe in it, there is no one who feels. So does it…? And the concrete materialization of the spirit of Auroville hasn’t taken place yet, it doesn’t exist, there isn’t in the earth atmosphere a formation of the “spirit of Auroville,” which is a spirit…. (Mother remains absorbed for a long time) At bottom it is: “The art of building unity out of complexity.” Without uniformity, you understand: unity through harmony in complexity, with each thing in its place….
It’s very difficult.
When R. (Auroville’s architect) was here last time, he said to me, “When are we going to create Auroville’s atmosphere? Everyone is quarrelling!” (Mother laughs) I said, “Yes, that’s the difficulty….” And it’s continuing. But anyway, there is a Pressure from above, like that, a Pressure. We shall see.
It’s still a symbol.
Each little group thinks it is a symbol—that too is a symbol.
And as the formation descends in order to manifest, all oppositions rise up, contradictions rise up, complications come, and within you can clearly see that they don’t understand. So I spend my time telling them, “Don’t try to organize, don’t try, you are going to fossilize the whole thing before it’s begun.”
For my part, I wanted it to grow like that, spontaneously, with the full play of the unexpected. But then, you are confronted with all the rules and regulations: we are in a country [India]—we should do it on a desert island! But that no longer exists on earth, there isn’t an island left that doesn’t belong to a nation—we are caught, bogged down.
Anyway, we’ll muddle along as best we can.
It’s an attempt, that’s all.
But what Sri Aurobindo meant was that the movement, the general movement was towards a catastrophe, and this was to divert the current of force.
But I have wondered whether the Tower of Babel, insofar as the story is true, wasn’t a similar attempt, an attempt to harmonize men?… It’s presented to us the other way round, but I have wondered if it wasn’t that.
We’ll see.
Now there is integrally, even for the most material consciousness, the body consciousness, this: to leave the entire responsibility to the Lord—what He wants will be, and that’s all. When He wants us to do something, we do it, but after all … We do it simply because He tells us to do it. And what will happen will happen. Then, if you want to know, you put yourself in the attitude of the Witness and look on. And that’s very amusing! As soon as you are in the attitude of the Witness, it becomes very interesting—very interesting—and you smile.
That’s how it is.
The body too has learned to be like that for the smallest things. Then it’s fine.
Voilà.
See Agenda VII of September 21, 1966. ↩
***
October 21, 1967
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