Yesterday I saw Y. She told me what she wanted to do: her new method of education…. It was rather amusing!… It seems there is in a box the miniature reproduction of as many things of the earth as can be represented: humans, animals, objects, houses, and so on. All that is mixed together in a big box, on a sort of table, and the big and small children are put there, all of them together, and given a fixed time (I think): they have to make something out of the objects on the table—absolutely free, they do what they like. And it seems that according to what they do, the way they use the objects and assemble them, you can tell their character… As an illustration, she told me they put someone there (she didn’t tell me who), apparently a sage, a sage who knows about the existence of yoga, and the result of his work was this: a Red Indian taking aim to shoot another, the second Red Indian taking aim to shoot another, and the third Red Indian taking aim to shoot another—four like that, in a row. Then the last Red Indian, the fourth, taking aim to kill a lion, and the lion rushing at a deer to kill it…. There’s his tableau! And he told them that was an image of life….
According to that, they are sure of knowing his character! (Mother laughs mockingly) I found it prodigiously amusing!
The sage must have played a good joke on them (!), he must have pulled their leg and they didn’t realize it, they took it seriously… They seem to have asked him what it was, and he said, “This is life….” We see it this way, but it’s the other way round: it really begins with the lion running after the deer, then the Red Indian coming to stop the lion and shooting at it, then… I found it very amusing!
She is convinced that it’s the way to discover someone’s character.
But all that seems to me very superficial.
Absolutely!
Absolutely. But naturally, all they do is superficial. They don’t even know the existence of a depth. Or if they are told about it, they deny it.
No, but those who organize that and are supposed to know the existence of a depth, do they believe that through such a game they can reach a depth?
I don’t think they believe so. I think they consider they have reached the height of mental development.
It’s for the education of children, taken very small. They are left free in a place, they do what they like—absolutely free, with all they need at their disposal. So those who spend their time fighting are said to have a fighting character! (Mother laughs) Some remain all alone, others come together—from all that their characters are determined. So she wants to do that in Auroville. I told her, “How are they prevented from injuring themselves or having serious accidents?” She said they should be put in a place where they can fall without hurting themselves—I found it a bit flimsy! But anyway, there’s the idea. She wants to have that garden by the sea. I asked her (laughing), “How will you prevent them from getting drowned?!” She replied, “Oh, we’ll put a barrier in the sea to stop them from going too far.” (She’s already chosen the spot, near F’s hut, they even want to appropriate one of the places F has bought: they’ll put the children there.) I said, “There are sharks in the sea.” So they’re counting on their barrier to stop the sharks—it will have to be strong!… These people seem to me to be living in their imagination.
And they’re so convinced that they know that you have nothing to tell them. Now and then I tell a joke just to see—oh, brrr!…
What strikes me in it all is that I find it very old.
(Mother laughs)
There’s no lever of the future in there.
No, nothing. Nothing.
And to crown it all, who’s going to live there and watch over the children but A.—A.!! A. is the one who has learned in Switzerland this new method to describe people’s characters, it’s he who brought it back, and it interests him… furiously I just said to Y., “I hope there won’t be any accidents.” Then she told me, “Oh, later, when we have enough money, we’ll make a garden in Auromodèle, and then we’ll do it with all the necessary precautions.” I thought they should rather wait…. But to get money, they have to do something (that’s how it is: you must start doing something, and afterwards you’re given the money to do it)…. Me, of course, I don’t say anything (Mother crosses her fingers on her lips). I’ve named her “responsible for the direction of education in Auroville” (Mother laughs heartily). She told me, by the way, that she wants to have a bank account in the name of “Auroeducation”—do you know why? Because those young Americans who came here on a visit (did you hear about them?), a dozen or so… I saw them all: quite ordinary people. They asked me, “What’s responsibility?!”… Things of that sort.
Yes, you told me about them.
Well, those young people all went to see Y, and she showed them what she wanted to do—Y. says they were so ENTHUSIASTIC and said, “At last we’ve found what we were looking for!” Then one of them (they’re twenty—or twenty-two-year-old girls) told her, “Give me the number of your bank account so I can send you my contribution.” Y had never dared to hope for such a thing, she told me, “Imagine, they’re going to send me money!…” “Oh, very good,” I said.
They all seem to me like children.
Yes.
Anyway, we’ll see!
I don’t want to intervene, I want to see. Now and then, I send a collective note, like that…. But I don’t intervene.
Yes, what I look on with curiosity is YOUR way of acting with Auroville.
MY way?
Or of not acting, I don’t know!
Does it surprise you?
No, no, but I try to understand!
Aaah! You don’t understand?…
Maybe you want to lead them to the end of their foolishness… or maybe their foolishness is at the necessary present level?!
But mon petit, their foolishness is the height of intelligence in the world!… Don’t you know what the world is like, have you forgotten?!
Now and then, I see.
(Mother laughs) From time to time I have news through Z, he tells me the outer conditions—fright-ful!… Take UNESCO—UNESCO is a leading association, you know, and they haven’t gone beyond “tolerance”!
Have you forgotten how things are?
Not quite!
(Mother laughs) Not quite…
Now and then I do see some reactions. I realize people don’t understand…. Several times I tried to say certain things as I feel or see them, and I saw I had caused a dreadful scandal….
(Mother laughs heartily)
As if it were an attack on their life!
Yes, oh!… And you know, if you ask Y (it’s truthful people who told me), if you ask her, she says, “The Bulletin belongs to the past,” “Sri Aurobindo’s teaching belongs to the past.” While they’re in advance. And they’re so convinced of it!… She’s chosen M. as the god of her new creation, so you understand…
(silence)
What I do now is to… (Mother crosses her fingers on her lips)… because this Force, this Consciousness is there (gesture of pressure), and it’s working, I see it work, and it uses all that wonderfully, so as to… put people (gesture against the nose) in front of themselves.
There’s a place (“Promesse” and “Auro-orchard,” all that area which is concerned with agriculture), with French people, Swiss people, Italians (even Indians!), and they’re all busy quarreling… all the time. From every side they complain to me, asking for my support. So it’s prodigiously instructive. As for me, I stay like this (Mother crosses her fingers on her lips), and now and then I let a drop fall. The Xs, for instance, would regularly, once or twice a week, send me a complaint against the people living there (now some, now others, all of them in succession). The first time, I didn’t say anything, but after a while (laughing), I simply said (I don’t remember the exact words, only the meaning) that the true consciousness needed to live in Auroville is to look at one’s own faults first, before complaining about others’ faults, and to mend one’s ways before demanding others should mend theirs (I put it in a more… literary manner). And I sent it. Since then, silence, complete silence: I no longer exist—I don’t go and give support to all their little quarrels, so I no longer exist.
But that’s a way of kneading the dough…. They will have either to change or to go—without telling them anything, without having to tell them anything, with the pressure of the Consciousness alone. Either they will have to change, or they will be compelled to go.
It’s not a method particular to this person (Mother points to herself): it’s the method of this Consciousness.
I very clearly see the way in which it works: it puts a pressure for all that resists in someone’s nature to come to the surface and manifest, and so the ridiculous or wrong side of the thing becomes conspicuous, and it has either to go or to… I’ve noticed that. It’s its way of working.
But in fact, with this pressure, you realize that people are always ten times more stupid than you thought—they themselves know nothing about it (but that’s the habit: one is generally very unconscious of one’s own stupidity), but even when you thought you were conscious of what they’re like, you weren’t even remotely aware of what they’re like!
(silence)
I didn’t say anything to Y, except one thing: “I hope no children will get drowned.” That’s all. Nothing else. Then what a face she made…. I think the thought had never occurred to her, she’d never thought of that possibility!
(long silence)
You know that the [presidential] elections have taken place, and that there were three candidates. Among the three, one1 had seemed to me the most apt to give India her true place among the nations of the earth—I was immediately told that it was phantasmagoric and quite impossible. I didn’t insist. They told me, “Here are the three candidates” (I told you last time), so I had only one solution, only one way, that was to concentrate—concentrate with an aspiration—and ask for the best to happen for the country. That’s the message I sent to Delhi; I said to them, “I have received the assurance that what would happen would be the best for the country” (in the present conditions). Thus there was one man of worth—and no chance; another man, very old,2 and a third man,3 upright and capable, with some qualities, but a little behind the times, that is to say, clinging to the past, and quite appalled by the decisions Indira had made.4 So officially, he was against her way of governing…. That man sent me his photos, asking for my blessings; I wrote, “Blessings” on one of the photos,5 gave it to L. and told him (you know that he left for Delhi), “While you are there, if you see the possibility, meet that man and give him the photo, saying, ‘Here, Mother sends you her blessings, but she warns you that she stands behind Indira’s way of acting….’” I don’t know what happened, but on the day of the election I was like that, with No active thought, simply, “The best for the country, the best for the country”—and it’s the old one who made it!…6 Not only did he make it, he also sent me a telegram to thank me! So you understand, it precisely shows where things stand. That’s how it is….
Actively, outwardly, I would never have been able to say, “Choose this man.” I only said, “The best for the country.” I don’t know why or how, because… because, mon petit, our human consciousness is SO SMALL! Even when we identify with the general Consciousness, we feel so small, so microscopic in comparison with the true, all-containing Consciousness. We can’t contain all! Even, even when we identify with this Consciousness, we become like this (gesture showing emptiness at the forehead level), absolutely silent and still, with only a luminous Vibration, IMMENSE, you know, infinite, and an infinite power, too, but… (same gesture to the forehead) no translation of any sort, nothing like a thought. So then, if we want to intervene between That and circumstances, we are OBLIGED to make mistakes, we can’t do otherwise! So the only way is to stay like this (still gesture, turned upward). That’s why I am like this, silent. You told me, “I don’t understand your way of acting in Auroville…”: it’s nothing but that. It’s because our thought limits, opposes—even, even the vastest consciousness, you understand, is only a TERRESTRIAL consciousness, a terrestrial consciousness, and… it’s very small. Very small. And very small especially from the point of view of consequences, of the sequence of circumstances (Mother draws a curve), of how this will bring about that—we don’t see. So one must be like this (gesture turned upward), and simply let this Consciousness act…. And there was the result: it is the third man who made it. I found it quite amusing. Quite amusing. I thought, “There you are!”
In my vision (I can’t swear it’s supramental, but at any rate it was much above a mental vision), I chose one man [Deshmukh], and everyone giggled, telling me it was an impossibility—it was the one thing that could make India immediately great. Immediately it gave India a place in the world, which was her true place. Everyone found it profoundly ridiculous. So then, I was asked to choose from among three candidates, and the most obviously incapable of the three was chosen as… as the man who would help the most in India’s development and blossoming. There.
After that, you only have to keep quiet.
You know, this telegram… (Mother looks for it and hands it to Satprem).
“Deep gratitude for blessing. I am always at thy service.”
V. V. Giri
He was elected, and this telegram was sent immediately: the time coincides…. Don’t you find it interesting?
Yes, very.
(silence)
It’s after noting a considerable number of such facts that I began being like this: simply bringing, almost by force (Mother brings down her two arms with force), the Supreme Consciousness in contact with the earth. That’s all.
(silence)
F. told me there was a piece of land by the sea where you’d like to have a hut?
Oh, you know, it’s just a manner of speaking!
Never mind! As soon as she told me, I answered her, “Well, we’ll find a way.” We’ll try to get the land. Luckily it’s not too near their future kindergarten!
There’s a small bit of dune or hillock there, which is very lovely.
Ah!
So we happened to sit there, and I said, “Oh, it would be nice to have a hut here…”
But it’s not yet ours.
But Mother, I have no idea or even desire…
Yes, oh, I know very well, it’s simply as you say: one feels a current passing by and says, “Oh, it would be nice…”—Why not! (Mother laughs) We constantly have to do something—as long as we are here, we have to do something—so better do the things that put you in contact with the most harmonious current!
But I must say that from the standpoint of action (not even merely material action, because I have almost no material action left, so to say), but of invisible action, with this Consciousness I have learned a LOT, quite a lot. It has… our means are very childish, and, you know, it has such a wonderful sense of humor, a way of making people face their stupidity, which is really… really charming. And I see it constantly, all the time, for very small things, for big things, for a country’s politics or the organization of a house—all the same thing. And with a delightful irony—and so benevolent: no sense of reprobation, no… The idea of evil and sin and all that—prrrt! all gone.
It’s only the pressure of the Consciousness on the inconscient—and then, in people, the measure of the resistance or of the receptivity. it’s like that. In some people (and not always the apparently bad ones), there’s such resistance!… It’s like… like iron. While others…
It’s going much faster. Things are moving fast just now.
We’ll see, we’re going to see!… (Mother laughs)
C. D. Deshmukh. ↩
V. V. Giri. ↩
Sanjiva Reddy. ↩
The nationalization of banks. ↩
That is the photo which Sanjiva Reddy will only receive eight years later, precisely when he was elected president in later elections. ↩
V.V. Giri, aged 75. ↩
***
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