I keep receiving almost daily some Aphorisms of Sri Aurobindo, which I had completely forgotten. There are really quite interesting things …. Some of them give me the exact impression of a clothing (we might say an intellectual clothing, but it’s not that, it’s from a higher mind, but it’s mentalized, that is to say, accessible to thought), a clothing of the experience I had of the supramental Consciousness, in which the difference between good and evil and all that looked like childishness, and Sri Aurobindo expresses it in those Aphorisms in a manner accessible to intelligence. Only… those who understand don’t understand right! Because they understand below.
Do you remember those Aphorisms?… In one he says, “If I can’t be Rama, then I want to be Ravana…” and he explains why It’s that series.1
(silence)
I have the name of A.R.’s “master.” I told you he has a guru ….
(Mother looks for a scrap of paper)
“Sitaram Omkarnath.”
I don’t know him at all …. He isn’t well known, at any rate.
Ah, L. went to Delhi (he even met A.R.), so I asked him about N.S.; he said she was relieved a lot, but not cured. That’s what everyone here had, the same thing: a relief, but no cure.
Yes, for all those in contact with you, it’s a different case.
Yes. But I can see, that’s what Sri Aurobindo also had: there is a certain power that comes from the contact with the supramental forces, which Sri Aurobindo had, and which I have experienced (when I said, “He takes things away as one would do with one’s hand,” and nothing remains), but it’s not cured, in the sense that out of weakness one lets the ailment come back. I clearly see that, I have the same experience now, but… that’s not what I call “cure”; and I clearly see that to cure, something else would be needed. Something else would be needed. Ultimately to put it quite tritely, one can cure only if the disease isn’t necessary to the individual’s development.
One can give the body an indication of the direction it should follow in order to be cured, but… ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it won’t do it.
Yes, people call them miracles, but to me, they are incomplete miracles!… In all the transfers (what I call “transfer of power”), at the time of the transfer, there is in the body a sort of disequilibrium, and if you aren’t VERY attentive, or if the disequilibrium is a bit stronger than usual, it results in a pain. If you make the mistake of taking the wrong attitude, the pain turns into an illness. But with the true attitude, the pain can be taken away in a few seconds—that experience occurs almost every day, which is to say that I’ve had it hundreds of times. And for others, it’s the same thing—you can do it for someone else. But all that you can do is… to teach the body the way to cure itself—but it doesn’t learn! (Mother laughs)
(silence)
There’s a practical problem there: one can see that one would like to do away with certain movements because one realizes there’s a flaw, but one doesn’t know how to do it. Should it be done from above?… One puts the light on it every time such a movement comes, and then …
It depends on the kind of movement, mon petit, in which part of the being and the kind of movement.
I am convinced that every difficulty is a special problem. We can’t make a general rule.
The other day, for instance, you said that birth is a purge …
(Mother laughs)
You remember, you said that with people who have repressed everything, it comes out again in the children.
Yes, Yes!
And you said it gives the key of what shouldn’t be done.
Yes.
So Id like to know what’s the key to the cure WITHOUT REPRESSION. Because usually, as a matter of fact, one puts the Light, and the wrong movement sinks below.
Ah, yes, that’s the general rule. What’s needed is the opposite! Instead of repelling it, to offer it. It’s to put the thing, the movement itself, to CAST it into the Light …. Generally, it squirms and refuses! But… (laughing) it’s the only way. That’s why this Consciousness is so precious …. You understand, what caused the repression is the idea of good and evil—a sort of contempt or shame at what’s regarded as evil—and so one goes like this (gesture of repelling), one doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t want to let it be. What’s needed… The first thing—the first thing to be realized is that the infirmity of our consciousness is what creates this division, and that there is a Consciousness (I am sure of it now), there is a Consciousness in which that doesn’t exist, in which what we call “evil” is as necessary as what we call “good,” and if we could cast our sensation—or our activity or perception—cast it into this Light, that’s what cures.2 Instead of repressing or repelling it as something one wants to destroy (it can’t be destroyed!), one must cast it into the Light. I had in fact several days of an experience which for that reason was very interesting; instead of trying to drive far away from yourself certain things (which you don’t accept or which cause a disequilibrium in the being), instead of that, accept them, take them as a part of yourself, and… (Mother opens her hands) offer them—they don’t want to be offered, but there’s a way to compel them. A way to compel them: the resistance is lessened to the extent that we can lessen in us the sense of disapproval. If we can replace that sense of disapproval with a higher understanding, then we can do it. It’s much easier.
I had a whole baggage which remained like that, of things I did when I was young; it remained like that (gesture on the side), and in fact, after that supramental experience, I was able to gather all of it, and all of a sudden, it got entirely clarified, I understood everything, and… it evaporated. Things I had been dragging along for a very long time—I didn’t want to know, you understand, didn’t want to have anything to do with them anymore—and then it was all over. It melted, it was clarified like… Well, it was in its place.
I think that’s it. All, all the movements that pull downward, we must put them in contact with the higher understanding.
Only, it’s obviously beyond the mind. Because I said just before that those Aphorisms of Sri Aurobindo were an expression intelligible to the intellect, but it still diminishes; it diminishes, it’s no longer that dazzling light of a wordless understanding—THAT is where, that is where things can be arranged.
Even when you explain them to yourself, they get diminished. We should say nothing: it’s as if… (laughing) applying a coat of distorting paint!
(Mother suddenly picks up a desk pad near her and writes an answer to a letter she had read at the beginning.3)
Is it readable? Because I’m not sure, I don’t see clearly.
(Satprem reads)
“It is an excellent time to read, meditate, and, little by little, go into a receptive silence that will enable the higher Consciousness to enter the body in order to transform it.”
It came like that; that’s how it takes place: all of a sudden, brff! and it stays on, it won’t go away until I’ve written. It’s amusing!
It’s amusing because it doesn’t correspond… (I can’t say “to what I think,” because, to tell the truth, I no longer think) to my experience, but to the OTHER person’s need. The answer is dictated FOR the other person. Words, expressions, the turn of phrase, the presentation vary completely according to the person it’s written to. And this consciousness [of Mother] which is there (gesture above) has nothing to do with it at all. It just receives. It receives, and then it comes down and goes like this (hammering gesture) until I’ve written! It won’t go away until it’s written down. That’s very amusing …. That way, one can do a lot of work without getting tired!
I’d like to take a leaf out of your book!
Here! (Mother gives her hands, laughing)
Because, even in a mental silence (I am used to always writing in mental silence), but still, even in that silence, I am wary of old formations or reactions coming and expressing themselves in the silence.
Ah, yes.
I am afraid of that.
Yes, of old things rising up again.
But don’t you feel it comes from above?
I feel the Force is there and it comes down.
Well, so then?
Well, yes, but later on, after I’ve written certain things, I wonder if …
Ah, it gets mixed.
I wonder if I should have said that.
But then, that’s the mind’s intervention.
I don’t know.
It happens to me too. Sometimes I write something, send it, and afterwards I remember what I wrote and say to myself, “Gee! I shouldn’t have said that!…” And later on, I realize it’s quite fine—it’s the reaction that’s a mental reaction.
That’s happened to me several times. The other day, for example, I had to write to C.S. [a German translator]—he’d written me some… very often he writes unacceptable things, but I don’t say anything; and the other day, I wrote a rather strong letter to tell him, “What does that mean?” But afterwards, I said to myself, “No, you shouldn’t budge,” and I didn’t send my letter… What’s to be done? I don’t know.
That, mon petit… (silence)
It’s difficult.
Yes …. But when you turn above or aspire, or when you’re like that, open to the Supreme Consciousness, is it concrete?
Oh, yes, it’s solid.
It’s concrete? What’s needed… You understand, there’s only ONE way, it’s for the ego to go away, that’s all. That’s the thing. It’s when, instead of an “I,” nothing remains there—completely flat, you know, like this (immense, even gesture, without a ripple), with a sort of… not even expressed with words, but a very STABLE expression of, “What You will, what You will.” (Words become very small.) Really with a concrete sensation that this [the body] doesn’t exist, it’s only “made use of,” as it were, and there’s NOTHING but That. That which goes like this (gesture of exerting a pressure). The impression of That, this conscious immensity which (Mother stretches out her arms)… You eventually see it, you know (“see” it, it’s not a vision with pictures, but a vision… I don’t know with what! But it’s very concrete, much more concrete than pictures), a vision of this IMMENSE Force, this IMMENSE Vibration pressing and pressing and pressing… and then, the world wriggling about underneath (!) and the thing opening—and when it opens, that enters and spreads.
It’s really interesting.
It’s the only solution, there’s no other. All the rest is… aspirations, conceptions, hopes… it’s still the superman, but not the supramental. It’s a higher humanity that tries to lift its whole humanity upward, but… it’s useless. It’s useless.
The image is very clear of all this humanity clinging and climbing, striving to catch like that, but actually not giving itself—it wants to take! And that won’t do. It has to nullify itself. Then something else can come, can take its place.
The whole secret is there.
For instance, the whole side (all that here, in the Ashram, Y represents) of this humanity that wants to FORCIBLY seize things and lift them here (gesture to the level of the forehead)…. It’s interesting (there’s no denying it, it’s interesting!), but it’s NOT THAT! It’s not that! All those possibilities must be exhausted for something in humanity to understand… that there’s nothing but this (Mother opens her hands in a gesture of surrender). There. And then, to let oneself be flattened until one disappears.
Ultimately, that’s the most difficult: to learn to disappear.
(silence)
Very well, mon petit (laughing), we’ll get there!
220—"Men talk of enemies, but where are they? I only see wrestlers of one party or the other in the great arena of the universe."
221—"The saint and the angel are not the only divinities; admire also the Titan and the Giant."
222—"The old writings call the Titans the elder gods. So they still are; nor is any god entirely divine unless there is hidden in him also a Titan."
223—"If I cannot be Rama, then I would be Ravana; for he is the dark side of Vishnu." (Rama is a divine incarnation, whereas Ravana is the incarnation of a demon.)
Mother gave this comment on the last of these Aphorisms: "It means that gentleness without strength and goodness without power are incomplete and cannot entirely express the Divine. I might say that the charity and generosity of a converted Asura are infinitely more effective than those of an innocent angel." ↩
When Satprem later published this part of the conversation in the "Notes on the Way," Mother added the following comment: "In this Consciousness where the two contraries, the two opposites are joined, the nature of both changes. They don't remain as they are. it's not that they are joined and remain the same: the nature of both changes. And that's most important. Their nature, their action, their vibration are wholly different the minute they are joined. it's separation that makes them what they are. Separation must be done away with, and then their very nature changes: it's no longer 'good' and 'evil,' but something else, which is complete. It's complete." ↩
A letter in which a disciple said he had some spare time between 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. and asked the best way to use it. ↩
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December 10, 1969
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