Good morning! It’s the festival of Light: Christmas is the festival of the return of the Light—it’s much older than Christianity!—when the days were beginning to grow longer (Mother laughs).
And next Saturday is the first of January. I’ll see you….
I hope that ‘72 is going to be better!
(Mother nods her head)
More and more I am convinced that we have a way of receiving things and reacting to them that CREATES difficulties—I am more and more convinced of it. Because, for example, I have rather unpleasant physical and material experiences about food. You know that for a very long time now I have completely stopped being hungry (I eat only to be reasonable, because “one must” eat, otherwise…), and I have some small difficulty in swallowing, or breathing (ridiculous things), but everything changes depending on whether you pay attention to them or not, depending on an attitude like this (gesture of being focused on oneself) in which you watch yourself living, or an attitude in which you’re (vast gesture) in things, in movement, in life; and a third attitude in which you pay attention only to the Divine. If you succeed in being like that all the time, there are no difficulties—and yet things are the same. That’s the experience: the thing in itself is as it is, but it is our reaction to it that differs. The experience is more and more conclusive. You see, there are three categories: our attitude with respect to things, the things in themselves (those two always give you trouble), and there is a third category in which everything, but everything is in regard to the Divine, in the Consciousness of the Divine—all is marvelous, all is easy! And I am speaking of material things, of the material, physical life (for psychological things, we’ve known it for long), I mean material things like little discomforts of the body, or reactions, feeling pain or not, circumstances going wrong, not being able to swallow your dinner—the most banal things you don’t pay attention to when you’re young and strong and in good health (you don’t pay any attention to them, and it’s like that for everyone), but when you live in the consciousness of your body and what happens to it and its ways of receiving things that come and so on—oh, it’s misery! When you live in the consciousness of others, of what they want, what they need, their relationship with you—it’s misery! But if you live in the Divine Presence and it’s the Divine who does everything, sees everything, is everything… it’s Peace—it’s Peace, time has no duration, everything is easy and…. Not that you feel joy or feel… it’s not so… it’s the Divine who is there. And it’s the ONLY solution. That’s where the world is going: the Consciousness of the Divine—the Divine who does, the Divine who is, the Divine…. So then, the same IDENTICAL circumstance (I am not speaking of different circumstances), the same IDENTICAL circumstance (it’s my experience these last few days, so concrete, you know, so concrete); day before yesterday I was sick as a dog, and yesterday circumstances were the same, my body was in the same state, all was the same and yet… all was peaceful.
I am thoroughly convinced of that.
If only I didn’t have so much trouble speaking…. That explains everything. It explains everything, all, all.
The world is the same—it is seen and felt in a totally opposite way.
Everything is a phenomenon of consciousness—everything. Only, it is not a matter of this consciousness, or that one, or that other one, that’s not it: it’s our way, the human way of being conscious versus the divine way of being conscious. That’s all. That’s the whole question. And I am thoroughly convinced.
(silence)
In a word, the world is as it should be at each second.
Yes.
It’s we who see it wrongly or feel it wrongly or receive it wrongly.
It’s like death, you see. The phenomenon is transitional, but seems to us to have existed forever (it’s forever for us because our consciousness is like this—Mother draws a little square in the air), but when you have that divine consciousness, oh!… things become almost instantaneous, you understand. I can’t explain it.
There IS movement, there IS progression, there IS what is translated for us by time, that exists, it’s something… somethingin the consciousness…. It’s hard to express…. It’s like an object and its projection. A little like that. All things ARE, but for us, we see them projected on a screen, as it were: one comes after another. It’s a little like that.
Yes, Sri Aurobindo said that in the supramental consciousness, past, present and future exist side by side on a single map of knowledge.1
Yes, that’s it. That’s right. But for me it is an experience. Not something I “think” (I don’t think), but an experience. And hard to explain.
And its effect on us, the sensation it produces in us depends exclusively on the position of our consciousness. There is the consciousness of being in oneself or being in the whole (being in the whole is already a bit better than being egoistically oneself, and it has its advantages and disadvantages, but it’s not the truth), the Truth is… the Divine as totality—totality in time and totality in space. And that consciousness, the body CAN have, because this body had it (momentarily, for a few moments), and while it has it, everything is so… you see, it’s not joy, it’s not pleasure, it’s not happiness, nothing of all that… a sort of blissful peace… and luminous… and creative. Magnificent. Only, it comes and goes, comes and goes…. And when you go out of it, you have the impression of falling into a horrible pit—our ordinary consciousness (I mean the ordinary human consciousness) is a horrible pit. But we also know why it had to be momentarily that way, for it was necessary in order to go from this to that: everything that happens is necessary for the full development of the goal of creation. You could say (we could word-paint): the goal of creation is for the creature to become conscious as the Creator. There you are.
It’s word-painting, but it’s in that direction.
This creation’s goal is that Consciousness of the Infinite, the Eternal, which is omnipotent—Infinite, Eternal, Omnipotent (which our religions have called God: for us, with respect to life, it’s the Divine)—Infinite and Eternal, All-Powerful… outside of time: each individual particle possessing that Consciousness; each individual particle containing that same Consciousness.
Division created the world, and it is in division that the Eternal manifests.
Words are stupid, but that’s how it is. I don’t know if you follow.
(silence)
With, in addition (and not as a contradiction, but as a complement), the exact sense of what you are supposed to do—what you are supposed to be, what you are supposed to do and why you have been created. And all that TOGETHER… oh!… (Mother has a blissful smile)
That gives both the reason and the goal of creation—both at once—and almost the method of development.
(silence)
Yes, it’s like something that IS, that is as a whole and is successively projected on a screen. And yet it exists as a whole—and it is projected successively on a screen.
(Mother goes into contemplation)
I have the impression that I am on the way to discovering… the illusion that must be destroyed so that physical life can be uninterrupted—discovering that death comes from a… a distortion of consciousness. That’s it.
It’s this close, you know (Mother makes a gesture as if she were about to grasp the secret).
And as I told you, sometimes I feel that the great number of years makes the work somewhat more difficult, but taken on the whole, it is a GREAT help—I understood that were I young, I could never have done what I am doing. And when I am in the true consciousness, the moment I am in the true consciousness, the number of years is nothing!—The body feels so young, so full of… something else than young (for it, young is immature and ignorant, it’s not that), it’s… you’re in communion with “something”… which changes according to the need.
Our language (or our consciousness) is… inadequate. Later I’ll be able to say.
Something IS HAPPENING—that’s all I can say. (Mother laughs)
Merry Christmas, mon petit!
Merry Christmas to you too.
The festival of Light….
"For while the reason proceeds from moment to moment of time and loses and acquires and loses and again acquires, the gnosis dominates time in a one view and perpetual power and links past, present and future in their indivisible connections, in a single continuous map of knowledge, side by side. The gnosis starts from the totality which it immediately possesses; it sees parts, groups and details only in relation to the totality and in one vision with it."
The Synthesis of Yoga, XX.464 ↩
***
December 22, 1971
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