562 Integral Yoga
160 Poetry
146 Occultism
90 Philosophy
89 Christianity
56 Fiction
49 Yoga
42 Psychology
21 Science
15 Integral Theory
13 Mysticism
11 Hinduism
10 Education
9 Philsophy
8 Mythology
7 Cybernetics
6 Theosophy
5 Buddhism
1 Thelema
1 Sufism
1 Alchemy
332 The Mother
240 Satprem
186 Sri Aurobindo
123 Nolini Kanta Gupta
78 Aleister Crowley
48 William Wordsworth
48 H P Lovecraft
38 Carl Jung
36 Plotinus
36 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
31 James George Frazer
26 Sri Ramakrishna
17 John Keats
17 Aldous Huxley
16 Swami Krishnananda
16 Saint Augustine of Hippo
16 Robert Browning
14 A B Purani
13 Walt Whitman
11 Plato
10 Rudolf Steiner
10 Percy Bysshe Shelley
9 Ralph Waldo Emerson
9 Nirodbaran
8 Vyasa
8 Saint John of Climacus
8 Paul Richard
8 Friedrich Nietzsche
8 Franz Bardon
7 Swami Vivekananda
7 Sri Ramana Maharshi
7 Peter J Carroll
7 Norbert Wiener
6 William Butler Yeats
6 Rabindranath Tagore
6 George Van Vrekhem
5 Ovid
5 Jordan Peterson
5 Bokar Rinpoche
5 Aristotle
4 Lucretius
4 Jorge Luis Borges
4 Edgar Allan Poe
3 Patanjali
3 Ken Wilber
3 Joseph Campbell
3 Henry David Thoreau
3 Friedrich Schiller
2 Thubten Chodron
2 Saint Teresa of Avila
2 Rainer Maria Rilke
2 Mahendranath Gupta
2 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2 Jean Gebser
2 Genpo Roshi
51 Magick Without Tears
48 Wordsworth - Poems
48 Lovecraft - Poems
33 The Synthesis Of Yoga
31 The Golden Bough
27 Liber ABA
27 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 04
25 The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
23 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03
23 Agenda Vol 09
22 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02
21 Agenda Vol 08
20 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 07
19 Agenda Vol 10
18 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01
18 Agenda Vol 11
18 Agenda Vol 03
18 Agenda Vol 02
17 The Perennial Philosophy
17 Questions And Answers 1950-1951
17 Keats - Poems
17 Agenda Vol 06
16 The Study and Practice of Yoga
16 Sri Aurobindo or the Adventure of Consciousness
16 Questions And Answers 1953
16 Browning - Poems
16 Agenda Vol 04
15 Savitri
15 On the Way to Supermanhood
15 Agenda Vol 07
14 Questions And Answers 1956
14 Mysterium Coniunctionis
14 Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo
14 Essays In Philosophy And Yoga
14 Agenda Vol 01
13 Whitman - Poems
13 The Phenomenon of Man
13 The Life Divine
13 The Future of Man
13 Letters On Yoga IV
12 Words Of Long Ago
12 Talks
12 City of God
12 Agenda Vol 05
11 The Practice of Psycho therapy
11 Questions And Answers 1954
11 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 01
10 Shelley - Poems
10 Questions And Answers 1957-1958
10 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 02
10 On Thoughts And Aphorisms
10 On Education
10 Letters On Yoga II
10 Agenda Vol 13
9 Twelve Years With Sri Aurobindo
9 The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
9 Questions And Answers 1955
9 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 04
9 Emerson - Poems
8 Words Of The Mother II
8 Vishnu Purana
8 Vedic and Philological Studies
8 The Ladder of Divine Ascent
8 Prayers And Meditations
8 Let Me Explain
8 Essays On The Gita
8 Agenda Vol 12
7 Record of Yoga
7 Liber Null
7 Letters On Yoga III
7 Cybernetics
7 A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah
6 Yeats - Poems
6 The Secret Doctrine
6 The Problems of Philosophy
6 The Mother With Letters On The Mother
6 Tagore - Poems
6 Questions And Answers 1929-1931
6 Preparing for the Miraculous
6 Plotinus - Complete Works Vol 03
5 Twilight of the Idols
5 The Practice of Magical Evocation
5 Theosophy
5 The Human Cycle
5 Tara - The Feminine Divine
5 Some Answers From The Mother
5 Poetics
5 Metamorphoses
5 Maps of Meaning
5 Letters On Poetry And Art
5 Isha Upanishad
5 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 05
4 The Confessions of Saint Augustine
4 Of The Nature Of Things
4 Letters On Yoga I
4 Knowledge of the Higher Worlds
4 Essays Divine And Human
4 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 08
4 Aion
3 Walden
3 Thus Spoke Zarathustra
3 The Secret Of The Veda
3 The Hero with a Thousand Faces
3 Sex Ecology Spirituality
3 Sefer Yetzirah The Book of Creation In Theory and Practice
3 Schiller - Poems
3 Raja-Yoga
3 Poe - Poems
3 Patanjali Yoga Sutras
3 Labyrinths
3 Initiation Into Hermetics
3 Dark Night of the Soul
2 The Red Book Liber Novus
2 The Interior Castle or The Mansions
2 The Ever-Present Origin
2 Symposium
2 Rilke - Poems
2 Hymn of the Universe
2 How to Free Your Mind - Tara the Liberator
2 Faust
2 Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 06
2 Collected Poems
2 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2E
00.01 - The Mother on Savitri, #Sweet Mother - Harmonies of Light, #unset, #Zen
In truth, the entire form of Savitri has descended "en masse" from the highest region and Sri Aurobindo with His genius only arranged the lines - in a superb and magnificent style. Sometimes entire lines were revealed and He has left them intact; He worked hard, untiringly, so that the inspiration could come from the highest possible summit. And what a work He has created! Yes, it is a true creation in itself. It is an unequalled work. Everything is there, and it is put in such a simple, such a clear form; verses perfectly harmonious, limpid and eternally true. My child, I have read so many things, but I have never come across anything which could be compared with Savitri. I have studied the best works in Greek, Latin, English and of course French literature, also in German and all the great creations of the West and the East, including the great epics; but I repeat it, I have not found anywhere anything comparable with Savitri. All these literary works seems to me empty, flat, hollow, without any deep reality - apart from a few rare exceptions, and these too represent only a small fraction of what Savitri is. What grandeur, what amplitude, what reality: it is something immortal and eternal He has created. I tell you once again there is nothing like in it the whole world. Even if one puts aside the vision of the reality, that is, the essential substance which is the heart of the inspiration, and considers only the lines in themselves, one will find them unique, of the highest classical kind. What He has created is something man cannot imagine. For, everything is there, everything.
It may then be said that Savitri is a revelation, it is a meditation, it is a quest of the Infinite, the Eternal. If it is read with this aspiration for Immortality, the reading itself will serve as a guide to Immortality. To read Savitri is indeed to practice Yoga, spiritual concentration; one can find there all that is needed to realise the Divine. Each step of Yoga is noted here, including the secret of all other Yogas. Surely, if one sincerely follows what is revealed here in each line one will reach finally the transformation of the Supramental Yoga. It is truly the infallible guide who never abandons you; its support is always there for him who wants to follow the path. Each verse of Savitri is like a revealed Mantra which surpasses all that man possessed by way of knowledge, and I repeat this, the words are expressed and arranged in such a way that the sonority of the rhythm leads you to the origin of sound, which is OM.
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00.03 - Upanishadic Symbolism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Still the Upanishad says this is not the final end. There is yet a higher status of reality and consciousness to which one has to rise. For beyond the Cosmos lies the Transcendent. The Upanishad expresses this truth and experience in various symbols. The cosmic reality, we have seen, is often conceived as a septenary, a unity of seven elements, principles and worlds. Further to give it its full complex value, it is considered not as a simple septet, but a threefold heptad the whole gamut, as it were, consisting of 21 notes or syllables. The Upanishad says, this number does not exhaust the entire range; I for there is yet a 22nd place. This is the world beyond the Sun, griefless and deathless, the supreme Selfhood. The Veda I also sometimes speaks of the integral reality as being represented by the number 100 which is 99 + I; in other words, 99 represents the cosmic or universal, the unity being the reality beyond, the Transcendent.
Elsewhere the Upanishad describes more graphically this truth and the experience of it. It is said there that the sun has fivewe note the familiar fivemovements of rising and setting: (i) from East to West, (ii) from South to North, (iii) from West to East, (iv) from North to South and (v) from abovefrom the Zenithdownward. These are the five normal and apparent movements. But there is a sixth one; rather it is not a movement, but a status, where the sun neither rises nor sets, but is always visible fixed in the same position.
--
Man, however, is an epitome of creation. He embraces and incarnates the entire gamut of consciousness and comprises in him all beings from the highest Divinity to the lowest jinn or elf. And yet each human being in his true personality is a lineal descendant of one or other typal aspect or original Personality of the one supreme Reality; and his individual character is all the more pronounced and well-defined the more organised and developed is the being. The psychic being in man is thus a direct descent, an immediate emanation along a definite line of devolution of the supreme consciousness. We may now understand and explain easily why one chooses a particular Ishta, an ideal god, what is the drive that pushes one to become a worshipper of Siva or Vishnu or any other deity. It is not any rational understanding, a weighing of pros and cons and then a resultant conclusion that leads one to choose a path of religion or spirituality. It is the soul's natural call to the God, the type of being and consciousness of which it is a spark, from which it has descended, it is the secret affinity the spiritual blood-relation as it were that determines the choice and adherence. And it is this that we name Faith. And the exclusiveness and violence and bitterness which attend such adherence and which go "by the "name of partisanship, sectarianism, fanaticism etc., a;e a deformation in the ignorance on the physico-vital plane of the secret loyalty to one's source and origin. Of course, the pattern or law is not so simple and rigid, but it gives a token or typal pattern. For it must not be forgotten that the supreme source or the original is one and indivisible and in the highest integration consciousness is global and not exclusive. And the human being that attains such a status is not bound or wholly limited to one particular formation: its personality is based on the truth of impersonality. And yet the two can go together: an individual can be impersonal in consciousness and yet personal in becoming and true to type.
The number of gods depends on the level of consciousness on which we stand. On this material plane there are as many gods as there are bodies or individual forms (adhar). And on the supreme height there is only one God without a second. In between there are gradations of types and sub-types whose number and function vary according to the aspect of consciousness that reveals itself.
--
The first boon regards the individual, that is to say, the individual identity and integrity. It asks for the maintenance of that individuality so that it may be saved from the dissolution that Death brings about. Death, of course, means the dissolution of the body, but it represents also dissolution pure and simple. Indeed death is a process which does not stop with the physical phenomenon, but continues even after; for with the body gone, the other elements of the individual organism, the vital and the mental too gradually fall off, fade and dissolve. Nachiketas wishes to secure from Death the safety and preservation of the earthly personality, the particular organisation of mind and vital based upon a recognisable physical frame. That is the first necessity for the aspiring mortalfor, it is said, the body is the first instrument for the working out of one's life ideal. But man's true personality, the real individuality lies beyond, beyond the body, beyond the life, beyond the mind, beyond the triple region that Death lords it over. That is the divine world, the Heaven of the immortals, beyond death and beyond sorrow and grief. It is the hearth secreted in the inner heart where burns the Divine Fire, the God of Life Everlasting. And this is the nodus that binds together the threefold status of the manifested existence, the body, the life and the mind. This triplicity is the structure of name and form built out of the bricks of experience, the kiln, as it were, within which burns the Divine Agni, man's true soul. This soul can be reached only when one exceeds the bounds and limitations of the triple cord and experiences one's communion and identity with all souls and all existence. Agni is the secret divinity within, within the individual and within the world; he is the Immanent Divine, the cosmic godhead that holds together and marshals all the elements and components, all the principles that make up the manifest universe. He it is that has entered into the world and created facets of his own reality in multiple forms: and it is he that lies secret in the human being as the immortal soul through all its adventure of life and death in the series of incarnations in terrestrial evolution. The adoration and realisation of this Immanent Divinity, the worship of Agni taught by Yama in the second boon, consists in the triple sacrifice, the triple work, the triple union in the triple status of the physical, the vital and the mental consciousness, the mastery of which leads one to the other shore, the abode of perennial existence where the human soul enjoys its eternity and unending continuity in cosmic life. Therefore, Agni, the master of the psychic being, is called jtaveds, he who knows the births, all the transmigrations from life to life.
The third boon is the secret of secrets, for it is the knowledge and realisation of Transcendence that is sought here. Beyond the individual lies the universal; is there anything beyond the universal? The release of the individual into the cosmic existence gives him the griefless life eternal: can the cosmos be rolled up and flung into something beyond? What would be the nature of that thing? What is there outside creation, outside manifestation, outside Maya, to use a latter day term? Is there existence or non-existence (utter dissolution or extinctionDeath in his supreme and absolute status)? King Yama did not choose to answer immediately and even endeavoured to dissuade Nachiketas from pursuing the question over which people were confounded, as he said. Evidently it was a much discussed problem in those days. Buddha was asked the same question and he evaded it, saying that the pragmatic man should attend to practical and immediate realities and not, waste time and energy in discussing things ultimate and beyond that have hardly any relation to the present and the actual.
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00.04 - The Beautiful in the Upanishads, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Only, to some perhaps the beauty may not appear as evident and apparent. The Spirit of beauty that resides in the Upanishadic consciousness is more retiring and reticent. It dwells in its own privacy, in its own home, as it were, and therefore chooses to be bare and austere, simple and sheer. Beauty means usually the beauty of form, even if it be not always the decorative, ornamental and sumptuous form. The early Vedas aimed at the perfect form (surpaktnum), the faultless expression, the integral and complete embodiment; the gods they envisaged and invoked were gleaming powers carved out of harmony and beauty and figured close to our modes of apprehension (spyan). But the Upanishads came to lay stress upon what is beyond the form, what the eye cannot see nor the vision reflect:
na sandi tihati rpamasya
--
The rich and sensuous beauty luxuriating in high colour and ample decoration that one meets often in the creation of the earlier Vedic seers returned again, in a more chiselled and polished and stylised manner, in the classical poets. The Upanishads in this respect have a certain kinship with the early poets of the intervening ageVyasa and Valmiki. Upam KlidsasyaKalidasa revels in figures and images; they are profusely heaped on one another and usually possess a complex and composite texture. Valmiki's images are simple and elemental, brief and instinct with a vast resonance, spare and full of power. The same brevity and simplicity, vibrant with an extraordinary power of evocation, are also characteristic of the Upanishadic mantra With Valmiki's
kamiva dupram
--
Art at its highest tends to become also the simplest and the most unconventional; and it is then the highest art, precisely because it does not aim at being artistic. The aesthetic motive is totally absent in the Upanishads; the sense of beauty is there, but it is attendant upon and involved in a deeper strand of consciousness. That consciousness seeks consciousness itself, the fullness of consciousness, the awareness and possession of the Truth and Reality,the one thing which, if known, gives the knowledge of all else. And this consciousness of the Truth is also Delight, the perfect Bliss, the Immortality where the whole universe resolves itself into its original state of rasa, that is to say, of essential and inalienable harmony and beauty.
***
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0.00a - Introduction, #A Garden of Pomegranates - An Outline of the Qabalah, #Israel Regardie, #Occultism
A simple example is the concept of the Trinity in the Christian religion. The student is frequently amazed to learn through a study of the Qabalah that Egyptian mythology followed a similar concept with its trinity of gods, Osiris the father, Isis the virgin-mother, and Horus the son. The Qabalah indicates similar correspondences in the pantheon of Roman and Greek deities, proving the father-mother (Holy Spirit) - son principles of deity are primordial archetypes of man's psyche, rather than being, as is frequently and erroneously supposed a development peculiar to the Christian era.
At this juncture let me call attention to one set of attri butions by Rittangelius usually found as an appendix attached to the Sepher Yetzirah. It lists a series of "Intelligences" for each one of the ten Sephiros and the twenty-two Paths of the Tree of Life. It seems to me, after prolonged meditation, that the common attri butions of these Intelligences is altogether arbitrary and lacking in serious meaning.
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0.00 - INTRODUCTION, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
Khudiram Chattopadhyaya and Chandra Devi, the parents of Sri Ramakrishna, were married in 1799. At that time Khudiram was living in his ancestral village of Dereypore, not far from Kamarpukur. Their first son, Ramkumar, was born in 1805, and their first daughter, Katyayani, in 1810. In 1814 Khudiram was ordered by his landlord to bear false witness in court against a neighbour. When he refused to do so, the landlord brought a false case against him and deprived him of his ancestral property. Thus dispossessed, he arrived, at the invitation of another landlord, in the quiet village of Kamarpukur, where he was given a dwelling and about an acre of fertile land. The crops from this little property were enough to meet his family's simple needs. Here he lived in simplicity, dignity, and contentment.
Ten years after his coming to Kamarpukur, Khudiram made a pilgrimage on foot to Rameswar, at the southern extremity of India. Two years later was born his second son, whom he named Rameswar. Again in 1835, at the age of sixty, he made a pilgrimage, this time to Gaya. Here, from ancient times, Hindus have come from the four corners of India to discharge their duties to their departed ancestors by offering them food and drink at the sacred footprint of the Lord Vishnu. At this holy place Khudiram had a dream in which the Lord Vishnu promised to he born as his son. And Chandra Devi, too, in front of the Siva temple at Kamarpukur, had a vision indicating the birth of a divine child. Upon his return the husband found that she had conceived.
--
The anguish of the inner soul of India found expression through these passionate words of the young Gadadhar. For what did his unsophisticated eyes see around him in Calcutta, at that time the metropolis of India and the centre of modem culture and learning? Greed and lust held sway in the higher levels of society, and the occasional religious practices were merely outer forms from which the soul had long ago departed. Gadadhar had never seen anything like this at Kamarpukur among the simple and pious villagers. The sadhus and wandering monks whom he had served in his boyhood had revealed to him an altogether different India. He had been impressed by their devotion and purity, their self-control and renunciation. He had learnt from them and from his own intuition that the ideal of life as taught by the ancient sages of India was the realization of God.
When Ramkumar reprimanded Gadadhar for neglecting a "bread-winning education", the inner voice of the boy reminded him that the legacy of his ancestors — the legacy of Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Sankara, Ramanuja, Chaitanya — was not worldly security but the Knowledge of God. And these noble sages were the true representatives of Hindu society. Each of them was seated, as it were, on the crest of the wave that followed each successive trough in the tumultuous course of Indian national life. All demonstrated that the life current of India is spirituality. This truth was revealed to Gadadhar through that inner vision which scans past and future in one sweep, unobstructed by the barriers of time and space. But he was unaware of the history of the profound change that had taken place in the land of his birth during the previous one hundred years.
--
One day the priest of the Radhakanta temple accidentally dropped the image of Krishna on the floor, breaking one of its legs. The pundits advised the Rani to install a new image, since the worship of an image with a broken limb was against the scriptural injunctions. But the Rani was fond of the image, and she asked Sri Ramakrishna's opinion. In an abstracted mood, he said: "This solution is ridiculous. If a son-in-law of the Rani broke his leg, would she discard him and put another in his place? Wouldn't she rather arrange for his treatment? Why should she not do the same thing in this case too? Let the image be repaired and worshipped as before." It was a simple, straightforward solution and was accepted by the Rani. Sri Ramakrishna himself mended the break. The priest was dismissed for his carelessness, and at Mathur Babu's earnest request Sri Ramakrishna accepted the office of priest in the Radhakanta temple.
^No definite information is available as to the origin of this name. Most probably it was given by Mathur Babu, as Ramlal, Sri Ramakrishna's nephew, has said, quoting the authority of his uncle himself.
--
Thus the insane priest was by verdict of the great scholars of the day proclaimed a Divine Incarnation. His visions were not the result of an over-heated brain; they had precedent in spiritual history. And how did the proclamation affect Sri Ramakrishna himself? He remained the simple child of the Mother that he had been since the first day of his life. Years later, when two of his householder disciples openly spoke of him as a Divine Incarnation and the matter was reported to him, he said with a touch of sarcasm: "Do they think they will enhance my glory that way? One of them is an actor on the stage and the other a physician. What do they know about Incarnations? Why, years ago pundits like Gauri and Vaishnavcharan declared me to be an Avatar. They were great scholars and knew what they said. But that did not make any change in my mind."
Sri Ramakrishna was a learner all his life. He often used to quote a proverb to his disciples: "Friend, the more I live the more I learn." When the excitement created by the Brahmani's declaration was over, he set himself to the task of practising spiritual disciplines according to the traditional methods laid down in the Tantra and Vaishnava scriptures. Hitherto he had pursued his spiritual ideal according to the promptings of his own mind and heart. Now he accepted the Brahmani as his guru and set foot on the traditional highways.
--
In 1867 Sri Ramakrishna returned to Kamarpukur to recuperate from the effect of his austerities. The peaceful countryside, the simple and artless companions of his boyhood, and the pure air did him much good. The villagers were happy to get back their playful, frank, witty, kind-hearted, and truthful Gadadhar, though they did not fail to notice the great change that had come over him during his years in Calcutta. His wife, Sarada Devi, now fourteen years old, soon arrived at Kamarpukur. Her spiritual development was much beyond her age and she was able to understand immediately her husband's state of mind. She became eager to learn from him about God and to live with him as his attendant. The Master accepted her cheerfully both as his disciple and as his spiritual companion. Referring to the experiences of these few days, she once said: "I used to feel always as if a pitcher full of bliss were placed in my heart. The joy was indescribable."
--- PILGRIMAGE
--
Keshab possessed a complex nature. When passing through a great moral crisis, he spent much of his time in solitude and felt that he heard the voice of God, When a devotional form of worship was introduced into the Brahmo Samaj, he spent hours in singing kirtan with his followers. He visited England land in 1870 and impressed the English people with his musical voice, his simple English, and his spiritual fervour. He was entertained by Queen Victoria. Returning to India, he founded centres of the Brahmo Samaj in various parts of the country. Not unlike a professor of comparative religion in a European university, he began to discover, about the time of his first contact with Sri Ramakrishna, the harmony of religions. He became sympathetic toward the Hindu gods and goddesses, explaining them in a liberal fashion. Further, he believed that he was called by God to dictate to the world God's newly revealed law, the New Dispensation, the Navavidhan.
In 1878 a schism divided Keshab's Samaj. Some of his influential followers accused him of infringing the Brahmo principles by marrying his daughter to a wealthy man before she had attained the marriageable age approved by the Samaj. This group seceded and established the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, Keshab remaining the leader of the Navavidhan. Keshab now began to be drawn more and more toward the Christ ideal, though under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna his devotion to the Divine Mother also deepened. His mental oscillation between Christ and the Divine Mother of Hinduism found no position of rest. In Bengal and some other parts of India the Brahmo movement took the form of unitarian Christianity, scoffed at Hindu rituals, and preached a crusade against image worship. Influenced by Western culture, it declared the supremacy of reason, advocated the ideals of the French Revolution, abolished the caste-system among its own members, stood for the emancipation of women, agitated for the abolition of early marriage, sanctioned the remarriage of widows, and encouraged various educational and social-reform movements. The immediate effect of the Brahmo movement in Bengal was the checking of the proselytizing activities of the Christian missionaries. It also raised Indian culture in the estimation of its English masters. But it was an intellectual and eclectic religious ferment born of the necessity of the time. Unlike Hinduism, it was not founded on the deep inner experiences of sages and prophets. Its influence was confined to a comparatively few educated men and women of the country, and the vast masses of the Hindus remained outside it. It sounded monotonously only one of the notes in the rich gamut of the Eternal Religion of the Hindus.
--
Keshab Chandra Sen and Sri Ramakrishna met for the first time in the garden house of Jaygopal Sen at Belgharia, a few miles from Dakshineswar, where the great Brahmo leader was staying with some of his disciples. In many respects the two were poles apart, though an irresistible inner attraction was to make them intimate friends. The Master had realized God as Pure Spirit and Consciousness, but he believed in the various forms of God as well. Keshab, on the other hand, regarded image worship as idolatry and gave allegorical explanations of the Hindu deities. Keshab was an orator and a writer of books and magazine articles; Sri Ramakrishna had a horror of lecturing and hardly knew how to write his own name, Keshab's fame spread far and wide, even reaching the distant shores of England; the Master still led a secluded life in the village of Dakshineswar. Keshab emphasized social reforms for India's regeneration; to Sri Ramakrishna God-realization was the only goal of life. Keshab considered himself a disciple of Christ and accepted in a diluted form the Christian sacraments and Trinity; Sri Ramakrishna was the simple child of Kali, the Divine Mother, though he too, in a different way, acknowledged Christ's divinity. Keshab was a householder holder and took a real interest in the welfare of his children, whereas Sri Ramakrishna was a paramahamsa and completely indifferent to the life of the world. Yet, as their acquaintance ripened into friendship, Sri Ramakrishna and Keshab held each other in great love and respect. Years later, at the news of Keshab's death, the Master felt as if half his body had become paralyzed. Keshab's concepts of the harmony of religions and the Motherhood of God were deepened and enriched by his contact with Sri Ramakrishna.
Sri Ramakrishna, dressed in a red-bordered dhoti, one end of which was carelessly thrown over his left shoulder, came to Jaygopal's garden house accompanied by Hriday. No one took notice of the unostentatious visitor. Finally the Master said to Keshab, "People tell me you have seen God; so I have come to hear from you about God." A magnificent conversation followed. The Master sang a thrilling song about Kali and forthwith went into samadhi. When Hriday uttered the sacred "Om" in his ears, he gradually came back to consciousness of the world, his face still radiating a divine brilliance. Keshab and his followers were amazed. The contrast between Sri Ramakrishna and the Brahmo devotees was very interesting. There sat this small man, thin and extremely delicate. His eyes were illumined with an inner light. Good humour gleamed in his eyes and lurked in the corners of his mouth. His speech was Bengali of a homely kind with a slight, delightful stammer, and his words held men enthralled by their wealth of spiritual experience, their inexhaustible store of simile and metaphor, their power of observation, their bright and subtle humour, their wonderful catholicity, their ceaseless flow of wisdom. And around him now were the sophisticated men of Bengal, the best products of Western education, with Keshab, the idol of young Bengal, as their leader.
--
This contact with the educated and progressive Bengalis opened Sri Ramakrishna's eyes to a new realm of thought. Born and brought up in a simple village, without any formal education, and taught by the orthodox holy men of India in religious life, he had had no opportunity to study the influence of modernism on the thoughts and lives of the Hindus. He could not properly estimate the result of the impact of Western education on Indian culture. He was a Hindu of the Hindus, renunciation being to him the only means to the realization of God in life. From the Brahmos he learnt that the new generation of India made a compromise between God and the world. Educated young men were influenced more by the Western philosophers than by their own prophets. But Sri Ramakrishna was not dismayed, for he saw in this, too, the hand of God. And though he expounded to the Brahmos all his ideas about God and austere religious disciplines, yet he bade them accept from his teachings only as much as suited their tastes and temperaments.
^The term "woman and gold", which has been used throughout in a collective sense, occurs again and again in the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna to designate the chief impediments to spiritual progress. This favourite expression of the Master, "kaminikanchan", has often been misconstrued. By it he meant only "lust and greed", the baneful influence of which retards the aspirant's spiritual growth. He used the word "kamini", or "woman", as a concrete term for the sex instinct when addressing his man devotees. He advised women, on the other hand, to shun "man". "Kanchan", or "gold", symbolizes greed, which is the other obstacle to spiritual life.
--
Durgacharan Nag, also known as Nag Mahashay, was the ideal householder among the lay disciples of Sri Ramakrishna. He was the embodiment of the Master's ideal of life in the world, unstained by worldliness. In spite of his intense desire to become a sannyasi, Sri Ramakrishna asked him to live in the world in the spirit of a monk, and the disciple truly carried out this injunction. He was born of a poor family and even during his boyhood often sacrificed everything to lessen the sufferings of the needy. He had married at an early age and after his wife's death had married a second time to obey his father's command. But he once said to his wife: "Love on the physical level never lasts. He is indeed blessed who can give his love to God with his whole heart. Even a little attachment to the body endures for several births. So do not be attached to this cage of bone and flesh. Take shelter at the feet of the Mother and think of Her alone. Thus your life here and hereafter will be ennobled." The Master spoke of him as a "blazing light". He received every word of Sri Ramakrishna in dead earnest. One day he heard the Master saying that it was difficult for doctors, lawyers, and brokers to make much progress in spirituality. Of doctors he said, "If the mind clings to the tiny drops of medicine, how can it conceive of the Infinite?" That was the end of Durgacharan's medical practice and he threw his chest of medicines into the Ganges. Sri Ramakrishna assured him that he would not lack simple food and clothing. He bade him serve holy men. On being asked where he would find real holy men, the Master said that the sadhus themselves would seek his company. No sannyasi could have lived a more austere life than Durgacharan.
--- GIRISH GHOSH
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One day, soon after, Narendra requested Sri Ramakrishna to pray to the Divine Mother to remove his poverty. Sri Ramakrishna bade him pray to Her himself, for She would certainly listen to his prayer. Narendra entered the shrine of Kali. As he stood before the image of the Mother, he beheld Her as a living Goddess, ready to give wisdom and liberation. Unable to ask Her for petty worldly things, he prayed only for knowledge and renunciation, love and liberation. The Master rebuked him for his failure to ask the Divine Mother to remove his poverty and sent him back to the temple. But Narendra, standing in Her presence, again forgot the purpose of his coming. Thrice he went to the temple at the bidding of the Master, and thrice he returned, having forgotten in Her presence why he had come. He was wondering about it when it suddenly flashed in his mind that this was all the work of Sri Ramakrishna; so now he asked the Master himself to remove his poverty, and was assured that his family would not lack simple food and clothing.
This was a very rich and significant experience for Narendra. It taught him that Sakti, the Divine Power, cannot be ignored in the world and that in the relative plane the need of worshipping a Personal God is imperative. Sri Ramakrishna was overjoyed with the conversion. The next day, sitting almost on Narendra's lap, he said to a devotee, pointing first to himself, then to Narendra: "I see I am this, and again that. Really I feel no difference. A stick floating in the Ganges seems to divide the water; But in reality the water is one. Do you see my point? Well, whatever is, is the Mother — isn't that so?" In later years Narendra would say: "Sri Ramakrishna was the only person who, from the time he met me, believed in me uniformly throughout. Even my mother and brothers did not. It was his unwavering trust and love for me that bound me to him for ever. He alone knew how to love. Worldly people, only make a show of love for selfish ends.
--
Unsurpassed among the woman devotees of the Master in the richness of her devotion and spiritual experiences was Aghoremani Devi, an orthodox brahmin woman. Widowed at an early age, she had dedicated herself completely to spiritual pursuits. Gopala, the Baby Krishna, was her Ideal Deity, whom she worshipped following the vatsalya attitude of the Vaishnava religion, regarding Him as her own child. Through Him she satisfied her unassuaged maternal love, cooking for Him, feeding Him, bathing Him, and putting Him to bed. This sweet intimacy with Gopala won her the sobriquet of Gopal Ma, or Gopala's Mother. For forty years she had lived on the bank of the Ganges in a small, bare room, her only companions being a threadbare copy of the Ramayana and a bag containing her rosary. At the age of sixty, in 1884, she visited Sri Ramakrishna at Dakshineswar. During the second visit, as soon as the Master saw her, he said: "Oh, you have come! Give me something to eat." With great hesitation she gave him some ordinary sweets that she had purchased for him on the way. The Master ate them with relish and asked her to bring him simple curries or sweets prepared by her own hands. Gopal Ma thought him a queer kind of monk, for, instead of talking of God, he always asked for food. She did not want to visit him again, but an irresistible attraction brought her back to the temple garden; She carried with her some simple curries that she had cooked herself.
One early morning at three o'clock, about a year later, Gopal Ma was about to finish her daily devotions, when she was startled to find Sri Ramakrishna sitting on her left, with his right hand clenched, like the hand of the image of Gopala. She was amazed and caught hold of the hand, whereupon the figure vanished and in its place appeared the real Gopala, her Ideal Deity. She cried aloud with joy. Gopala begged her for butter. She pleaded her poverty and gave Him some dry coconut candies. Gopala, sat on her lap, snatched away her rosary, jumped on her shoulders, and moved all about the room. As soon as the day broke she hastened to Dakshineswar like an insane woman. Of course Gopala accompanied her, resting His head on her shoulder. She clearly saw His tiny ruddy feet hanging over her breast. She entered Sri Ramakrishna's room. The Master had fallen into samadhi. Like a child, he sat on her lap, and she began to feed him with butter, cream, and other delicacies. After some time he regained consciousness and returned to his bed. But the mind of Gopala's Mother was still roaming in another plane. She was steeped in bliss. She saw Gopala frequently entering the Master's body and again coming out of it. When she returned to her hut, still in a dazed condition, Gopala accompanied her.
She spent about two months in uninterrupted communion with God, the Baby Gopala never leaving her for a moment. Then the intensity of her vision was lessened; had it not been, her body would have perished. The Master spoke highly of her exalted spiritual condition and said that such vision of God was a rare thing for ordinary mortals. The fun-loving Master one day confronted the critical Narendranath with this simple-minded woman. No two could have presented a more striking contrast. The Master knew of Narendra's lofty contempt for all visions, and he asked the old lady to narrate her experiences to Narendra. With great hesitation she told him her story. Now and then she interrupted her maternal chatter to ask Narendra: "My son, I am a poor ignorant woman. I don't understand anything. You are so learned. Now tell me if these visions of Gopala are true." As Narendra listened to the story he was profoundly moved. He said, "Yes, mother, they are quite true." Behind his cynicism Narendra, too, possessed a heart full of love and tenderness.
--- THE MARCH OF EVENTS
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0.00 - The Book of Lies Text, #The Book of Lies, #Aleister Crowley, #Philosophy
tremendous import, and though it is so simple that
I could disclose it...in a short paragraph, I might
--
whole course of numbers from the simple unity of 1
to the complex unity of 13, impregnated by the magical
--
Yet ITS doing, which is no-doing, is simple and yet
complex, is neither free nor necessary.
--
This chapter is perfectly simple, and needs no
comment whatsoever.
--
Initiation is not a simple phenomenon. Any given initiation must take place
on several planes, and is not always conferred on all of these simultaneously.
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of English, simple, austere, and terse, should need a
commentary. But it does so, or my most gifted Chela
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really as simple as it appears complex, that the names (or
veils) of truth are obscure and many, the Truth itself plain
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needed, for the Book of Lies itself. In these few simple
words, it explains the necessity of the book, and offers it-
--
This poem, inspired by Jane Cheron, is as simple
as it is elegant.
--
interpreting, refining away, analysing. Be simple and
lucid and radiant as Frater P.
--
The chapter is perfectly simple and needs no com-
ment.
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0.00 - THE GOSPEL PREFACE, #The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, #Sri Ramakrishna, #Hinduism
M. spent his weekends and holidays with the monastic brethren who, after the Master's demise, had formed themselves into an Order with a Math at Baranagore, and participated in the intense life of devotion and meditation that they followed. At other times he would retire to Dakshineswar or some garden in the city and spend several days in spiritual practice taking simple self-cooked food. In order to feel that he was one with all mankind he often used to go out of his home at dead of night, and like a wandering Sannysin, sleep with the waifs on some open verandah or footpath on the road.
After the Master's demise, M. went on pilgrimage several times. He visited Banras, Vrindvan, Ayodhy and other places. At Banras he visited the famous Trailinga Swmi and fed him with sweets, and he had long conversations with Swami Bhaskarananda, one of the noted saintly and scholarly Sannysins of the time. In 1912 he went with the Holy Mother to Banras, and spent about a year in the company of Sannysins at Banras, Vrindvan, Hardwar, Hrishikesh and Swargashram. But he returned to Calcutta, as that city offered him the unique opportunity of associating himself with the places hallowed by the Master in his lifetime. Afterwards he does not seem to have gone to any far-off place, but stayed on in his room in the Morton School carrying on his spiritual ministry, speaking on the Master and his teachings to the large number of people who flocked to him after having read his famous Kathmrita known to English readers as The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.
--
In 1905 he retired from the active life of a Professor and devoted his remaining twenty-seven years exclusively to the preaching of the life and message of the Great Master. He bought the Morton Institution from its original proprietors and shifted it to a commodious four-storeyed house at 50 Amherst Street, where it flourished under his management as one of the most efficient educational institutions in Calcutta. He generally occupied a staircase room at the top of it, cooking his own meal which consisted only of milk and rice without variation, and attended to all his personal needs himself. His dress also was the simplest possible. It was his conviction that limitation of personal wants to the minimum is an important aid to holy living. About one hour in the morning he would spend in inspecting the classes of the school, and then retire to his staircase room to pour over his diary and live in the divine atmosphere of the earthly days of the Great Master, unless devotees and admirers had already gathered in his room seeking his holy company.
In appearance, M. looked a Vedic Rishi. Tall and stately in bearing, he had a strong and well-built body, an unusually broad chest, high forehead and arms extending to the knees. His complexion was fair and his prominent eyes were always tinged with the expression of the divine love that filled his heart. Adorned with a silvery beard that flowed luxuriantly down his chest, and a shining face radiating the serenity and gravity of holiness, M. was as imposing and majestic as he was handsome and engaging in appearance. Humorous, sweet-tongued and eloquent when situations required, this great Maharishi of our age lived only to sing the glory of Sri Ramakrishna day and night.
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0.02 - II - The Home of the Guru, #Evening Talks With Sri Aurobindo, #unset, #Zen
The Master, the Guru, set at rest the puzzled human mind by his illuminating answers, perhaps even more by his silent consciousness, so that it might be able to pursue unhampered the path of realisation of the Truth. Those ancient discourses answer the mind of man today even across the ages. They have rightly acquired as everything of the past does a certain sanctity. But sometimes that very reverence prevents men from properly evaluating, and living in, the present. This happens when the mind instead of seeking the Spirit looks at the form. For instance, it is not necessary for such discourses that they take place in forest-groves in order to be highly spiritual. Wherever the Master is, there is Light. And guru-griha the house of the Master can be his private dwelling place. So much was this feeling a part of Sri Aurobindo's nature and so particular was he to maintain the personal character of his work that during the first few years after 1923 he did not like his house to be called an 'Ashram', as the word had acquired the sense of a public institution to the modern mind. But there was no doubt that the flower of Divinity had blossomed in him; and disciples, like bees seeking honey, came to him. It is no exaggeration to say that these Evening Talks were to the small company of disciples what the Aranyakas were to the ancient seekers. Seeking the Light, they came to the dwelling place of their Guru, the greatest seer of the age, and found it their spiritual home the home of their parents, for the Mother, his companion in the great mission, had come. And these spiritual parents bestowed upon the disciples freely of their Light, their Consciousness, their Power and their Grace. The modern reader may find that the form of these discourses differs from those of the past but it was bound to be so for the simple reason that the times have changed and the problems that puzzle the modern mind are so different. Even though the disciples may be very imperfect representations of what he aimed at in them, still they are his creations. It is in order to repay, in however infinitesimal a degree, the debt which we owe to him that the effort is made to partake of the joy of his company the Evening Talks with a larger public.
***
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0.02 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
to be simple, rapid and fully satisfactory. I put forth all the
necessary force for it to become an effective formation charged
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0.03 - Letters to My little smile, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It is very simple, as you will see.
1) The Infinite is the inexhaustible storehouse of forces. The
--
could also feel the pure and simple joy of the music for its own
sake, and that when you are near me, you also feel the simple
and sincere joy of a child near to its mother.
--
be near me, and trusting and simple enough not to put a false
interpretation on all I do. Who has poured this poison of doubt
--
once your happiness, your simple joy of life and your beautiful
smile which was a pleasure to see? I don't ask the question in
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0.03 - The Threefold Life, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The characteristic energy of pure Mind is change, and the more our mentality acquires elevation and organisation, the more this law of Mind assumes the aspect of a continual enlargement, improvement and better arrangement of its gains and so of a continual passage from a smaller and simpler to a larger and more complex perfection. For Mind, unlike bodily life, is infinite in its field, elastic in its expansion, easily variable in its formations. Change, then, self-enlargement and selfimprovement are its proper instincts. Mind too moves in cycles, but these are ever-enlarging spirals. Its faith is perfectibility, its watchword is progress.
The characteristic law of Spirit is self-existent perfection and immutable infinity. It possesses always and in its own right the immortality which is the aim of Life and the perfection which is the goal of Mind. The attainment of the eternal and the realisation of that which is the same in all things and beyond all things, equally blissful in universe and outside it, untouched by the imperfections and limitations of the forms and activities in which it dwells, are the glory of the spiritual life.
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0.04 - The Systems of Yoga, #The Synthesis Of Yoga, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
But Rajayoga does not forget that the disabilities of the ordinary mind proceed largely from its subjection to the reactions of the nervous system and the body. It adopts therefore from the Hathayogic system its devices of asana and pran.ayama, but reduces their multiple and elaborate forms in each case to one simplest and most directly effective process sufficient for its own immediate object. Thus it gets rid of the Hathayogic complexity and cumbrousness while it utilises the swift and powerful efficacy of its methods for the control of the body and the vital functions and for the awakening of that internal dynamism, full of a latent supernormal faculty, typified in Yogic terminology by the kun.d.alin, the coiled and sleeping serpent of Energy within. This done, the system proceeds to the perfect quieting of the restless mind and its elevation to a higher plane through concentration of mental force by the successive stages which lead to the utmost inner concentration or ingathered state of the consciousness which is called Samadhi.
By Samadhi, in which the mind acquires the capacity of withdrawing from its limited waking activities into freer and higher states of consciousness, Rajayoga serves a double purpose. It compasses a pure mental action liberated from the confusions of the outer consciousness and passes thence to the higher supra-mental planes on which the individual soul enters into its true spiritual existence. But also it acquires the capacity of that free and concentrated energising of consciousness on
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0.06 - INTRODUCTION, #Dark Night of the Soul, #Saint John of the Cross, #Christianity
which belongs to loving and simple faith.
Both these chapters have contri buted to the reputation of St. John of the
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0.07 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(In his notebook the sadhak drew a simple pencil sketch
of a foot extended to touch a lotus.) Please excuse me
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01.01 - Sri Aurobindo - The Age of Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The ideal or perhaps one should say the policy of Real-politick is the thing needed in this world. To achieve something actually in the physical and material field, even a lesser something, is worth much more than speculating on high flaunting chimeras and indulging in day-dreams. Yes, but what is this something that has to be achieved in the material world? It is always an ideal. Even procuring food for each and every person, clothing and housing all is not less an ideal for all its concern about actuality. Only there are ideals and ideals; some are nearer to the earth, some seem to be in the background. But the mystery is that it is not always the ideal nearest to the earth which is the easiest to achieve or the first thing to be done first. Do we not see before our very eye show some very simple innocent social and economic changes are difficult to carry outthey bring in their train quite disproportionately gestures and movements of violence and revolution? That is because we seek to cure the symptoms and not touch the root of the disease. For even the most innocent-looking social, economic or political abuse has at its base far-reaching attitudes and life-urgeseven a spiritual outlook that have to be sought out and tackled first, if the attempt at reform is to be permanently and wholly successful. Even in mundane matters we do not dig deep enough, or rise high enough.
Indeed, looking from a standpoint that views the working of the forces that act and achieve and not the external facts and events and arrangements aloneone finds that things that are achieved on the material plane are first developed and matured and made ready behind the veil and at a given moment burst out and manifest themselves often unexpectedly and suddenly like a chick out of the shell or the young butterfly out of the cocoon. The Gita points to that truth of Nature when it says: "These beings have already been killed by Me." It is not that a long or strenuous physical planning and preparation alone or in the largest measure brings about a physical realisation. The deeper we go within, the farther we are away from the surface, the nearer we come to the roots and sources of things even most superficial. The spiritual view sees and declares that it is the Brahmic consciousness that holds, inspires, builds up Matter, the physical body and form of Brahman.
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01.02 - Natures Own Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In the Supermind things exist in their perfect spiritual reality; each is consciously the divine reality in its transcendent essence, its cosmic extension, its, spiritual individuality; the diversity of a manifested existence is there, but the mutually exclusive separativeness has not yet arisen. The ego, the knot of separativity, appears at a later and lower stage of involution; what is here is indivisible nexus of individualising centres of the one eternal truth of being. Where Supermind and Overmind meet, one can see the multiple godheads, each distinct in his own truth and beauty and power and yet all together forming the one supreme consciousness infinitely composite and inalienably integral. But stepping back into Supermind one sees something moreOneness gathering into itself all diversity, not destroying it, but annulling and forbidding the separative consciousness that is the beginning of Ignorance. The first shadow of the Illusory Consciousness, the initial possibility of the movement of Ignorance comes in when the supramental light enters the penumbra of the mental sphere. The movement of Supermind is the movement of light without obscurity, straight, unwavering, unswerving, absolute. The Force here contains and holds in their oneness of Reality the manifold but not separated lines of essential and unalloyed truth: its march is the inevitable progression of each one assured truth entering into and upholding every other and therefore its creation, play or action admits of no trial or stumble or groping or deviation; for each truth rests on all others and on that which harmonises them all and does not act as a Power diverging from and even competing with other Powers of being. In the Overmind commences the play of divergent possibilities the simple, direct, united and absolute certainties of the supramental consciousness retire, as it were, a step behind and begin to work themselves out through the interaction first of separately individualised and then of contrary and contradictory forces. In the Overmind there is a conscious underlying Unity but yet each Power, Truth, Aspect of that Unity is encouraged to work out its possibilities as if it were sufficient to itself and the others are used by it for its own enhancement until in the denser and darker reaches below Overmind this turns out a thing of blind conflict and battle and, as it would appear, of chance survival. Creation or manifestation originally means the concretisation or devolution of the powers of Conscious Being into a play of united diversity; but on the line which ends in Matter it enters into more and more obscure forms and forces and finally the virtual eclipse of the supreme light of the Divine Consciousness. Creation as it descends' towards the Ignorance becomes an involution of the Spirit through Mind and Life into Matter; evolution is a movement backward, a return journey from Matter towards the Spirit: it is the unravelling, the gradual disclosure and deliverance of the Spirit, the ascension and revelation of the involved consciousness through a series of awakeningsMatter awakening into Life, Life awakening into Mind and Mind now seeking to awaken into something beyond the Mind, into a power of conscious Spirit.
The apparent or actual result of the movement of Nescienceof Involutionhas been an increasing negation of the Spirit, but its hidden purpose is ultimately to embody the Spirit in Matter, to express here below in cosmic Time-Space the splendours of the timeless Reality. The material body came into existence bringing with it inevitably, as it seemed, mortality; it appeared even to be fashioned out of mortality, in order that in this very frame and field of mortality, Immortality, the eternal Spirit Consciousness which is the secret truth and reality in Time itself as well as behind it, might be established and that the Divine might be possessed, or rather, possess itself not in one unvarying mode of the static consciousness, as it does even now behind the cosmic play, but in the play itself and in the multiple mode of the terrestrial existence.
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01.02 - Sri Aurobindo - Ahana and Other Poems, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
All the tragedy, the entire pathos of human life is concentrated in this line so simple, yet so grand:
Son of man, thou hast crowned the life with the flowers that are scentless,
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01.02 - The Creative Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Now the centre of this energy, the matrix of creativity is the soul itself, one's own soul. If you want to createlive, grow and be real-find yourself, be yourself. The simple old wisdom still remains the eternal wisdom. It is because we fall off from our soul that we wander into side-paths, paths that do not belong to our real nature and hence that lead to imitation and repetition, decay and death. This is what happens to what we call common souls. The force of circumstances, the pressure of environment or simply the momentum of custom or habit compel them to choose the easiest and the readiest way that may lie before them. They do not consult the demand of the inner being but the requirement of the moment. Our bodily needs, our vital hungers and our mental prejudices obsess and obscure the impulsions that thrill the hidden spirit. We hasten to gratify the immediate and forget the eternal, we clutch at the shadow and let go the substance. We are carried away in the flux and tumult of life. It is a mixed and collective whirla Weltgeist that moves and governs us. We are helpless straws drifting in the current. But manhood demands that we stop and pause, pull ourselves out of the Maelstrom and be what we are. We must shape things as we want and not allow things to shape us as they want.
Let each take cognisance of the godhead that is within him for self is Godand in the strength of the soul-divinity create his universe. It does not matter what sort of universe he- creates, so long as he creates it. The world created by a Buddha is not the same as that created by a Napoleon, nor should they be the same. It does not prove anything that I cannot become a Kalidasa; for that matter Kalidasa cannot become what I am. If you have not the genius of a Shankara it does not mean that you have no genius at all. Be and become yourselfma gridhah kasyachit dhanam, says the Upanishad. The fountain-head of creative genius lies there, in the free choice and the particular delight the self-determination of the spirit within you and not in the desire for your neighbours riches. The world has become dull and uniform and mechanical, since everybody endeavours to become not himself, but always somebody else. Imitation is servitude and servitude brings in grief.
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01.02 - The Issue, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
To a first thin strip of simple animal wants,
And the mighty wildness of the primitive earth
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01.03 - Mystic Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
I am anticipating however, I shall come to the point presently again. I was speaking of spiritual poetry. Listen once more to these simple, transparent, yet vibrant lines:
But how shall body not seem a hollow space
--
Man's consciousness is further to rise from the mental to over-mental regions. Accordingly, his life and activities and along with that his artistic creations too will take on a new tone and rhythm, a new mould and constitution even. For this transition, the higher mentalwhich is normally the field of philosophical and idealistic activitiesserves as the Paraclete, the Intercessor; it takes up the lower functionings of the consciousness, which are intense in their own way, but narrow and turbid, and gives, by purifying and enlarging, a wider frame, a more luminous pattern, a more subtly articulated , form for the higher, vaster and deeper realities, truths and harmonies to express and manifest. In the old-world spiritual and mystic poets, this intervening medium was overlooked for evident reasons, for human reason or even intelligence is a double-edged instrument, it can make as well as mar, it has a light that most often and naturally shuts off other higher lights beyond it. So it was bypassed, some kind of direct and immediate contact was sought to be established between the normal and the transcendental. The result was, as I have pointed out, a pure spiritual poetry, on the one hand, as in the Upanishads, or, on the other, religious poetry of various grades and denominations that spoke of the spiritual but in the terms and in the manner of the mundane, at least very much coloured and dominated by the latter. Vyasa was the great legendary figure in India who, as is shown in his Mahabharata, seems to have been one of the pioneers, if not the pioneer, to forge and build the missing link of Thought Power. The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these were very simple beginnings. The moderns go in for something more radical and totalitarian. The rationalising element instead of being an additional or subordinate or contri buting factor, must itself give its norm and form, its own substance and manner to the creative activity. Such is the present-day demand.
The earliest preoccupation of man was religious; even when he concerned himself with the world and worldly things, he referred all that to the other world, thought of gods and goddesses, of after-death and other where. That also will be his last and ultimate preoccupation though in a somewhat different way, when he has passed through a process of purification and growth, a "sea-change". For although religion is an aspiration towards the truth and reality beyond or behind the world, it is married too much to man's actual worldly nature and carries always with it the shadow of profanity.
--
or this simple single line pregnant no less with the self-same fullness:
An eye awake in voiceless heights of trance, ||8.8||
--
This is what I was trying to make out as the distinguishing trait of the real spiritual consciousness that seems to be developing in the poetic creation of tomorrow, e.g., it has the same rationality, clarity, concreteness of perception as the scientific spirit has in its own domain and still it is rounded off with a halo of magic and miracle. That is the nature of the logic of the infinite proper to the spiritual consciousness. We can have a Science of the Spirit as well as a Science of Matter. This is the Thought element or what corresponds to it, of which I was speaking, the philosophical factor, that which gives form to the formless or definition to that which is vague, a nearness and familiarity to that which is far and alien. The fullness of the spiritual consciousness means such a thing, the presentation of a divine name and form. And this distinguishes it from the mystic consciousness which is not the supreme solar consciousness but the nearest approach to it. Or, perhaps, the mystic dwells in the domain of the Divine, he may even be suffused with a sense of unity but would not like to acquire the Divine's nature and function. Normally and generally he embodies all the aspiration and yearning moved by intimations and suggestions belonging to the human mentality, the divine urge retaining still the human flavour. We can say also, using a Vedantic terminology, that the mystic consciousness gives us the tatastha lakshana, the nearest approximative attribute of the attri buteless; or otherwise, it is the hiranyagarbha consciousness which englobes the multiple play, the coruscated possibilities of the Reality: while the spiritual proper may be considered as prajghana, the solid mass, the essential lineaments of revelatory knowledge, the typal "wave-particles" of the Reality. In the former there is a play of imagination, even of fancy, a decorative aesthesis, while in the latter it is vision pure and simple. If the spiritual poetry is solar in its nature, we can say, by extending the analogy, that mystic poetry is characteristically lunarMoon representing the delight and the magic that Mind and mental imagination, suffused, no doubt, with a light or a reflection of some light from beyond, is capable of (the Upanishad speaks of the Moon being born of the Mind).
To sum up and recapitulate. The evolution of the poetic expression in man has ever been an attempt at a return and a progressive approach to the spiritual source of poetic inspiration, which was also the original, though somewhat veiled, source from the very beginning. The movement has followed devious waysstrongly negative at timeseven like man's life and consciousness in general of which it is an organic member; but the ultimate end and drift seems to have been always that ideal and principle even when fallen on evil days and evil tongues. The poet's ideal in the dawn of the world was, as the Vedic Rishi sang, to raise things of beauty in heaven by his poetic power,kavi kavitv divi rpam sajat. Even a Satanic poet, the inaugurator, in a way, of modernism and modernistic consciousness, Charles Baudelaire, thus admonishes his spirit:
--
This is religious poetry, pure and simple, expressing man's earliest and most elementary feeling, marked by a broad candour, a rather shallow monotone. But that feeling is raised to a pitch of fervour and scintillating sensibility in Vaughan's
They are all gone into the world of light
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01.05 - Rabindranath Tagore: A Great Poet, a Great Man, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Tagore was a poet; this poetic power of his he put in the service of the great cause for the divine uplift of humanity. Naturally, it goes without saying, his poetry did not preach or propagandize the truths for which he stoodhe had a fine and powerful weapon in his prose to do the work, even then in a poetic way but to sing them. And he sang them not in their philosophical bareness, like a Lucretius, or in their sheer transcendental austerity like some of the Upanishadic Rishis, but in and through human values and earthly norms. The especial aroma of Tagore's poetry lies exactly here, as he himself says, in the note of unboundedness in things bounded that it describes. A mundane, profane sensuousness, Kalidasian in richness and sweetness, is matched or counterpointed by a simple haunting note imbedded or trailing somewhere behind, a lyric cry persevering into eternity, the nostalgic cry of the still small voice.2
Thus, on the one hand, the Eternity, the Infinity, the Spirit is brought nearer home to us in its embodied symbols and living vehicles and vivid formulations, it becomes easily available to mortals, even like the father to his son, to use a Vedic phrase; on the other hand, earthly things, mere humanities are uplifted and suffused with a "light that never was, on sea or land."
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01.05 - The Yoga of the King - The Yoga of the Spirits Freedom and Greatness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A simple fiat of its thinking force,
The casual pressure of its slight assent
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01.08 - A Theory of Yoga, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
What is the reason of this elaboration, this check and constraint upon the natural and direct outflow of the animal instincts in man? It has been said that the social life of man, the fact that he has to live and move as member of a group or aggregate has imposed upon him these restrictions. The free and unbridled indulgence of one's bare aboriginal impulses may be possible to creatures that live a separate, solitary and individual life but is disruptive of all bonds necessary for a corporate and group life. It is even a biological necessity again which has evolved in man a third and collateral primary instinct that of the herd. And it is this herd-instinct which naturally and spontaneously restrains, diverts and even metamorphoses the other instincts of the mere animal life. However, leaving aside for the moment the question whether man's ethical and spiritual ideals are a mere dissimulation of his animal instincts or whether they correspond to certain actual realities apart from and co-existent with these latter, we will recognise the simple fact of control and try to have a glimpse into its mechanism.
There are three lines, as the Psycho-analysts point out along which this control or censuring of the primary instincts acts. First, there is the line of Defence Reaction. That is to say, the mind automatically takes up an attitude directly contrary to the impulse, tries to shut it out and deny altogether its existence and the measure of the insistence of the impulse is also the measure of the vehemence of the denial. It is the case of the lady protesting too much. So it happens that where subconsciously there is a strong current of a particular impulse, consciously the mind is obliged to take up a counteracting opposite impulse. Thus in presence of a strong sexual craving the mind as if to guard and save itself engenders by a reflex movement an ascetic and puritanic mood. Similarly a strong unthinking physical attraction translates itself on the conscious plane as an equally strong repulsion.
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01.08 - Walter Hilton: The Scale of Perfection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Close the senses. Turn within. And then go forward, that is to say, more and more inward. In that direction lies your itinerary, the journey of your consciousness. The sense-ridden secular man, who goes by his physical eye, has marked in his own way the steps of his forward march and progress. His knowledge and his power grew as he proceeded in his survey from larger masses of physical objects to their component molecules and from molecules to their component atoms and from atoms once more into electrons and protons or energy-points pure and simple, or otherwise as, in another direction, he extended his gaze from earth to the solar system, from the solar system to other starry systems, to far-off galaxies and I from galaxies to spaces beyond. The record of this double-track march to infinityas perceived or conceived by the physical sensesis marvellous, no doubt. The mystic offers the spectacle of a still more marvellous march to another kind of infinity.
Here is the Augustinian mantra taken as the motto of The Scale of Perfection: We ascend the ascending grades in our heart and we sing the song of ascension1. The journey's end is heavenly Jerusalem, the House of the Lord. The steps of this inner ascension are easily visible, not surely to the outer eye of the sense-burdened man, but to the "ghostly seeing" of the aspirant which is hazy in the beginning but slowly clears as he advances. The first step is the withdrawal from the outer senses and looking and seeing within. "Turn home again in thyself, and hold thee within and beg no more without." The immediate result is a darkness and a restless darknessit is a painful night. The outer objects of attraction and interest have been discarded, but the inner attachments and passions surge there still. If, however, one continues and persists, refuses to be drawn out, the turmoil settles down and the darkness begins to thin and wear away. One must not lose heart, one must have patience and perseverance. So when the outward world is no more-there and its call also no longer awakes any echo in us, then comes the stage of "restful darkness" or "light-some darkness". But it is still the dark Night of the soul. The outer light is gone and the inner light is not yet visible: the night, the desert, the great Nought, stretches between these two lights. But the true seeker goes through and comes out of the tunnel. And there is happiness at the end. "The seeking is travaillous, but the finding is blissful." When one steps out of the Night, enters into the deepest layer of the being, one stands face to face to one's soul, the very image of God, the perfect God-man, the Christ within. That is the third degree of our inner ascension, the entry into the deepest, purest and happiest statein which one becomes what he truly is; one finds the Christ there and dwells in love and union with him. But there is still a further step to take, and that is real ascension. For till now it has been a going within, from the outward to the inner and the inmost; now one has to go upward, transcend. Within the body, in life, however deep you may go, even if you find your soul and your union with Jesus whose tabernacle is your soul, still there is bound to remain a shadow of the sinful prison-house; the perfect bliss and purity without any earthly taint, the completeness and the crowning of the purgation and transfiguration can come only when you go beyond, leaving altogether the earthly form and worldly vesture and soar into Heaven itself and be in the company of the Trinity. "Into myself, and after... above myself by overpassing only into Him." At the same time it is pointed out, this mediaeval mystic has the common sense to see that the going in and going above of which one speaks must not be understood in a literal way, it is a figure of speech. The movement of the mystic is psychological"ghostly", it is saidnot physical or carnal.
--
This will elucidate another point of difference between the Christian's and the Vaishnava's love of God, for both are characterised by an extreme intensity and sweetness and exquisiteness of that divine feeling. This Christian's, however, is the union of the soul in its absolute purity and simplicity and "privacy" with her lord and master; the soul is shred here of all earthly vesture and goes innocent and naked into the embrace of her Beloved. The Vaishnava feeling is richer and seems to possess more amplitude; it is more concrete and less ethereal. The Vaishnava in his passionate yearning seeks to carry as it were the whole world with him to his Lord: for he sees and feels Him not only in the inmost chamber of his soul, but meets Him also in and I through his senses and in and through the world and its objects around. In psychological terms one can say that the Christian realisation, at its very source, is that of the inmost soul, what we call the "psychic being" pure and simple, referred to in the book we are considering; as: "His sweet privy voice... stirreth thine heart full stilly." Whereas the Vaishnava reaches out to his Lord with his outer heart too aflame with passion; not only his inmost being but his vital being also seeks the Divine. This bears upon the occult story of man's spiritual evolution upon earth. The Divine Grace descends from the highest into the deepest and from the deepest to the outer ranges of human nature, so that the whole of it may be illumined and transformed and one day man can embody in his earthly life the integral manifestation of God, the perfect Epiphany. Each religion, each line of spiritual discipline takes up one limb of manone level or mode of his being and consciousness purifies it and suffuses it with the spiritual and divine consciousness, so that in the end the whole of man, in his integral living, is recast and remoulded: each discipline is in charge of one thread as it were, all together weave the warp and woof in the evolution of the perfect pattern of a spiritualised and divinised humanity.
The conception of original sin is a cardinal factor in Christian discipline. The conception, of sinfulness is the very motive-power that drives the aspirant. "Seek tensely," it is said, "sorrow and sigh deep, mourn still, and stoop low till thine eye water for anguish and for pain." Remorse and grief are necessary attendants; the way of the cross is naturally the calvary strewn with pain and sorrow. It is the very opposite of what is termed the "sunlit path" in spiritual ascension. Christian mystics have made a glorious spectacle of the process of "dying to the world." Evidently, all do not go the whole length. There are less gloomy and happier temperaments, like the present one, for example, who show an unusual balance, a sturdy common sense even in the midst of their darkest nights, who have chalked out as much of the sunlit path as is possible in this line. Thus this old-world mystic says: it is true one must see and admit one's sinfulness, the grosser and apparent and more violent ones as well as all the subtle varieties of it that are in you or rise up in you or come from the Enemy. They pursue you till the very end of your journey. Still you need not feel overwhelmed or completely desperate. Once you recognise the sin in you, even the bare fact of recognition means for you half the victory. The mystic says, "It is no sin as thou feelest them." The day Jesus gave himself away on the Cross, since that very day you are free, potentially free from the bondage of sin. Once you give your adherence to Him, the Enemies are rendered powerless. "They tease the soul, but they harm not the soul". Or again, as the mystic graphically phrases it: "This soul is not borne in this image of sin as a sick man, though he feel it; but he beareth it." The best way of dealing with one's enemies is not to struggle and "strive with them." The aspirant, the lover of Jesus, must remember: "He is through grace reformed to the likeness of God ('in the privy substance of his soul within') though he neither feel it nor see it."
--
Indeed, there are one or two points, notes for the guidance of the aspirant, which I would like to mention here for their striking appositeness and simple "soothfastness." First of all with regard to the restless enthusiasm and eagerness of a novice, here is the advice given: "The fervour is so mickle in outward showing, is not only for mickleness of love that they have; but it is for littleness and weakness of their souls, that they may not bear a little touching of God.. afterward when love hath boiled out all the uncleanliness, then is the love clear and standeth still, and then is both the body and the soul mickle more in peace, and yet hath the self soul mickle more love than it had before, though it shew less outward." And again: "without any fervour outward shewed, and the less it thinketh that it loveth or seeth God, the nearer it nigheth" ('it' naturally refers to the soul). The statement is beautifully self-luminous, no explanation is required. Another hurdle that an aspirant has to face often in the passage through the Dark Night is that you are left all alone, that you are deserted by your God, that the Grace no longer favours you. Here is however the truth of the matter; "when I fall down to my frailty, then Grace withdraweth: for my falling is cause there-of, and not his fleeing." In fact, the Grace never withdraws, it is we who withdraw and think otherwise. One more difficulty that troubles the beginner especially is with regard to the false light. The being of darkness comes in the form of the angel of light, imitates the tone of the still small voice; how to recognise, how to distinguish the two? The false light, the "feigned sun" is always found "atwixt two black rainy clouds" : they are "highing" of oneself and "lowing" of others. When you feel flattered and elated, beware it is the siren voice tempting you. The true light brings you soothing peace and meekness: the other light brings always a trail of darknessf you are soothfast and sincere you will discover it if not near you, somewhere at a distance lurking.
The ultimate truth is that God is the sole doer and the best we can do is to let him do freely without let or hindrance. "He that through Grace may see Jhesu, how that He doth all and himself doth right nought but suffereth Jhesu work in him what him liketh, he is meek." And yet one does not arrive at that condition from the beginning or all at once. "The work is not of the hour nor of a day, but of many days and years." And for a long time one has to take up one's burden and work, co-operate with the Divine working. In the process there is this double movement necessary for the full achievement. "Neither Grace only without full working of a soul that in it is nor working done without grace bringeth a soul to reforming but that one joined to that other." Mysticism is not all eccentricity and irrationality: on the contrary, sanity seems to be the very character of the higher mysticism. And it is this sanity, and even a happy sense of humour accompanying it, that makes the genuine mystic teacher say: "It is no mastery to me for to say it, but for to do it there is mastery." Amen.
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01.09 - The Parting of the Way, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
So, in man also, especially of that order which forms the crown of humanityin poets and artists and seers and great men of actioncan be observed a certain characteristic form of consciousness, which is something other than, greater than the consciousness of the mere self. It is difficult as yet to characterise definitely what that thing is. It is the awakening of the self to something which is beyond itselfit is the cosmic self, the oversoul, the universal being; it is God, it is Turiya, it is sachchidanandain so many ways the thing has been sought to be envisaged and expressed. The consciousness of that level has also a great variety of names given to it Intuition, Revelation, cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness. It is to be noted here, however, that the thing we are referring to, is not the Absolute, the Infinite, the One without a second. It is not, that is to say, the supreme Reality the Brahmanin its static being, in its undivided and indivisible unity; it is the dynamic Brahman, that status of the supreme Reality where creation, the diversity of Becoming takes rise, it is the Truth-worldRitam the domain of typal realities. The distinction is necessary, as there does seem to be such a level of consciousness intermediary, again, between man and the Absolute, between self-consciousness and the supreme consciousness. The simplest thing would be to give that intermediate level of consciousness a negative namesince being as yet human we cannot foresee exactly its composition and function the super-consciousness.
The inflatus of something vast and transcendent, something which escapes all our familiar schemes of cognisance and yet is insistent with a translucent reality of its own, we do feel sometimes within us invading and enveloping our individuality, lifting up our sense of self and transmuting our personality into a reality which can hardly be called merely human. All this life of ego-bound rationality then melts away and opens out the passage for a life of vision and power. Thus it is the poet has felt when he says, "there is this incalculable element in human life influencing us from the mystery which envelops our being, and when reason is satisfied, there is something deeper than Reason which makes us still uncertain of truth. Above the human reason there is a transcendental sphere to which the spirit of men sometimes rises, and the will may be forged there at a lordly smithy and made the unbreakable pivot."(A.E.)
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0.10 - Letters to a Young Captain, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Moreover, there is a very simple way of knowing. One has
only to imagine that the thing one wants to do will not be done,
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01.10 - Principle and Personality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
And yet we yield to none in our demand for holding forth the principles always and ever before the wide open gaze of all. The principle is there to make people self-knowing and self-guiding; and the man is also there to illustrate that principle, to serve as the hope and prophecy of achievement. The living soul is there to touch your soul, if you require the touch; and the principle is there by which to test and testify. For, we do not ask anybody to be a mere automaton, a blind devotee, a soul without individual choice and initiative. On the contrary, we insist on each and every individual to find his own soul and stand on his own Truththis is the fundamental principle we declare, the only creedif creed it be that we ask people to note and freely follow. We ask all people to be fully self-dependent and self-illumined, for only thus can a real and solid reconstruction of human nature and society be possible; we do not wish that they should bow down ungrudgingly to anything, be it a principle or a personality. In this respect we claim the very first rank of iconoclasts and anarchists. And along with that, if we still choose to remain an idol-lover and a hero-worshipper, it is because we recognise that our mind, human as it is, being not a simple equation but a complex paradox, the idol or the hero symbolises for us and for those who so will, the very iconoclasm and anarchism and perhaps other more positive things as wellwhich we behold within and seek to manifest.
The world is full of ikons and archons; we cannot escape them, even if we try the world itself being a great ikon and as great an archon. Those who swear by principles, swear always by some personality or other, if not by a living creature then by a lifeless book, if not by Religion then by Science, if not by the East then by the West, if not by Buddha or Christ then by Bentham or Voltaire. Only they do it unwittingly they change one set of personalities for another and believe they have rejected them all. The veils of Maya are a thousand-fold tangle and you think you have entirely escaped her when you have only run away from one fold to fall into another. The wise do not attempt to reject and negate Maya, but consciously accept herfreedom lies in a knowing affirmation. So we too have accepted and affirmed an icon, but we have done it consciously and knowingly; we are not bound by our idol, we see the truth of it, and we serve and utilise it as best as we may.
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01.11 - Aldous Huxley: The Perennial Philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We fear Mr. Huxley has completely missed the point of the cryptic sentence. He seems to take it as meaning that human kindness and morality are a means to the recovery of the Lost Way-although codes of ethics and deliberate choices are not sufficient in themselves, they are only a second best, yet they mark the rise of self-consciousness and have to be utilised to pass on into the unitive knowledge that is Tao. This explanation or amplification seems to us somewhat confused and irrelevant to the idea expressed in the apophthegm. What is stated here is much simpler and transparent. It is this that when the Divine is absent and the divine Knowledge, then comes in man with his human mental knowledge: it is man's humanity that clouds the Divine and to reach the' Divine one must reject the human values, all the moralities, sarva dharmn, seek only the Divine. The lesser way lies through the dualities, good and evil, the Great Way is beyond them and cannot be limited or measured by the relative standards. Especially in the modern age we see the decline and almost the disappearance of the Greater Light and instead a thousand smaller lights are lighted which vainly strive to dispel the gathering darkness. These do not help, they are false lights and men are apt to cling to them, shutting their eyes to the true one which is not that that one worships here and now, nedam yadidam upsate.
There is a beautiful quotation from the Chinese sage, Wu Ch'ng-n, regarding the doubtful utility of written Scriptures:
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01.12 - Goethe, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Satan proposes to lead man down into hell through a sure means, nothing more sure, according to him, viz., love for a woman and a woman's love in return. Nothing like that to make man earth-bound or hell-bound and force out of him the nostalgic cry, "Time must have a stop." A most simple, primal and primeval lyric love will most suit Satan's purpose. Hence the Margaret episode. Love=Passion=Lust=Hell; that is the inevitable equation sequence, and through which runs the magic thread of infatuation. And that charm is invincible. Satan did succeed and was within an ace, as they say, of the final and definitive triumph: but that was not to be, for he left out of account an incalculable element. Love, even human love has, at least can have, a wonderful power, the potency of reversing the natural decree and bring about a supernatural intervention. Human love can at a crucial momentin extremiscall down the Divine Grace, which means God's love for man. And the soul meant for perdition and about to be seized and carried away by Satan finds itself suddenly free and lifted up and borne by Heaven's messengers. Human Jove is divine love itself in earthly form and figure and whatever its apparent aberrations it is in soul and substance that thing. Satan is hoisted with his own petard. That is God's irony.
But Goethe's Satan seems to know or feel something of his fate. He knows his function and the limit too of his function. He speaks of the doomsday for people, but it is his doomsday also, he says in mystic terms. Yes, it is his doomsday, for it is the day of man's liberation. Satan has to release man from the pact that stands cancelled. The soul of man cannot be sold, even if he wanted it.
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01.13 - T. S. Eliot: Four Quartets, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine Love is a greater fire than the low smouldering fire that our secular unregenerate life is. One has to choose and declare his adhesion. Indeed, the stage of conversion, the crucial turn from the ordinary life to the spiritual life Eliot has characterised in a very striking manner. We usually say, sometimes in an outburst of grief, sometimes in a spirit of sudden disgust and renunciation that the world is dark and dismal and lonesome, the only thing to do here is to be done with it. The true renunciation, that which is deep and abiding, is not, however, so simple a thing, such a short cut. So our poet says, but the world is not dark enough, it is not lonesome enough: the world lives and moves in a superficial half-light, it is neither real death nor real life, it is death in life. It is this miserable mediocrity, the shallow uncertainty of consciousness that spells danger and ruin for the soul. Hence the poet exclaims:
. . . . Not here
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01.14 - Nicholas Roerich, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A Russian artist (Monsieur Benois) has stressed upon the primitivealmost aboriginalelement in Roerich and was not happy over it. Well, as has been pointed out by other prophets and thinkers, man today happens to be so sophisticated, artificial, material, cerebral that a [all-back seems to be necessary for him to take a new leap forward on to a higher ground. The pure aesthete is a closed system, with a consciousness immured in an ivory tower; but man is something more. A curious paradox. Man can reach the highest, realise the integral truth when he takes his leap, not from the relatively higher levels of his consciousness his intellectual and aesthetic and even moral status but when he can do so from his lower levels, when the physico-vital element in him serves as the springing-board. The decent and the beautiful the classic grace and aristocracyform one aspect of man, the aspect of "light"; but the aspect of energy and power lies precisely in him where the aboriginal and the barbarian find also a lodging. Man as a mental being is naturally sattwic, but prone to passivity and weakness; his physico-vital reactions, on the other hand, are obscure and crude, simple and vehement, but they have life and energy and creative power, they are there to be trained and transfigured, made effective instruments of a higher illumination.
All elemental personalities have something of the unconventional and irrational in them. And Roerich is one such in his own way. The truths and realities that he envisages and seeks to realise on earth are elemental and fundamental, although apparently simple and commonplace.
***
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0.11 - Letters to a Sadhak, #Some Answers From The Mother, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The simplest and most effective way is to offer it to the Divine;
the more sincere and radical this offering is, the more quickly
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0 1958-03-07, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
On the way, I stopped at J and Es place. They are living like native fishermen, in loincloths, in a coconut grove by the sea. The place is exceedingly beautiful, and the sea full of rainbow-hued coral. And suddenly, within twenty-four hours, I realized an old dreamor rather, I purged myself of an old and tenacious dream: that of living on a Pacific island as a simple fisherman. And all at once, I saw, in a flash, that this kind of life totally lacks a center. You float in a nowhere. It plunges you into some kind of higher inertia, an illumined inertia, and you lose all true substance.
As for me, I am totally out of my element in this new life, as though I were uprooted from myself. I am living in the temple, in the midst of pujas,1 with white ashes on my forehead, barefoot dressed like a Hindu, sleeping on cement at night, eating impossible curries, with some good sunburns to complete the cooking. And there I am, clinging to you, for if you were not there I would collapse, so absurd would it all be. You are the only realityhow many times have I repeated this to myself, like a litany! Apart from this, I am holding up quite well physically. But inside and outside, nothing is left but you. I need you, thats all. Mother, this world is so horrifyingly empty. I really feel that I would evaporate if you werent there. Well, no doubt I had to go through this experience Perhaps I will be able to extract some book from it that will be of use to you. We are like children who need a lot of pictures in order to understand, and a few good kicks to realize our complete stupidity.
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0 1958-06-06 - Supramental Ship, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
The ego becomes more and more conscious and resistant as the being develops. Very primitive, very simple beings, little children will respond first, because they dont have an organized ego. But these big people! People who have worked on themselves, who have mastered themselves, who are organized, who have an ego made of steel, it will be difficult for them.
Unless they go beyond all this and have enough spiritual knowledge to be able to make the ego surrender in which case the realization will naturally be much greaterit will be more difficult to accomplish, but the result will be far more complete.
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0 1958-07-02, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
I recall that once I tried to speak of this, but no one followed me, no one understood, so I did not insist. I left it open and never pursued it further, for they could not decipher anything or find any meaning in what I was saying. But now I could give a very simple answer: Let the Supreme do the work. It is He who has to progress, not you!
Ramdas does not at all consider that the world as it is, is good.
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0 1958-10-10, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
But all this is still in suspense, on the way to realization, moving forward progressively; therefore, unless we are able to see the outcome, we cant understand a thing. We get confused. Only when we see the outcome, the final realization, only when we have TOUCHED there, will everything be understood then it will be as clear and as simple as can be. But meanwhile, my relationships with different people are very funny, utterly amusing!
Those who have what I would call the more outer relationship compared to the other (although it is not really so)the relationship of yoga, of sadhanaconsider the others superstitious; and the others, who have faith OI perception, or the Grace to have understood what Sri Aurobindo meant (perhaps even before knowing what he said, but in any event, after he said it), discard the others as ignorant unbelievers! And there are all the gradations in between, so it really becomes quite funny!
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0 1958-11-04 - Myths are True and Gods exist - mental formation and occult faculties - exteriorization - work in dreams, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Once you have worked in this field, you realize that when you have studied a subject, when you have mentally understood something, it gives a special tonality to the experience. The experience may be quite spontaneous and sincere, but the simple fact of having known this subject and of having studied it gives a particular tonality; on the other hand, if you have learned nothing of the subject, if you know nothing at all, well, when the experience comes, the notation of it is entirely spontaneous and sincere. It can be more or less adequate, but it is not the result of a former mental formation.
What happened in my life is that I never studied or knew things until AFTER having the experienceonly BECAUSE OF the experience and because I wanted to understand it would I study things related to it.
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0 1958-12-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
X is at the summit of tantric initiation, and his power is not the fruit of a simple knowledge. He holds it directly from the Divine, and these things have been in his family traditionally from ten generations. No black magic can resist his power. His action is not brutal, he does not mechanically apply formulas, he holds this Science and knows how to apply it like an expert chemist, always in Light, Love and sweetness. If you agree that he come to see you, he will immediately know the source of these attacks upon you and will even be able to make the attacking force speak. He has this power. Of course, neither X nor Swami will divulge this to anyone, and everything will be kept secret. You have only to send word, or a telegram: No objection.
The work can be done from here also, but naturally it will not be quite as effective. In that case, you would have to set a specific time to synchronize the action in Rameswaram and Pondicherry. Swami can also do something in his pujas. It is for you to decide, but I hope you will not want to prolong this battle unnecessarily.
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0 1959-01-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
My explanations will have to be simple, for X speaks English with difficulty, thus subtleties are out of the question. (I am teaching him a little English while he is teaching me Sanskrit, and we manage to understand each other rather well all the same. He understands more than he can speak.)
I do not want to mention this to Swami, as X is not very happy about the way Swami seizes upon every occasion to appropriate things, and particularly mantras (I will explain this to you when we meet again). It is especially the way he says I. Nothing very seriousit is Swamis bad side, though he has good ones too. You know that, however.
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0 1959-05-25, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Only someone who loves you and has the knowledge can find the true solution to the problem. X1 fulfills these conditions excellently. Go to him and simply be what you are, without blackening nor embellishing, with the sincerity and simplicity of a child. He knows your soul and its aspiration; speak to him of your physical life and of your need for space, solitude, untamed nature, the simple and free life. He will understand and, in his wisdom, will see the best thing to do.
And what he decides will be done.
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0 1959-06-03, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Certainly his political rage is not only understandable but justified. However, when one begins looking at things from the external viewpoint of the manifestation, they are not as simple as that. I cannot speak of all this in detail, but as an example I can tell you that here in Pondicherry, those who are maneuvering (and not without some hope) to oust the Congress are our worst enemies, the enemy of all that is disinterested and spiritual, and if they come to power, they would be capable of anything in their hate.
For all these world events, I always leave it to the Divine vision and wisdom, and I say to the Supreme: Lord, may Thy Will be done.
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0 1960-01-28, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Yet its HAPPY. It loves doing the work, it lives only for thatto change, to transform itself is its reason for being. And its such a docile instrument, so full of good will! Once it even started wailing like a baby: O Lord, give me the time, the time to be transformed It has such a simple fervor for the work, but it needs timetime, thats it. It wants to live only to conquer, to win the Lords Victory.3
One crore = 10 million.
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0 1960-04-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
There are days when everything is so simple, when I see and feel that all one needs is to let oneself be carried and everything is light. I have really to be done with this me.
It will be a joy to be with you again and resume the work. Here, I am sparing as many hours as I can to correcting The Human Cycle I follow X perfectly in his inner life, unreservedly, but I have to force myself to follow him in his outer life.
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0 1960-07-26 - Mothers vision - looking up words in the subconscient, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Its very simple, actually; its a convention, a conventional construction somewhere in the subconscious brain, and you write automatically. But if you want to try to bring the light of a slightly higher reason into it, its terrible. It becomes meaningless, and you forget everything.
You have to be inside this automatic convention to remember; its very difficult (Mother laughs). So I make a lot of spelling mistakes (under her breath, in a mischievous tone) I think Ill ask him for his dictionary (laughter)!
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0 1960-11-26, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
So, its very simple. The sickness was due to one part of your being going faster than the rest. A part of the physical consciousness probably remained behind, and that created this imbalance and triggered the sickness.
It took a huge effort in my dream.
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0 1960-12-31, #Agenda Vol 01, #unset, #Zen
Oh, but you know, night after night, night after night, I SEE how things which in their truth are so simple become complicated here in the human atmosphere. Really, its so interesting; I have visions you see, the thing in its truth is so simple its stupefying, and then here it becomes so complicated, painful, exhausting, upsetting.
But its enough to take one step behind to come out of it all.
--
And IMMEDIATELY, I found myself down below, relieved of my packages. And everything was perfectly simple. (I had even brought the packages along without realizing it.) All, all was in order, very neat, very luminous, very simplesimply because I had said, Ah, no! Ive had enough of this business! Why all these stupid complications!5
But these are not dreams, they are types of activitymore real, more concrete than material life; the experience is much more concrete than ordinary life.
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0 1961-01-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Understanding The Synthesis of Yoga is quite simple: I have only to be silent for a moment, and Sri Aurobindo is here.
Its not this bodys understanding: HE is here!
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0 1961-01-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother frequently addressed Satprem as 'mon petit' or 'petit,' terms of endearment she used for very few other people. We have unfortunately been unable to find English equivalents that capture the nuances of Mother's simple 'petit' and 'mon petit,' and so have decided to leave them in the original French wherever they appear.
***
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0 1961-02-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The most violent attack came immediately after that experience [of January 24]. But of all the experiences in my life, this was the most wonderful for the simple reason that it was NOT EVEN preceded by an aspiration, not even an aspiration from the body it came directly as the Supreme Will, bang! (Mother bangs down her hands in an irresistible gesture) And then there was nothing, nothing but THE thing, WITHOUT ANY PERSONAL PARTICIPATION WHATSOEVER: no will, no aspiration, not even the satisfaction of itnothing. It was. I was (in my higher consciousness) filled with wonder at the ABSOLUTENESS of the experience. It came, a thing DECREED and eternallike that (same irresistible gesture).
(silence)
--
A recentand unifying (!)theory postulated by the American Nobel Laureate, Murray Gell-Mann, would reduce this somewhat startling enumeration to more reasonable proportions through the introduction of a unique sub-particle constituting all matter: the quark. Nevertheless, there would still exist several kinds of quarks (e.g., 'strange,' 'charmed,' 'colored' in red, yellow and blue) for accommodating the various qualities of matter. A proton, for example, would consist of three quarks: red, yellow and blue. However, it should be noted that quarks are basically mathematical intermediaries to facilitate the comprehension or interpretation of certain experiments thus far unexplained. Moreover, the simple question still remains, even if they do exist materially: 'What are quarks made of?'
Nevertheless, a mathematical model resulting from a recent theory that attempts to represent our material universe strangely resembles Mother's perception, for it postulates a milieu consisting entirely of electromagnetic waves of very high frequency. According to this theory, Matter itself is the 'coagulation' of these waves at the moment they exceed a certain frequency threshold; our perception of emptiness, of fullness, of the hard or the transparent, being finally due only to the differences in vibratory frequencies'vibratory modes within the same thing.'
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0 1961-02-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a rather amusing sensation, a combination of sensation and feeling, that the ordinary human attitude towards things multiplies and magnifies the difficulties to FANTASTIC proportions; while if they simply had the true attitudea NORMAL attitude, quite simple, uncomplicatedahh, all life would be much easier. For the body feels the vibrations (those very vibrations which concentrate to form a body), it feels their nature and sees that its normal reaction, a peaceful and confident reaction, makes things so much easier! But as soon as this agitation of anxiety, fear, discontent comes in, the reaction of a will that doesnt want any of it oh, right away it becomes like water boiling: pff! pff! pff! like a machine. While if the difficulty is accepted with confidence and simplicity, its reduced to its minimum, and I mean purely materially, in the material vibration itself.
Almost (I say almost because the body hasnt had every experience), but almost all pains can be reduced to something absolutely negligible. (Of course, some pains it hasnt had, but it has had a sufficient number!) Its this anxiety resulting from a semi-mental vibration (the first stirrings of Mind) that complicates everything, everything! For example, take this difficulty I mentioned of climbing the stairs: in the doctors consciousness or anyone elses, pain causes it. According to their ordinary reasoning, pain is what tenses the nerves and muscles so one can no longer walk but this is absolutely FALSE. Pain does not prevent my body from doing anything at all. Pain isnt a factor, or rather its a factor that can be easily dealt with. Its not that: it is Matter; Matter (probably cellular matter, or) losing its capacity to respond to the will, to will-power. But why? I dont know! It depends upon the particular disorganization; but why is it like that? I dont know. Now each time I climb the stairs, I am trying to find the means of infusing Will in such a way that this lack of response doesnt last but I still havent found it. Although theres all this accumulated force and power and will (a tremendous accumulation, I am BATHED in it, the whole body is bathed in it!), yet for some reason it doesnt respond. Here and there, groups of cells fail to respond, and the Force cannot act. So what must be found is.
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0 1961-03-11, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I have a recollection of this life, for I relived it when I first became conscious of the life of the entire earth; but I cant say how long it lasted or what area it covered I dont know. I only remember the conditions at that time, the state of material Nature and the human form and human consciousness, and this state of harmony with all the other elements of the earth: harmony with animal life and a great harmony with plant lifethere was a kind of spontaneous knowledge of how to use the things of Nature, the qualities of plants, fruits and all that vegetal nature could offer. There was no aggressiveness, no fear, no contradictions or frictions, and no perversion the mind was pure, simple, luminous, uncomplicated.
It was certainly with the progress of evolution, the march of evolution, when the mind began to develop for and in itself, that ALL the complications, all the deformations began. Indeed, this story of Genesis that seems so childish does contain a truth. The old traditions like Genesis resembled the Vedas in that each letter6 was the symbol of a knowledge; it was the pictorial rsum of a traditional knowledge, just as the Veda contains a pictoral rsum of the knowledge of its time. But whats more, even the symbol had a reality in the sense that there was truly a period when life upon earth (the first manifestation of mentalized Matter in human forms) was still in complete harmony with all that preceded it. It was only later that.
The tree of knowledge symbolizes this kind of knowledge a material knowledge, no longer divine because its origin was the sense of division and this is what began to spoil everything. How long did this period last? I am unable to say. (Because my recollection is of an almost immortal life; it seems that it was through some sort of evolutionary accident that the destruction of forms became necessary for progress.) And where did it take place? From certain impressions (but these are only impressions), it would seem that it was in the vicinity of either this side of Ceylon and India or the other, I dont know exactly (Mother indicates the Indian Ocean either west of Ceylon and India or to the east between Ceylon and Java), although certainly the place no longer exists; it must have been swallowed up by the sea. I have a very clear vision of the place and a consciousness of that life and its forms, but I cant give precise material details. Did it last for centuries, was it ? I dont know. To tell the truth, when I was reliving those moments I wasnt curious about such details (for one is in another mental state where there is no curiosity about material details: all things turn into psychological facts). It was something so simple, luminous, harmonious, far removed from all our usual preoccupationsthose very preoccupations with time and space. It was a spontaneous life, extremely beautiful, and so close to Naturea natural flowering of animal life. There were no oppositions or contradictions, nothing of the kindeverything happened in the best way possible.
(silence)
--
Matter was very simple and very harmonious and very luminous not complex enough. This complexity is what ruined everything, but it will lead to an INFINITELY more conscious realizationinfinitely more conscious. And when the earth again becomes as harmonious, simple, luminous, pure simple, pure, purely divine then, with this complexity added, something can be achieved.
(Mother gets up to leave)
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0 1961-04-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
These are political texts from the revolutionary period, concerning bomb attacks against the English. And then he says that the man God has protected can never be touched. However hard you try, you will never be able to slay him. But who can protect the man God has already slain? He has already been slain by God. And man is simply the instrument used by God to do here what has been done there (it has ALREADY been done there). Its very simple.
Yes, I quite understand. But in general, does EVERYTHING that happens here first get played out on the other side in some way? Its an occult problem, and furthermore a problem of freedom.
--
Now I no longer have the experience of that state except as a memory, so I cant formulate it accurately. But what was very clear and comes very oftenvery oftenis the perception of a superimposition of falsehood over a real fact. This brings us back to what I was telling you some time ago,4 that everything is very simple in its truth, that human consciousness is what complicates everything. But the former was an even more total experience of it.
It is very interesting from the standpoint of death. I saw it once so clearly when someone (I no longer remember whom) had left his body. The word death and all these human reactions seemed so foolish! So senseless, ignorant, stupidfalse, without reality. There was simply something that shifted, like this (Mother draws a curve showing a shift of consciousness from one mode of being to another), and then we, in our false consciousness, made a drama out of it. But it was simply something evolving (same gesture).
--
In any case, for your question its very simple: we dont need to go to these extremes!
No, I wasnt putting the problem on a metaphysical plane but on an occult one as if the play were acted out occultly and we were executing it materially.
--
Now I know that its not necessary at allnot at all. Simply the aspiration must be constantly like this (gesture of a rising flame). Aspiration that is, knowing what you want, wanting it. But it cannot be given a definite form; Sri Aurobindo has used certain words, we use other words, others use still other words, and all this means nothing they are simply words. But there is something beyond all words, and that for me, the simplest thing (the simplest to express) is, The Supremes Will.
And its The Supremes Will FOR THE EARTHwhich is quite a special thing. I am in a universal consciousness at the moment and the earth seems to me to be a very tiny thing, like this (Mother sketches a tiny ball in the air) in the process of being transformed. But this is from the standpoint of the Work, its another matter.
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0 1961-04-25, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, his jaw dropped! People imagine that by the simple fact of being here they become disciples and apprentice yogis! But its not true.
So, now Im not angry any more!
--
But the difficulty. You see, so far as Mind is concerned, the whole yoga has been donelike a path blazed through the virgin forest. And since it has been done, its relatively simple: the landmarks are there and one follows them. But here, nothing has been done! One doesnt know which end to take hold ofno one has ever done it! [186] You meet all the same obstacles before which others have simply said, Its impossible. Sri Aurobindo explains that its not impossible, but nothing more. And he himself hadnt done it.
No, for the least little thing, the whole mechanism has to be discovered, and discovered in a realm of the most total ignorance, where, really, unconsciousness is the most unconscious and ignorance the most ignorant.
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0 1961-04-29, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Those who say that are simpletons and dont even know what theyre talking about! It is enough to read everything Sri Aurobindo has written to know that it is IMPOSSIBLE (underlined) to found a religion upon his writings, since for each problem, for each question, he presents all aspects and, while demonstrating the truth contained in each approach, he explains that to attain the Truth a synthesis must be effected, overpassing all mental notions and emerging in a transcendence beyond thought.
Your second question, therefore, makes no sense! Furthermore, if you had read what appeared in the last Bulletin,1 you could never have asked it.
--
At the age of eighteen, I remember having such an intense need in me to KNOW. Because I was having experiences I had all kinds of experiences but my surroundings offered me no chance to receive an intellectual knowledge which would have given me the meaning of it all: I couldnt even speak of them. I was having experience after experience. For years, I had experiences during the night (but I was very careful never to speak about them!)memories from past lives, all sorts of things, but without any base of intellectual knowledge. (Of course, the advantage of this was that my experiences were not mentally contrived; they were entirely spontaneous.) But I had such a NEED in me to know! I remember living in a house (one of these houses with a lot of apartments), and in the apartment next door were some young Catholics whose faith was very they were very convinced. And seeing all that, I remember saying to myself one day while brushing my hair, These people are lucky to be born into a religion and believe unquestioningly! Its so easy! You have nothing to do but believehow simple that makes it. I was feeling like this, and then when I realized what I was thinking (laughing), well, I gave myself a good scolding: Lazybones!
To know, know, KNOW! You see, I knew nothing, really, nothing but the things of ordinary life: external knowledge. I had learned everything I had been given to learn. I not only learned what I was taught but also what my brother was taughthigher mathematics and all that! I learned and I learned and I learned and it was NOTHING. None of it explained anything to menothing. I couldnt understand a thing!
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0 1961-06-24, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I cant say I was surprised, but I admired the mighty power by which the simple fact of having been here and died here was sufficient to help you to the utmost in that transition.
But there are all sorts of cases. Take N.D., for example, a man who lived his whole life with the idea of serving Sri Aurobindohe died clasping my photo to his breast. This was a consecrated man, very conscious, with an unfailing dedication, and all the parts of his being well organized around the psychic.6 The day he was going to leave his body little M. was meditating next to the Samadhi when suddenly she had a vision: she saw all the flowers of the tree next to the Samadhi (those yellow flowers I have called Service) gathering themselves together to form a big bouquet, and rising, rising straight up. And in her vision these flowers were linked with the image of N.D. She ran quickly to their house andhe was dead.
--
But people are so ignorant! They make such a fuss over death, as if it were the endthis word death is so absurd! I see it as simply passing from one house into another or from one room to another; you take one simple step, you cross the threshold, and there you are on the other side and then you come back.
Have I told you about the experience I had the day I suddenly found myself in Sri Aurobindos home in the subtle physical?7Well, its as if I took a step and entered a far more concrete world than the physicalmore concrete because things contain more truth. I spent a good while there with Sri Aurobindo and then, when it was over, I took another step and I found myself back here slightly dumbfounded. It took me quite some time to regain my bearings here, because it was this world that seemed unreal to me, not the other.
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0 1961-07-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For the past two days there has been the feeling of not knowing anythingNOTHING at all. I have had this feeling for a very long time, but now it has become extremely acute, as it always does at times of crisis, at times when things are on the verge of changingor of getting clarified, or of exploding, or. From the purely material standpointchemically, biologically, medically, therapeutically speaking I dont believe many people do know (there may be some). But it doesnt seem very clear to mein any case, I dont know. Yogically (I dont mean spiritually: that was the first stage of my sadhana), its very easy to be a saint! Oh, even to be a sage is very easy. I feel I was born with itits spontaneous and natural for me, and so simple! You know all that has to be done, and doing it is as easy as knowing it. Its nothing. But this transformation of Matter! What has to be done? How is it to be done? What is the path?
Is there a path? Is there a procedure? Probably not.
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0 1961-07-18, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the problem remains: Buddha and all the rest have FIRST realized, then resumed contact with the world. That makes it very simple. But for the total realization of what I envisage, isnt it indispensable to remain in the world?
(Mother is absorbed for a while, gazing into the distance)
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0 1961-09-16, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You know, we are surrounded by complications, but there is always a place where it all opens out simple and straightthis is a fact of my experience. You go around in circles, seeking, working at it, and you feel stuck; then something in the inner attitude gives way, and all of a sudden it opens outquite simply.
I have had this experience very often. So I have asked Sri Aurobindo to give it to you.
And he says repeatedly, insistently: Be simple, be simple. Say simply what you feel. Be simple, be simple, insistently. These are only words, but as a matter of fact, when he spoke these words it was like a path of light opening up, and everything became very simple: Just take one step after another, thats all we have to do!thats how it seemed to me.
Its curious, all the complications seemed to be there (Mother touches her temples), very complicated and very difficult to adjust; and then when he said, Be simplehow strangeit was like a light coming from his eyes, as if one had suddenly emerged into a garden of light.
It gave that impressionlike a garden bathed in light.
Such great insistence on the simple thing: say simply what you see or what you know simple, simple. A simplicity it was altogether the impression of a joyous garden.
Be simple, be simple.
The complications are there (same gesture), it is hard and complicated and then a door opens: Be simple.
As if there were too much mental tension: something here at the temples.
--
I have to face a similar difficulty, mind you, although its on another level. There is such a tremendous accumulation of people to see, things to do, questions to be resolvedeverything. The accumulation is So TIGHTLY packedso compact! Too compact for the life for the hours, the time, the forcesof an ordinary body. Yet behind it all, there is a sort of constant active immobility, in the sense that the consciousness has the impression of being immobile, of being borne along on the stream of progress and evolution. But this immobility. If I should try to do what I have to do, you know, everything I have to do, well it becomes impossible, things clog up, it gets painful. And here his answer is the same: Be simple, be simple.
This morning when I was walking, the program of the day and the work ahead of me was so formidable that I felt it to be impossible. And yet simultaneously there was this immobile inner POSITION in me; as soon as I stop my movement of formation and action, it becomes like a dance of joy: all the cells vibrating (there is a sort of vivacity, and an extraordinary music), all the cells vibrant with the joy of the Presence the divine Presence. But when I see the outside world entering and attacking, well this joy doesnt exactly disappear, but it retreats. And the result is that I always feel like sitting down and keeping stillwhen I can do that it is marvelous. But of course, all the suggestions from outside come in: suggestions of helplessness and old age, of wear and tear, of diminishing power, all thatand I know positively that its false. But calm in the body is indispensable. Well, for me also Sri Aurobindos answer is always the same: Be simple, be simple, very simple.
And I know what he means: to deny entry to regimenting, organizing, prescriptive, judgmental though the wants none of all that. What he calls being simple is a joyous spontaneity; in action, in expression, in movement, in lifebe simple, be simple, be simple. A joyous spontaneity. To rediscover in evolution that condition he calls divine, which was a spontaneous and happy condition. He wants us to rediscover that. And for days now he has been here telling me (and the same goes for your work): Be simple, be simple, be simple. And in his simplicity was a luminous joy.
A joyous spontaneity.
--
But Sri Aurobindo wants us to have the same simple joy as a blossoming rose: Be simple, be simple, be simple. And when I hear it or see it, its like a rivulet of golden light, like a fragrant gardenall, all, all is open. Be simple.
So you see, mon petit
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0 1961-10-15, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For example, I have nothing for the next Bulletin; I could have given something from those things youve transcribed [for the Agenda], but its not possible, it CANNOT be done! This cant be made public, its impossible; its not the moment, not the moment. People dont understand even the simplest things I say! Ive seen that even Nolini sometimes hesitates; he doesnt get it. So you can imagine, the public!
(silence)
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0 1961-11-05, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At any rate, you understand that Im not very keen on having Richard introduced into the book the simple fact of mentioning him attracts him.3
He was a pastor at Lille, in France, for perhaps ten years; he was quite a practicing Christian, but he dropped it all as soon as he began to study occultism. He had first specialized in theological philosophy in order to pass the pastoral examinations, studying all the modem philosophy of Europe (he had a rather remarkable metaphysical brain). Then I met him in connection with Theon and the Cosmic Review, and I led him into occult knowledge. Afterwards, there were all sorts of uninteresting stories. He became a lawyer during the early period of our relationship and I learned Law along with him I could even have passed the exam! Then the divorce stories began: he divorced his wife; they had three children and he wanted to keep them, but to do so he had to be legally married, so he asked me to marry himand I said yes. I have always been totally indifferent to these things. Anyway, when I met him I knew who he was and I decided to convert him the whole story revolves around that.
--
Indian tradition makes a distinction between a direct 'incarnation' (avatar) and a simple 'emanation' (vibhuti) coming from the consciousness of a godor a devil.
Not a physical place. See conversation of November 7, p. 380.
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0 1961-11-07, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know my own experience and I can speak of it in detail; and according to what Sri Aurobindo told me, it was the same for himalthough he NEVER wrote of it anywhere. But since it has been my experience, I naturally feel that its the simplest method.
There is also what Theon and Madame Theon used to say. They never spoke of Supermind, but they said the same thing as the Vedas, that the world of Truth must incarnate on earth and create a new world. They even picked up the old phrase from the Gospels, new heavens and a new earth,1 which is the same thing the Vedas speak of. Madame Theon had this experience and she gave me the indication (she didnt actually teach me) of how it was to be done. She would go out of her body and become conscious in the vital world (there were many intermediary states, too, if one cared to explore them). After the vital came the mental: you consciously went out of the vital body, you left it behind (you could see it) and you entered the mental world. Then you left the mental body and entered into. They used different words, another classification (I dont remember it), but even so, the experience was identical. And like that, she successively left twelve different bodies, one after another. She was extremely developed, you seeindividualized, organized. She could leave one body and enter the consciousness of the next plane, fully experience the surroundings and all that was there, describe it and so on, twelve times.
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0 1961-11-16a, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But work, mon petit. I cant work. I cant remember even the simplest things I am supposed to remember! I wanted to tell you when my free days were, but I no longer recall them.
Yet it produces an extraordinarily keen perception of what is behind things. For instance, Ive just seen the [school] children;
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0 1961-12-20, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Seen from the European angle, Sri Aurobindo represents an immense spiritual revolution, redeeming Matter and the creation, which to the Christian religion is fundamentally a fallits really unclear how what has come from God could become so bad, but anyway, better not be too logical! its a fall. The creation is a fall. And thats why they are far more easily convinced by Buddhism. I saw this particularly with Richard, whose education was entirely in European philosophy, with Christian and positivist influences; under these two influences, when he came into contact with Theons cosmic philosophy and later Sri Aurobindos revelation, he immediately explained, in his Wherefore of the Worlds, that the world is the fruit of DesireGods desire. Yet Sri Aurobindo says (in simple terms), God created the world for the Joy of the creation, or rather, He brought forth the world from Himself for the Joy of living an objective life. This was Theons thesis too, that the world is the Divine in an objective form, but for him the origin of this objective form was the desire to be. All this is playing with words, you understand, but it turns out that in one case the world is reprehensible and in the other it is adorable! And that makes all the difference. To the whole European mind, the whole Christian spirit, the world is reprehensible. And when THAT is pointed out to them, they cant stand it.
So the very normal, natural reaction against this attitude is to negate the spiritual life: lets take the world as it is, brutally, materially, short and sweet (since it all comes to an end with this short life), lets do all we can to enjoy ourselves now, suffer as little as possible and not think of anything else. Having said that life is a condemned, reprehensible, anti-divine thing, this is the logical conclusion. Then what to do? We dont want to do away with life, so we do away with the Divine.
--
Coming from here, of course, it will take much more time to touch the general public, but I see how things work in the universe: it will go far more surely and directly to those who are ready to receive it. And we mustnt believe that only an elite public of especially intelligent and refined people will be touched: among very simple, open-hearted people there is a deep intelligence that understands and responds to these things far better than very cultivated people dofar betterbecause they feel, they feel the vibration of this profound Hope, this profound Joy, something corresponding to the intense need of their being. While the others begin to reason and sophisticate, which takes away half the power.
From the practical standpoint, I would much prefer the book to be printed here and for us to make the necessary effort for it to go out and touch as many people as possible. The publisher may be a handy and less troublesome channel, but hes not at all the best onefar from it. THAT I know, because I am constantly seeing your book with Sri Aurobindos perception, and I am absolutely positive that he likes it very much; he has put a lot into it and he sees that it can be an enormous help but not in the short run. There is always the sense of it needing a hundred years to have its full effect. With your publisher, on the other hand, the effects are far more violent, more external and noisy, but they fade far more quickly.
--
I am seeing this book now. I see it. But when I leave here, with that whole throng around me and all that work to do, it will fade away. I would need to be very quiet, have nothing to do, and just write when it comes to me; because I cannot do things in a logical fashion I have never been able to, never. The experience must come suddenlya memory, an experience then I note it down, put it aside and leave it. And when another comes, the same thing. In this way there would be (smiling) no plan to the book! It would be very simple: no plan of ideas, no plan of development, nothing; simply a story.
For example, the importance of the departure2: how he was present the whole time I was away; how he guided my entire life in Japan; how. Of course, it would be seen in the mirror of my own experience, but it would be Sri Aurobindonot me, not my reactions: him; but through my experience because thats all I can speak of.
--
This can all be narrated in a very simple way; these things are not metaphysical. It involves occultism, of course, but its utterly concrete and simple: things a child could understand.
And these are the real milestones of the whole Story.
--
A book like that (sufficiently veiled, of course), written in the simplest way possible (like I wrote The Science of Living, I believe)and its fine, you speak to people in their own language. Above all, no philosophy! None! You simply tell some extraordinary stories in the same way you would tell an ordinary story. But the Story is there, thats the most important thing.
It started in my infancy the Story was already there.
--
Think it over. I would like us to publish your book exactly as it is, with its full force, with all that Sri Aurobindo has put into it; and we will give it a bit of help to go and do its work. And you should come to an understanding with these people. But first you should write just a simple book, quite simple and quite positive: the constructive aspectvery constructive, very simple. No attempt to convince, no big problemsno, no, no! Sri Aurobindo has come to tell the world that man is not the final creation, that there is another creation; and he said this not because he knew it but because he felt it. And he began to do it. And thats all.
It neednt be long.
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0 1961-12-23, #Agenda Vol 02, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But truly, EVERYTHING was changed at that moment: something was achieved. It was the perception of Power the Power that comes from Love (what Love is to the Supreme Consciousness, which has nothing to do with what we usually mean by the word love). And it was it was simple! None of those complications resulting from thought, intellect, understandingall that was gone, all gone. A formidable Power! And it made me understand one thing, that the state I had been put in (by the Lord of Yoga, in fact) was for obtaining the particular power that comes through an identity with all material things, a power possessed by certain personsnot always yogis, certain mediums, for instance. I saw it with Madame Theon: she would will a thing to come to her instead of going to the thing herself; instead of going to get her sandals when she wanted them, she made the sandals come to her. She did this through a capacity to radiate her mattershe exercised a will over her matterher central will acted upon matter anywhere, since she WAS THERE. With her, then, I saw this power in a methodical, organized way, not as something accidental or spasmodic (as it is with mediums), but as an organization of Matter. And so I began to understand: With this comes the power to put each thing in its place! provided one is universal enough.
Well, I have understood. And now I know where I stand.
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0 1962-01-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mother frequently addressed Satprem as "mon petit" or "petit," terms of endearment she used for very few other people, which can be approximately rendered as "my little one" or "my child." Since no English phrase can capture the nuances of Mother's simple "petit" and "mon petit," we have decided to leave them in the original French wherever they occur.
Sri Aurobindo on Himself.
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0 1962-01-12 - supramental ship, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For thought, its elementary, very simple. Its not difficult for the feelings either; for the heart, the emotional being, to expand to the dimensions of the Supreme is relatively easy. But this body! Its very difficult, very difficult to do without the body losing its center (how can I put it?) its center of coagulationwithout it dissolving into the surrounding mass. Although, if one were in a natural environment, with mountains and forests and rivers, with lots of space and lots of natural beauty, it could be rather pleasant! But its physically impossible to take a single step outside ones body without meeting unpleasant, painful things. At times you come in contact with a pleasant substance, something harmonious, warm, vibrating with a higher light; it happens. But its rare. Flowers, yes, sometimes flowers sometimes, not always. But this material world, oh! It batters you from all sides; it claws you, mauls youyou get clawed and scraped and battered by all sorts of things which which just dont blossom. How hard it all is! Oh, how closed human life is! How shriveled, hardened, without light, without warmth let alone joy.
While sometimes, when you see water flowing along, or a ray of sunlight in the treesoh, how it sings! The cells sing, they are happy.
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0 1962-01-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Well, if you speak this way to philosophers and metaphysicians, theyll look at you as if to say, You must be a real simpleton to believe all that claptrap! But these things are not to be taken as concrete truths they are simply splendid images. Through them I really did come in contact, very concretely, with the truth of what caused the worlds distortion, much better than with all the Hindu stories, far more easily.
Buddhism and all similar lines of thought took the shortest path: The desire to exist is what has caused all the trouble. If the Lord had refrained from having this desire, there would have been no world! Its childish, very childish, really a much too human way of looking at the problem.
--
But there is one advantage: without those beings, without the worlds distortion, many things would be lacking. Those beings potentially embodied certain absolutely unique elementsunderstandably so, since they were the first wave. And precisely because they still WERE the Supreme to such a great extent, each one felt he was the Supreme, and that was that. Only it wasnt quite sufficient, for the simple reason that they were already divided into four, and one single division is enough to make everything go wrong. Its readily understandable: its not something essentially evil, but a question of wrong FUNCTIONING; its not the substance, not the essence. The essence isnt evil, but the functioning is faulty.
But if you understand.
--
You speak of exteriorizationcouldnt you show me a simple way of learning to do it?
You cant do it on your own, its dangerous.
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0 1962-02-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Take Z, for instanceshe told me that Maharshi1 wrote in his book that if I were Hindu and did asanas every day, all India would be at my feet! This has certainly been Zs biggest difficulty: it was easy to come here, she could speak to me perfectly freely, I didnt behave mysteriously. So of course, it was too simple!
***
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0 1962-03-06, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it has become such a delicate play! A MINUTE thing, minute, can throw everything out of gearone simple ordinary movement. If through habit you slip back into the ordinary functioning (these are infinitesimal things, not easily seen, subtle, tenuous; one must be very, very, VERY alert), if this happens, the whole new thing stops. Then you have to wait. Wait until the ordinary functioning consents to stop, and that means meditating, entering into contemplationgoing over the whole path again. Then, when you have caught hold of That again and can stay there for a few seconds, sometimes a few minutes (its marvelous when it lasts a few minutes). And then it gets jammed again and everything has to be done over.
I am not saying this to discourage you, but to tell you that one must really and truly be patient. The only possible way to do it is in a sort of passivity: not to WANT the resultWANTING the result brings in an ego movement which spoils it all.
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0 1962-05-27, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For Sujata its not quite so simple. From a strictly external standpoint, I have no doubt that it would be both pleasant and instructive. But Sujata is in a rather special relationship [with me]in fact, she does the yoga without doing it; I mean she benefits automatically from the yoga that Sri Aurobindo and I do. And this would risk being damaged.
I dont say for certain; I dont know. But there is a risk. Anyway as I said, from the external angle, the being would certainly be enriched.
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0 1962-05-31, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But with a very simple movement, you can easily eliminate that from the consciousness; this movement can be formulated in an almost childlike way: You alone, Lord, You alone can act. You alone, Lord, You alone can act. And then that easing off (its relaxation, actually): you just let yourself melt, let yourself melt. This (the head) keeps still, it doesnt stir; you are wholly in the sensation, you let yourself melt. And with a sense of boundlessness.
And no more distinctions.
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0 1962-06-02, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You remember all the difficulties I encountered in those other visions at night. Well, this was very interesting because it was just the opposite: I was in a very complicated place full of obstacles and difficulties, but someone or something was always there when I arrivedeverything would get sorted out and I would go on my way. It all sorted itself out automatically the feeling of a power putting everything in order. And I remember when the mason arrived, just as I was facing that rather big obstacle, there was someone on my right (someone very official, wearing a dark coat) who thought (the contact was through thought rather than words), Oh! Shes always calling on the workers for help instead of. And I answered, The workers are more efficient and their goodwill (all that business of caste, you know, or of society or social position). The workers have simple hearts, I said, they are efficient in their work and have more goodwill than the people who think theyre so smart! It was funny. So this made two interesting experiences yesterday, one after the other.
The afternoon experience was very intriguing; I was busy working (organizing things for one of the departments, I no longer remember which) and then I said to the person I was with, Now I am going to my cousins place! When I was very young I had a cousin, the eldest son of one of my fathers brothers (he had a large family, such as you seldom see in France). This cousin became some kind of engineera civil engineer, maybe, or a mechanical engineer (he was an outstanding chemist). Anyway, this boy was very attracted to me. He went off to the war as an officer and caught some disease (I forget what) and died around 1915, at the time I returned to France. Well, in my experience yesterday afternoon, a certain family living HERE gave me exactly the same sensation I had had towards those people when I was young. And especially for this cousin (for the rest of the family it was more vague, like a background to the experience). I am going to their place, I said. They have a lovely estate here, just as they had a lovely estate in France before (they had Madame de Sevignes chateau at Sucy, near Parisa beautiful property). And it was all so concrete! It wasnt coming through the head; it wasnt a thought but a sensation. I have to go see him now, I said. And even as I was having my vision I was telling myself, You must be going crazy! Can they really be here in Pondicherry? This uncle with whom I had only rather distant relations and this cousin I never saw much of, but whom I knew to be very nice and very loyalAre they really here?! The sensation was most strange (the head wasnt functioning at all; it was a SENSATION). So off I went to see this cousin, and it was on the way to see him that I had the experience of crossing the river. And on the way back, after the discussion with the spiritual brother (whom I really told off: Get out of here! I dont need you!), after that, when I found myself back on the bank, I started collecting my consciousness again, telling myself, Look here now! Lets try to see clearly. And then I realized that the cousin who died prematurely during the war had reincarnated in someone here. How strange, I thought. And the dates coincided.
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0 1962-06-09, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, but when you say that what changes is only the relations between things, its still a matter of subjectivity (I use the word for lack of a better one). But when we come down to the brass tacks of transformationphysical immortality in the body, for instancedoesnt it involve more than a simple inner change of relations? Doesnt MATTER itself have to be transformed? So there has to be a power over matter. Not merely a change of relations no?
No; you cant grasp what I mean by the word relation unless you take it scientifically. Your body, and my body, this table, this carpet, are all made up of atoms; and these atoms are constituted of the SAME thing. The differences we seedifferent bodies, different formsare due to the movements or the interrelations within this same thing.
--
The problem is getting out of it: we see, we touch, and we are enslaved. But if you look up THERE (gesture above the head) it all seems quite simple!
And looking up THERE, I tell you, I am sure there is no difference between subjective and objectiveexcept when you give your individuality and your individual consciousness an independent reality; that is, when you cut everything into little bits with your imagination. Then, of course.
In fact, physicists today unanimously admit that the mathematical "models" explaining the corpuscular structure of matter have become excessively complex: "There are too many kinds of quarks [theoretical elementary particles and 'ultimate' constituents of matter] and far too many of their aspects are unobservable." There is a call for a simpler working hypothesis, a new idea, simplifying and unifying, that would explain matter without recourse to "unobservables."
And it may well be that the seed of this "idea" is concealed in Mother's simple but enigmatic words: "Everything has one and the same constituent element; and everything lies IN the interrelations."
***
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0 1962-06-20, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, this is much more easily expressed in psychological termspsychologically, its very simple, crystal clear but even MATERIALLY its like that.
***
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0 1962-07-11, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The true life in its simple purity cannot come until until the Lord Himself is doing and deciding everything, acting, realizing, living, having the experience. When everything is in His hands and you have absolutely nothing to do and dont even know WHERE YOU ARE, then then it comes in its purity, not before.
This is the difference, the radical difference, since the experience of [April 13]: there is nothing but the Lord. All the rest what is it? No more than a habit of speaking (not even a habit of thinking, thats all gone), a habit of speaking; so the less one speaks, the happier one is. Otherwise nothing. And what else could there be? It is He who sees, He who wills, He who acts.
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0 1962-07-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(In the same conversation of July 11, Mother said that to have the experience in its simple purity we mustnt even know where we are, and yet we want to see ourselves being, progressing, acting, to see ourselves.)
That [the sense of an individual position, of being a particular being in a particular place, watching and feeling oneself being] really vanished with the last experience [of April 13]. Before, it used to get in my way a lot. I was always wondering how to get rid of it.
--
Ever since Einstein's Theory of Relativity, we have known that such an experience of time's relative nature is "physically" feasible. We need only consider the example of time aboard a spaceship approaching the speed of light: time "slows down," and the same event will take less time aboard the spaceship than on earth. In this instance, speed is what makes time slow down. In Mother's experience (which is every bit as "physical"), the "intensity of the Presence" seems to be the origin of time change. In other words, consciousness is what makes time slow down. Thus we are witnessing two experiences with identical physical results, but formulated in different languages. In one, we speak of "speed," in the other of "consciousness." But what is speed, after all?... (Moreover, the implications of this "language" difference are quite colossal, for it would indeed be simpler to press on a "consciousness button" than on an accelerator that had to take us to the speed of light.) Speed is a question of distance. Distance is a question of two legs or two wings: it implies a limited phenomenon or a limited being. When we say "at the speed of light," we imagine our two legs or our two wings moving very, very fast. And all the phenomena of the universe are seen and conceived of in relation to these two legs, these two wings or this rocketship they are creations of our present-day biped biology. But for a being (a supramental being, of the future biology) containing everything within himself, who is immediately everywhere, without distance, where is "speed"? ... The only "speed of light" is biped. Speed increases and time slows down, they say. The future biology says: consciousness intensifies and time slows down or ceases to existdistances are abolished, the body doesn't age. And the world's whole physical cage collapses. "Time is a rhythm of consciousness," says Mother. We change rhythm and the physical world changes. Might this be the whole problem of transformation?
Asked later about this unfinished sentence, Mother said, "I stopped because it was an impression and not a certainty. We'll talk about it again later." Was Mother hinting at a stage when she would live in both times simultaneously?...
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0 1962-07-21, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then look at India. Except for some solitary giants, everywhere there is your simple man, that is, the average man who does not want to think and cannot think, who has not the least Shakti but only a temporary excitement. In India, you want the simple thought, the easy word. In Europe they want the deep thought, the deep word; there even an ordinary laborer or artisan thinks, wants to know, is not satisfied with surface things but wants to go behind. But there is still this difference: there is a fatal limitation in the strength and thought of Europe. When it comes into the spiritual field, its thought-power can no longer move ahead. There Europe sees everything as riddlenebulous metaphysics, yogic hallucination. They rub their eyes as in smoke and can see nothing clear. Still, some effort is being made in Europe to surmount even this limitation. We already have the spiritual sensewe owe it to our forefa thersand whoever has that sense has at his disposal such Knowledge and Shakti as with one breath might blow away all the huge power of Europe like a blade of grass. But to get that Shakti one must be a worshiper of Shakti. We are not worshipers of Shakti. We are worshipers of the easy way. But Shakti is not to be had by the easy way. Our forefa thers dived into a sea of vast thought and gained a vast Knowledge and established a mighty civilization. As they went on in their way, fatigue and weariness came upon them. The force of thought diminished and with it also the strong current of Shakti. Our civilization has become an achalayatana [prison], our religion a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint glimmer of light or a momentary wave of religious intoxication. And so long as this sort of thing continues, any permanent resurgence of India is improbable
In Bengal this weakness has gone to the extreme. The Bengali has a quick intelligence, emotional capacity and intuition. He is foremost in India in all these qualities. All of them are necessary but they do not suffice. If to these there were added depth of thought, calm strength, heroic courage and a capacity for and pleasure in prolonged labor, the Bengali might be a leader not only of India, but of mankind. But he does not want that, he wants to get things done easily, to get knowledge without thinking, the fruits without labor, siddhi by an easy sadhana [discipline]. His stock is the excitement of the emotional mind. But excess of emotion, empty of knowledge, is the very symptom of the malady. In the end it brings about fatigue and inertia. The country has been constantly and gradually going down. The life-power has ebbed away. What has the Bengali come to in his own country? He cannot get enough food to eat or clothes to wear, there is lamentation on all sides, his wealth, his trade and commerce, his lands, his very agriculture have begun to pass into the hands of others. We have abandoned the sadhana of Shakti and Shakti has abandoned us. We do the sadhana of Love, but where Knowledge and Shakti are not, there Love does not remain, there narrowness and littleness come, and in a little and narrow mind there is no place for Love. Where is Love in Bengal? There is more quarreling, jealousy, mutual dislike, misunderstanding and faction there than anywhere else even in India which is so much afflicted by division.
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0 1962-09-05, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For a long, long time, that was also the one thing I felt was worth living forConsciousness. When I met Thon and came to understand the mechanism, I also understood why I wasnt conscious at a certain level. I think Ive told you how I spent ten months one year working to connect two layerstwo layers of consciousness; the contact wasnt established and so I couldnt have the spontaneous experience of a whole spectrum of things. Madame Thon told me, Its because theres an undeveloped layer between this part and that part. I was very conscious of all the gradations: Thon had explained it all in the simplest terms, so you didnt need to be, as I said, a genius to understand. He had made a quadruple division, and each of them was divided into four, and then again into four, making innumerable divisions of the being; but with that mental simplification you could make in-depth psychological studies of your own being. And so by observation and elimination I eventually discovered that between this and that (gesture indicating two levels of Mothers consciousness), there was an undeveloped layerit wasnt conscious. So I worked for ten months on nothing but that: absolutely no results. I didnt care, I kept right on, telling myself, Well, it may take me fifty years to get anywhere, who knows. And then I left for the country (I was living in Paris at the time). I lay down on the grass, and all at once, with the contact of earth and grass, poof! There was a sort of inner explosion the link was established, and full consciousness came, along with all the ensuing experiences. Well, I said to myself, it was worth all the trouble!
And I am sure thats how the work is done, slowly, imperceptibly, like a chick being formed in the egg: you see the shell, you see only the shell, you dont know whats inside, whether its just an egg or a chick (normally, I meanof course, you could see through with special instruments) and then the beak goes peck-peck! And then cheep! Out comes the chick, just like that. Its the same thing exactly for the contact with the psychic being. For months on end, sometimes years, you may be sitting before a closed door, push, push, pushing, and feeling, feeling the pressure (it hurts!), and theres nothing, no results. Then all at once, you dont know why or how, you sit down and poof! Everything bursts wide open, everything is ready, everything is doneits over, you emerge into a full psychic consciousness and become intimate with your psychic being. Then everything changeseverything changesyour life completely changes, its a total reversal of your whole existence.
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0 1962-10-12, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am skipping all the details (it was a long thing, lasting an hour), but suddenly he went out of the room, leaving me alone (after expressing what he wanted to tell me with a gesture, which I understood). And then I simply seemed to take a step (gesture of crossing a threshold), and I found myself lying in my bed again. And at that moment I said to myself, Really! We make all kinds of complications, and its so simple: you just have to go like this (same gesture) and there you are; then you go like that (same gesture in the opposite direction) and youre back here.
(silence)
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0 1962-11-14, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My method is essentially very simple: for each thing that comes, I say, Here, Lord, its for You; change it, transform it. A work of offering and dedication (gesture of presenting something to the Light). And this morning there was a sort of replynot exactly to a question, but as though I were wondering How do I do it? (because the Lord tells me I am here for His work), How do I do His work? Whats the new way of doing the Work? We know all the old ways, but whats the new way? And the reply came, very concrete, without words: By bringing the two extremes together. Everything you see, everything that comes to you or that you discover is automatically put in the presence of the Most High, of the Supreme. You join the two extremes. Your whole work is to make the junction.
And now you read me all this! Its as if you were explaining itdont you find that interesting! (Mother laughs) I find it VERY interesting.
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0 1962-12-19, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But I had an interesting experience the other day, when this new room was inaugurated. Those rascals set up a balcony! And there was such a crowdin all the streets, on the rooftops that I had no choice but to go out on the balcony. And I realized that there has been a complete break between my life before and now, with that famous experience1 as the dividing line: I have to make the same movement I make to summon up the memory of a past life! It was so concrete, I was flabbergasted. The same movement of consciousness as when you summon up a past life: it was as though I had to recall what I used to do on the balcony in my former life! I was teaching the body as if it had no idea what to do. I was calling back what had to be done from the depths of a subconscious memory. But it was not the same thing, since the doors were not the same, the setup was different, so it was a little bit complicated. But when I found myself at the edge of the balcony, I suddenly drew on something, and this came: Heres how it was, heres what I used to do; and once again the Presence was there. And the whole time I was standing on the balcony it was it was better than before, much clearermuch clearer the experiences are much simpler and much more absolute (when I know something, I know it better than before).
But in the past, you see, I used to go up and down the stairs four or five times a day; I would go out, go down the other stairs, it gave me some exercise. Nowadays I dont get any exercise, except walking for half an hour twice a day, but thats no substitute: my legs are a bit stiff from lack of exercise. So I didnt feel like walking on the balcony like a puppet before of all those people waiting and wondering. You see, more than three-quarters of them think I was very sick (Mother laughs), practically dying (thats the form it takes in their consciousness). I couldnt show them someone who seemed to be emerging from a serious illness! So I clearly saw I had to tell my body, Now dont walk like that! Youve got to walk like thisthis is how you used to walk. And the body was listening like a little child. Youre going to walk, I had to tell it, youre going to walk like this. And it started walking! It was funny.
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0 1962-12-28, #Agenda Vol 03, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This cleansing of the middle ground is the whole story of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother I had been dredging, dredging, dredging the mire of the subconscious. The supramental light was coming down before November,2 but afterwards all the mud arose and it stopped.3 Once again Sri Aurobindo verified, not individually this time but collectively, that if one pulls down too strong a light, the violated darkness below is made to moan. It is noteworthy that each time Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had some new experience marking a progress in the transformation, this progress automatically materialized in the consciousness of the disciples, without their even knowing anything about it, as a period of increased difficulties, sometimes even revolts or illnesses, as though everything were grating and grinding. But then, one begins to understand the mechanism. If a pygmy were abruptly subjected to the simple mental light of a cultivated man, we would probably see the poor fellow traumatized and driven mad by the subterranean revolutions within him. There is still too much jungle beneath the surface. The world is still full of jungle, thats the crux of the matter in a word; our mental colonization is a minuscule crust plastered over a barely dry quaternary. And the battle seems endless; one digs and digs, said the Rishis, and the deeper one digs, the more the bottom seems to recede: I have been digging, digging. Many autumns have I been toiling night and day, the dawns aging me. Age is diminishing the glory of our bodies. Thus, thousands of years ago, lamented Lopamudra, wife of Rishi Agastya, who was also seeking transformation. But Agastya doesnt lose heart, and his reply is magnificently characteristic of the conquerors the Rishis were: Not in vain is the labor which the gods protect. Let us relish all the contesting forces, let us conquer indeed even here, let us run this battle race of a hundred leadings.
(Rig-Veda I.179)
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0 1963-03-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a sort of change in the cells functioning,3 or in their organization. When I say all this now, I try to pull back a deep-buried memory. But thats the point. Once you have understood that (all that you understand, you can do), once youve understood that, you can do it. Then its very simple: you can easily stop the thing from going this way or that way; you can go like that or like this or like that (Mother seems to handle forces or shift the position of the consciousness). Then it almost becomes childs play to make someone die or make someone live! But that is better left unsaid.
But it will surely come! In how many years, I dont know, but the thing has become plain. And to me (as I said the other day), to me it seemed quite a central secretnot the most central of all, no, but fairly central with regard to life on earth.
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0 1963-05-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
There is a particular aspect of the creation (a very modern aspect, maybe): a need to get out of disorder and confusionof disharmony and confusion. A confusion, a disorder which assumes all forms, turns into struggles, pointless efforts and wasted energy. It depends on which level you stand on, but materially, in action, it means unnecessary complications, wasted energy and materials, waste of time, incomprehension, misunderstanding, confusion, disorderwhat in ancient days they called deforma in sharp and unnecessary zigzags). Its one of the things farthest from the harmony of a purely divine actionwhich is somethition, crookedness in the Vedas (I dont know the French word for it, its something crooked which, instead of shooting straight to the goal, weaves its wayng so simple. It looks like childs play and directdirect, without those absurd and completely useless twists and turns. Well, it is clearly the same phenomenon: that disorder is a way to stimulate the need for pure and divine simplicity.
The body feels strongly, very strongly that everything could be so simple, so simple!
And for the being that sort of individual aggregateto be transformed, it needs in effect to grow simpler and simpler. All those complexities of Nature which man is now beginning to understand and study, which for the smallest thing are so complex (the smallest of our physical workings is the result of such a complex system that its almost unthinkable certainly it would be impossible for the human mind to think up and contrive all those things), are now being discovered by science. And its quite plain to see that for the functioning to become divine, that is, to escape Disorder and Confusion, it must grow simpler and simpler.
(long silence)
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0 1963-05-29, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In the necessary and unavoidable everyday contact with people, there is a growing perception that whatever the circumstance (which in itself is so simple, simpler than a child, you knowa perfect simplicity), as soon as it comes into contact with the terrestrial human atmosphere, it becomes ever so complicated! And quite unnecessarily. It seems as if the normal human occupation is to complicate all that could be extremely simple. I see this day after day, for all the small events of every day, of each and every minute. With certain consciousnesses as soon as it touches certain consciousnesses it is twisted, sometimes into terrible knots. Then it takes a fantastic labor to undo it the whole thing PERFECTLY unnecessary!
These last few days, in fact, I have been observing it all and wondering, Why are things this way? It must have been the meansprobably the most effective means, I dont knowto emerge from inertia, from tamas. If everything worked in that Simplicity, that perfect Quietness, well, human consciousness would be in such a state that it would have simply fallen asleep. It would have reached the state not even of an animal, perhaps of a slumbering plant!
--
But the true everything is fine, THE TRUE THING as it is, is so simple! So simple, so quiet, so immediate, so direct that its almost unthinkable for human thought, much less for human sensation. Voil.
***
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0 1963-06-15, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And all at once, it came so clearly, as though the Lord Himself were arranging something, and it was translated into, Give him a bath of the Lord. You understand, to make an atmosphere (no need to speak, no need for words), an atmosphere that is a bath of the Lord. So that all those who enter the atmosphere automatically enter the bath of the Lord. It was so lovely! And so simple, so smiling, nothing showy, no big words: something very simple and natural. So, early in the morning, I went to the room over there; I had many people to see beforehand, a host of people who came to see me in the morning, but nevertheless early in the morning I had already started preparing my bath of the Lord! I was finished seeing people about an hour before Nehrus arrival, so I stayed in the room, preparing the bath. It was very charming.
He may have felt something they are very thick-skinned, you know, necessarily so: overworked, full of self-conceit, naturally, and convinced that they know everything and can do everything (and unfortunately they can do a lot), so the whole of life is organized so as to BLOCK all inner receptivity.
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0 1963-06-19, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its perfectly obvious that people can live, that men can exist and live BECAUSE they are unconscious. If they were conscious, really conscious of the state they live in, it would be intolerable. And I can see that there is a very difficult period when you go from that unconsciousness (unconsciousness of the habit of living in that state) to a conscious vision of the state you live in. When you become totally conscious of things as they areof what you are, of your condition and when you do not yet have the power to get out, like last night, its almost intolerable. And there was a very clear awareness, very precise, that it isnt a question of life or death: it doesnt depend on that sort of thing, which ultimately changes nothing but a wholly superficial appearance thats not it! You know, people who are unhappy think, Ah, a day will come when Ill die, and all my difficulties will be overtheyre simpletons! It wont be over at all, it will go on. It will go on until the time when they get out for good, that is, when they emerge from Ignorance into Knowledge. Its the only way out: to emerge from Ignorance into Knowledge. And you can die a thousand times, it wont get you out, its perfectly uselessit just goes on. Sometimes, on the contrary, it drags you even further down.
Thats the thing.
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0 1963-07-03, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That religion is perhaps the one I have fought the most. For a very simple reason: its power, its means of action (the power it uses as a means of action) is fear. And of all things, fear is the most degrading.
I saw two examples of this, one physically and the other intellectually (I am referring to things I was in contact with materially). Intellectually, it was a studio friend; for years we had done painting together, she was a very gentle girl, older than I, very serious, and a very good painter. During the last years of my life in Paris, I saw her often and I spoke to her, first of occult matters and the Cosmic philosophy, then of what I knew of Sri Aurobindo (I had a group there and I used to explain certain things), and she would listen with great understandingshe understood, she approved. Now, one day, I went to her house and she told me she was in a great torment. When she was awake, she had no doubts, she understood well, she felt the limitations and obscurities of religion (she came from a family with several archbishops and a cardinalwell, one of those old French families). But at night, she told me, I suddenly wake up with an anguish and somethingfrom my subconscient, obviouslytells me, But after all this, what if you go to hell? And she repeated, When I am awake it doesnt have any force, but at night, when it comes up from the subconscient, it chokes me.
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0 1963-07-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ultimately one wonders who finds it amusing?! People complain, they say theyre wretched but its their own fault! Theyre the first to twist things! If they didnt have that habit, everything would be perfectly simple.
And events would NOT be changed.
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0 1963-07-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It happens especially during daytime (between 12:30 and 1 oclocknot for long, a few minutes, I cant say; and between 5:30 and 6). At night its not the same, because (I think Ive told you already) as soon as I stretch out, the whole body is like a prayer. Its more than an aspiration, its an intense need: Lord, take hold of me ENTIRELY! So there may be nothing but You, and that always brings about a result [the trance]which may last more or less long, until (how can I put it?) the moment agreed upon comes! Then when I wake up, or rather when the body emerges from that state, it knows its agreed upon, it doesnt have that anxiety. I dont know how to explain. In terms of consciousness its almost like a child: very simple, very simple. No complications, no complications whatever, very simple: to do what is to be done in the proper way while expressing the supreme Will. That is, to bring as little mixture as possible to the supreme Will (its not a question of Will: the Movement, the Vibration), as little mixture or distortion or deterioration as possible to the Vibrationwe always translate into words that are too intellectual.
But the body is docile, full of goodwill. Only I find its a little bit of a whiner (that must be particular to this one, I am sure other bodies are different), it isnt spontaneously joyful. Not that it complains, not at all, but Perhaps its due to that sort of concentration of Force of progressits not a blissful satisfaction, far from it. Its a long time since it stopped enjoying ordinary satisfactions, like the sense of taste, of smell: it doesnt enjoy any of thatit is conscious, very conscious, it can discern things very clearly, but in an entirely objective way, without deriving any pleasure from them.
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0 1963-08-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It seems to me (Ive been feeling that for a long time now, more than a year, almost a year and a half), it seems to me that all the work was done only to teach every single element of the body to have a physical, material consciousness, but at the same time to maintain that state of peacea positive, full, thoroughly comfortable peace: something that can last indefinitely. That is to say, I progressively teach the body what I could call all the divine states; I teach it to feel and live in the divine states. Well, the closest things (two things are close enough, but one is more comfortable, if I may say soits the word ease in Englishthan the other; the other is more tense [Mother makes a fist], there is a will in it) the closest things are the sense of eternity and the sense of silence. Because behind the whole creation (I mean the material creation), there is a perfect Silence, not the opposite of noise but a positive silence, which is at the same time a complete immobility thats very good as an antidote to disorder. But the sense of eternity is still better, and it has a sweetness the other hasnt; the sense of eternity includes the sense of sweetness (but not sweetness as we understand it). Its extremely comfortable. That is, there is no reason why it should changeor cease or start anew. It is selfexistent, perfect in itself. And these are the best antidotes to the other state [of disorder]: peace, simple peace, isnt always sufficient.
After all, the body is an utterly wretched thing. Yesterday, I think, it was complaining, really complaining (I said it was a whiner, but yesterday it was complaining), really asking, Why, why was such a wretched thing ever made?Incapacity, incomprehension, oh! Nothing but limitations and impossibilities. A sterile goodwill, a complete lack of power, and as soon as some little vital power comes, its turned into violencedisgusting.
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0 1963-08-10, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The last experience (which Ive had these last few days), in which apparently there was a hitch (it wasnt really one) was a sort of demonstration. I told you what it was, you remember: its like a purge of all the vibrations that are false vibrations, that arent the pure and simple response to the supreme Influence (all that in the cells still responds to the vibrations of falsehood, either from habit or from the people around or the food takenfifty thousand things). Then, with an aspiration or a decision, almost a prayer for purification coming from the body, something happens which, naturally, upsets the balance; the imbalance in turn brings about a general discomfort. The form discomfort takes is habitually the same: first, pains and all kinds of sensations I need not describe; if that state goes on developing, if it is allowed to assume its full proportions, it results in the past it resulted in a faint. But this time, I followed the process for about two hours from the moment I got up: the struggle between the new balance, the new Influence that was getting established, and the resistance of all the existing elements forced to go away. That created a sort of conflict. The consciousness remained very clear the consciousness of the BODY remained very clear, very quiet, perfectly trusting. So for two hours I was able to follow the process (while going on with all my usual activities, without changing anything), until I felt, or rather was told sufficiently clearly that the Lord wanted my body to be completely immobile for a while so that He might complete His work. But I am not all alone: there are other people here to help me and watch over everything (but I dont say or explain anything to them, those are things I dont talk about I dont say what goes on, I dont say anything), so I sat there wondering, Is it really and truly indispensable? (Mother laughs) Then I felt the Lord exert a little more pressure, which heightened the intensity of the conflict, so that I had all the signs of fainting I understood (!) I stood up, let my body moan a little to make it plain it didnt feel too well (!) and I stretched out. Then I was immobile, and in that immobility, I saw the work that was being donea work that cannot be done if you go on moving about. I saw the work. It took nearly half an hour; in half an hour it was over. Which means there is really there is a fact I cannot doubt, even if all the surrounding thoughts and forces contradict it: I cannot doubt that the consciousness is increasing more and more the consciousness in the body. It is growing more and more precise, luminous, exactQUIETvery peaceful. Yet very conscious of a TREMENDOUS battle against millennial habits. Do you follow?
When it was over, I saw that even physically, bodily, there is a strength: the result is an increased strength. A very clearly increased strength.
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0 1963-08-21, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As though the entanglement of forces, of consciousnesses and movements grew clearer and clearer, more and more complete, very, very precise. And very simple too.
Very simple.
All problems, all problems are beginning to be seen in that way.
--
Before, there were always hazy spots, some hazy, imprecise, uncertain things; and as that disappears, it all becomes much clearer, much simpler, and MUCH MORE EXACT. And the haziness disappears. There is, you know, a whole world of impressions, of guessing (things you imagine, they are imaginations rather than impressions) that fills the gaps; and there were some reference points, things that are known and linked together by a whole hazy mass of impressions and imaginations (it works automatically); and every time, oh, you emerge from it all towards something so light (gesture above), and all those clouds evaporate. And it looks so simple! You say to yourself, But its so obvious, so clear! There werent any complications.
Every time, its like that (gesture of ascent from stage to stage): you see farther, you see more things at a glance.
It would seem that a time will come when all the movements of the earth will be like that, very clear and very simple.
And it corresponds to that descent into the pit.
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0 1963-08-24, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What people see [when they look at Mothers body] is only the appearance, but this appearance is a reflection of something else. (silence) Theres a sort of knowledge (is it a knowledge?) or foreknowledge given to the body of how this appearance will be changed. And it sounds so simple, so easy, it can be done in a flash, because its not AT ALLit wont AT ALL be done in the way people think or expect. Its rather like the vision of the TRUE internal movement that would IMPOSE itself in such a way that it would veil the false vision which sees things like that [on the surface]. Its very hard to explain, but its Ive felt it several times for a few seconds (I have a sort of sensation of the thing): there is something true, the true Physical, which, although its not perceptible to our eyes as they see, could make itself perceptible through an INTENSIFICATION. And that intensification would be what would effect the transformation outwardly that would replace the false appearance with the real form.
But I have no idea whether the false appearance wouldnt still exist for those not ready to see the true thing. At any rate, it would be an intermediary period: those whose eyes were open would be able to see (what is called open eyes in the Scriptures), they would be able to see; and they would be able to see not through effort or seeking, but the thing would impose itself on them. While those whose eyes were not open for a time, at least, it would be that way, they wouldnt seethey would still see the old appearance. The two may be simultaneous.
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0 1963-09-07, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then I said, But its very simple! I accept your point of view, there is nothing other than what we see, than mankind as it is; all the so-called inner phenomena are due to a mental, cerebral action; and when you die, you diein other words, the phenomenon of agglomeration comes to the end of its existence, and it dissolves, everything dissolves. Thats all very well.
(Quite likely, had things been that way, I would have found life so disgusting that I would have left it long ago. But I must add right away that its not for any moral or even spiritual reason that I disapprove of suicide, its because to me its an act of cowardice and something in me doesnt like cowardice, so I did not I would never have fled from the problem.)
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0 1963-09-25, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its simple and definite.
Now we should translate the rest into French I have so many papers that I am lost! (Mother rummages among a heap of scraps of paper) I am snowed under with papers!
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0 1963-10-16, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Every time a new truth has attempted to manifest upon earth, it has been immediately attacked, corrupted and diverted by pseudo-spiritual forceswhich did represent a certain spirituality at a given time, but precisely the one that the new truth wants to go beyond. To give but one example of those sad spiritual diversions which clutter History, Buddhism was largely corrupted in a sizable part of Asia by a whole Tantric and magic Buddhism. The falsity lies not in the old spirituality which the new truth seeks to go beyond, but in the eternal fact that the Past clings to its powers, its means and its rule. As Mother said in her simple language, Whats wrong is to remain stuck there. And Sri Aurobindo with his ever-present humor: The traditions of the past are very great in their own place, in the past. We could expect the phenomenon to recur today. In India, Tantrism represents a powerful discipline from the Past and it was inevitable that Mother should experience the better and the worse of that system in her attempt to transform all the means and elements of the old earththis Agenda has made abundant mention of a certain X, symbol of Tantrism. Now, as it happens, we are witnessing the same phenomenon of diversion, and today this same Tantrism is seeking to divert the new truth by convincing as many adepts as possible not to say Mothers Mantra, which is too advanced for ordinary mortals, and to say Tantric mantras in its stead. This is purely and simply an attempt to take Mothers place. One has to be quite ignorant of the mechanism of forces not to understand that saying a mantra of the old gods puts you under the influence and into the orbit of precisely that which resists the new truth. Mother had foreseen the phenomenon and forewarned me in the following conversation. Unfortunately, until recently, I always wanted to believe that Tantrism would be converted. Nothing of the sort. It is attempting to take Mothers place and lead astray those who are not sincere enough to want ONE SINGLE THING: the new world.
***
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Things are increasingly AS THEY ARE: exact, without complications. I have noticed that with people, even the most sincere and straightforward, there is always a kind of coating, an emotive coating (even with the coldest and driest), something that belongs to the vital; an emotive coating that makes things fuzzy, uncertain and allows a game that gives them a feeling of all sorts of mysterious forces at playthings are very clear, very simple, very, oh, very simple, and that coating brings along a sort of confusion. Its not sentiment, not emotion either, its something something that LOVES uncertainty, the unknown, the unexpectednot positively chance (its not so strong), but which loves to live in that, in in fact, in Ignorance! Which loves not to know whats going to happen. Even the simplest things, the most obvious, have all that coating over them.
Look, for instance, how many people, even the most serious, love to have their fortune told: reading the hand, reading the handwriting (I am pestered with people who ask me things like that), but anyway, even regardless of any spiritual idea, that sort of interest people find in being told, See, your life line will last up to here. People love it! They love it, they love to remain in their uncertainty. They love their ignorance. They love that unknown the unknown full of mysteries. They love the prophet who comes and tell them, This is what you will do. This is what is going to happen to you. It seems so childish! Its the same as the taste for theater, its the same thing (not the playwright, but the spectator who watches the play without knowing how it will end), or again the taste for novels the taste for the unknown. But then thats very close to the taste for the marvelous.
There is still a long way to go to enter Knowledge the consciousness in which you know things quietly, in which everything is so simple, so natural, so evident. And its that coating which brings complications: suddenly things get complicated in the human atmosphere.
I think animals (not those which live with men), animals (there arent many left nowadays, they have all been contaminated by man!), the natural animalsanimals in their natural statehave a very simple life. Everything is quite evident, quite simple, quite naturalwere the ones who make complications.
Cartier-Bresson had photographed Sri Aurobindo in 1950.
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0 1963-11-20, #Agenda Vol 04, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But you cant imagine, its wonderful! Immediately there comesclear, simple, effortlessly, without seeking for itexactly what has to be done or said or written: the whole tension stops, its over. And then, if you need paper, the paper is there; if you need a fountain pen, you find just the one you need; if you need (theres no seeking: above all dont seek, dont try to seek, youll just make another mess)its there. And thats a fact of EVERY MINUTE. You have the field of experience every second. For instance, youre dealing with a servant who doesnt do things properly or as you think they should be done, or youre dealing with a stomach that doesnt work the way youd like it to and it hurts: its the same method, there is no other. You know, at times situations get so tense that you feel as if youre about to faint, the body cant stand it any more, its so tense; or else theres a pain, something wrong, things arent sorting themselves out, and theres a tension; so immediately you stop everything: Lord, You, its up to You. At first there comes a peace, as if you were entirely outside existence, and then its gone the pain goes, the dizziness disappears. And what is to happen happens automatically. And, you see, its not in meditation, not in actions of terrestrial importance: its the field of experience you have ALL the time, without interruptionwhen you know how to put it to use. And for everything: when something hurts, for instance, when things resist or grate or howl inside there, instead of your saying, Oh, how it hurts! you call the Lord in there: Come in here, and then you stay calm, not thinking of anythingyou simply stay still in your sensation. And more than a thousand times, you know, I was almost bewildered: Look! The pain is gone! You didnt even notice how it went. So people who want to lead a special life or have a special organization to have experiences, thats quite silly the greatest possible diversity of experiences is at your disposal every minute, every minute. Only you must learn not to have a mental ambition for great things. Just the other day, I was shown in such a clear way a very small thing I had done (I, its the body speaking), a very small things that had been done by the Lord in this body (thats a long sentence!), and I was shown the terrestrial consequence of that very small thingit was visible, I mean, as my hand is visible to my eyesand the terrestrial correspondence. Then I understood.
We are given everythingEVERYTHING. All the difficulties that have to be overcome, all of them (and the more capable we are, that is, the more complex the instrument is, the more numerous the difficulties are), all the difficulties, all the opportunities to overcome them, all the possible experiences, and limited in time and space so they can be innumerable. And it has repercussions and consequences all over the earth (I am not concerned with what goes on in the universe because, for the time being, that isnt my work). But it is certain (because it has been said so and I know it) that what goes on on the earth has repercussions throughout the universe. Sitting there, you live the everyday life with its usual insignificance, its unimportance, its lack of interest and its a WONDERFUL field of experiences, of innumerable experiences, not only innumerable but as varied as can be, from the most subtle to the most material, without leaving your body. Only, you should have RETURNED to it. You cannot have authority over your body without having left it.
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0 1964-01-15, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Immediately afterwards, I had a visit from the Pope! The Pope [Paul VI] had come to Pondicherry (he does intend to visit India), he had come to Pondicherry and asked to see me (quite impossible things materially, of course, but they were perfectly simple and straightforward). So I saw him. He came, we met each other over there (in the music room), and we actually did speak to each other. I really felt the man in front of me (gesture of feeling), felt what he was. And he was very worried at the thought of what I was going to say to people about his visit: the revelation I would give of his visit. I saw that, but I didnt say anything. Finally he said (we were speaking in French, he had an Italian accent; but all this, you see, doesnt correspond to any thought: its like pictures in a film), he said, What will you tell people about my visit? So I looked at him (inner contacts are more concrete than pictures or words) and I simply answered him, after staring at him intently, I will tell them that we have been in communion in our love for the Lord. And there was in it the warmth of a golden lightextraordinary! Then I saw something relax in him, as if an anxiety were leaving him, and he left like that, in a great concentration.
Why did that come? I dont know.
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0 1964-01-28, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(B.) I shall suggest a simpler wayto turn to you.
Perhaps the time has come to tell what I have told you. You may talk if an occasion arises. Keep your faith and go like a warrior.
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0 1964-02-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My article gives them a sense of something both very boring and very childishboth at once, so that crowns it all! Because the external form is very simple, of course, without literary pretensions; so it isnt exciting for the brain, not in the least (on the contrary I try to calm it down as much as possible!).
No, those who understand you best are the simple-hearted.
Yes, they are touched.
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0 1964-03-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I heard from some people that a great number of little miracles had occurred, but I didnt listen, it doesnt interest me (people tell me, but my thoughts are elsewhere). Its possible: the atmosphere was highly charged. In peoples consciousness, it may result in little phenomenaa number of little phenomena which they call miraculous, but which to me are childishly simple and elementary: its just the way things are.
(silence)
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0 1964-04-04, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, very pure and simple.
I have always wondered why I wasnt born a musician.
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0 1964-05-02, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Why do I have to write all those lines in ink when it would be so much simpler to think of you, and lo! I would be with you, I would see you. Our human life is quite bounded and stupid. In two hundred years, in Eskimo land, we will be colored penguins; you will be sky blue and I, pomegranate red. And sometimes, I will be you and you will be me, red and blue, and well no longer be able to tell each other apart, or else well become all white like snow and no one will be able to find us again, except the great Caribou who is wise and knows love. And when the snow melts, we will be eider-penguins, of course, a new flying race, emerald, which plays among the northern fir trees on the shores of Lake Rokakitutu (pronounced fiddledeedee in penguin language).
S.
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0 1964-07-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All human action is based on that for them, thats the way it is; they wont act with this person in the same way as with that one, even in similar circumstances, because, as they say, they love this one, but not that one. Therefore, in one case, the Master loves, and in another case, he doesnt(laughing) simple!
So I said that human action is based on reactions. Divine action, on the other hand, SPONTANEOUSLY stems from the vision through identity of the necessity of the dharma of each thing and each being. It is a constant perception, spontaneous, effortless, through identity, of the dharma of each being (I use the word dharma because its neither law nor truth, but both together). In order for this being to go by the shortest way to his goal, here is the curve of the most favorable circumstances; consequently the action will always be modeled on that curve. The result is that in seemingly similar circumstances, the action of the divine Wisdom will sometimes be completely different, at times even opposite. But then, how do you explain this to the ordinary consciousness? In one case, the Master loves this person, while in the other he doesnt love himits easy!
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0 1964-08-11, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For two hours, it was the experience of Omnipotenceof THE LORDS Omnipotence for two hours, with all the decisions that were made then, that is to say, the expression of what was going to be translated in the earth consciousness. There was such a simplicity about it! Such obviousnesswhat we customarily call natural. So obvious, so simple, so natural, so spontaneous, without even the memory of what might be an effort the constant effort you have to make in material life just to live, just to keep all those cells together.
The strange thing is that (I was very conscious, perfectly conscious; the Witness consciousness is never canceled, but it isnt in the way) is that I knew, I saw (yet my eyes were closed, I was lying in my bed), I saw my body movingit had movements of such a Rhythm! You see, every movement, every gesture, every finger, every attitude was a thing that was being realized. Then what I studied, what I saw during the half-hour that followed (with my eyes closed, seeing much more clearly than with my ordinary eyes) was the difference in the body the difference in the bodys movements between that moment [during the experience] and after [when Mother returned to the personal consciousness]. At that moment, the movements were it was creation! And with an EXACTNESS, a majesty! (Mother stretches out her arms and moves them slowly in a vast Rhythm.) I dont know what other people might have seen, I have no idea, but as for me, I saw myself; I saw especially the arms because it was the arms that acted: they were like the realizing intermediaries I dont know how to put it. But it was as vast as the world. It was the earth (its always the earth consciousness), not the universe: the earth, the earth consciousness. But I was conscious then of the universe and of the action on the earth (both things), of the earth as a very small thing in the universe (Mother holds a small ball in her hands). I dont know, its hard to say, but when it expressed itself, there was also the perception of the difference in vision between that moment [during the experience] and afterwards. But all this is inexpressible. Yet it is an absolute knowledgeits another way of knowing. Sri Aurobindo explained this, that all mental knowledge is a seeking: you seek; while this knowledge has another quality, another flavor. And then the power of the Harmony is so wonderful! (Mother again depicts a great Rhythm, her arms outstretched) So wonderful, so spontaneous, so simple. And It stays there, as if It supported the entire world as it is; it is a kind of inner support of the world the world leans on it.
But outwardly, that sort of film its like a thin film of difficulties, of complications, added on by the human consciousness (its much stronger with man than with the animal; the animal doesnt have that, very littleit has it more and more because of man, but very little; its something specific to man and the mental function), its something very thinas thin as an onion skin, as dry as an onion skinyet it spoils everything. It spoils everything ONLY FOR THE HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS. At the time [of the experience], it was unimportant. Unimportant, in the sense that it takes away all the Beauty, all the Power, all the Magnificence of the thing for the human consciousness. For man, it is of paramount importance. But for the Action, its almost negligible. Basically, its rather that it makes it difficult for man to become conscious and PARTICIPATE; otherwise, my feeling is that truly the time has come for things to get done: that experience was a NEW descent, that is, something new entering the terrestrial manifestation; it wasnt that I became conscious of how the world is: I WAS the Lords Will coming into the world to change it. Thats what it was. And that action was only very slightly affected (assuming it was affected at all) by that stupid onion skin of human mentality.
--
You cant imagine how, as you go forward and as all that Consciousness, in fact, grows more and more alive, true and constant, how at first you feel you are a rotten bundle of insincerity, hypocrisy, lack of faith, doubt, stupidity. Because as (how can I explain?) as the balance changes between the parts of the being and as the luminous part increases, the rest grows more and more inadequate and intolerable. Then you are really utterly disgusted (there was a time when it used to hurt me, long agonot so long ago, but anyway long enough, a few years ago), and more and more there is the movement (a very spontaneous and simple movement, very complete): I cant do anything about it. Its impossible, I cant, its such a colossal work that its impossibleLord, do it for me. And when you do this with the simplicity of a child (gesture of offering), really like this, you know, really convinced that you cannot do it, Its not possible, Ill never be able to do itdo it for me, its wonderful! Oh, He does it, mon petit, youre dumbfounded afterwards: How come! There are lots of things that prrt! vanish and never come back againfinished. After a time, you wonder, How can that be?! It was there. Just like that, prrt! in a second.
But as long as there is personal effort, its oof! its like the man who rolls his barrel uphill, and down it rolls again every minute.
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0 1964-08-22, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So the first day, I was almost dazed; I was constantly groping for the way to do things. Yesterday, it was still strong. And this morning, suddenly I began to understand (what I call to understand is to have control), I understood: Ah, thats it! Because I was wondering, But what on earth does all this mean? How can I do my work? I remember, yesterday I had to see a host of people, people who arent close and whose atmosphere isnt good: it was very difficult, I had to keep a hold on myself, and I must have looked strange, very absent I was very far away, in a very deep consciousness, so that my body wouldnt be you know, that gave it discomfort of sortsdiscomfort, yesit was hard to bear. Yesterday the body was still that way the whole morning; towards evening it got better. But the night wasnt good, oh! In the night, I am always given a state of human consciousness to put right, one after another there are millions of them. And there are always all the images and events that illustrate that particular state of consciousness. At times, its very hard going: I wake up tired, as after a long period of work. And last night, thats how it was; its always the various, multiple ways which men have of complicating the original Simplicity: of turning a simple vibration into extremely complicated eventswhere the thing should be simple and flow naturally, there are endless complications, and such difficulties! Unbearable and insuperable difficulties. I dont know if you have experienced that: you want to go somewhere, but there are hindrances everywhere; you want to go out of a room, but there is no way out, or there is one, but you have to crawl on the ground under kinds of rocks and then something in the being refuses, No, I wont do it. And with a sense of insecurity, as if at any moment the thing could topple over and crush you. There are people who want to help you, but they cant do anything at all, they only make the complication still more complicated; you start on a road with the certainty of reaching a particular place, then all of a sudden, in the middle of it the road changes, everything changes, and you have your back to the place you wanted to go. All kinds of things like that. The symbolism of it is extremely clear. But then, it makes for a lot of work.
Anyway, I got up in that state and began to wonder, Wont there be an end to it? Its always, always, always like that. And more and more I have an inner conviction that it isnt a thing you can obtain through effort and progressive transformationit would take millions of years! Its only the Grace. When the Lord decides, Its finished, now its going to be like that, it will be like that. Then you find rest and tranquillity.
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0 1964-08-26, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When there is someone who has made the experiment and naturally has Wisdom, its so simple! Before, whenever there was the slightest difficulty, I didnt even need to say anything to Sri Aurobindo, everything would sort itself out. Now, I am the one who is doing the work, I have no one to turn to, no one has done it! So this, too, makes for a sort of tension.
One cannot imagineone cannot imagine what a grace it is to have someone in whose hands you can place yourself entirely! By whom you can let yourself be guided without having the need to seek. I had that, I was very, very conscious of it as long as Sri Aurobindo was there. And when he left his body, it was a dreadful collapse. One cannot imagine. Someone you can refer to with the certainty that what he says will be the truth.
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0 1964-11-25, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Perhaps it was that very childlike, but very spontaneous and very simple movement of the body, conscious of Matters imperfection, We are so impure that we cannot even burn in front of You!perhaps thats what provoked that answer.
It was a wondera brief wonder!
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0 1964-12-07, #Agenda Vol 05, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
That will need something very vast and very calmvery vast. Very simple. A few very simple great notes.
Voil.
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0 1965-01-12, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
To me, its very simple. Narada was a demigod, as we know, and he belonged to the overmental world and was able to materializethose beings dont have a psychic being. The gods dont have in themselves the divine spark which is the heart of the psychic being, since only ON THE EARTH (I am not even referring to the material universe), only on the earth was there the Descent of divine Love that was the origin of the divine Presence in the heart of Matter. And naturally, as they dont have a psychic being, they dont know, they have no knowledge of the psychic being. Some of those beings even decided to take on a physical body in order to experience the psychic beingnot many.
They generally did it only partially, through an emanation, not through a complete descent. It is said, for instance, that Vivekananda was an incarnation (a vibhuti) of Shivas; but Shiva himself I have had a very close relationship with him and he clearly expressed the will to come down on earth only with the supramental world. When the earth is ready for supramental life, he will come. And almost all those beings will manifest they are waiting for that moment, they do not want the present struggle and darkness.
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0 1965-03-03, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
109All things seem hard to man that are above his attained level and they are hard to his unaided effort; but they become at once easy and simple when God in man takes up the contract.
Its perfect. There is nothing to say.
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0 1965-05-08, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When I speak like this, its very simple and it seems very easy, but EVERY MINUTE you are hanging between three possibilities (generally three) for the body: the fainting or the acute suffering, the indifferent, mechanical movement, or the glorious Mastery. And I am talking about washing your eyes, rinsing your mouth, doing any of those absolutely indifferent little things (in big things it always goes well because nature is in the habit of thinking that one should bear oneself properly to rise to the occasionall that is ridiculous), but in little things, thats how it is. So the head whirls, and hup! And you can seeyou can see with extreme precision the three possibilities, and if you arent constantly attentive (gesture of a closed fist, of authority and control), the physical nature, with such repulsive spinelessness, you know, absolutely disgusting, lets itself go.
This repeats itself hundreds upon hundreds of times a day. So if this isnt called sadhana, I dont know what a sadhana is! You see, eating is a sadhana, sleeping is a sadhana, washing is a sadhana, everything is a sadhana. Whats a sadhana least of all is, for instance, receiving someone, because the body immediately keeps quite stillit calls the Lord and says, Now be here, and then everything is fine (because it keeps still). The visitor comes, the body smiles, everything is fine the Lord is there, so of course everything goes very smoothly. But when were dealing with what we call material things, the things of daily life, its hell, because of that idiot.
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0 1965-05-19, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I feel like asking you a very simple question. You say here, If we always had the feeling that what happens under any circumstances is the best, we wouldnt be afraid. Is it truly the best that happens under any circumstances?
Its the best in the given state of the worldits not an absolute best.
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0 1965-05-29, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its an experiment that can be done very easily: a scientist may explain all the phenomena before our eyes, he may even use physical forces and make them do whatever he likes (they have obtained amazing results from the material point of view), but if you just ask them this question, this simple question, What is death?, in reality, they have no idea. They will describe the phenomenon as it occurs materially, but if they are sincere, they are compelled to say that it doesnt explain anything.
There always comes a point when it no longer explains anything. Because to know to know is to have power.
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0 1965-06-05, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its put in a childlike way, but its so true and so simple! The more you see things in detail, the more you notice that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, even more than that, if you are tense or hurt, or pained or bothered, its simply because things arent exactly as you had told yourself they should bethis is for intelligent people; for less intelligent people, its a sort of desire: they want things to be that way (they feel it much more than they think it), and then when things happen in another way, oh, they get a shock. But if they had wanted it beforehand, it would have been a pleasureexactly the same occurrence. The occurrence would be exactly the same. If they had wanted it beforehand, they would have said, Ah, at last this has been realized, and just because they didnt think of it, because they didnt see it: Oh, how horrible! Almost everywhere and almost constantly thats how it is. I see it more and more in the small movement of every minute.
***
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0 1965-06-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it was the same thing for food, meat and so on. For a long time we ate meat; it was even very funny. Pavitra was a strict vegetarian when he came, and at the time, not only were we not vegetarian but the chickens were killed in the courtyard (!) and (laughing) Pavitra had the room right next to the kitchen the chickens used to be killed under his nose! Oh, poor Pavitra! Then it stopped for a very simple reason (not at all on principle): feeding people with meat is far costlier than being vegetarian! It meant complications. I was personally vegetarian out of tasteeverything is out of taste, not on principle. I became vegetarian at the beginning of the century, oh, a long time ago (yes, it must have been more than sixty years ago), because in my childhood I was forced to eat meat, and it disgusted me (not the idea: it was the taste I didnt like, it disgusted me!) and the doctor said I should be given pickles and all sorts of things to mask the taste. So as soon as I was independent and free, I said, Finished! (laughing) Ah, no! I wont eat meat anymorenot as a rule, since now and then I still take foie gras (thats not vegetarian!) and for a long time I went on eating crayfish or lobster, things like thatno rules, oh, for heavens sake no rules, but taste. But as you said earlier,4 its complications, thats exactly how I felt. And when I moved to this room (you know that they stuck me in bed for I dont know how long I cant manage to find out how long, no one wants to tell me), and when I started eating again, the doctor made me take chicken bouillon; but for that chicken bouillon they had to assassinate one chicken a daythey assassinated one chicken every day for me to have my chicken bouillon. Then, when the hot season came, they told me that the chickens were sick (the heat make them sick) and that, after all, maybe it wasnt so good to eat sick-chicken soup! So I said, Stop it, do stop it! And once I had stopped, ah, my heart was glad: Now (laughing) we dont assassinate chickens anymore! So I said, Finished, we wont do it again. But as it happens, its precisely during that time that I put on two kilos (at the time the doctor used to take my weight), and he said, See, you have put on weight! I told him, But I am not keen to put on weight!
You see (to Sujata), in front of him I speak frankly! (laughing) You should do as I say and not do as I do!
--
A little earlier, Satprem had returned to the attack and asked again for Mother's permission to stop his meat diet and return to simple vegetarian food. Mother had refused because of Satprem's state of health.
***
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0 1965-06-23, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
My plan is very simple.
It will be up there, off the Madras road, on top of the hill. (Mother takes a piece of paper and starts drawing) Here we have (naturally in Nature its not like this: well have to adaptits like this up there, in the ideal), here, a central point. This central point is a park I had seen when I was a little girl (perhaps the most beautiful thing in the world with regard to physical, material Nature), a park with water and trees like all parks, and flowers, but not too many (flowers in the form of creepers), palm trees and ferns (all species of palm trees), water (if possible, running water) and, if possible, a small waterfall. From a practical point of view, it would be very good: at the edge, outside the park, we could build reservoirs that would provide water to the residents.
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0 1965-07-03, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For me its very different: things always appear old to me, they seem to belong to a faraway past. Especially these last few days. This cold, for instance (Mother has a bad cold), I clearly saw why I caught it (outwardly the reason is very simple: the person who prepares my cards has a cold and I took the cold along with his cards), but why did I really catch it? Well, it corresponded to an arrowlike movement in the consciousness of the cells, and then, naturally, a lag: all that was refusing (refusing or unableit rather gives a feeling of drowsy things that arent too eager to make progress) is lagging behind, and naturally that manifests as a disorder.
Very well.
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0 1965-07-17, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Mother laughs) The reason is simple: that side is very, very close to the ordinary consciousness, so you remember; the other there isnt a sufficient connection, so when you wake up, you forget.
Thats the discouraging thing, besides, because one always remembers the bad side, not the rest!
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0 1965-07-31, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And above all the selection will be done with the idea of being easy to understand. I had an example yesterday when I spoke to a Dutch woman: I explained to her the difference between the old spirituality that denied Matter and tried to escape from it completely, and the new spirituality, tomorrows spirituality, which accepts Matter, dominates it and transforms it. For me, its simple, of courseshe didnt understand a thing!
So if one adopts the frame of mind of saying to people things they can understand, one distorts everything.
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0 1965-08-14, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
With him, anything simple becomes complicated.
I thought that was my own particular experience reserved for me! I thought he had scruples and wanted me to know everything people write but thats absurd!
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0 1965-08-21, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And at night it corresponds to thoroughly strange activities: a completely new way of seeing, feeling and observing people and things. Last night, for example, for over two hours there was a clear visionan active vision (through action, that is)of the way in which human consciousnesses make the most simple things complicated and difficult. It was fantasticfantastic. And then, this consciousness was spontaneously impelled by the divine Presence, but it followed the others human movements with the clear perception of the simple thing and of the way in which it becomes complicated. It was symbolic, with images; an activity in images in the sense that it wasnt purely material, physical as we know it here, but in a symbolic, imaged physical (in which the material world is seen as clay). It was very interesting.
Only, there was a very great intensity of transformation, and (how can I explain?) Its like a shift in the directing will. And then, there was materially, physically, a sort of surprise, and a need to identify with the new directionits a little difficult. Its difficult to explain, too. Its no longer the same thing that makes you actact or anything, of course: move, walk, anything. It isnt the same center any longer. And then if, by habit, you try to reconnect with the old center, oh, that creates a great disorder, and you must be very careful not to let habit, the old habit, express itself and manifest.
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0 1965-11-23, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And thats why its so difficult to know how one should be. Because in thought you can be in the same constant state, even in aspiration you can be in the same constant state, in the general goodwill, even in surrender to the Divine, it all can be the same thing, in the same stateits in here (Mother touches her body), and this makes the whole difference. I can very well conceive that there may be people in whom this opposition persists in the mind and the vital, but there its so obvious. But I am talking of something absolutely material. Some people say and think, How come? I have such goodwill, such a desire to do the right thing, and then nothing works, everything jarswhy? I am so good (!) and yet things dont respond. Or those who say, Oh, I have made my surrender, I have such goodwill, I have an aspiration, I want nothing but the Truth and the Good, and yet I am ill all the timewhy am I ill? And naturally, one small step more, and you begin to doubt the Justice that rules the world, and so on. Then you fall into a hole. But thats not it, thats not what I mean. Its much simpler and much more difficult at the same time, because it isnt blatant, it isnt evident, its not an opposition from which you can choose, its truly, totally and integrally leaving the entire responsibility to the Lord.
Of all things, this is the most difficult for manits far easier for the plant and even for the animal, far easier. But for man its very difficult. Because there was a whole period in the evolution when in order to progress he had to take on the responsibility for himself. So the habit has formed, it has taken root in the being.
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0 1965-12-07, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But just when it left, just half a second before that, there came How can I explain? Its so simple and natural and unsophisticated, oh, so simple that it seems childish. It was as though I were told by a voice that would be like Sri Aurobindos voice, You are the stronger and you can send the ball away, something of that sort. But the words are nothing; it was the feeling of a sort of buoyancy, as they say in English, that feeling one has when one is young, full of boldness and enthusiasm the feeling of absolutely scoffing at them and at their formidable formation, as a lion would scoff at a rat. Absolutely that sort of relationship. And that kind of enthusiasm lasted just a flash, and at the same time, just at the same time (gesture of a hood being removed), pfft! like night and day.
Oh, it has taught me a lot, a whole lot of things, a world of things.
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0 1965-12-10, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He is a very simple and rough type. He never used to exhibit anything, never used to say anything, and when he was sensitive to something, outwardly he would grow harder and harder. A very rough man, without aesthetic refinement. Just a man of action, who translated what he felt into acts.
No, he is intuitive. You didnt know it, but he was an intuitive type.
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0 1965-12-31, #Agenda Vol 06, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course, all the outward events come and belie this. In spite of the inner transformation (which is a sure fact, one has proof of it every second), yet the body keeps its habit of deterioration. And just when you think that things are improving (to give you, as you say, proof that you are making progress), something comes along as if to prove to you that its all an illusion! And its growing more and more acute, more and more acute. There is always a Voice (which I know very well, its the voice of the adverse forces tempting you), which comes and tells you (same hammering gesture), See, see how mistaken you are, see how you delude yourself, see what a mirage it all is, see And then if you listen, youre done for. Its very simple: everything is done for.
You just have to put your fingers in your ears, shut your eyes and keep holding tight up above.
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0 1966-04-20, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Because It was very simple, I had put my whole consciousness in her and I knew that if she was to be cured, she would know it: she would suddenly have the certitude that she was going to be cured. And when V. told me what she had said, They think I am better, but I dont feel well, I looked and I saw that she couldnt be wrong. Because I had put my consciousness in her, so she couldnt be wrong. Her saying, I am not well, meant it was the end.
But one must be sure of one thing (because, needless to say, I loved her very much, I was very happy to have her near me, she was very useful and I consider that from the material standpoint her departure is a great loss), but when I learned it was serious, immediately (as always, every moment of my life), my will was for the best possible thing from the divine point of view to be realized. And the divine point of view is also always the personal point of view: the divine point of view is the best that can happen to the person in question. I saw in an absolute way that it was the best for her.
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0 1966-04-30, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Just this simple thing of being impartial, neutral and perfectly sincere, without bias towards experiences, towards life, towards thingsjust that they cant have! There is always a sort of petty bias, of preference in the background.
And all that is accumulated in the subconscient, and it comes back in the form of dreams. And naturally (thats quite a common experience, which is known to all those who are even slightly familiar with the play of occult forces), when someone in your dream comes and gives you blows and attacks you, its absolutely sure that youve had bad thoughts for himbad thoughts or bad feelings. Thats what comes back to you in that form. But they will say on the contrary: See, I was right to have bad thoughts for him: he comes and attacks me!
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0 1966-05-07, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In fact, thats right. We speak of the supramental world, but its simply a world in which truth would be true. Thats all, its simple.
Quite so.
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0 1966-05-14, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But everything, absolutely everything is becoming strange. As if there were two, three, four realities (superimposed gesture) or appearances, I dont know (but they are rather realities), one behind another or one within another, like that, and in the space of a few minutes it changes (gesture as if one reality were surging forward to overtake and replace another), as though one world were just there, inside, and emerged all of a sudden. When I have peace and quiet, there is a slight not a movement, I dont know what it is: it might rather feel like pulsations, and depending on the case, there are different experiences. For instance, customary things take a usual amount of time when nothing abnormal happens, and then you have an exact sense of the time they take. So then, I am given the following experience, of the same thing done in the same way, accomplished a first time in its normal duration, and another time, when I am in another state, that is, when the consciousness seems to be placed elsewhere, the thing seems to be done in a second!Exactly the same thing: habitual gestures, things you do absolutely every day, quite ordinary things. Then, another time (and its not that I try to have it, I dont try at all: I am PUT in that state), another time I am put in another state (to me, it doesnt make much difference, they are like very small differences in the concentration), and in that state, the same thing, oh, takes a long, long time, an endless time to get done! Just to fold a towel, for instance (I am not the one who does it), someone folds a towel or someone puts a bottle away, wholly material and absolutely simple things devoid of any psychological value; someone folds a towel thats on the floor (I am giving that example): there is a normal time, which I perceive internally after a study; its the normal time, when everything is normal, that is, usual; then, I am in a certain concentration and without my even having the time to notice it, its done! I am in another state of concentration, with absolutely minimal differences as far as the concentration is concerned, and its endless! You feel it takes half an hour to get done.
If it occurred just once, youd say, Never mind, but it takes place with persistence and regularity, as when someone is trying to teach you something. A sort of insistence and regular repetition as if someone wanted to teach me something.
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0 1966-05-22, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You see, I instinctively go and take the book, I open it and find the money. So I asked him, Would you like to entrust your money to me? I will keep it for you. He replied, That would make things simpler. But after a year, I had three thousand rupees of his money, coming from books, from here and there! I told him (laughing), See, it has borne fruit!
***
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0 1966-07-27, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Man really isnt an improvement! He is full of miseries and ugly things, while this is so simple, so spontaneous.
Yes, a few days ago the consciousness was under attack. All that is petty, sordid, ugly, oh poor, helpless, all thatit was such an avalanche! This poor body, it cried over its incapacity to express anything superior. And then, the answer was very simpleit was very clear, very strong and the experience came: the only solution the only way out of the difficulty is to BECOME divine Love. And the experience was there at the same time for a few moments (it lasted long enough, maybe more than half an hour). Then you understand that everything you have to go through, all these ordeals, all this suffering, all these miseries, is nothing in comparison with the experience of what will be (and what is). But we are still incapable, meaning that the cells havent the strength yet. They are beginning to have the capacity to be, but not the strength to keep ThatThat cannot stay yet.
And That has such an extraordinary power to transform what is! All our notions (and this had become visible), our notions of miracle, of marvelous change, all the stories of miracles that have been told, all of it becomes a childs prattleits nothing! Nothing. All that we try to have, all that we aspire to have, all that is childishness.
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0 1966-08-03, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
At the same time, I am little by little learning from demonstration the true use that must be made of mental activity. Its purpose is easy to understand: it has been used to educate, awaken and so on; but its not something that after having done its duty and fulfilled its purpose will disappear. It will be used in its own manner, but in its true manner and true place. And it becomes wonderfully interesting. For instance, the idea that you are what you think, that your knowledge is your power, well, it seems to be a necessity of the transition, of the passage from one state of consciousness to another, but its not, as I said, something that will disappear when something else is reached: it will be used, but in its own place. Because when you experience union, the mind appears unnecessary: the direct contact, the direct action, do without it. But in its true place, acting in the true way, sticking to its place (a place not of necessity or even usefulness, but of refinement in action), it becomes quite interesting. When you see the Whole as a growing self-awareness, the mind enrichesit enriches the Whole. And when each thing is in its own place, it all becomes so harmonious and simple, but with such full and complete and perfect simplicity that everything is used.
And with all this, there is (it almost seems to be the key to the problem, to the understanding), there is a special concentration on the why, the how of death. Years and years ago, when Sri Aurobindo was still here, there came one day a sort of dazzling, imperious revelation: One dies only when one chooses to die. I told Sri Aurobindo, This is what I saw and KNEW. He said to me, It is true. Then I asked him, Always, in every case? He said, Always. Only, one isnt conscious, human beings arent conscious, but thats how it is. But now I am beginning to understand! Some experiences, some examples are given in the details of the bodys inner vibrations, and I see that there is a choice, a choice generally unconscious, but which, in some individuals, can be conscious. I am not talking about sentimental cases, I am talking about the body, the cells accepting disintegration. There is a will like this (Mother raises a finger upward) or a will like that (Mother lowers her finger). The origin of that will lies in the truth of the being, but it seems (and that is something marvelous), it seems that the final decision is left to the choice of the cells themselves.
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0 1966-08-31, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The why is very simple: its always separation the individual separating himself, always. So, according to everyones nature, there is more or less egoism, but there is separation. Now I see the false movement: its when the consciousness falls back into an old habit. And as its an old habitvery old habityou dont feel it as a fall: its a tiny little movement like this (Mother twists something between her thumb and index finger).
I knowthis morning, it was very clear.
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0 1966-09-07, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its not bad willoh, if they had bad will, it would be very simple, Id just shove them out!
I thought of sending them a letter, I even wrote them one, which I didnt send.1 I regret I didnt, it would have had some effect.
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0 1966-09-17, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this simplicity, this lack of complication and sophistication, is what gives these things great value, in the sense that it gives them perfect sincerity and simplicity. In anything expressed mentally, vitally, intellectually, there is always MORE in the form, in the word, in the expression, MORE than in the experienceit gets enlarged and rounded out (!) What is said is more than what is meant to be said. While here, its the perfectly pure experience, which feels the words as a sort of shrinking, a diminishing, and at the same time as bringing in a complication that doesnt exist in the experience the experience is very simple, very simple: it is truly pure. And anything one says is like adding something that lessens its purity and simplicity.
So, saying these things is good for oneself, its good for someone who is in the same state of heart, but for the public (Mother shakes her head) its doomed to incomprehension.
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0 1966-10-08, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
How?Very simple. Because these are mere words. When you practice without believing in God or in the Divine, you practice to reach a perfection, to make progress, for all sorts of reasons.
Are there many people (I am not referring to those who have a religion: they learn a catechism when they are quite small, so it doesnt have much meaning), but taking people as they come, are there many of them who believe in the Divine? Not in Europe, at any rate. But even here, there are quite a few who, by tradition, have a family deity, and yet when they are displeased they think nothing of taking the deity and throwing it into the Ganges! They do it, I know people who did it; they had a family Kali in their home, they took her and threw her into the Ganges because they were displeased with herif you believe in the Divine, you cant do such things, can you?
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0 1966-10-15, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All this (pointing to the stack of letters) is for appointments! And its something quite simple, its not tiringnothing is tiring if you arent in a hurry. But if you are forever thinking of the next thing you have to do, its horrible. If you do the thing as it comes, without thinking of anything else, its very good. That nasty habit of thinking, always thinkingvery bad. But I am beginning to (with a mischievous smile) Do you think fish think?! Because I felt like saying, I am beginning to live like a fish in water! (Laughing) Fish probably dont think. But dolphins think, dont they? They talk, so they must think their brain is heavier than mans.
Ah, no chattering!
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0 1966-10-29, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ultimately, all beliefs people have about what happens after death Human beings have long tried to know, of course, and some religions thought they had found an explanation. Ive had personal experiences. And now the problem is put in a new way, as if (I say as if because I havent come to the end and I dont know), as if what is perpetuated from life to life werent personalities but STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS, which are immortal and in constant transformation at the same time, and whats transformed through ones lives is the state of consciousness. Some have only one state of consciousness, others have many (there are even certain people who have two nearly opposite states of consciousness, which results in that double personality and those contradictions in life). Some are very simple and have only one, and that results in almost primitive individuals; but they sometimes have a wonderful development in their state of consciousness. That explains many contradictions. Thats what I am clearly shown at the moment: states of consciousness passing through numerous aggregates. And then, there is, there too, a secret to be found for the prolongation of an aggregate, that is, what gives the character not of immortality (which is something very different), but of the indefinite duration of lifeof the FORM, rather (life never stops), of the form. So then, once this study has been done in depth, another secret will have been found.
Its very interesting.
--
But I felt (it was yesterday, I think) that things are much simplermuch simpler and much less dramatic than human thought imagines. Its very strange, I have a growing feeling of something without mystery, and that its our way of thinking and feeling that adds the whole mystery and the whole dramawhile in fact there isnt any.
Oh, how men dramatize everything!
--
In reality, its one way of looking at the problem, but it makes things simpler in a truly interesting way. In other words, great transformations are merely the result of a change of state of consciousness.
(silence)
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0 1966-11-26, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the first time this year it has happened to me. Previously, it used to happen fairly often, but its the first time this year. It shows that, all the same, things are improving. Oh, but it was terrible, people cant imagine what it is! It takes hold of everyone and everybody, every circumstance and everything, and it gives shape to disintegrationquite like this Gentleman (I think hes the one!), quite like him. But it doesnt have the poetic form [of Savitri], of course, its not a poet: it has all the meanness of life. And it insists on that a great deal. These last few days it insisted on it a great deal. I said to myself, See, all that is written and said is always in a realm of beauty and harmony and greatness, and, anyway, the problem is put with dignity; but as soon as it becomes quite practical and material, its so petty, so mean, so narrow, so ugly! Thats the proof. When you get out of it, its all right, you can face all problems, but when you come down here, its so ugly, so petty, so miserable. We are such slaves to our needs, oh! For one hour, two hours, you hold on, and after And its true, physical life is uglynot everywhere, but anyway I always think of plants and flowers: thats really lovely, its free from that; but human life is so sordid, with such crude and imperious needsits so sordid. Its only when you begin to live in a slightly superior vision that you become free from that; in all the Scriptures, very few people accept the sordidness of life. And of course, thats what this Gentleman insists on. I said, Very well. This bodys answer is very simple: We certainly arent anxious that life should continue as it is. It doesnt find it very pretty. But we conceive of a lifea life as objective as our material lifewhich wouldnt have all these sordid needs, which would be more harmonious and spontaneous. Thats what we want. But he says its impossiblewe have been told its not only possible but certain. So theres the battle.
Then comes the great argument: Yes, yes, one day it will be, but when? For the time being you are still swamped in all this and you plainly see it cant change. It will go on and on. In millennia, yes, it will be. Thats the ultimate argument. He no longer denies the possibility, he says, All right, because you have caught hold of something, youre hoping to realize it now, but thats childishness.
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0 1966-12-17, #Agenda Vol 07, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So I told him Because I looked, I immediately looked at it from THAT angle. For my part, I see things very differently, never in that way. I am always surprised at the way people see things. To me, its completely different, its the Lords Vibration crystallizing. Thats all. And always, alwaysat all times. So theres no why, no howits very simple, elementary in its simplicity. But I couldnt tell him that, he wouldnt have understood. So I looked at it from his standpoint, and all of a sudden I saw; I said, Yes indeed, how did this come about? (Mother laughs) So I answered him (I dont remember the words I used, but in substance): The protection acts on the entire group when it works in a coordinated and disciplined way, but if individuals in it have an action INDEPENDENT of the group, then they fall back into their own determinism, which means that the protection acts according to their personal faith, not at all as something collective: according to their personal state and faith, the action of the protection is greater or lesser.
I saw it was clearly that. I saw how it had happened (because his question made me look at it, so I saw). There is an interesting point, its that the mental initiative in swimming across that pond was P.s and anothersso, humanly speaking, they are the ones who are responsible (but thats not true, its not like that!). But anyway, they were outside the group, it was an action that had nothing to do with the group, and they did it because they were to rejoin the group at a precise time and they were late. So it was clearly an individual outgrowth. Walking round the pond would have taken three hours while there were hardly two hours left before nightfall, and they were in a jungle, without any light or anything. That was another impossibility. So with his reason and human common sense, he said, The best is to swim across. But he hadnt foreseen (that was the reckless part) that the water would be icy.
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0 1967-01-28, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a whole category of a way of thinking. Those who think they have superior intelligence and scorn what they dont understand are countlesscountless. And thats the very sign of stupidity! On the other hand, there are many (they are generally regarded as simple-minded, but for my part, I appreciate those simple-minded people, they have a warmth of soul), they admire everything they cannot understand. They have a sort of dumb admiration, which is looked upon as silly, for anything they dont understand. But they at least have goodwill. While the others on the lofty heights of their so-called intelligence, anything they dont understand is worthless. This man came here and said, One cant work with these people, they are Indians! (Mother laughs) And he says it quite naturally.
You met someone the other day, I heard?
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0 1967-03-15, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its the same with all the questions I am asked (I receive innumerable questions), its all like this (same gesture), everything is like this and one cant see anything. If one remains quiet the Light goes through, everything becomes limpid, transparent, and it becomes so natural, so simple! So simple, so obvious: there is ONE thing that can be done and its the true thing. All the rest (same gesture of seething).
Some people live in a constant whirl, and theyre quite surprised that everything goes wrong! They meet with complications, with And its always that (same gesture).
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0 1967-04-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Mon petit, when the cells get into this state, its wonderful, you cant imagine! It changes life com-plete-ly. They are like that: a sense of wonder at the first Contact. Is it possible? Can it be that beautiful! Is it possible? Like that. And constantly, all the time, at any moment, about anything: Can it possibly be like that? Such a sense of wonder! Then you see the difference with the old habits and everything people have had crammed into their heads (renunciation, the beyond)its marvellous! Unbelievable. All morning again it was like that. There comes a malaise (it always comes from outside, from this and that, in relation to this and that; thats how it comes), and immediately, they remember immediately. They remember, they say, No! What You will, Lord. Thats their attitude, an attitude of such complete self-giving! Much, much more complete, much simpler, much more charming than in any other part of the being. Its, What You will. You, You, You, what You will. To be to be You not with an idea of aggrandizement, but to melt, to flow, to disappear in You like that. And then, But You are reality! And all these words are a diminution. Diminution not of sensation, but of consciousness its a marvel of consciousness, you know: You, You But You alone exist, You alone are. Then all the discomforts, all the pains, they vanish without a trace. Its a marvel, one cant imagine!
Sri Aurobindo once wrote somewhere, after an experience like this of the Divine Presence in the being, he wrote, If men knew how marvellous is the way. But they dont know. He wrote it, I cant quote because Ill quote it incorrectly, but he had this experience, If men knew how marvellous it is, they wouldnt hesitate for a minute.
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0 1967-04-27, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I told you about that experience (which has been growing increasingly concrete and constant) of the Vibration of Harmony (a higher harmony expressing the essential Consciousness in its aspect of love and harmony and, as it draws nearer to the manifestation, of order and organization), and of the nearly constant and general vibration of disorder, disharmony, conflictin reality, Matters resistance to this Action. The two vibrations are like this (Mother slips the fingers of her right hand between those of the left), as if they interpenetrated each other and a simple movement of consciousness sent you to one side or the other, or rather, the aspiration, the will for realization, put you into contact with the Vibration of Harmony, and the SLIGHTEST slackening made you lapse into the other. It has become constant. And then, on the 24th, right from morning there was a constant aspiration, a constant will for the triumph of the Vibration of Harmony. Then I sat down at my table as I always do, about five or ten minutes before it began. And instantly, with a puissancea puissance capable of crushing an elephantthis Vibration of Harmony came down like that, massive to the point that the body lost the sense of its existence altogether: it became That, it was conscious of nothing but That. And the first quarter of an hour literally flashed by in a second. Then, there were three people in the room; one of the three, or maybe all three, felt a malaise (nothing surprising!), and that woke me up: I saw the light (I burn a candle on my table) and I saw the time, but it wasnt me something saw. Then there was a sort of pacifying action on the place, and thengone again. And one second later, the call of the end!1
Its the first time that has happened to my body. It always used to remain conscious. Sri Aurobindo, too, told me the same thing, that he never, ever, had samadhi in his body. Neither did I: I always, always, always used to remain conscious. While that only the Force remained, there was nothing left but the Force at work: there was a concentration here, a concentration on the whole country, and a concentration on the whole earth. And all that was conscious, like that (vast gesture above the head), at work. But something massive, as powerful as an elephantenough to crush you.
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0 1967-05-10, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I always admire those mediums (they generally are very simple people) who have the exact memory of the sound and can tell you, This and that is what I said. That way we could have a phonetic notation. If I remembered the sounds I uttered we would have the notation, but I dont.
I remember these questions: I suddenly thought, How interesting it would be to hear that language! And then, being curious, How did they rediscover the pronunciation? How? Besides, all the names of ancient history we were taught when we were very small have been changed now. They said they had rediscovered the sounds, or rather they claimed they did. But I dont know.
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0 1967-05-24, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Seen as a whole, its very interesting, very charming, with a Smile that looks on. Oh, that Smile looking on. That Smile seems to be saying, How complicated you make it! When it could be so simple.
To put it in a literary way, we could say, So much complication for something so simple: to be oneself.
(silence)
--
I know it is the Russian explanation of the recent trend to spirituality and mysticism that it is a phenomenon of capitalist society in its decadence. But to read an economic cause, conscious or unconscious, into all phenomena of mans history is part of the Bolshevik gospel born of the fallacy of Karl Marx. Mans nature is not so simple and one-chorded as all thatit has many lines and each line produces a need of his life. The spiritual or mystic line is one of them and man tries to satisfy it in various ways, by superstitions of all kinds, by ignorant religionism, by spiritism, demonism and what not, in his more enlightened parts by spiritual philosophy, the higher occultism and the rest, at his highest by the union with the All, the Eternal or the Divine. The tendency towards the search of spirituality began in Europe with a recoil from the nineteenth centurys scientific materialism, a dissatisfaction with the pretended all-sufficiency of the reason and the intellect and a feeling out for something deeper. That was a pre-war [of 1914] phenomenon, and began when there was no menace of Communism and the capitalistic world was at its height of insolent success and triumph, and it came rather as a revolt against the materialistic bourgeois life and its ideals, not as an attempt to serve or sanctify it. It has been at once served and opposed by the post-war disillusionmentopposed because the post-war world has fallen back either on cynicism and the life of the senses or on movements like Fascism and Communism; served because with the deeper minds the dissatisfaction with the ideals of the past or the present, with all mental or vital or material solutions of the problem of life has increased and only the spiritual path is left. It is true that the European mind having little light on these things dallies with vital will-o-the-wisps like spiritism or theosophy or falls back upon the old religionism; but the deeper minds of which I speak either pass by them or pass through them in search of a greater Light. I have had contact with many and the above tendencies are very clear. They come from all countries and it was only a minority who hailed from England or America. Russia is differentunlike the others it has lingered in mediaeval religionism and not passed through any period of revoltso when the revolt came it was naturally anti-religious and atheistic. It is only when this phase is exhausted that Russian mysticism can revive and take not a narrow religious but the spiritual direction. It is true that mysticism revers, turned upside down, has made Bolshevism and its endeavour a creed rather than a political theme and a search for the paradisal secret millennium on earth rather than the building of a purely social structure. But for the most part Russia is trying to do on the communistic basis all that nineteenth-century idealism hoped to get atand failedin the midst of or against an industrial competitive environment. Whether it will really succeed any better is for the future to decide for at present it only keeps what it has got by a tension and violent control which is not over.
Sri Aurobindo
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0 1967-05-27, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
D. has gone to the Tibetan zones (not in Tibet, thats not possible, but up there, where the Tibetan refugees live), with some sort of hope of finding a guru. But I saw her yesterday, and she has changed a lot. Yesterday she told me (she had read something by me, I dont know where, because she generally doesnt read), she told me that one day, Oh, I had a revelation; I suddenly understood that I didnt understand anything of what you say! Because we dont give words the same meaning. I said it was true! And now Ive understood, Ive understood how it is when we dont understand! And she was troubled, because naturally, everyone tells her, Why do you go there in search of what you have here? I answered her, What does it matter to you! Its quite simple, just tell them the truth that you arent ready for staying here. She said, Yes, thats what I am trying to tell them. (She is trying to tell them in a roundabout way.)
But she has a great sincerity in her aspiration
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0 1967-06-03, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, I have something much more interesting. K. is giving a class (of sociology, I think), but based on what Sri Aurobindo has written. And then, you know that at the School I have AT LAST got them to agree that examinations should not be indispensable; that if a student shows interest and attention during the classes, he can move up to the higher class without needing a certificate or having to take exams.1 I have obtained that at last, after so many years! So the students have been told, Its as you like; if you want to take exams, there are exams and you can take them; but if you dont feel the need for exams, you need not take them and can just as well move up to the next class. But K., who has a simple heart, thought all those boys and girls had understood Sri Aurobindos teaching and had a total contempt for exams and the old ways. And he expected his students to tell him, Oh, then we wont take exams. And each and every one of them, with a single exception, said they preferred to take the exams so as to get a certificate.
He was very disappointed. He said to me, How is it that after all this Well, I thought they had understood. And after having studied Sri Aurobindo, here they are following the old ideas! Then he said, I have found in a letter of Sri Aurobindo a passage that perhaps provides an explanation, and I would like to ask you if I should take notice. I told him he should.
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0 1967-06-07, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then he said to meit was very simple, very clear: A federation of all nations and countries without exception, all continents. A single federation: the federation of all human nations of the earth. And a groupa governing groupconsisting of one representative from each country, the most able man from the standpoint of political and economic organization. And nothing of the proportional question that would give large countries many representatives and small ones only oneone representative for each country. Because each country represents one aspect of the problem. And they would sit in rotation.
It was a vast vision, not so much with words as with a vision.
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0 1967-07-05, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
All things are so simple and at the same time so COMPLEX.
For instance, that relationship of simplicity (like that of a child) in which you very simply ask for the thing you feel the need for, but without mental complications; without explanations, without justifications, without all that useless farragosimply, Oh, I would like You have, for instance, quite a special feeling towards someone or something and you would like that someone or something to be perfectly harmonious, happy (which physically is expressed by good health or favourable circumstances), and so, spontaneously, simply, you say, Oh! (you pray), Oh, may it be like that! And it happens. Then the thought (the general human thought): This has happened, therefore its the expression of the Truth. And it becomes a principle: This is true, this is the way things should be. But up above, in that Consciousness that global Consciousness in that total Harmony, those things in themselves, in their material expression (good health, favourable circumstances) are of no more than minor importance, so to say, of almost nonexistent importance: things may be this way or that or this (they may be a hundred different ways), without its making any difference to the Harmony; but this particular way is chosen because of the simple, pure, candid beauty of the aspiration that is lovely, that is powerful in its simplicity. And, you know, without mental complication, without hypocrisy of any sort, without pretence of any sort: very simply, but from a luminous, pure, loving heart, without any egoism, just like that. So thats a lovely light which has its place; and because of it, things may be this way or that (good health, favourable circumstances), it doesnt matter, its unimportant. Human beings attach importance only to the external form, to what has manifested; they say, Oh, this is true, since it isand its a passing breath of air. But the cause of it, its origin has a place in that total, universal Harmony: a disinterested goodwill, love devoid of egoism, trust that doesnt argue or reason, simplicityingenious simplicity for which evil doesnt exist.4 If we could catch hold of that and keep it That trust for which evil doesnt existnot trust in what takes place here: trust up above, in that all-powerful principle of Harmony.
(long silence, then Mother repeats this prayer:)
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0 1967-07-12, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats how it is. All of a sudden, for two or three seconds, you seem to be holding the key. And all that we conventionally call miracles look like the simplest things in the world: But its quite simple, all you have to do is this! And then it goes away. And once its gone, you search, you tryabsolutely useless.
But when its there, its so simple, so natural! And absolutely all-powerful.
(silence)
--
Sri Aurobindo said that to me; its so simple, so simple!
I was looking at all those religions, seeing them as facets, innumerable facets that harden and brace themselves against each other, and he seemed to be saying, Well, put it all together and it will be so simple!
Just one sentence, not one word more.
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0 1967-07-22, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Wait, theres something else again. Oh, poor K., he held examinations (theyre out of their minds with their exams!), he held examinations on a text or a subject he had dictated to the students in his class. In other words, they had the answer quite ready. Two of the boys (one of whom K. finds very intelligen the is, moreover and has a liking for, while he doesnt like the other) were late, and K. asked the boy he doesnt like to bring to him at home the result of their work. He brought it. K. read it, and to one of the questions, the two boys answers were not quite identical but extremely similar. It was precisely the subject K. had dictated to them, so it was natural enough that the answers should be similar. K. felt right away that the boy had copied from the other, and told him so! The boy lost his temper and spoke to him rather rudely. So K. writes to tell me the whole story in his own way, and the boy writes to tell me the whole story, in his own way, moreover expressing regret that he was rude to his teacher. But K. remains convinced that he copied. So, a flood of letters Finally I wrote to K., Send me the two texts, I will see (not see with my eyes, but like that, feeling the thing). The boy did NOT copy. But to me, its far worse, because it means K. made a mental formation with wordswords put in a certain order and stuffed it into their brains. And they repeat it parrot fashionnaturally, it bears an extraordinary similarity to his teaching. Finally, K. told me, If I accept that the boy didnt copy, I am obliged to give him a very good mark, which I cant do! (Mother laughs) And he asks me, What should I do? I replied yesterday evening: There is a very simple way out: cancel the exam. Take all the papers, tie them into a bundle, put them away in your cupboard, and pretend it never existed and in future, no more exams! And at the end of the year, when you have to give marks to the students, well, instead of using such an artificial method, you will be obliged to observe attentively, follow the childs inner development, have a deeper contact with him (Mother laughs mockingly), and know if he has really understood or not! Then you will be able to give marks instead of basing yourself on the parrot-like repetition of something they have learned without understanding. And I sent that. So now, theyre in a fix! (Mother laughs) I find it so funny, its very amusing!
They had to hold a teachers meeting to face up to my answer! (Mother laughs) I upset the whole School!
--
It is quite simple. The majority of children study because they are forced to by family, habit, current ideas, not because they want to learn and know. Until the motive for their studies is rectified, until they learn because they want to know, they will use all kinds of tricks to make their work easier and get results with the least effort.
(July 13, 1967)
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I took it as one of the signs that the Force is really at work. Because I dont think that man had done any yoga, he knew nothing about those things; he is just a gentleman-whos-had-an-injection-of-penicillin which he cant tolerate (those accidents happen fairly often), nothing more. There was just this idea that the brain is the conscious part of the being, and if he concentrated there His idea was, I want to know whats happening, I want to be conscious of whats happening, I want to see whats happening. So thats what pulled the Force. A simple thing.
It seems to me there is a progress in human consciousness thats my impression.
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0 1967-07-26, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For a time I attended a private school: I didnt go to a state school because my mother considered it unfitting for a girl to be in a state school! But I was in a private school, a school of high repute at the time: their teachers were really capable people. The geography teacher, a man of renown, had written books, his books on geography were well-known. He was a fine man. So then, we were doing geography (I enjoyed maps more fully because it all had to be drawn) and one day, the teacher looked at me (he was an intelligent man), he looked at me and asked, Why are towns, the big cities, settled on rivers? I saw the students bewildered look, they were saying to themselves, Lucky the question wasnt put to me! I replied, But its very simple! Its because rivers are a natural means of communication. (Mother laughs) He too was taken aback! Thats how it was, all my studies were like that, I enjoyed myself all the timeenjoyed myself thoroughly, it was great fun!
The teacher of literature He was an old fellow full of all the most conventional ideas imaginable. What a bore he was, oh! So all the students sat there, their noses to the grindstone. He would give subjects for essaysdo you know The Path of Later On and the Road of Tomorrow? I wrote it when I was twelve, it was my homework on his question! He had given a proverb (now I forget the words) and expected to be told all the sensible things! I told my story, that little story, it was written at the age of twelve. Afterwards he would eye me with misgivings! (Laughing) He expected me to make a scene. Oh, but I was a good girl!
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0 1967-08-19, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You understand, behind this whole earth evolution, there is, more or less consciously (its an unexpressed need rather than a precise consciousness), the need to live the Divineor to put it differently, the need to live divinely. And it is clear that what was expressed as different religions were solutions found individually (found, and perhaps partially lived); and here [in India], there was this solution: in order to really become the Divine again, there should be no more creation. That was the Nirvanic solution. And instinctivelyinstinctivelymankind felt death to be the negation of the Divine. But like all negation, it had the capacity to lead and open the way. The solution of Christianity wasnt completely new, it was the adaptation of an ancient solution: a life in other worldswhich was expressed by that quite childish conception of paradise. But that was a conception for public use: a life in the presence of the Divine, exclusively taken up with the Divine, and so one sang and Touchingly simple. Anyway, they conceived of a world (not a material one) in which a divine life had been realized. In the ancient Indian traditions, there had also been a first hint of already divine worlds, as a sort of reaction to that Nirvanismif we want to be divine, we must stop being, or if the Divine wants to be pure, he must stop manifesting! So they were all somewhat clumsy attempts to find the means, and perhaps at the same time inner preparations, to make people capable of really making contact with the Divine. Then there was that great reaction of the cult of Matter, which has been VERY useful to knead it and make it less unconscious of itself: it has forcibly brought consciousness back into Matter. So perhaps all that has sufficiently prepared the moment of the coming of Total Manifestation (gesture of descent).
This morning, during the experience, the body felt the whole bliss of the condition, but it was very conscious of its incapacity to manifest and very conscious in such a perfect peace, like this (gesture with the palms of the hands open upward), in which there wasnt even the intensity of the need. It was simply a vision of how things were, how the condition was. And it was something like this: the conditions of the earth are such, the conditions of the substance are such that a local and momentary manifestation, as an example, is not impossible, but the transformation that would make possible the new Manifestation of the supramental being and not just as an isolated case, but with its place and role in earth lifedoes not appear to be immediate. That was the impression.
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0 1967-08-30, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The explanation becomes very simple and very easy when you enter the consciousness in which its the material reality that becomes an illusionits illusory, inexact: the inner reality is truer. Then, in that case, its simple. Maybe its only our mind that is astonished?
Take writing, for instance: I havent noticed in detail, but when you write over there, you seem to write much more easily. I dont know how to explain it it takes much less time. And things are noted down on paper, but is it paper? It looks like paper, but things are noted down much more directly. Its perhaps the similarity, like when, for example, you use a fountain pen or a pencil: its not exactly a fountain pen or a pencil, its something that looks like it and is (what should I say?) the prototype or principle of that object. But what I mean is that if we were still at the time of the quill or the twig that you dip into ink, I would probably see it like that! Its the ESSENCE or principle of the thing, which in the memory, is translated as a similarity.
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0 1967-09-13, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its very simple: when you say to people, Be humble, they immediately think of being humble towards others, and that humility is bad. True humility is humility towards the Divine, that is, the precise, exact, LIVING sense that you are nothing, can do nothing, understand nothing without the Divine, that even if you are an exceptionally intelligent and capable being, that is NOTHING in comparison with the divine Consciousness and one must keep that constantly, because then one constantly has the true attitude of receptivity. A humble receptivity that sets no personal pretension against the Divine.
***
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0 1967-09-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now it has become that way FOR THE BODY: when it hurts, when it gets disorganized, when it threatens to fall apart. And then, there is always that Consciousness inside, straight as a sword, that says, Now, will you stand firm? And the cells are really touchingly good willed: Oh, is it like that? Well, very well. So you remain very quiet, very peaceful, and then you callyou call the Lord. And you repeat the mantra, which comes automatically, and Peace establishes itself. And after a while the pain has disappearedeverything, just everything, all the threats disappear one after the other Thats how it is: Lord, You are there And you know, such dazzling, indisputable proof of this Presence, which is so wonderful and so simple, so simple, so total, in all that comes, all that happens, down to the smallest detail, so as to lead you as fast as possible to the transformation.
And all that comes nearcomes near at a greater or lesser distance, but that comes near, is borne along in the Movement, without even knowing it.
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0 1967-10-04, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And this man (I saw his photo, he has a magnificent head) says, I live in Gods presence. Thats what he says, and I dont think he makes any fussbesides he doesnt have the time because he goes to bed after midnight and gets up at five every day, starts work at five-thirty and spends the whole day working, that is, seeing people and people and more people (when that was read out to me, I thought, And I complain!). Its admirable. He did some studies, but he isnt a philosopher, he doesnt have any theories: he seems to have been born like that, with healing hands. He probably gets rid of infections by dehydrating them, so he cures all the diseases of that nature. And they did (poor man, they must have made his life impossible!), they did encephalograms, cardiograms and so on, and they noticed that just when he lays his hands (for a few seconds, two or three minutes at the most), at that moment his heartbeats suddenly go up from sixty to eighty, then fall back to normal. And he doesnt seem to be making any fuss, unlike that German I told you aboutnothing at all, very simple, very nice.
I liked that story.
--
Well, see him. Id like you simply to tell me yes or no, that is, Favourable impression or Unfavourable impression, something simple, one sentence, so that accordingly I may send him a line to tell him, You may stay, or It would be better if you didnt stay.
But in the end, even so, he will find himself faced with the same eternal problem: religion versus freedom.
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0 1967-10-11, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was really interesting. I am putting it into words (of course, she didnt speak to me in French!), but it was very simple, the contact was very simple (gesture of inner exchange), and very natural, very spontaneous. At one point I even asked her (laughing), Do you enjoy all this worship people give you? She said no. No, I dont care. She is too used to it, she doesnt care.
***
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0 1967-12-16, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And when, from outside, people fill it with letters, news, requests (it all piles up, you know), then I have only one means, the simplest means, which is to do this (gesture of offering): Here (what Sri Aurobindo calls surrender), Here, its not my business, not my concern. Then its over.
***
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0 1967-12-20, #Agenda Vol 08, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I take the simplest and most concrete things like, for instance, brushing ones teeth; its extremely flexible and things are done, not out of habit but by a sort of choice based on personal experience and routine, so there is no necessity for a special concentration (the real purpose of routine is to avoid the need for a special concentration: things can be done almost automatically). But that automatism is very flexible, very plastic, because depending, as I said, on the intensity of the concentration, the time varies the time varies: you can (you can know by looking at your watch before and after), you can certainly reduce the time by more than half, yet things are done in exactly the same way. Thats right: you dont do away with anything, you do everything in the same way. To make sure, you can, for instance, count the number of times you brush your teeth or the number of times you rinse your mouth I am DELIBERATELY taking the most banal thing, because in other activities there is a natural suppleness that allows you to spread yourself and concentrate (and so its easier to understand with such things). But it works in the same way with the most concrete and banal things too. And there isnt any Oh, I wont do this today or I am neglecting thattheres none of that, nothing at all: everything is done in the same way, BUT with a sort of concentration and constant call the constant call is always there. The constant call which might find a material expression in saying the mantra, but its not even that: its the SENSE, the sense of the call, of the aspirationits above all a call. A call. You know, when the mind wants to make sentences, it says, Lord, take possession of Your kingdom. For certain things, I remember, when there are certain disorders, something wrong (and with the perception of a consciousness that has become very sharp, you can see when that disorder is the natural origin of an illness, for example, or of something very serious), with the call, the concentration and the response [the disorder is dissolved]. Its almost a surrender, because its an uncalculating self-giving: the damaged spot opens to the Influence, not with an idea of getting cured, but like this (gesture like a flower opening out), simply like this, unconditionally that is the most potent gesture.
But the interesting part is that formulating it in words makes it sound artificialits much more sincere, much truer, much more spontaneous than anything expressed or expressible by the mind. No formula can render the sinceritysimplicity, sincerity, spontaneity, something uncalculatingof the material movement. There was a time when expressing or formulating caused a very unpleasant sensation, like putting something artificial on something spontaneously true; and that unpleasantness was cured only, to begin with, by a higher knowledge that all that is formulated must be surpassed. For instance, every experience expressed or described CALLS FOR a new progress, a new experience. In other words, it hastens the movement. That has been a consolation, because in fact, with the old sensation of something very stable and solid and immobile because of inertia (a past inertia, which is now being transformed but has left marks), because of that inertia there is a tendency to prefer things to be solid; so there is a thrill at being forced to No, no! No rest, no halt, go on!farther and farther and farther on When an experience has been very fruitful and highly pleasant, let us say, when its had a great force and a great effect, the first movement is to say, We wont talk about that, well keep it. Then after comes, Well say it in order to go farther onto go farther on, ever farther, ever farther.
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0 1968-01-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Oh, its very simple (Mother reads):
Truth alone can give to the world the power of receiving and manifesting the Divines Love.1
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0 1968-01-12, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I will try to answer your questions as simply as possible, that is, without wrapping the problem in the sibylline mists of mysterious traditions, but directly from my experience. And after all, that is the best way to rediscover the truth of traditions, which were born from an experience, too. There is a plane of simple truth where all those experiences meet.
We may begin by looking at the problem in the wide sense, that of evolution. Species have evolved from the mineral to the plant, to the animal, and on to man. Everything points to the fact that the progress of evolution is not a progress in forms but a progress of consciousness. Forms are only an increasingly fit support for the progress of consciousness. We have reached the human stage, but there is no reason to assume that it is final or supreme (otherwise there would be no evolution), no more than an objective observer one hundred million years ago would have been right to assume that the chameleon or the baboon was the highest term of evolution. We have simply reached the decisive evolutionary stage when we can consciously intervene to accelerate the natural process, which might otherwise require a few more millions of years, with much wastage. Yoga and all spiritual disciplines are ultimately nothing but processes of conscious acceleration of evolution in the true sense.
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0 1968-01-27, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It was Pavitra who read me the gentlemans letter yesterday evening, and while he was reading it, Sri Aurobindo came, and he started laughing! He laughed when the man asked for my reminiscences, and instantlyinstantly I got the answer, instantly. It came like that: Its quite simple, there isnt much to tell. But those people dont understand! And Sri Aurobindo told me, Its high time they learned it. So it was over in five minutes.
***
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0 1968-02-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In my life, I have been given so many, so many experiences, as proof that EVERYTHING is possible. For instance, when I was twenty-two, one night, after an experience I had in the night (I forget the details of it) at the time women wore dresses that exactly touched the ground, just touched it without resting on it (gesture of skimming the ground), and in my experience at night, I had grown tallin the morning, there was one inch between the dress and the ground! Which means that the body had grown one inch WITH THE NIGHTS EXPERIENCE. You see, in the nights experience I had grown tall (I dont remember the details), and in the morning And Ive been given that material verification for many such experiences, so as to be sure, so the body may be convinced without having to repeat the experiences over and over again. So it KNOWS, it knows there is nothing impossible, it knows impossible doesnt mean anything. But it doesnt depend on an individual will, you understand. The Consciousness which rules things is a marvel of wisdom, patience, compassion, endurance. When there is destruction or disorder, it means its absolutely unavoidable, absolutelybecause matters resistance in the individual or in things is so strong that it quite naturally brings about disorder or destruction. But that doesnt form part of the Action, the supreme Action, which is a marvel. The body has understood that; it has understood, it is patient. Only, from time to time (how can I put it?) There are people whom I prevent from dyingseveral people. I dont yet have the consciousness, the conscious power to cure them, but the possibility is there and I maintain it above them. That is to say, its not all-powerful in the sense that a certain receptivity, a certain response, a certain attitude are necessary which arent always there (human natures are very fluctuating, there are ups and downs and more ups and downs, and that makes the work very difficult), but at times, during a down spell, when a being suffers or sags, there is something in the consciousness [of Mother], a compassion (how can I explain that?) Affliction and all those movements are movements of weakness, but that is something at once very strong and very sweet, almost like sorrow, and the whole, entire consciousness in the body rises like a prayer and an aspirationa pure prayer: Why are things still in this pitiful state, why? Why? And it instantly has an effect [in the sick person]. Unfortunately, the effect doesnt last; it doesnt last because certain conditions in others are still necessary. But its wonderful, you know! Its something so wonderful. And it makes one understand the necessity of a presence on this side, a presence capable of feeling, understanding still IN THE OTHER WAY, so the suffering of others may be a reality. And that also is taken into account, that also means time is needed, patience is needed. Now the body knows ittheres no longer any impatience; there is only, now and then, that sort of sorrow, especially when beings are full of aspiration, goodwill, faith, and in spite of it this suffering is still there, clinging. That on one side, and on the other, one thing: there is still a sort of horror and reprobation of acts of cruelty, of THE cruelty; thats And then, there is this awesome Poweryou feel, you can feel that a mere nothing, a simple little movement would, oh, bring about a catastrophe. So you have to keep that still, still, still so what happens may always be the best.
Now stupidity, imbecility, ignorance, all those things are looked at with a patience which waits for them to grow. But bad will and crueltyespecially viciousness, cruelty, what LOVES to cause suffering thats still difficult, one still has to keep a hold on oneself. In figurative language (not language, but a way of being), its Kali that wants to strike, and I have to tell her, Keep still, keep still. But thats a human transcription. All those gods, all those beings are real, they exist, but its a transcription. True truth is beyond all that.
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0 1968-02-14, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its very, very instructive. I mean, its not anything new to me, but its the wholly clear, precise, evident picture that its man who creates all his difficulties. Things would be simple and easy if there werent all these ego reactions: reactions of ambition, reactions of self-esteemnot to speak of deceit: when that comes (gesture underhand). Yes, these three things: ambition, with the need to show off, to dominate; self-esteem or vanity (being hurt when you arent appreciated at your true value: then you lose your temper, you quarrel, theres grating and friction); and, last, the thirst for money, greed, the desire to possess, cupidity: you want to make the most of the occasion I want to profit, I want to profit. With these three things, everything is muddled.
So long as it all comes out in the open ingenuously and frankly, you smile, but when it turns into duplicity, when people use all kinds of tricks in the hope of deceiving, of hiding their motives while pretending to have othersall that in various combinations then, it wont do anymore.
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0 1968-03-13, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Strangely, when you read it, it was simple, obvious, but now
Yes, when I read it, it seemed obvious to me. Maybe it doesnt require any comment, thats all!
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0 1968-04-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The last time I saw him, he asked me how he should get himself received by the Pope. I said to him, Its very simple, its Sri Aurobindos name that will open the door for you; just write the Pope, I come from Sri Aurobindos Ashram and I would like to see you.
(Mother goes into a long concentration)
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0 1968-04-06, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
What I wanted to say came; its very simple (Mother takes a written note), simply like this (its about very small things):
One must choose between getting drunk and living in Auroville, the two are incompatible.
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0 1968-04-10, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The second thing is the power of conviction. That is to say, the highest consciousness, when its put in contact with Matter, spontaneously has (what should I call it? Its not an influence, because theres no will to influence. I might put it this way:) it has a power of conviction greater than that of all intermediary regions. Through simple contact, its power of conviction, that is, its power of transformation, is greater than that of all the intermediary regions. That is a fact. Those two facts make it impossible for any pretense to last. (I am looking at it from the standpoint of a collective organization.)
As soon as you come down from that supreme Height, you find the whole play of diverse influences (gesture of mixture and conflict), and thats in fact a sure sign: if you come down ever so slightly (even into a region of higher mentality, higher intelligence), the WHOLE conflict of influences starts. Only whats truly all the way up, with perfect purity, has this power of spontaneous conviction. All substitutes you may try are therefore an approximation, and not a much better one than democracyby democracy, I mean the system that wants to rule through the greatest number and lowest masses (I am referring to social democracy, the latest trend).
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0 1968-05-18, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
It all came so spontaneously and naturally that I felt as if it was THERE. Now that youve read it back to me (laughing), I realize its not there! But it came so spontaneously: I sat there, reading those four notes, and it came one after another. Especially Abhijits, this completely objective, or anyway completely detached vision of the phenomenon: Circulation stops As if you were looking at a small instrument or tool (Mother gestures as if fingering a small object), and you remarked, Oh, its stopped now thats why it no longer works. Like that. In other words, none of those uncertainties or anxieties or aspirations. All that was emotions, sentiments, psychological phenomenait was all completely absent. A very simple little contraption (same fingering gesture) which you look at as you would a machine, and the machine stops because it no longer goes like that. There. And as a result, this body was completely detached from all human anguishfrom everything: not only from anguish, but from the habit, the whole human formation about deathit was all gone. As if I were all the way up above, like that, and looking all the way downhup! it went away.
Its what we might express as perfect detachment from the phenomenon.
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0 1968-05-29, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I am going to tell her, I cant admit you for the simple reason that there are no classes! Already last year, R. had asked me, and I had told her, But its not like that at all! I may talk or may not, but its never a class! Now and then I say something, and then
What an idea! The guru turned into a super-teacher! As it is, the idea of the guru makes me shudder, but a super-teacher guru, oh, how horrible!
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0 1968-06-03, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Bengal they know, or feel, that they are the countrys intellectual leaders, so they are puffed up with themselves. Me, I like simple people.
***
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0 1968-06-08, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
For maybe a few hours (I dont exactly know because I didnt pay attention to time), the consciousness was as if I dont know, turned over (I dont know what word I should use), and there was no center anymore, that center with everything organized around no longer existed at all; that is to say, the divine Consciousness wasnt a central consciousness with everything organized around itnot at all, not at all! It was something extraordinarily simple and at the same time extraordinarily complex.
(Mother remains silent for a long time)
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0 1968-06-15, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Thats perfectly true! Its perfectly true, its again part of my present experience. Its as if, somewhere, I were suddenly told, But just say, I want this! (But not with words: words are a travesty.) Then a little something in the being goes like this (gesture of gathering), and there it is. And its true. FOR THE BODY (I dont mean for thought or feelings: once and for all, we are leaving all that aside), only for the body, something that says, But you just have to say, I want this, this must be (not with words), and something does indeed go like this (same gesture of gathering), goes like this in a blue lighta bright sapphire and there it is. There it is. Its very simple.
Only, one cant explain because one uses words that have another meaning. Saying, You just have to will would be nonsense.
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0 1968-06-18, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But as the mind is very still, I dont know in the mental form: its in a very very simple form, very objective (gesture of looking at a picture): all of a sudden came Christ running away because he was brought an idiotBut no! And there was the movement of turning vibrations (same gesture as before), receiving the light, and he becomes intelligentlike that.
In fact, its with things of this sort that I spend my time. I dont note them down, because there would be too many of them to begin with.
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0 1968-08-28, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Let the higher intelligences putter along in their own sweet way, which will go on for millennia, and let them leave simple and goodwilled people, those who believe in the Divine Grace, free to move on quietly on their path of light.
Then, here, I have several notes, I dont know what it is.
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0 1968-09-07, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I know all that is correct, it happened the way its said and is quite correct. But now, its as if I were looking from above, like this (Mother bends down as if looking from a great height). And then, it becomes so simple. Simply the Vision realizing itself (its not a vision, not a will, not a decision, but the nearest approximation is vision). A Vision realizing itself (gesture as if to show the Force of Vision coming down). Then, below, all that results in calls. From above, its like that, something descending; from above you see: there are, yes, points of consciousness that shine and call, and then there is Contact (gesture of junction between the Force above and the shining points below).
Its very strange, I really feel as if I am somewhere above, seeing things from above.
--
All that I said there was the description of the working of death. All those complications! Here its so simple (descending gesture of the Vision-Force expressing itself).
Its strange. I have my eyes closed, but I see. Only, I see differently. Its very simple. Its forces like a Pressure like this (same descending gesture).
Very strange.
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0 1968-09-21, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
And its mostly mental, it comes with a sort of sense of fatality: You are the one who caused this to happen, youre getting your just deserts. Like that. Then the bodys answer is very simple, it says, Were all in the same state! The whole of Matter is like this, its full of ignorance and incapacity. That becomes faults in the human mind, but its not faults. Or else, its hopeless: if what has been is indefinitely the cause of the whole future, its hopeless.
So all that can be held at arms length, it can be calmed, but I clearly see its not going away. And the body truly has trust, it has faith, thats what saves it, otherwise
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0 1968-10-26, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now and then, for not even a few minutes (its a few seconds), there is a clear perception of the true Identity, which is perfect Harmony, and then all disorders cease to exist but materially they exist! Take a very simple instance: my teeth are all loose in my mouthit s a FACTand its true that logically, such a condition should be very painful: its not. And I see that it is so because of a Presence that I understand very well. But it doesnt get cured, far from it! Its incurable.1
This physical is truly a mystery.
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0 1968-11-06, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its a tumor, which may be cancerous or a simple tumor.
Anyway, she is making arrangements, she has already distributed all her money.
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0 1968-12-04, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body is very simple, it has a childs simplicity. This morning it was assailed with visionsnot visions, I dont know what to call them they werent exactly recollections, but things coming and all of them expressing hatred, violence (all that side, you know), and the body saw, it saw and felt, and said so spontaneously (it continues to be in this constant communion with the divine Presence), it said to the Lord, Why do You carry all that in Yourself? With a childs candor and simplicity: Why do You carry all that in Yourself? And just when it said that, there was a sort of vision, a vision extended over the whole earth of all the horrors constantly committed on it: Why do You carry? So then, the Answer is always, always the same (its like this, its here like this [gesture around the head]): In my Consciousness, things are different. Or, In my Consciousness, things have a different appearance. And there was this insistence: Work to have the true consciousness. The TRUE consciousness that contains everything.
And this morning, the body understood: the problem was very clearly understood. (None of this is thought out, I dont know how to explain its not positively sensations, but its perceptions I dont know [Mother feels the air with her fingers].) But the body clearly understood why division is, for a while, for the growth of the being, necessary. Because if there were from the start the perception it now has of everything within the Lord, absolutely everything, for instance all the things that even not so long ago (though in a different way) were still giving it a sort of horrorcertain kinds of cruelty, certain things were really giving the body a sense of horror Now its no longer like that, but it still cant be happy with such things; it can be indifferent (gesture of a Witness),but it cant be happy. And it has understood why that horror was necessary; why there was a time when the manifested world, the world of manifestation, needed to appear outside and separate from the Lord. (After a silence) One must one must have that immutable Peace, one must be as vast as the universe to be able to bear the idea that EVERYTHING is the supreme Lord.
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0 1968-12-11, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body is something very, very simple and very childlike, and it has that experience so imperatively, you understand, it doesnt need to seek: it just has to stop its activity for a minute and its there. So then, it wonders why people havent been aware of that since the beginning? It wonders, Why, why have they sought all kinds of thingsreligions, gods all kinds of thingswhen its so simple! So simple, for the body its so simple, so self-evident.
All those constructionsreligions, philosophies all those constructionsare a need of the mind to play the game. It wants to play the game well. While the body is so simple, so simple, so obvious! So obvious, so simple: Why, it wonders, Why, why have they been seeking all kinds of complications when its so simple? The very fact of saying, The Divine is deep within you (it remembers its own experience, you understand) is so complicated, while its so simple!
It cant explain, cant express, there are no words, but it has a sort of conscious perception of (Mother makes a slight twisting gesture with the tips of her fingers) what distorts and veils. And thats what has become reality for all human consciousnesses.
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0 1968-12-21, #Agenda Vol 09, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the experiences are innumerable, with all aspects. It would take hours to telleven then, you always feel that speaking, yes, warps something. Its no longer as simple, no longer as beautiful, no longer as clear. It becomes complicated.
The body has absolutely wonderful momentsand HOURS of anguish. And all of a sudden, a wonderful moment. But that moment cant be expressed. If we are to judge the degree of development from the proportion of time, well the wonderful moment lasts for a few minutes, and there are hours of anguish. There are even hours of suffering. So if, from that, you judge the proportion, theres still a very, very long, extremely long way to go.
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0 1969-01-04, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its for my own satisfaction. These, and the New Birth,1 oh, these two fragrances are so clean. (Pointing to the bunch of daisies) This is simple Sincerity You know, a sincerity that doesnt make any fuss!
So what are you bringing me?
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0 1969-02-08, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the nature of the thing is so special! It has extraordinary precision, and such intensity that the bodys whole attention is turned towards that, but it cant communicate yet. Unless it comes quite naturally with this [superman] consciousness actingacting in others, for some detail or other, for one thing or other (that is to say, people themselves dont know, everyone isnt aware of the whole action, he is aware only according to the development of his consciousness). The consciousness is very clearly active on a large scale, and with results that are quite surprising and look, when seen in isolation, like miracles (small miracles, but they look like miracles). So I have wondered if it was going to make others capable of the same inner work? The hindrance in most people is mental activitytruly, this body is infinitely grateful that it has been liberated from the mental presence so it may be ENTIRELY under the influence of this Consciousness, without this whole accumulated farrago of so-called knowledge people have. Its spontaneous, natural, unsophisticated, very, very simple, and almost childlike in its simplicity. And that [the minds disappearance] is a great advantage. At this speed, things can go very fastone learns a hundred, two hundred things AT THE SAME TIME, you understand, all of it seen at once. This morning, it was particularly intense.
But if its described as it can be described, with words following each other, it becomes like F.s text on Auroville: flat, artificial, devoid of life.
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0 1969-03-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
A very simple man.
It was just stating a FACT, you understand: there was a crowd, so there was no arguing; the two cranes were like this, tilting, and everyone was expecting them to and they straightened up! (Mother laughs)
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0 1969-03-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But it was it was really amusing! And the objections of age, possibility, capacity, no longer existed. If this intermediary method is considered useful (I mean, practical), the possibility is there; this Consciousness was showing the body that the possibility is there. Foroh, for hours and hoursit insisted, it didnt want to go! It insisted until the body had completely understood. And there is no need of a material intervention: it can be done (thats known, there have been fully recognized cases), the physical intervention wasnt necessary, it was replaced by an intervention in the subtle physical, which was sufficient. All that in every detail, with every explanation and everything. Then, when it was thoroughly done, it was over, the chapter was closed. But it was really unexpected, I had never thought of such a thing! And the way it was presented! It was so concrete and so simpleso simple, so concrete and all objections were resolved.
So the body said, Very well, we shall see. (Mother laughs) Well see.
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0 1969-04-09, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body is becoming conscious as if it had a truth-vision to see all the previous falsehood. All that it did, even when the inner being knew and the consciousness was growing more enlightened and there was a general goodwill all the silly things done because of that sense of a separate personality, all that is becoming clear, very clear, and with this nascent vision. While its in this state where the vision is clear, everything simply becomes wonderful but it cant last. It cant last mostly because of the constant contact (gesture around Mother). But even without contact, at night, for example, it can remain in that state for an hour, two hours, and suddenlyone doesnt know what happensah! it falls back into the old way, and then Then you get a pain here, a pain there, a sense of unease oh, youre disgusted. Then, simply, when you climb back again and all those divisions disappear, then everything is so clear! So clear, so transparent, and so simple! So simple
Life could be so marvelously simple and beautiful. Man has really made it idiotic.
I quite understand it was necessary to churn matter, but the time has come for this to end, for a way out to be found.
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0 1969-04-26, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
simple Truth that is far above them.
Then replies to questions from the New Age Association:
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0 1969-05-03, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So then, for instance, these two I mentioned [P. and his sister, the two captains], from a human standpoint, you would say theyre really insensitiveits because theyre insensitive and too egocentric that the accident took place. In other words, a reproach. In this light, Oh, these are good instruments, one can lean on them5 (solid gesture), they wont sag, theyre strong enough for one to lean on them. And all that is shown to the body, which is really beginning (laughing) to know things no body had ever learned beforeever. And to see life quite differently It feels (laughing) you know, it feels stupid, that is, consciously its in one way, and then out of atavism, out of construction, its tied down in the other way. So it feels very silly, very silly. But the Consciousness held it (with yesterdays event), it HELD it in its Consciousness like that, present, until it had really understood everything in detail, and once it had really understood, poff! the thing was gone, finished. So it understands that when something is held like that, it means theres something to understand, it has a lesson to learn, and when the lesson has been learned, when it has understood, seen clearlyonce it has seen clearly and its all simple and very clear thats it, poff! its gone, finished (gesture showing the Consciousness letting go of the body), as though the thing were quite taken away That was taking place at night, while I am not disturbed (the night hours are the only ones when I am not disturbed every minute; I can carry on with my work untroubled), and then I saw. And that night was so peaceful, but with such peace! Its ten rungs above the ordinary material peace, completely You know, the peace of a psychic will so powerful (Mother stretches her arms in a sovereign gesture), so tranquil that all our emotions, our reactions, all that absolutely looks like childishness. But the body understands very well (since this Consciousness came it has begun to understand lots of things), it understands that all that [emotions, reactions] was a necessary path to prepare receptive instruments.
Its really interesting.
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0 1969-05-10, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the quantity of formations in the earth atmosphere that we might call defeatist, its tre-men-dous! You wonder how everything isnt smashed, its so Everybody is all the time, all the time shaping catastrophesexpecting the worst, seeing the worst, observing nothing but the worst. Their reactions Oh, you know, its down to the smallest things: the body observes everything. So when the reaction is in harmony, everything is fine; when there is that reaction I now call defeatist, if someone takes an object, he drops it. It happens all the time. Theres absolutely no reason whatsoever why it should happen: its the presence of the defeatist consciousness. Someone takes an object, and drops it; he wanted to do one thing, and he is made to do another.. And if (the body having been aware of it), if it makes the mistake of telling the person the thing AS IT IS, the person is completely upset! It happened again two days agoa very simple thing, you know, that is, just as it is, and the person is completely upset!
But you know, this Consciousness is amusing, it has put this body in contact with, if not all, at least a considerable number of desires that it should die! Everywhere, they are everywhere! It sees that, sees it as it is, but its not affected at all anymore, it doesnt care in the least. It seems to be fully protected from all the things that come. It doesnt care in the least. Most of the time, they even make it laugh. But its incredible! And then, from time to time, a little flame, its so lovely! And that Presence That Presence, that Presence These cells are like children: when they feel, everything, but everything disappears except that Presence; then there is like a sigh of relief. But outwardly, its invisible: if the body were suffering, it would amount to the same thing. Generally, when it suffers, it doesnt complain: it calls. It calls and calls and calls. And its quite aware that its absolutely useless, that if it only knew how to go into immobility, go into silence, it would be enough. As soon as it does it
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0 1969-05-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As a result, I can no longer, I can no longer even for instance, previously, when someone told me he had difficulties or was unhappy or it was very simple, spontaneously I would say, But just think of something else, think of the yoga, and youll find peace I cant even say that any longer! Because I cant tell people, Do as I do and youll be in peace! Its true that I dont have a single carenot one care. One day (it was yesterday or the day before, I dont remember), everything seemed to go haywireeverything everywhere: everybody, all circumstances, all thingsevery thing, on the scale of the earth. Not on a small scale, on the scale of the earth. On a small scale: complete disorder; on a general scale: complete disorder. But even that the body can still see and smile at. But you see, it cant eat anymore, or it throws up all that it eats, or Complete disorder. I cant say it finds that perfectly all right, but it doesnt find it unbearable; it says, Its like that, so its like that. Because theres always, always this, this which doesnt budge (gesture above the head, like an unshakable will), there is always the consciousness of reaching, reaching the Lord, the Supreme Consciousness reaching the Lord. This is stable. This is durable. And then: If all this still has to dissolve, it will dissolve; if it can evolve, it will evolve; if it has to go through all these troubles, which really arent very pleasant, it will go through them. This doesnt budge (same gesture above the head). And it even comeswhen things begin to be troublesome enough, it comes like this: To be what the Lord wills. What You will.
There.
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0 1969-07-12, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body participates, you see; I could say that its the body which dreams, its not an inner being: its the subtle body that dreams. It has a very concrete character, with a very simple symbolism, simple but so clear! Its interesting.
(silence)
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0 1969-07-23, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, exactly, it shows you really did go there. Its really like that. As for me, I find it more familiar, more (whats the word?) simple, you know, than our own life. Our physical life here seems (Mother puffs up her cheeks). We make a lot of fuss about very little. Oh then, you can be sure that you really went there!
But the place where I met him looked a little like your room downstairs.
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0 1969-08-02, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive received a line from P.L. He is arriving on the 8th. He just writes this: The distress of these last few weeks is slowly turning into strength and calm. I confess that I suffered a good deal from my failure regarding the Vatican, but after what you conveyed to me from Mother, everything is growing clearer Yes, I had told him that it wasnt at all a question of outer triumph or failure, that the simple fact of his PRESENCE there acted as a kind of relay enabling the Light to enter there the very fact of his being there. Thats what I had told him.
As for me, Ill add something. You understand, they made an attempt to unify all of Christendom, and the Pope went to Geneva to unite with the Protestantswhich wouldnt have been so good. Thats not the thing needed, because it would have streng thened Christianitydivision takes away some of its power. Its the unification of ALL religions thats needed, not the unification of Christianity they havent reached that point. So after looking a good deal, I saw it was, on the contrary, a divine grace that it didnt work out.
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0 1969-08-27, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So well see the druid! That makes the fourth person: we have a healer of cancer coming; we have a healer pure and simple coming; we have (Mother tries to remember) ah, yes, a Persian inventor who has made extraordinary inventions for education (he sent a paper), especially for childrens education; he is coming in September.
All that will be very amusing!
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0 1969-09-06, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Ive had one more example today Its a woman who was murdered; I immediately took care of her psychic, it went away there. But a part of her vital stayed on, and she stayed on with them [the family]. I thought they would be happythey were scared! Its a curious thing. So I said, Oh, its very simple (laughing), Ill take her with me, like that. You know, I have a crowd around meits not cumbersome in the least.
I dont understand. What is it? I dont understand, because even when I was small and knew nothing (I didnt even know it really existed), I was never afraid of invisible things. Why? Someone without a body is less cumbersome than someone with a bodysomeone with a body takes up room, needs room; someone whos not alive doesnt take up any room, he may be there without hampering in the least. So is it only the appearance people love the body? Strange.
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0 1969-10-18, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If the time has come for that, its very good thats why I dont want to intervene. But I dont know, I dont know if the time has come for that. There are moments when the body is thoroughly convincedmoments when it seems impossible that the time might not have come but at other moments, it gets completely veiled. And that comes from the fact that despite everything, the awareness of the mixture is becoming very clear. Which means that the realization is partial; its partial, fragmentary. And for a very simple reason (theres no arguing): its because somehow or other, the appearance will have to change. This body has capacities thats visibleit has capacities which many other bodies dont have, but its still uncertain, not established, not complete. So in this transitional period, there will certainly be one who will get through to the other side, that is, who will reach realization there has to be a realization at some point, you see. Well, it must be In any case, with A.R., the attitude is good, so theres nothing to say. But as he isnt developed mentally, thats where a mixture of influences remains3thats where. Its not in the body, its in the mind. And I dont want to replace that mixture with a (Mother gestures to show an authority imposing itself). All that I can do is to give the necessary atmosphere, and thats that.
I got a letter from N.S.4 in which she said she was almost desperate to have missed the appointment I had given her with A.R. But I am not sure [that it wasnt just as well]. She says that instead of the time she had been told, she arrived an hour later because she had been somewhere (I forget where), had got completely drenched, and had to change her clothes; she sent word to A.R. requesting him to wait, but when she arrived, he had left. So she doesnt know whether L. didnt get her message, or didnt convey it. And she writes me that at the first opportunity she would like to come and see him. I had her told that for the moment he had withdrawn, but that as soon as he resumed his activity, I would let her know. But I didnt tell A.R., because
--
You know, when that understanding comesit comes, and it does like this (gesture like a luminous swelling), it comes like that, then it fades away, then it comes back, and then again it fades away; but when it comes its so evident, so simple that you wonder how you could manage not to know it!
Some more time is needed. How much time? I dont know But the notion of time, too, is quite arbitrary.
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0 1969-10-25, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Of course you are right, there, when you say that one should seek the Divine for his own sake. For you people, its easy to understand since you are bathing in this atmosphere here. But for the Western man, a proof is needed, he wants to know what he will gain! The easiest and most striking thing to demonstrate is healing. There. Its really quite simple. I dont know if you understand it. Christ, too, did the same thing!
***
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0 1969-11-19, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
You understand, many things Sri Aurobindo had said remained in spite of all that one has read, all the theories and explanations, something remained (how can I put it?) hard to explain (its not explain, thats very small). For instance, suffering and the will to cause suffering, all that side of the Manifestation. There was indeed a sort of foreknowledge of the original identity of hate and love, because they went to the two extremes, but for all the rest, it was difficult. Today it was so luminously simple, thats it, so obvious! (Mother looks at a note she wrote) The words are nothing. And I wrote with a pencil that writes badly
I dont know if you can make out these words. They represented something very precise for me; now theyre nothing but words.
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0 1969-12-24, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He must be a simple man.
Hes seventy-eight, and his mission is to keep wandering about India, giving initiation to whoever wants it. His method is very simple, he says one just has to repeat the divine Name: Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna Its enough to purify.
Hare Krishna? He does look like a good man!
--
Yoga for simple souls!
Its good, I am happy with A.R.s choice. Yes, hes a good man . A.R. must be feeling a sort of warmth (gesture to the heart), and hes happy. (Laughing) Were too high up for him!
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0 1969-12-31, #Agenda Vol 10, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its very simple, after all: well try to have R. understand and create a collaboration. R. wont say no to me but he wont do anything (!) Thats how it is, you understand. But anyway, if he can do it, if they can work it out and agree, then it will be very good, there wont be any difficulties. But if he cant, then Paolo will have to be here while R. is away, and well just have to do it! You understand, thats how it is for me! (Mother laughs) Because R. has enough work (he has a tremendous amount of work). Its not that we are taking work away from him, its that if he refuses to do it, well do it, thats all.
Ill see if they can agree.
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0 1970-01-03, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I told R. about it, and the next day he told me, Yes, but it will take time to prepare. (I said nothing of all Ive just told you, I just spoke of doing something.) Afterwards I had a vision of that room, so I no longer need anyone to see how it should be I know. Whats needed is an engineer more than an architect, because an architect It has to be as simple as possible.
I told Paolo what you had seen, that large room, empty, without anything. It touched him a lot, he in fact could see that large empty room. He understands quite well. So empty simply means a shape.
--
But the place should be absolutely as simple as possible. And the floor in such a way that people may be comfortable, without having to think that it hurts here or there!
(P.:) Its very beautiful.
--
So Ill have small plans prepared by an engineer, simple ones to show, and then Ill show you when they are ready. There. And well see.
As far as the walls are concerned, they will probably have to be in concrete.
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0 1970-01-10, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
No, Mother, its a very simple matter: three times I wrote to him, Send me the proofs for the cover of The Synthesis of Yoga, and he didnt do it.
I think this poor boy has no authority there. Thats my impression.
--
Very simple, very simple.
It will hold about two hundred people.
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0 1970-01-17, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
He explained something I found very beautiful and would like to submit to you. As a matter of fact, when you spoke of that Center, you said, I dont know whether the walls will have a slope or the roof. You seemed, to hesitate. Then Paolo said he received a kind of inspiration and saw something very simple, like a big shell with one part emerging above the ground and another part buried underground. He drew a sort of sketch which Id like to show you.
Did he see R. also? Because R. had two ideas, he came to see me with two ideas, and I told him which of the two I liked better. But nothing is decided yet. R. has to draw a sketch of his ideas. So Ill see what Paolo says and then Ill tell you R.s ideas.
(Satprem unrolls a plan) So you see, this is the outside, which would simply be like a shell. The inside is exactly as you saw it: that big bare carpet, and the ball at the center. What determined Paolos inspiration is that you said one would have to go underground and then to reemerge inside. So he had the idea of going deep down through a spiral staircase here, which would climb back up, and once here, there would be a series of staircases fanning out in every direction (in the lower part of the shell) and ending inside the temple itself. Then, the whole lower part would be in black marble while the higher part would be in simple white marble. The whole thing is like a big bud, you see, as if growing out of the earth.
Image 3
--
Yes, that would make things simpler.
Oh, much, much simpler!
(silence)
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0 1970-01-28, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The signs abound, they are simple and obvious. The most important event of the sixties is not the trip to the moon, but the trips on drugs, the great hippie migration, and the student unrest throughout the world but where will they go? There is no more room on the teeming beaches, no more room on the bustling roads, no more room in the ever-growing anthills of our cities. The way out is elsewhere.
But there are many kinds of elsewheres. Those of drugs are uncertain and fraught with danger, and above all dependent on outer meansan experience ought to be obtainable at will and anywhere, in the marketplace as in the solitude of our room, or else it is not an experience but an anomaly or slavery. Those of psychoanalysis are limited, for the moment, to a few dimly lit caves, and above all lack that lever of consciousness which enables us to move about at will, as our own masters and not as helpless witnesses or sickly victims. Those of religion are more illumined, but they too depend on a god or a dogma, and above all confine us within one type of experience, for one can be a prisoner of other worlds as much as of this oneeven more so.
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0 1970-01-31, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Its very simple, they dare not tell you, You have no money anymore, its not yours, but they prevent you from spending it as you wish, where you wishyou no longer have that right. You no longer have the right to use it as you like; its not taken away from you, but you cant use it. So what use is it?
(silence)
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0 1970-02-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Among other things and in a quite practical and positive way, he explained to me that the cause of all illnesses, all disorders, all conflicts, here in the material world, is that the two simultaneous movements (one is the movement of durationwhat we could call Stability and the other, the movement of transformation), the two movements in the original Consciousness are only one and not in contradiction; and I was shown how (not with the thought: with the consciousness), here, they are separate, and thats what is the cause of death. Its because they cant be in harmony they dont KNOW how to be in harmony: they can, but they dont know. One is the movement of transformation, the other the movement of stability. When they are not in harmony, or not in harmony where they should be, it causes a break in equilibrium and the being diesthings die, everything dies because of that. But put that way, it makes no sense. Its the experience of the thing which is given. And this also, the cough and all thatall of it, everythingits so simple! So obvious once you have the experience.
We could say (almost) that if the two find their equilibrium of simultaneous existence, it re-creates the Divine. He is in us, but not in harmony.1
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0 1970-03-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But this fact of personal expenses not allowed has been there since the beginning. I remember, long ago, my mother had started I forget if it was a henhouse or something of the sort, because she wanted to increase her income a bit, so (that must have been some fifty or sixty years ago). She was very simple, not complicated; she opened her business and would sell her hens, her eggs and so on: she would spend the money personally and look after all her affairs. Until one fine day (laughing) when she was asked to give accounts! She narrowly escaped a severe punishment because she had used that money for her personal expensesshe didnt understand! I found it very amusing. That was at least fifty years ago.
You understand, I find it an odd frame of mind. You workwhat for? Normally, you work to earn your livelihoodits not legal. You must work, but the business isnt personal at all! You have no right to draw your own expenses on the industry you yourself started!
--
The cells are quite, absolutely convinced that (Ill put it in the simplest way) the Lord is all-powerful, you understand? Only, what theyre not convinced of is whether He WANTS (laughing) it to be this way or that, that is to say, whether He wants the transformation to be done in an already existing body, or in stages.
But then, in stages means centuries and centuries.
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0 1970-04-22, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But then, everything becomes simple when someone is there, receptive, that is, comes without thought, without simply like a sponge that absorbs. Then the Presence becomes concretely perceptible, quite so. Things are exactly the same, but the Presence is concrete and quite not only perceptible: it imposes itself. Then things come to a halt, there is a stabilization and everything becomes perfect.
But it depends a lot I mean, it STILL dependson peoples receptivity And these last few days, Ive had the impression, or something like a perception, an impression of an AWESOME Power! The Power that would seem capable of bringing a dead man back to life, you know. An awesome Power that uses this [the body] without conscious identification, but quite, quite naturally, without as if there were no resistance. Its a natural state, and its neither this nor that nor that, its its EVERYTHING (gesture showing an immense movement) which which acts according to circumstances.
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0 1970-05-09, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But the main thing was this Nature. A little taller than my body. For years, every time I have seen Nature, its this person Ive seen; to me, for years she has been Nature. And its not a relationship, but like my mother who might be my sister, or my sister who might be my mother, like that (things arent quite clear-cut, words are worthless). She is tall, a beautiful woman, and she is very, very simple, very simple, and quite awesome. But with me, like a little child. She went around with me, and she said, See, Ive put on your dress, Ive put it on to tell you that its accepted Ive put on your dress. And its color was the same as that of the skin [of Mothers exposed part], it was something like skin, and the dress was exactly the same color. It also had a slight luminosity like that, something as if efflorescent.4 The skin too was efflorescent. And that was the point: no sex, neither man nor womanno sex. It was a form like this (Mother draws a svelte figure in space), a form resembling our body, but sexless: the two legs joined together.
It was pretty.
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0 1970-07-01, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Then one understands! All at once, all questions vanished, it became very clear, very simple.
(silence)
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0 1970-07-04, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But its rather strange, I could put it this way: its about the only part (gesture from the cheek to the chin) thats conscious of the way people are and of what comes from them, and which still has reactions we could call personal. That is to say, if the atmosphere is troubled, well, theres disorder [in that part in Mother], its subject [to the outside disorder] and that seems to be the only part. Otherwise, all the rest is as if bathed, constantly bathed in the Divine, and automatically everything goes to the Divine. The divine Will goes through (gesture of descent and diffusion through Mother) and causes it to actautomatically. So then, at certain times, for some reason or other, the body calls (the mantra I told you), and as a result (gesture of dilation) suddenly the cells go into a blissit only lasts a minute (not even a minute, a few seconds), but the simple fact of saying that, and its bliss. Afterwards, everything starts up again (gesture indicating the normal rhythm).
Its very interesting.
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0 1970-07-18, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
in order that the human being may rise to the Divine. It is a simple truth
(Mother laughs)
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0 1970-07-25, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
So I answered. This morning I presented that question [to the Lord], and it was as if it was waiting for the occasion. I received a reply simple, as always, but explaining the WHOLE, entire functioning. When I saw that, it was such an illumination that everything became so simple! (I wrote it down, but its nothing, it looks like a commonplace.) But it puts an end to all questions. It was absolutely wonderful!
So instead of sending the notebook back to him, I kept it to show it to you, because it looks like nothing at all, but if it gives others the experience it gave me, its something! For several hours I lived in a Peace nothing can disturb. Its so simple, so simple!
(Satprem reads the notebook)
--
But all, all human conceptions fall away. Its so simple! So simple. And this whole huge mental edifice people have built to try and explain falls to the ground.
It [the working] is automatic.
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0 1970-09-05, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Last time, when you spoke of that long period, you said that what happened was something prodigious and almost idiotic, so simple is italmost idiotic, you said.
I dont remember.
Prodigious and at the same time so simple that its almost idiotic.
Only there was For the first time, the brain was affected, in the sense that I had uncontrolled movements. I can manage to control them, but its very troublesome. And I spend absolutely sleepless nights, because of that. I am obliged to remain awake so that But something happened the day you came, which day was it?
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0 1970-09-16, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
But Mother, about three weeks ago, when you were still fully in that experience, you told me, I dont know whether I will remember, but perhaps the psychic will, because it attended. And you said, Its something prodigious and almost idiotic, so simple is it.
(Mother nods silence)
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0 1970-10-03, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(After Satprems departure, Sujata tells Mother about young women of her generation, who do not have the advantage of being close to Mother or in the circle of important persons, and who suffer from never seeing Mother. This was in factwhich is why we record ita very central problem at the Ashram: a sort of dichotomy between the simple elements who washed the dishes, stitched clothes or greased cars, and who were there simply with their love for Mother, and the leading elements, who increasingly revealed their ambitious and therefore warped nature. Yet it was with that thick circle that Mother had to work almost daily, and that is what made her difficulty, if not suffocation. With Sujata, Mother agreed to receive in rotation a number of those young and simple elementsunfortunately, that new opening will soon be blocked by circumstances: a new serious turning point in Mothers yoga, then other impossibilities.)
On the Way to Supermanhood.
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0 1970-10-07, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Secrets are simple, because the truth is simple. And what looked like a human impossibility will become childs play.
Its magnificent, mon petit, magnificent!
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0 1970-10-31, #Agenda Vol 11, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(Answer:) Not sex exactly, but what might be called the masculine and feminine principle. It is a difficult question [whether sex is altered in rebirth]. There are certain lines the reincarnation follows and so far as my experience goes and general experience goes, one follows usually a single line. But the alteration of sex cannot be declared impossible. There may be some who do alternate. The presence of feminine traits in a male does not necessarily indicate a past feminine birththey may come in the general play of forces and their formations. There are besides qualities common to both sexes. Also a fragment of the psychological personality may have been associated with a birth not ones own. One can say of a certain person of the past, that was not myself, but a fragment of my psychological personality was present in him. Rebirth is a complex affair and not so simple in its mechanism as in the popular idea.
11 January 1936
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0 1971-03-03, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I see lots of people and Im forced to. I always come back to the simple thing, which is the NEED.
But I am counting on your book to shake all that upits very well explained there, very well.
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0 1971-03-06, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
I should have put true spirituality is VERY simple! (Mother laughs) Thats even better.
And then quarrels over nothing, people wanting more moneyoh, a subhumanity! And they think theyre. You see, they are grossly ignorant; they come here without experience, without knowledge, without preparation, and they think they are going to realize the Supermind right away. Its really pathetic.
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0 1971-04-17, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Now, you have completely confused the psychic and the spiritual. The psychic, the soul, the Fire within, Agni, does not belong to the mental bubble or to any bubble: it is the Divine in matter. It is that little Fire which opens the door to the great solar Fire of the New Consciousness. It is the instrument of the yoga of the superman (when I speak of turning on the psychic switch, I am there taking the word in the vulgar and ridiculous sense of people seeking visionary and occult experiencesnot in the true sense). Others in every age have had the experience of the psychic, of the inner Fire, but aside from the Rishis, no one used it to transform matter; the religions have made a purely devotional and mystical thing out of it. As for the spiritual, that includes all the planes of consciousness above the ordinary mind. It is the path of ascent. And that is where I repeatedly and emphatically, and from experience, say that those great Experiences, which have to be turned into spiritual summits, are part of the mental bubble (including the overmind): they are the rarefied summits on which the being thins out into a marvelous whiteness, immense, royal, without a ripple of trouble, in an eternal peacewhich can last for millenniums without its changing the world one iota, by definition. But the spiritual is not the supramental, and when one touches the supramental, it seems to be almost a whole other Spirit, it is so compact, warm, powerful, present, embodied and radiantly solid in broad daylight. That is the Radiance which Sri Aurobindo and Mother came to bring down on earththey said over and over that their yoga was new, new, newand it is through the simple little fire inside us that we can enter into direct contact with That, without sitting in the lotus position or leaving life. When one touches That, the spiritual heights seem pale. That is all I have to say. So we do not at all need to be superyogis to have this contact, and those who have found Nirvana, or what have you, have not advanced one inch toward That, because the clue to That is not up there at all or outside, but in your own small capacity of flame.
So if instead of splitting hairs, you set out boldly on the road, afire, you would perhaps discover that we are indeed at the Hour of God and that a single spark of sincere effort, at ones own level, opens doors which have been closed for millenniums.
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0 1971-05-15, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
From this simple, eternal Fact follow all the conclusions and policies that will flow with the current of the earths destiny. Sri Aurobindo said so already in 1947, The division must and will go. Dire will be the consequences for India and for the earth if we fail to heed this eternal Theorem: The old communal division into Hindus and Muslims seems now to have hardened into a permanent political division of the country, said Sri Aurobindo. It is to be hoped that this settled fact will not be accepted as settled for ever or as anything more than a temporary expedient. For if it lasts, India may be seriously weakened, even crippled: civil strife may remain always possible, possible even a new invasion and foreign conquest. We now know, twenty-four years after this prophetic declaration, that China is at our gates and only awaits her hour to invade the entire continent, seizing precisely on this division of India to strike at the spiritual heart of the world and, perhaps, frustrating the realization of the entire destiny of the earth or postponing it until a future cycle after much suffering and complication.
The Great History tells us that India must again be one, and that particular current of history is so imperative that twice already Destiny has managed to put India before the possibility of her reunification. The first time was in 1965 when Pakistans foolish aggressiveness enabled India to counterattack and carry the battle right into the suburbs of Lahore and up to Karachi had she but had the courage to seize boldly her destiny. The hour was indeed for a decisive choice. The Mother declared categorically: India is fighting for the triumph of Truth, and She must fight until India and Pakistan become ONE again, for such is the truth of their being. At Tashkent, we yielded on the crest of a petty compromise which was to lead us into a second, more bloody and painful reef, Bangladesh. There too destiny graciously arranged to enable India to hasten to the aid of her massacred brethreneven the famous skyjacking incident of January4 was, as it were, arranged by the Grace so as to spare India from delaying her intervention until it was too late (or to spare her the shame of not intervening at all and allowing Pakistans planes to fly over her head loaded with weaponry and murderers to slaughter her brothers). But there again, yielding to the demands of the moment and to the small, shortsighted interests, we refused to accept the challenge of the Great Direction of our History, and we now find ourselves on the brink of a new compromise which will lead us inevitably to a third and even more disastrous and bloody reef. For one day India must inevitably face that which twice she has fled. Only each time the conditions are more disastrous for her and for the worldperhaps so disastrous that the whole earth will even be engulfed in another general conflict, while the whole story could have been resolved at the little symbolic point that is Bangladesh, at the right hour, with the right gesture and a minimum of suffering.
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0 1971-05-26, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
(M.:) I didnt read it with a very critical mind, Mother, but one reaction I did have, I can say frankly: I felt that what Satprem says is natural and it should be kept simple. It reminded me of a similar analogy as when I do a mathematical problem that I find extremely difficult, but once Ive found the solution, I always think, But it was so simple! All you had to do was draw this line and everything comes out! I found the book a little like that.
(Mother nods her head)
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0 1971-06-23, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
If its not handled by a publisher, theres no publicity, and if theres no publicity, theres no sale. Its that simple.
(Mother goes within for a long time)
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0 1971-07-21, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The body is more and more conscious, but not at all mentallylike like things actually lived. I dont know how to say it. Its hard to explain. Its sensing or having the (I dont know how to explain exactly what it is) how, in the manifestation, the human consciousness distorts the Divine Action (gesture of direct flow). Its our constitution which is so pitiable. We reduce, distort, diminish EVERYTHINGeverything. We know things (Knowledge is there all around us, in us), but we are so complicated that we distort it. Everyone is that way. So then, this is a kind of very accurate sensation of everything that is organized by the inner Divine from within, and at the same time how it gets distorted as it surfaces (words are silly, and yet thats the closest I can come). Its our silly way of saying something that is so simple and so marvelous! But we are so perverted that we always choose what is distorted.
I dont know, even my words distort the thing, but its its something I feel is so simple, so luminous, so pureso absolute. And then, we make of it what we can see around us: a complicated and almost incomprehensible life.
But what about you, dont you have any news?
--
But for me the practical beacon is very simple: the Divine. Thats the only concrete thing for me.
Yes, of course, theres the Force, I always feel the Force and and its very pleasant, if I may say so.
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0 1971-11-24, #Agenda Vol 12, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
As for X and Y, you have no claim over them and no right to control their thoughts and actions. X is of an age to choose and decide; he can think and act for himself and has no need of you to think and act for him. You are not his guardian, nor Ys; you are not even the head of the family. On what ground do you claim to decide where he shall go or where he shall stay? Your pretension to have the responsibility for him or her before God is an arrogant and grotesque absurdity. Each one is responsible for himself before God unless he freely chooses to place the responsibility upon another in whom he trusts. No one has the right to impose himself on others as a religious or spiritual guide against their free will. You have no claim at all to dictate to X or Y either in their inner or their outer life. It is again the confusion and incoherence of your mind in its present state that prevents you from recognising these plain and simple facts.
Again, you say that you ask only for the Truth and yet you speak like a narrow and ignorant fanatic who refuses to believe in anything but the religion in which he was born. All fanaticism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God and of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal and universal and infinite and cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only,those that happened to be in a line from the Bible and to have Jewish or Arabian prophets for their founders. Hindus and Confucians and Taoists and all others have as much right to enter into relation with God and find the Truth in their own way. All religions have some truth in them, but none has the whole truth; all are created in time and finally decline and perish. Mahomed himself never pretended that the Koran was the last message of God and there would be no other. God and Truth outlast these religions and manifest themselves anew in whatever way or form the Divine Wisdom chooses. You cannot shut up God in the limitations of your own narrow brain or dictate to the Divine Power and Consciousness how or where or through whom it shall manifest; you cannot put up your puny barriers against the divine Omnipotence. These again are simple truths which are now being recognised all over the world; only the childish in mind or those who vegetate in some formula of the past deny them.
You have insisted on my writing and asked for the Truth and I have answered. But if you want to be a Mussulman, no one prevents you. If the Truth I bring is too great for you to understand or to bear, you are free to go and live in a half-truth or in your own ignorance. I am not here to convert anyone; I do not preach to the world to come to me and I call no one. I am here to establish the divine life and the divine consciousness in those who of themselves feel the call to come to me and cleave to it and in no others. I am not asking you and the Mother is not asking you to accept us. You can go any day and live either the worldly life or a religious life according to your own preference. But as you are free, so also are others free to stay here and follow their own way.
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0 1972-02-08, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
This fact is so obvious, that even a simple, ignorant farmer here is in his heart closer to the Divine than all the intellectuals of Europe.
All those who want to become Aurovilians must know that and behave accordingly, otherwise they are unworthy of being Aurovilians.
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0 1972-03-10, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
One has no right to preach unity to the world when one gives such an example of utter division. Thats all. Its quite simple, so simple that a child could understand but THEY dont understand.
As for me, the power of consciousness goes on increasing; for the time being I repeat, for the time being the physical power is reduced to almost nought. I am forced to stay here, minding nothing, and make shift with seeing people. So I need some persons to do the practical work I used to do before and can no longer do (Mother is short of breath). I cant speak with the same strength as before the physical is undergoing a transformation, you know. Sri Aurobindo himself had said and rightly sohe said (because one of us had to go, and I offered to go), No, your body is capable of enduring it, it has the strength to undergo transformation. Its not easy. I can assure you, its not easy. Yet my body is good-willed, it is really good-willed. But for the moment it is in the process of well, it is no longer quite on this side but not yet on the other. The transition isnt easy. So I am stuck here, like an old woman, incapable of doing any work.
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0 1972-04-04, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, Mother. But at present all the requests are presented by S.S. No one else presents requests from newcomers. So things should be simple?
Are you sure about that?
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0 1972-04-05, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The third person was Mothers helper, Champaklal, who had also been Sri Aurobindos attendant. A pure-hearted man, simple and utterly devoted There is nothing to say about him, except my respect. He had come from his Gujarati village straight to the Ashram, some fifty years earlier, at the age of eighteen. There was nothing between his village and Sri Aurobindo. He understood nothing of what was happeninghe simply served and did as he was bidden.
The fourth and last person was Mothers new attendant. She is going to appear in the following conversation. I was particularly blind about her because she was young and affectionate but she was completely under Pranabs thumb and ruled by her passions. I had, of course, noticed that she was listening in on my conversations with Mother, thus subtly clouding the atmosphere, invisibly breaking in upon Mothers free expression; for, needless to say, Mother sensed all that went on in the atmosphere. How many times did she stop in the middle of a sentence, invisibly interrupted: I cant speak that was not just because she was short of breath. Hence, the atmosphere of our conversations was no longer what it had been for the last fifteen years, until 1970. But in addition, we were responsible for a new and sad turn of events. We knew that Mother frequently spoke about Auroville, or with one disciple or another, and we regretted the loss of those wordsto us each of her words seemed to have so much importance for the world, even if we were not yet fully able to understand all that she was saying. So with her approval, we managed to obtain a small, easy-to-operate cassette recorder. It had been agreed with Mother that her attendant would record all the important conversations in Mothers room, then pass them on to me to be added to the Agenda. At first, I noticed that the attendant was keeping the tapes, but an innate shyness kept me from saying anything lest I appear to monopolize things or seem pushing, and also I didnt know exactly whose instructions she was obeying. Then, gradually, the attendant stopped giving me the recordings altogether, even those of Mother with Sujata. At that point, the situation in Mothers room was so fragile that I didnt want to say anything, for fear of sparking an outburst that would have ultimately bounced on Mother. I was already feeling also the invisible barrier against Sujata, whose name was systematically crossed off the list of visitors under one pretext or another, along with those of the few young women who were the Ashrams positive and silentelements. And how could we possibly argue when Sujata was told, Mother cannot see you Mother is sick? Once, Sujata mentioned it to Mother, but when the same incident occurred three, four, ten times, there was nothing to be said. Without knowing why, I too was feeling my own meetings with Mother threatened and precarious. In fact, we were alone, facing an obscure league of opposition. Why the opposition? There is no answerexcept human pettiness, which does not understand and hates everything that exceeds it. Even Mothers own son was jealous of my place near her, not to mention the others, the liars pure and simple, as Mother used to call them, who were, and still are, directing the Ashram. Finally, much later, I discovered that the notorious cassette recorder, whose recordings I was no longer even receiving, was clandestinely used to record my own conversations with Motheron whose behalf?
That was the end. The atmosphere had become so rotten that, obviously, it could not last much longerMo ther was suffocating there. I later discovered in my own body and from direct experience that all bad thoughts are agonizing to the body, they create a sort of oppression as if you were short of air. Yet, even when they closed Mothers door on me, a year and a month later almost to the day, on May 19, 1973, I COULD NOT believe it was the end. I was convinced that this was the last stage, that Mother was finally going to shake off the old slavery to food: the last tie to the old physiology. But, as we now know, her bodyguard would not let her. In his speech on December 4, 1973, he declared, In the beginning [from May 20], She refused to take any food or drink, but somehow we persuaded Her to take them.2 She did fight as much as she could, and then. At times, I seemed to hear her faltering little voice up there: Where is Satprem? Where is Satprem? and then silence. Had I attempted to force the barrier, this Agenda would never have seen the light of day. In a way, the following conversation is therefore prophetic.
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0 1972-05-06, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yes, yes. Perfectly so. Really, its very simple: the whole creation must want nothing but the Divine, want nothing but to manifest the Divine; all its actions (including its so-called mistakes) are a means to make it inevitable for the whole creation to manifest the Divine but not a Divine as man usually conceives of, with all kinds of limitations and restrictions: a TOTALITY of tremendous power and light.
Truly the Power is IN the world, a new and stupendous Power which has come into the world to manifest the divine Almightiness and make it manifestable, so to say.
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0 1972-05-17, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
When you become simple, you know, like a child all goes well.
But you mustnt be afraid. Neither afraid of falling ill, nor of becoming imbecile, nor even of dyingyou must be like this (vast and quiet gesture, like the sea).
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0 1972-05-27, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
The old methods, the methods that even yesterday were effective and powerful, all seem nonexistent. Yet, side by side, when that Force comes, I concretely feel (and I have proof, a factual proof) that a simple expression of will, or even a simple vision of something is (Mother lowers her hands) all-powerful. Materially so. Some people on their deathbeds are returned to life; some healthy people, brrt, suddenly pass awayto that extent, you know. Circumstances that seemed inextricable find marvelous solutionspeople themselves say its miraculous. Its not miraculous to me, its very simple: just like this (Mother lowers a finger). But its INDISPUTABLE. Indisputable and new in the world. No longer the old method, no longer a mental concentration or a mental vision, none of that (Mother lowers a finger): a fact.
A fact.
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0 1972-07-12, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Life life used to be simpler with that faith that predominated over all else, but now (gesture of a complete collapse).
(Mother plunges in)
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0 1972-08-09, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
In simple terms, we could say that all living matter on earth is "assembled" by the sun's energy (including and especially what we use for food); that same matter is then "disassembled" to release and provide us with that SAME energy. The question is, could one directly absorb those SAME energy particles without going through the intermediary process?
Eight minutes.
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0 1973-04-07, #Agenda Vol 13, #The Mother, #Integral Yoga
Yet it looks to me that there is something VERY simple to be done to make it all right. But I dont know what.
(silence)
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02.01 - A Vedic Story, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
IX) The offerings that precede, the offerings that follow, offerings pure and simpleall forceful, may you enjoy. May this sacrifice be yours entirely. The four quarters bow down to you, O Agni!
***
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02.02 - Lines of the Descent of Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The formulation or revelation of the Psyche marks another line of what we have been describing as the Descent of Consciousness. The phenomenon of individualisation has at its back the phenomenon of the growth of the Psyche. It is originally a spark or nucleus of consciousness thrown into Matter that starts growing and organising itself behind the veil, in and through the movements and activities of the apparent vehicle consisting of the triple nexus of Body (Matter) and Life and Mind. The extreme root of the psychic growth extends perhaps right into the body, consciousness of Matter, but its real physical basis and tenement is found only with the growth and formation of the physical heart. And yet the psychic individuality behind the animal organisation is very rudimentary. All that can be said is that it is there, in potentia, it exists, it is simple being: it has not started becoming. This is man's speciality: in him the psychic begins to be dynamic; to be organised and to organise, it is a psychic personality that he possesses. Now this flowering of the psychic personality is due to an especial Descent, the descent of a Person from another level of consciousness. That Person (or Superperson) is the jvatman, the Individual Self, the central being of each individual formation. The Jivas are centres of multiplicity thrown up in the bosom of the infinite Consciousness: it is the supreme Consciousness eddying in unit formations to serve as the basis for the play of manifestation. They are not within the frame of manifestation (as the typal formations in the Supermind are), they are above or beyond or beside it and stand there eternally and invariably in and as part and parcel of the one supreme RealitySachchidananda. But the Jivatman from its own status casts its projection, representation, delegated formulationemanation, in the phraseology of the neo-Platonistsinto the manifestation of the triple complex of mind, life and body, that is to say, into the human vehicle, and thus stands behind as the psychic personality or the soul. This soul, we have seen, is a developing, organising focus of consciousness growing from below and comes to its own in the human being: or we can put it the other way, that is to say, when it comes to its own, then the human being appears. And it has come to its own precisely by a descent of its own self from above, in the same manner as with the other descents already described. Now, this coming to its own means that it begins henceforth to exercise its royal power, its natural and inherent divine right, viz, of consciously and directly controlling and organising its terrestrial kingdom which is the body and life and mind. The exercise of conscious directive will, supported and illumined by a self-consciousness, I that occurs with the advent of the Mind is a function of the I Purusha, the self-conscious being, in the Mind; but this self-conscious being has been able to come up, manifest itself and be active, because of pressure of the underlying psychic personality that has formed here.
Thus we have three characteristics of the human personality accruing from the psychic consciousness that supports and inspires it:(1) self-consciousness: an animal acts, feels and even knows, but man knows that he acts, knows that he feels, knows even that he knows. This phenomenon of consciousness turning round upon itself is the hallmark of the human being; (2) a conscious will holding together and harmonising, fashioning and integrating the whole external nature evolved till now; (3) a purposive drive, a deliberate and voluntary orientation towards a higher and ever higher status of individualisation and personalisation,not only a horizontal movement seeking to embrace and organise the normal, the already attained level of consciousness, but also a vertical movement seeking to raise the level, attain altogether a new poise of higher organisation.
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02.03 - An Aspect of Emergent Evolution, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The problem in reality, however, is simple enough, if we allow the facts to speak for themselves and do not hesitate to accept the conclusions to which they inevitably lead. After Matter came Life; that is to say, out of Matter came Life, and that can only be because Life was involved in Matter. And if such a conclusion makes of Matter a potentially living thing, we shall have to accept the position. In the same way, Mind that followed Life came out of Life, because Mind was involved in Life; and if that means endowing Life with a secret mentality, well, there is no help for it. And if, as a natural consequence of the two premises we have to admit the existence of some kind of mind or consciousness secreted in Mattera minimal psychic life, according to McDougall that would be but what the Upanishads always declared: Creation -is a vibration of consciousness, and all things and all kinds of existence are only forms and modalities of consciousness.
However, we thus arrive at Mind in following the evolutionary process. Now after Mind there emerges another principle which has been termed Deity. By Deity the emergent evolutionists mean the embodiment of the religious feelingpiety, charity, worship, love of God or of God's creatures. Indeed, saints and prophets are visible deities, embodiments of the Deity in the making. These represent another element in the evolutionary processa new evolute.
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02.03 - National and International, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We have just passed through another, a far greater, a catastrophic Kurukshetra, the last Act (Shanti Parvam) of which we are negotiating at the present moment. The significance of this cataclysm is clear and evident if we only allow ourselves to be led by the facts and not try to squeeze the facts into the groove of our past prejudices and set notions. All the difficulties that are being encountered on the way to peace and reconstruction arise mainly out of the failure to grasp what Nature has forced upon us. It is as simple as the first axiom of Euclid: Humanity is one and all nations are free and yet interdependent members of that one and single organism. No nation can hope henceforth to stand in its isolated grandeurnot even America or Russia. Subject or dependent nations too who are struggling to be free will be allowed to work out their freedom and independence, on condition that the same is worked out in furtherance and in collaboration with the ideal of human unity. That ideal has become dynamic and insistent the more man refuses to accept it, the more he will make confusion worse confounded.
***
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02.03 - The Shakespearean Word, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indeed all poets do this, each in his own way. To create beautiful concrete images that stand vivid before the mind's eye is the natural genius of a poet. Here is a familiar picture, simple and effective, of a material vision:
Cold blows the blast across the moor
--
One can go on ad infinitum, for in a sense poetry is nothing but images. Still I am tempted to give a last citation from Dante, the superb Dante, in his grand style simple:
Logiornosen'andava, el'aerbruno
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02.06 - Boris Pasternak, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A beautiful picture in the Chinese stylea few significant strokes, simple and clear, evoking a whole landscape, brimful of yearning and resignation and tearful quietness in which the whole creation is embalmed.
Pasternak's snowscapes are beautiful, they are particularly expressive of this nostalgia that pervades his whole consciousness like a perfume as it were. Here, for example, is a haunting scene:
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02.07 - The Descent into Night, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The old simple delights were left to lie
On the wastel and of life's descent to Night.
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02.08 - Jules Supervielle, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The poet speaks obliquely but the language he speaks by itself is straight, clear, simple, limpid. No rhetoric is there, no exaggeration, no effort at effect; the voice is not raised above the normal speech level. That is indeed the new modern poetic style. For according to the new consciousness prose and poetry are not two different orders, the old order created poetry in heaven, the new poetry wants it upon earth; level with earth, the common human speech, the spoken tongues give the supreme intrinsic beauty of poetic cadence. The best poetry embodies the quintessence of prose-rhythm, its pure spontaneousand easy and felicitous movement. In English the hiatus between the poetic speech and prose is considerable, in French it is not so great, still the two were kept separate. In England Eliot came to demolish the barrier, in France a whole company has come up and very significant among them is this foreigner from Spain who is so obliquely simple and whose Muse has a natural yet haunting magic of divine things:
Elle lve les yeux et la brises'arrte
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02.08 - The World of Falsehood, the Mother of Evil and the Sons of Darkness, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A shadow fell across the simple Ray:
Obscured was the Truth-light in the cavern heart
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02.10 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Little Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
The hard truth of things, simple, eternal, sole.
68.74
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02.11 - The Kingdoms and Godheads of the Greater Mind, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
A single law simplessed the cosmic theme,
Compressing Nature into a formula;
--
Her simple vast supremacy confess,
Dare to surrender to her absolute.
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02.13 - On Social Reconstruction, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This theory of money power, in spite of its factual or practical truth, is not the whole truth. This is, I should say, the very old I Ptolemaic social system, in a new garb, which turns round man as an economic and physicalbeing. The Copernican system would view man chiefly as a psychological centre. A truly rational economic system can be based upon such an inner view of the situation. A merely economic view would take man as nothing more than a wage-earning machine and that will give the society and its government a mechanistic pattern. It will forget this simple truism that a man's worth is not and need not be always commensurate with his wage-earning capacity or even his usefulness as a citizen (in the way the atom-bomb Scientists are proving useful today).
Personal value will mean then not productive value, but creative value, that is to say, the capacity to create values, that means the consideration of the psychological and moral makeup of the individual.
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02.13 - Rabindranath and Sri Aurobindo, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Characterising Tagore's poetry, in reference to a particular poem, Sri Aurobindo once wrote: "But the poignant sweetness, passion and spiritual depth and mystery of a poem like this, the haunting cadences subtle with a subtlety which is not of technique but of the soul, and the honey-laden felicity of the expression, these are the essential Rabindranath and cannot be imitated because they are things of the spirit and one must have the same sweetness and depth of soul before one can hope to catch any of these desirable qualities." Furthermore: "One of the most remarkable peculiarities of Rabindra Babu's genius is the happiness and originality with which he has absorbed the whole spirit of Vaishnava poetry and turned it into something essentially the same and yet new and modern. He has given the old sweet spirit of emotional and passionate religion an expression of more delicate and complex richness voiceful of subtler and more penetratingly spiritual shades of feeling than the deep-hearted but simple early age of Bengal could know."
Certain coincidences and correspondences in their lives may be noticed here. The year 1905 and those that immediately followed found them together on the crest wave of India's first nationalist resurgence. Again both saw in the year 1914 a momentous period marked by events of epochal importance, one of which was the First World War. For Tagore it was yuga-sandhi, the dying of the old age of Night to the dawning of a new with its blood-red sunrise emerging through the travail of death, sorrow and pain". For Sri Aurobindo it was a cataclysm intended by Nature to effect a first break in the old order to usher in the new. The significant year 1914 was also the period when Rabindranath expressed in the magnificent series of poems of the Balaka his visions and experiences of the forces at work on earth, and Sri Aurobindo began revealing through the pages of the Arya the truths of the supramental infinities that were then pouring down into him and through him into the earth's atmosphere.
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02.14 - Appendix, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
For us in India, especially to Bengalis, the first and foremost obstacle to accepting Wordsworth as a poet would be his simple, artless and homely manner:
Behold her, single in the field,
--
It is as if the hermitage of old, an abode of peace and quiet, nta-rasspadam-ramam-idam. All here is calm and unhurried, simple and natural and transparent, there is no muddy current of tempestuous upheavals. That is why the poet feels in his heart as if he were
. quiet as a nun
--
Tranquillity and a pleasant sweetness are then the first doors of entry. Through the second doors we come to a wide intimacy, an all-pervading unity, where man and nature have fused into one. This unity and universality brea the through and inspire such simple yet startling words:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
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02.15 - The Kingdoms of the Greater Knowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
And the magic underlying simple shapes.
On peaks where Silence listens with still heart
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03.01 - The Malady of the Century, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We have sought to increase our consciousness, but away from the centre of consciousness; so what we have actually gained is not an increase, in the sense of a growth or elevation of consciousness, but an accumulation of consciousnesses, that is to say, many forms and external powers or applications of consciousness. A multiplicity of varied and independent movements of consciousness that jostle and hurt and limit one another, because they are not organized round a fundamental unity, forms the personality of the modern man, which is therefore tending to become on the whole more and more ill-balanced and neuras thenic and attitudinizing, in comparison with the simpler and less equivocal temperament that mankind had in the past. And a good part of the catholicity or liberalism or toleration that appears to be more in evidence in the present-day human consciousness is to be attributed not so much to the sense of unity or identity, that is the natural and inevitable outcome of a real growth in consciousness, but rather to the doubt and indecision and hesitation, to the agnosticism and dilettantism and cynicism of a pluralistic consciousness.
Cut away from the soul, from the central fount of its being, the human consciousness has been, as it were, desiccated and pulverized; it has been thrown wholly upon its multifarious external movements and bears the appearance of a thirsty shifting expanse of desert sands.
--
The ancients, on the contrary, knew not many thingsnot so many as we know; but what they knew they knew well, they were sure of their knowledge. Their creations were not perhaps on the whole as rich and varied and subtleeven in a certain sense as deep as those of modern humanity; but they were finished and completed things, net and clear and full of power. The simple unambiguous virile line that we find in Kalidasa or in the Ajanta, in Homer or in the Par thenon, no longer comes out of the hands of a modern artist. Our delight is in the complexity and turbidity of the composition; we are not satisfied with richness only, we require a certain tortuousness and tangledness in the movement. We love the intermingling of many tints, the play of light dying away into haze and mist and obscurity, of shades that blur the sharpness of the contour. Our preoccupation, in Art, is how to create the impression of the many in its all-round simultaneity of forms and movements. The ancients were more simple and modest; they were satisfied with expressing one thing at a time and that simply done.
The ancient Rishis were worshippers of the Sun and the Day; they were called Finders of the Day, Discoverers of the Solar World. They knew what they were about and they sought to make their meaning plain to others who cared to go to them. They were clear in their thought, direct in their perception; their feelings, however deep, were never obscure. We meet in their atmosphere and in their creative activity no circum-ambulating chiaroscuro, nothing of the turbid magic that draws us today towards the uncertain, the unexpected and the disconcerting. It is a world of certitude, of solid realityeven if it be on the highest spiritual levels of consciousness presenting a bold and precise and clear outline. When we hear them speak we feel they are uttering self-evident truths; there is no need to pause and question. At least so they were to their contemporaries; but the spokesman of our age must needs be a riddle even to ourselves.
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03.04 - Towardsa New Ideology, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
We have to recognise that man, in his individual as well as in his collective being, is a complex entity, not something simple and one -dimensional. The healthy growth of himself and his society means a simultaneous development on many lines, all moving together in concord and harmony. And this movement of all-harmony can be found only when the movements are initiated from the very source of harmony which is the soul Certain soul-principles that seek expression in life today thatare necessary to the age or to the coming age, have to be recognised and each given a field and a scope. That should be the basis of social groupings. And a composite variety of grouping with strands and strata, each expressing a particular mode of being of the one group-soulwhich in its turn is an aspect of the Vishva Purusha in his playis the ideal pattern of social organisation. What exactly the lines of grouping would be need not and perhaps cannot be settled now; a certain preliminary growth and change of consciousness in man is necessary before anything definite and precise can be foreseen as to the form and schema that consciousness will manifest and layout.
Still some kind of hierarchy seems tobe the natural and inevitable form of collective life. A dead level, however high that may possibly be, appears to be rather a condition of malaise and not that of a stable equilibrium. The individual man cannot with impunity be brains alonehe becomes then what is called "a barren intellectualist", "an ineffectual angel" ; nor can he rest satisfied with being a mere hewer of wood and drawer of waterhe is no more than a bushman then. Like-wise a society cannot be made of philosophers alone, nor can it be a monolithic construction of the proletariat and nothing but the proletariat-if the proletariat choose to remain literally proletarian. As the body individual is composed of limbs that rise one upon another from the inferior to the superior, even so a healthy body social also should consist of similar hierarchical ranges. Only this distinction should not mean and it does not necessarily meana difference in moral values, as it was pointed out long ago by Aesop in his famous fable. The distinction is functional and spiritual. In the spirit, all differences and distinctions are based upon and are instinct with an inviolable and inalienable unity, even identity. Differences here do not mean invidious distinction, they are not the sources of inequality, conflict, strife, but make for a richer harmony, a greater organisation.
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03.05 - The World is One, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The distinctions and differences that held good in other times and climes can have no sense or value in the world of today. Race or religion can divide man no longer; even nationhood has lost much of its original force and meaning. It is strangeperhaps it is inevitable in the secret process of Nature's working that when everything in conditions and circumstances obviously demands and points to an obliteration of all frontiers of division and separationeconomically and politically tooand all drives towards a closer co-operation and intermingling, it is precisely then that the contrary spirit and impulse raises its head and seems even to gather added strength and violence. The fact may have two explanations. First of all, it may mean a defence gesture in Nature, that is to say, certain forces or formations have a permanent place in Nature's economy and when they apprehend that they are being ousted and neglected, when there is a one-pointed drive for their exclusion, naturally they surge up and demand recognition with a vengeance: for things forgotten or left aside that form indissolubly part of Nature's fabric and pattern, one has to retrace one's steps in order to pick them up again. But also the phenomenon may mean a simple case of atavism: for we must know that there are certain old-world aboriginal habits and movements that have to go and have no place in the higher scheme of Nature and these too come up off and on, especially when the demand is there for their final liquidation. They have to be recognised as such and treated as such. Radical and religious (including ideological) egoisms seem to us to belong to this category.
In the higher scheme of Nature, the next evolutionary status that is being forged,itis unity, harmony that is insisted upon, for that is the very basis of the new creation: whatever militates against that, whatever creates division and disruption must be banned and ruthlessly eschewed. In the reality of things, in the actual life that man lives, it will be found that on the whole, things that separate are less numerous and insistent than those which unite, man and man and nation and nation, if each one simply lives and lets live: on the contrary, it is the points of concordance and mutuality that abound. A certain knot or twist in the mind makes all the difference: it brings in the ignorance, selfishness, blind passiona possession by the dark forces of atavism that makes the mischief.
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03.08 - The Standpoint of Indian Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Indian art, too, possesses a perspective and an anatomy; it, too, has a focus of observation which governs and guides the composition, in the ensemble and in detail. Only, it is not the physical eye, but an inner vision, not the angle given by the retina, but the angle of a deeper perception or consciousness. To understand the difference, let us ask ourselves a simple question: when we call back to memory a landscape, how does the picture form itself in the mind? Certainly, it is not an exact photograph of the scenery observed. We cannot, even if we try, re-form in memory the objects in the shape, colour and relative positions they had when they appeared to the physical eye. In the picture represented to the mind's eye, some objects loom large, others are thrown into the background and others again do not figure at all; the whole scenery is reshuffled and rearranged in deference to the stress of the mind's interest. Even the structure and build of each object undergoes a change; it does not faithfully re-copy Nature, but gives the mind's version of it, aggrandizing certain parts, suppressing others, reshaping and recolouring the whole aspect, metamorphosing the very contour into something that may not be "natural" or anatomical figure at all. Only we are not introspective enough to observe this phenomenon of the mind's alchemy; we think we are representing with perfect exactitude in the imagination whatever is presented to the senses, whereas in fact we do nothing of the kind; our idea that we do it is a pure illusion.
All art is based upon this peculiar virtue of the mind that naturally and spontaneously transforms or distorts the objective world presented to its purview. The question, then, is only of the degree to which the metamorphosis has been carried. At the one end, there is the art of photography, in which the degree of metamorphosis is at its minimum; at the other, there seems to be no limit, for the mind's capacity to dissolve and recreate the world of sense-perception is infinite and many modern schools of European art have gone even beyond the limit that the "unnatural" Indian art did not consider it necessary to transgress. Now, the classical artist selects a position as close as he can to the photographer, tries to give the mind's view of Nature and creation, as far as possible, in the style and norm of the sense-perceptions. He takes his stand upon these and from there reaches out towards whatever imaginative reconstructions are justified within the bounds laid out by them. The general ground-plan is, almost rigorously, the form given by the physical eye. The art of the East, and even, to a large extent, the art of mediaeval Europe, followed a different line. Here the scheme of the sense-perceptions was rejected, the artist sought to build on other foundations. His procedure was, first, to get a focus within the mind, to discover a psychological standpoint, and from there and in accordance with the subtler laws and conventions of an inner vision create a world that is unique and stands by itself. The aim was always to build from within, at the most, from within outwards, but not from without, not even from without inwards. This inner world has its own laws and they differ from the laws of optics which govern the physical sight; but there is no reason why it should be called unnatural. It is unnatural only in the sense that it does not copy physical Nature; it is quite natural in the 1 sense that it is a faithful reproduction of another, a psychological Nature.
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03.09 - Buddhism and Hinduism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Buddhism, or for that matter, Christianity or Mohammadenism or any credal and personal religion, is easy to understand. For they are each of them a single and simple entity, whereas Hinduism is a multiple and complex organism. The difference is that between a tree, a huge mighty tree, may be, and a vast and tangled forest. Buddhism, for example, "may be likened to the great Bo tree under which, one may say, it was born; but Hinduism is a veritable Dandakaranya.
For Hinduism means all things to all men, while a personal religion is meant truly for a certain type of persons. Hinduism recognises differences and distinction even while admitting the fundamental unity of mankind; it does not impose uniformity as the other type does. Hinduism embraces all varieties of religious experience; it is not based on a single experience however overwhelming that may be.
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The Buddha says, take off the elements that compose the creation one by one, nothing would remain in the end. Creation is only an agglomeration of discrete elements; there is nothing behind them or within them that is permanent and holding them together. When names and forms go, at the end there is only dissolution, pure and simple, Nothing, Nihil.
(III) This metaphysical position is faithfully translated, one may point out here, in their respective logical positions of the two.
Buddhist logic considers negation as a simple contrary to affirmation; it is not an entity, it is the lack of entity. Zero or cypher means simple absence. Hindu logic makes of negation a positive statement but on the minus side, even as Hindu mathematics did not consider a zero as valueless but gave a special value, a value of position to it. Do we not hear of negative positives (positron) in modern science today?
The Buddhists deny likewise the real existence of general ideas: according to them only individuals are real existences, general ideas are mere abstractions. The Hindus, on the other hand, like Plato who must have been influenced by them, affirm the reality of general ideas-although real need not always mean material.
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03.10 - The Mission of Buddhism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
A simple Child,
That lightly draws its breath,
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03.11 - Modernist Poetry, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
and a modernist critic acclaims it as a marvellous, aye, a stupendous piece of poetic art; it figures, according to him, the very body of the modern consciousness and resthesis. The modern consciousness, it is said, is marked with two characteristics: first, it is polyphonic, that is to say, it is not a simple and unilateral thing, but a composite consisting of many planes and strands, both horizontal and vertical. A modern consciousness is a section of world-consciousness extending in space as well as in time; there is, on one hand, the bringing together and intermingling of diverse and even disparate contemporary cultures, produced by free and easy and rapid communication between different parts of the world; on the other hand, there is the connection and communion with all the past civilisations brought about by modern scientific researches. A modern man, who is representative of the age, when he looks close into himself, would find in him a texture of consciousness, the warp of which is spread out from the culture of the Greenlander in the North Pole to that of the Polynesian near the South Pole as well as from the culture of the Anglo-Saxon in the far West to that of the Korean and Nipponese in the far East; and the woof consists of traditions and legends threading past the Egyptian, the Sumerian and Atlantean glyphs and runes, and forward to present-day ideologiestotalitarianism and proletarianism or others like and unlike.
A modern artist when he creates, as he cannot but create himself, will have to embrace and express something of this peculiar cosmopolitanism or universalism of today. When Ezra bursts into a Greek hypostrophe or Eliot chants out a Vedic mantra in the very middle of King's English, we have before us the natural and inevitable expression of a fact in our consciousness. Even so, if we are allowed the liberty of comparing the flippant with the serious, even so, a fact of Anglo-vernacular consciousness was given graphic expression in the well-known lines of the famous Bengali poet and dramatist, D. L. Roy, ending in
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It is a simple truth that we state and it is precisely this that we have missed in the present age. Chaucer created a new poetic world, Shakespeare created another, Milton yet a third, the RomanticsWordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Byroneach of them has a whole world to his credit. But this they achieved, not because of any theory they held or did not hold, but because each of them delved deep and struck open an unfathomed and unspoilt Pierian spring. And this is how it should be. In this age, even in this age of modernism, a few poets have actually shown how or what that can be,a Tagore, a Yeats or A.E., by the bulk of their work, others of lesser envergure, in brief scattered strophes and stanzassuch lines, for example, from Eliot
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
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03.13 - Dynamic Fatalism, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
If it is so, then what is the necessity at all of work and labour and travailthis difficult process of sadhana? The question is rather naive, but it is very often asked. The answer also could be very simple. The change decreed is precisely worked out through the travail: one is the end, the other is the means; the goal and the process, both are decreed and inevitable. If it is argued, supposing none made the effort, even then would the change come about, in spite of man's inaction? Well, first of all, this is an impossible supposition. Man cannot remain idle even for a moment: not only the inferior Nature, but the higher Nature too is always active in himremember the words of the Gita though behind the veil, in the inner consciousness. Secondly, if it is really so, if man is not labouring and working and making the attempt, then it must be understood that the time has not yet come for him to undergo the change; he has still to wait: one of the signs of the imminence of the change is this very intensity and extensiveness of the labour among mankind. If, however, a particular person chooses to do nothing, prefers to wait and seehopes in the end to jump at the fruit all at once and possess it or hopes the fruit to drop quietly into his mouthwell, this does not seem to be a likely happening. If one wishes to enjoy the fruit, one must share in the effort to sow and grow. Indeed, the process itself of reaching the higher consciousness involves a gradual heightening of the consciousness. The means is really part of the end. The joy of victory is the consummation of the joy of battle.
Man can help or retard the process of Nature, in a sense. If his force of consciousness acts in line with Nature's secret movement, then that movement is accelerated: through the soul or self that is man, it is the Divine, Nature's lord and master who drives and helps Nature forward. If, on the contrary, man follows his lesser self, his lower ego, rajasic and tamasic, then he throws up obstacles and barriers which hamper and slow down Nature's march.
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03.15 - Origin and Nature of Suffering, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Suffering there is, some say, because the soul takes delight in it: if there was not the soul's delight behind, there would not be any suffering at all. There are still two other positions with regard to suffering which we do not deal with in the present context, namely, (1) that it does not exist at all, the absolute Ananda of the Brahman being the sole reality, suffering, along with the manifested world of which it is a part, is illusion pure and simple, (2) that suffering exists, but it comes not from soul or God but from the Anti-divine: it is at the most tolerated by God and He uses it as best as He can for His purpose. That, however, is not our subject here. We ask then what delight can the soul take when the body is suffering, say, from cancer. If it is delight, it must be of a perverse variety. Is it not the whole effort of mankind to get rid of pain and suffering, make of our life and of the world, if possible, a visible play of pure and undefiled Ananda?
On the other hand, we do find that suffering is not always mere suffering, that it can be turned into a thing of joy; it is a fact proved in the lives of many a martyr and many a saint. Many indeed are those who have not only borne suffering passively but have welcomed it and courted it with happiness and delight. If it is said it is a perverse kind of pleasure, and if one wishes to hang it by calling it masochism, well, we do not solve the problem in that way, we seek to hide it behind a big word; it is at the most a point of view. What agrees with one's temperament (or prejudices) one calls natural and what one does not like appears to him perverse. Another person may have a different temperament and accordingly a different vocabulary.
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03.16 - The Tragic Spirit in Nature, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The tragedy can happen in either of two ways. The in-individual's own unconsciousness can reach and overthrow and spoil his higher poise, or the collective unconsciousness too can invade and overwhelm the individual in his high status, who is declared, not unoften, the highbrow, an enemy of the peoplealthough atonement is sometimes attempted at a late period (as in the case of the Christ or Jeanne d'Arc). A way, however, was discovered in India by which one could avoid this life's inevitable tragic denouement. It was very simple, viz, to rise up from the inert ignorant unconsciousness, rise sufficiently high and fly or shoot into the orbits of other suns from where there is no more downfall, being totally free from all earthly down-pull.
But this need not be the only solution. Matter (the basic unconsciousness) was the master in this material world because, it was not properly faced and negotiated. One sought to avoid and bypass it. It was there Sphinx-like and none stopped to answer its riddle. The mystery is this. Matter, material Nature that is dubbed unconsciousness is not really so. That is only an appearance. Matter is truly inconscient, that is to say, it has an inner core of consciousness which is its true reality. This hidden flame of consciousness should be brought out from its cave and made manifest, dynamic on the surface. Then it will easily and naturally agree to submit to the higher law of Immortality. This would mean a reconditioning, a transmutation of the very basis of mind and life. The material foundation, the body conditions thus changed will bring about that status of the wholeness of consciousness which holds and stabilises the Divine in the human frame, which never suffers from any scar or diminution even in its terrestrial embodiment.
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04.02 - Human Progress, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Jung speaks of two kinds or grades of thinking: (1) the directed thinking and (2) the wishful thinking; one conscious and objective, the other automatic and subjective. The first is the modern or scientific thinking, the second the old-world mythopoeic thinking. These two lines of mental movement mark off two definite stages in the cultural history of man. Down to the Middle Ages man's mental life was moved and coloured by his libidodesire soul; it is with the Renascence that he began to free his mind from, the libido and transfer and transform the libido into non-egoistic and realistic thinking. In simpler psychological terms we can say that man's mentality was coloured and modulated by his biological make-up out of which it had emerged; the age of modernism and scientism began with the development of a rigorous rationalism which means a severance and transcendence of the biological antecedent.
In other words, it can be said that the older humanity was intuitive and instinctive, while modern humanity is rationalistic. Now it has been questioned whether this change or reorientation is a sign of progress, whether it has not been at the most a mixed blessing. Many idealists and reformers frankly view the metamorphosis with anxiety. Gerald Heard vehemently declares that the rationalism of the modern age is a narrowing down of the consciousness to a superficial movement, a foreshortening, and a top-heavy specialisation which means stagnation, decay and death. He would rather release the tension in the strangulation of consciousness, even if it means a slight coming down to the anterior level of instinct and intuition, but of more plasticity and less specialisation: it is, he says, only in conditions of suppleness and variability, of life organised yet sufficiently free that the forces of evolution can act fruitfully. It has also been pointed out that homo sapiens is not a direct descendant of homo neanderthalis who was already a far too specialised being, but of a stock anterior to it which was still uncertain, wavering, groping towards a definite emergence.
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04.02 - The Growth of the Flame, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
They answered to her with the simple heart.
In man a dim disturbing somewhat lives;
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04.04 - Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine or the spiritual consciousness, instead of being a simple unitary entity, is a vast, complex, stratified reality. There are many chambers in my Father's mansion, says the Bible: many chambers on many stories, one may add. Also there are different levels or approaches that serve different seekers each with his own starting-point, his point de repaire. When one speaks of union with the Divine or of entering into the spiritual consciousness, one does not refer to the same identical truth or reality as any other. There is a physical Divine, a vital Divine, a mental Divine; and beyond the mindfrom where one may consider that the region of true spirit begins there are other innumerable modes, aspects, manifestations of the Divine.
As we say, there are not only aspects of the Divine, but there are also levels in him. The spiritual consciousness rises tier upon tier and each spur has its own view and outlook, rhythm and character. Now, as long as man was chiefly preoccupied with his physico-vital or mentalised physico-vital activities, as long as the burden of his body and life and even mind lay heavy on him and their gravitational pull was normally very strong, almost irresistible, the spiritual impulse in him acted generally and fundamentally as a movement of escape from them into some thing beyond. It was a negative movement on the whole and it was enough to dissociate, reject, sublimate the lower status and somehow rise into something which is not that (neti): the question was not important at that stage of the human consciousness about a scientific scrutiny of the Beyond, its precise constitution and composition.
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04.04 - The Quest, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Trained to the simple act and conscious word,
Greatened within and grew to meet their heights.
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04.06 - Evolution of the Spiritual Consciousness, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The Divine or the spiritual consciousness, instead of being a simple unitary entity, is a vast, complex stratified reality. "There are many chambers in my Father's mansions", says the Bible: many chambers on many storeys, one may add. Also there are different levels or approaches that serve different seekers, each with his own starting-point, his point de repre. When one speaks of union with the Divine or of entering into the spiritual consciousness, one does not refer to the same identical truth or reality as any other. There is a physical Divine, a vital Divine, a mental Divine; and beyond the mindfrom where one may consider that the region of true spirit begins there are other innumerable modes, aspects, manifestations of the Divine.
As we say, there are not only aspects of the Divine, but there are also levels in him. The spiritual consciousness rises tier upon tier and each spur has its own view and outlook, rhythm and character. Now, as long as man was chiefly preoccupied with his physico-vital or mentalised physico-vital activities, as long as the burden of his body and life and even mind lay heavy on him and their gravitational pull was normally very strong, almost irresistible, the spiritual impulse in him acted generally and fundamentally as a movement of escape, from them into something beyond. It was a negative movement on the whole and it was enough to dissociate, reject, sublimate the lower status and somehow rise into something which is not that (neti): the question was not important at that stage of the human consciousness about a scientific scrutiny of the Beyond, its precise constitution and composition.
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04.06 - To Be or Not to Be, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
This is a way of cutting the Gordian knot. But the problem is not so simple as the moralist would have it. Resist not evil: if it is made an absolute rule, would not the whole world be filled with evil? Evil grows much faster than good. By not resisting evil one risks to perpetuate the very thing that one fears; it deprives the good of its chance to approach or get a foothold. That is why the Divine Teacher declares in the Gita that God comes down upon earth, assuming a human body,2to protect the good and slay the wicked,3 slay not metaphorically but actually and materially, as he did on the field of the Kurus.
It is a complex problem and the solution too is complex. The GitaHinduism generallydoes not posit a universal dharma, but a hierarchy of dharmas. Men have different natures; so their duties, their functions and activities, their paths of growth and development must naturally be different. A rigid rule does not fit in with the facts of life, and the more absolute it is, the less efficacy it possesses as a living reality. Therefore in the Indian social scheme, there is one dharma for the Brahmin and another for the Kshatriya, a third for the Vaishya and a fourth for the Shudra.
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04.47 - To the Heights-XLVII, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 02, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Oh, no longer the sweet simple innocence of yore:
The child has grown and now its limbs are hewn
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05.02 - Physician, Heal Thyself, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It should have been proved beyond doubt by now that the fact is not so. The only way to cure the world outside is to cure oneself first inside. The ancient proverb still holds good: the macrocosm is only an enlargement of the microcosm, the microcosm is the macrocosm in miniature. The universe is a transcript, a projection on a large scale of the individual nature within. What is there is here and what is not here is not found there. When we see some wrong in the world, something that has got to be set right, instead of rushing out and trying to tackle it in the external field, if one were to hold oneself back and look within, one would surely find, perhaps to his surprise I and enlightenment, a very similar movement, often an exact I replica in one's own consciousness and character of what one finds in the larger anonymous movements of nature and society. Now it may be admitted that one has no control or almost none over one's nature; the outside world is beyond our reach and we cannot order or mould it as we like. But the smaller world which is ourselves is not too far or too great for us; our own individual nature and character is ours and we have been given sufficient freedom and power to reform, renew and remake it. That is the secret, although it seems to be a very simple truth, almost a truism.
And if we cannot correct and mould as we wish the little world within which is our own, how can we expect to correct or change the vaster outer world? To leave oneself to be as one is and to try to make others change is evidently an absurd and self-contradictory proposition. On the other hand, if the first thing that one does is to correct oneself, then one will find, much to one's surprise and satisfaction, that there is very little to correct in the world, everything has been already corrected automatically.
Each man is given his little domain within him and he is master of that domain. Nobody is given more (or less even) than what he can successfully manage: the charge is accurately measured according to capacity. One can be indeed a roi fainant, if one chooses to be so; but that is not man's inevitable destiny; he can truly be the ruling king and exercise, to the full, his authority. It is a simple truth that man has a will and can wield it. This will he can consciously develop, increase and enlarge, make it an extremely powerful, if not invincible, instrument for action.
Will is a twofold power: it is energy and it is light. True will, will in essential purity, that is to say, when one is perfectly sincere and determined to follow up one's sincerity, impels rightly and impels infallibly. The consciousness is there of the right thing to do and the energy is also there inherent in that consciousness to work it out inevitably. There is a will be longing to a lower level, to the mind which is only a variant of wish, and in reference to that only it is said that even if the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. This will is a light, but without the fire that vivifies: and that is because there is a division in the consciousness, one can love and yet one can betray, in the words of a famous novelist.
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05.03 - Satyavan and Savitri, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Earth's ease of simple things can satisfy,
If thy glance can dwell content on earthly soil,
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Bare, simple is the sylvan hermit-life;
Yet is it clad with the jewelry of earth.
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A candid garl and set with simple forms
Her rapid fingers taught a flower song,
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05.04 - The Measure of Time, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
When it is said that the Realisation is decreed, is it meant also that the time for it has been fixed? If so, all individual effort and freedom of action seem to go out of the picture, being irrelevantnei ther hastening nor retarding the process. The fact is somewhat different, not so simple and trenchant.
There is very little sense in the common notion that everything is predetermined as to the time when it will happen, that the universal scheme has been all unalterably arranged and mapped out from beforehand, that nothing can change it, all goes according to plan. This is only a human conception, a construction of the mind, a wrong translation in the brain of some fact which is otherwise and elsewhere. The mind divides where there is no division, puts things against each other where there is perfect compatibility and harmony. Determinism and Indeterminism, Free-Will and Mechanism are contradictions set up by the mind and have no real objective existence. From a certain view-point, on a certain level of consciousness things appear to move in a rigid frame of mechanistic determinism; from another view-point, on another level, things seem to possess absolute freedom.
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05.06 - Physics or philosophy, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
First, that this universe is made up of particles that push and pull each other, the particles having certain constant values, such as in respect of mass and volume. secondly, that the laws governing the relations among the particles, in other words, their push and pull, are laws of simple mechanics; they are fixed and definite and give us determinable and mensurable quantities called co-ordinatesby which one can ascertain the pattern or configuration of things at a given moment and deduce from that the pattern or configuration of things at any other moment: the chain that hangs things together is fixed and uniform and continuous and is not broken anywhere.
The scientific view of things thus discovered or affirmed certain universal and immutable factsaxiomatic truthswhich were called constants of Nature. These were the very basic foundations upon which the whole edifice of scientific knowledge was erected. The chief among them were:(I) conservation of matter, (2) conservation of energy, (3) uniformity of nature and (4) the chain of causality and continuity. Above all, there was the fundamental implication of an independentan absolutetime and space in which all things existed and moved and had their being.
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05.07 - The Observer and the Observed, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
But in the end a difficulty arose in the operation of observation. It proved to be not a simple process. The scientific observer requires for his observation the yard-stick and the time-piece. Now, we have been pushed to admit a queer phenomenon (partly by observation and partly by a compelling deduction) that these two measuring units are not constant; they change with the change of system, that is to say, according to the velocity of the system. In other words, each observer has his own unit of space and time measure. So the elimination of the personal element of the observer has become a complicated mathematical problem, even if one is sure of it finally.
There is still something more. The matter of calculating and measuring objectively was comparatively easy when the object in view was of medium size, neither too big nor too small. But in the field of the infinite and the infinitesimal, when from the domain of mechanical forces we enter into the region of electric and radiant energy, we find our normal measuring apparatus almost breaks down. Here accurate observation cannot be made because of the very presence of the observer, because of the very fact of observation. The ultimates that are observed are trails of light particles: now when the observer directs his eye (or the beam oflight replacing the eye) upon the light particle, its direction and velocity are interfered with: the photon is such a tiny infinitesimal that a ray from the observer's eye is sufficient to deflect and modify its movement. And there is no way of determining or eliminating this element of deflection or interference. The old Science knew certainly that a thermometer dipped in the water whose temperature it is to measure itself changes the initial temperature. But that was something calculable and objective. Here the position of the observer is something like a "possession", imbedded, ingrained, involved in the observed itself.
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05.10 - Children and Child Mentality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
AA simple child
That lightly draws its breath,
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05.12 - The Soul and its Journey, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
For it must be remembered that the human soul after all is not a simple and unilateral being, it is a little cosmos in itself. The soul is not merely a point or a single ray of light come down straight from its divine archetype or from the Divine himself, it is also a developing fire that increases and enriches itself through the multiple experiences of an evolutionary progressionit not only grows in height but extends in wideness also. Even though it may originally emanate from one principle and Personality, it takes in for its development and fulfilment influences and elements from the others also. Indeed, we know that the Four primal personalities of the Divine are not separate and distinct as they may appear to the human mind which cannot understand distinction without disparity. The Vedic gods themselves are so linked together, so interpenetrate one another that finally it is asserted that there is only one existence, only it is given many names. All the divine personalities are aspects of the Divine blended and fused together. Even so the human soul, being a replica of the Divine, cannot but be a complex of many personalities and often it may be difficult and even harmful to find and fix upon a dominant personality. The full flowering of the human soul, its perfect divinisation demands the realisation of a many-aspected personality, the very richness of the Divine within it.
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05.16 - A Modernist Mentality, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The old, fossilised or rotten past has to be destroyed and ruthlessly eradicated, no doubt: -but, how is it to be done and who will do it? By a simple process of sledge-hammeringbreaking, burning? By anybody who cares to do it? It does not require much sense or intelligence to see that that is not the ideal nor even the most effective way of doing the thing. The best way to destroy, the wise say, is to construct. Look at Nature, how she is going about the thing. Something is crumbling, precisely because something is growing within or behind. It is the drive of a living growth in secret that pushes a limb no longer necessary or useful to decay and death. Man too in his work of reformation or regeneration should learn that lesson, whether in respect of his individual or of his 'collective growth and evolution. Discover the truth that is to replace the 'old, live it intensely and wholly the old past will automatically slip down like old clothes or drop like yellow sapless leaves.
Further Monsieur Gide says, God is nowhere, he has to be created. If he means that God is not anywhere in the manifest physical world, especially, the physical world of today, it is true, though here too partially true. God is never truly absent; even in and through this dismal and distressed age of ours he is ever present, a living power of abounding Graceeven if behind the veil, even if not patent to the sense-bound observer. Still God has to be made patent, established concretely in the physical world also, in the everyday normal human affairs. But, again, how to do it? And who is to do it? You or I in our complete, at best half-lit hazy ignorance? By running blindly full tilt against any and all atheism and denial and egoism and arrogance, shouting at them, pointing the finger of scorn at them or being physically violent upon them? It were best if we moved with as much vigour against our own selves, against the ungodly within us. If one begins seriously at home, in dealing with oneself one will be best equipped to deal with the others and the world, in the process of new-creating in oneself one will be in a position to find out exactly what lies in the way of a new creation outside.
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05.17 - Evolution or Special Creation, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The point is still being debated and, it seems, is still debatable whether evolution is truly the fact behind the origin of species or is it special creation. The latter, we know, was the old- world pre-Copernican theory advocated by theologians and religious minds. It was thoroughly discredited and demolished by the new illumination that Science brought in with the nineteenth century. Till lately it was considered as a pure superstition and to be its advocate would be nothing but blind bigotry. But evidently things in Nature are not so simple; what at one time is brushed aside as a meaningless futility comes back later with a meaning and suggestiveness and truth of reality. We were once laughing at the corpuscular theory of light advocated by the great Newton and putting on a patronising air at the frailty of an otherwise mighty intelligence.But the tables are now turned and we accept it as an undoubted fact when Planck says today that a light ray consists also of particles (quanta) of light. Similarly if in some scientific quarter a doubt has arisen as to the absolute and exclusive truth of the principle of evolution and if the old conception of special creation is exhumed for fresh consideration,well, one should not be astonished at the turn over.
The most serious lacuna in the concept of evolution, at least in the Darwinian form of it, is, as is well known, the missing link. The transition stage between one form of life and another, between one species and its higher evolute is always absent, has left no trace of any kind and it is a matter of any man's guess. So the theory of mutation, saltum, sudden change, has been advanced. But that only restates the fact, clinches the matter, but does not explain it. If a sudden and thorough change is possible, if one object can be transformed into something quite different and unpredictable, one can as well call it special creation. That would, some might say, be facing the fact squarely.
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05.21 - Being or Becoming and Having, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Again, in this ceaseless continuity of progression it is indeed not necessary at all to stop a while or somewhere and become something for one's perfection or fulfilment. The normal ideal that is placed before man or which he himself seeks is that he should become something, a definite pattern of some particular achievement, and possess something in the sense of an acquisition. An ordinary man must have an occupation and even an extraordinary man, the saint or the sage, must embody, that is to say, enchain himself in the name and form of a particular realisationa siddhnta or a siddhi. A man has to be -a soldier, a merchant, a politician or a poet, a philosopher: even so he has to be a bhaktaor a jni, a maunior a vksiddha. Each human being should have a ticket and a roll number, an identity card. Now, for the soul of man none of these or other adjuncts are necessary: its progress and its growth are independent of such auxiliaries or correlates. A soul can be and even express itself perfectly at the highest point of its being without formulating itself, binding itself in a scheme of some external achievement or functioning. The soul need not possess any of the gloriesaiwaryasto realise itself, in order to be the abode of the Divine. Its very existence is full to the brim of the substance of the truth and its simple living marks the law or rhythm of that Truth.
A soulful man, whatever he says, thinks, feels or acts, always embodies wholly the Divine. Not that because he says, acts, thinks or feels in a certain manner that he has attained perfection or is in dynamic union with the summit a d integral consciousness. As the Mother brings out the distinction, although in a somewhat different context, the perfect soul-existence .cannot be judged by the forms it takes, the forms themselves have to be judged by the soul-existence.
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05.28 - God Protects, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The conditions under which the Divine's protection can come are simple enough, but difficult to fulfil completely and thoroughly. The ideal conditions that ensure absolute safety are an absolute trust and reliance on the Divine Force, a tranquillity and fearlessness that nothing shakes, .whatever the appearances at the moment, the spirit and attitude of an unreserved self-giving that whatever one is and one has is God's. Between that perfect state at the peak of consciousness and the doubting and hesitant and timid mind at the lower end that of St. Peter, forexample, at his weakest moment there are various gradations of the conditions fulfilled and the protection given is variable accordingly. Not that the Divine Grace acts or has to act according to any such hard and fast rule of mechanics, there is no such mathematical Law of Protection in the scheme of Providence. And yet on the whole and generally speaking Providence, Divine Intervention, acts more or less successfully according to the degree of the soul's wakefulness on the plane that needs and possesses the protection.
And yet there is another aspect of the thing that is to be taken into consideration. For in the supreme and ultimate view the world or creation is not divided between God and Asura : the Asura cannot be outside God's infinity, he is there because permitted by him, indeed forms part of him and serves the divine purpose. Asura represents the hard dark passage through which the ignorant human soul cuts out its forward march: it is the crucible in which the growing consciousness is purified of its dross in order to regain the fullness of its divine quality and nature.
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05.33 - Caesar versus the Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
In reality, however, to a vision that sees behind and beyond the appearances, spirituality the force of the Spiritis ever dynamic: the spiritual soul, even when it appears passive and inert, is most active not merely in the subtle psychological domain, but also in the material field. To the gross pragmatic eye Ramakrishna, for example, appears as a less dynamic personality, a less strong and heroic, if not positively weaker character than Vivekananda. Well, that is only face-value reading. Vivekananda himself knew and felt and said that he was only one of hundreds of Vivekanandas that his simple and, modest-looking Guru could create if he chose. Even so a Ramdas. Ramdas was not merely a spiritual adviser to Shivaji, concerned chiefly with the inner salvation and development of his disciple, and only secondarily with the gross material activities, the things of Caesar. The two domains are not separate at least in this case: the spiritual here directly and dynamically affects the physical. The spiritual guide is the dynamo the matrixof the power, the power spiritual; he wields and marshals the hidden, the secret forces that are behind the outward forms and movements. And the disciple by his attitude of obeisance and receptivity becomes all the better a channel and instrument for the actual play and fulfilment of that force. A Govind Singh is another instance of spiritual power made dynamic in mundane things. And we always have the classical instance of Rajarshi Janaka.
Only, in the future a yet greater source of spiritual power is destined to be tapped and brought into play, into the plane of happenings, so that the material domain, the pattern of our actual day to day life will put on a different aspect; for a radiant consciousness will have breathed a new life into our very bodily cells.
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05.34 - Light, more Light, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 01, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Let us explain. Man is not as ignorant and helpless as he seems to be, as he would himself consider to be. There is in him always a spark, under the ashes, as it were, a perfect freedom behind the faade of a network of bondages, not dead or dormant but biding the time, to come out and be active on the surface. The spark is the light that directs to the right and warns against the wrong; the freedom is the choice to do the right and avoid the wrong. It is just a point of perception, just a flash of awareness, but net and clear: it is there, you have only to notice it. It does not give the why or the whither of the rightness: it is a simple declaration presented to you, for you to do what you like with it: to ignore or to profit by. Usually we do not pay attention to it: our attention is diverted towards another direction and other things. Our environment, our education, our domestic and social influences, even a good part of our own nature demand of us other ways of living and inhibit the spontaneous inherent light of the consciousness. Even so, if we care to look at it, if we sincerely turn round and ask for it, we will find it still there the flame behind the smoke, the queen in the harem, the deity in the sanctum. What is required is just a straight look and not the crooked wink we are accustomed to. The first attempts will necessarily mean a little fumbling, but if you mean what you do, you will find your vision getting clearer. It is our own disinclination that weaves the cobweb of ignorance around the truth. Otherwise, an unsophisticated consciousness, a consciousness which is not vitiatedmore often by nurture than by naturecan always feel the presence of the truth and is directly aware of it.
A blinded misdirected mind, if it wakes up at any time and looks about for the truth sincerelywe insist upon the conditioncan recognise it, learn to trace it by certain indications it always leaves behind in the consciousness. A touch of the truth, a step towards it will be always accompanied by a sense of relief, of peace, of a serene happiness and unconditional freedom. These things are felt not as something gross and superficial affecting your outer life and situation, but pertaining to the depth of your being, concerning your inmost fibreit is nothing else but just the sense of light, as if you are at last out of the dark. A right movement brings you that feeling; and whenever you have that feeling you know that there has been the right movement. On the contrary, with a wrong movement you are ill at ease. You may say that a hardened criminal is never ill at ease; perhaps, but only after a great deal of hardening. The criminal was not always a criminal I am speaking of a human being, not a born hostilehe must have started some-where the downward incline. The distinction of the right and the wrong must have been presented to his consciousness and the choice was freely his. Afterwards one gets bound to one's Karma and its chain.
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06.02 - The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Marred the sure steps of Nature's simple walk
And truth and freedom in the growing soul.
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06.07 - Total Transformation Demands Total Rejection, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The reason is very simple. The experience or realisation is not a total one, that is to say, it belongs to a part only of the nature and is not shared by other parts. The sadhak is not of one piece: the whole of his nature is not worked to the same pitch and amplitude, it is not equally responsive everywhere. Thus, when the psychic brings forward an experience and the inner consciousness is full of the light and energy and joy and faith, even then, in the background or by the side, if you are vigilant and observe carefully, you will see that the mind, the external mind, has its reservations or continues to move in its accustomed way. It looks askance at the experience, criticises or doubts; or it tries to understand or explain in its own terms, seize it within its frame of comprehension. Or else, the vital rises up and tries to get hold of the experience and utilise it for its own purposes; it is enjoyed as a tasty food, made to serve the vital's ambition or vanity, some lower ignorant egoistic urge. Or again, the physical, the body consciousness may not at all participate in the experience; it may remain indifferent, listless, lethargic with no impulse or enthusiasm to carry out in practice the experience of the inner consciousness. Any of these drags or cross-currents is sufficient to maim and diminish and even wipe out the experience: and usually all the three are finally there to combine and reinforce each other's effects to do the mischief.
The remedy is to turn back and hold to the spot of light that is there in the consciousness, the clarity or the aspiration that belongs to the inner and higher being. That has to be used as a torch, as a staff to support and guide you in your periods of darkness and vacillation. That beam of burning light should be thrown, in turn, upon those parts in you that besiege with their obscurity and inconscience, doubt and arrogance, the realisation that comes, the progress on the way. It must be done with firmness, vigilance and perseverance. The mixture has to be sorted out, the dross separated, kept on one side and the pure element on the other: the impurities have to be put under the flame-light to melt, burn away and be eliminated. And this means an ardent sincerity, for that is the tinder which keeps the fire blazing.
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06.11 - The Steps of the Soul, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Each man has then a mission to fulfil, a role to play in the universe; a part he has been given to learn and take up in the cosmic Purpose which he alone is capable of executing and none other. This he has to learn and acquire through life-experiences, that is to say, not in one life, but in life after life. In fact, that is the meaning of the chain of lives that the individual has to pass through, namely, to acquire experiences and to gather out of them the thread the skein of qualities and attributes, powers and capacities for the pattern of life he has to weave. Now, the inmost being, the true personality, the central consciousness of the evolving individual is his psychic being. It is, as it were, a very tiny speck of light lying far behind the experiences in normal people. In grown up souls this psychic consciousness has an increased lightincreased in intensity, volume and richness. Thus there are souls, old and new. Old and ancient are those that have reached or are about to reach the fullness of perfection; they have passed through a long past of innumerable lives and developed the most complex and yet the most integrated personality. New souls are those that are just emerged or emerging out of the mere physico-vital existence; these are like simple organisms, made of fewer constituents, referring mostly to the bodily life, with just a modicum of the mental. It is the soul, however, that grows with experiences and it is the soul that builds and enriches the personality. Whatever portion of the outer life, whatever element in the mind or vital or body succeeds in corning in contact with the psychic consciousness, that is to say, is able to come under its influence, is taken up and lodged there: it remains in the psychic 'being as its living memory and permanent possession. It is such elements that form the basis, the groundwork upon which the structure of the integral and true personality is raised.
The first thing then to do is to find out what it is that you are meant to realise, what is the role you have to play, your particular mission and the capacity or quality you have to express. You have to discover that and also the thing or things that oppose and do not allow it to flower or come to full manifestation. In other words, you have to know yourself, recognize your soul or psychic being.
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06.30 - Sweet Holy Tears, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The tears that the soul sheds are holy, are sweet; they come bidden by the Divine and are blessed by His Presence. They are like the dew from heaven. For they are pure, they are spontaneous, welling out of a heart of innocent freedom. The feeling is infinitely impersonal, completely egoless: there is only an intense movement of self-giving, total simple self-giving. Tears are the natural expression in one who needs help, who has the complete surrender and simplicity of a child, the abdication of all vanity. Such tears are beautiful in their nature and beneficent in character. They are therefore like dewdrops that belong to heaven as it were and come from there with a sovereign healing virtue. Such tears are not idle tears, as the English poet says in a vein of melancholy, they are instinct with a power, an effective energy which brings you relief, ease and peace. And it is not only pure but purifying, this feeling made of quiet intensity and aspiration and surrender: it is unmixed, free from any demand or need of reward or return; it is so impersonal that the aspiration is, so to say, even independent of the object for which it exists.
At a supreme crisis of the soul when there seems to be no issue before you, if you come, in the naked simplicity of your whole being, pour yourself out in a flood of self-giving, to one who can be your refugein the end the Divine alone can be such a oneand who can respond fully to the intensity and ardent sincerity of your approach, you come holding your tearful soul as a complete self-offering, you do not know what tremendous response you call forth, the blessing divine you bring down in and around you.
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07.01 - The Joy of Union; the Ordeal of the Foreknowledge, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Into a simplest movement she could bring
A oneness with earth's glowing robe of light,
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07.03 - The Entry into the Inner Countries, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
Its occult wizardries, its simple lines
And great communions and uplifting moves,
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07.05 - The Finding of the Soul, #Savitri, #Sri Aurobindo, #Integral Yoga
In a simple purity of emptiness
Her mind knelt down before the unknowable.
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Our acts chime with God's simple natural good
Or serve the rule of a supernal Right.
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07.06 - Record of World-History, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
It is the image of reading a book that I have given you. But it is, as I said, only an image. What it is really is a kind of perception. And the perception may be in the form of an image, it may be in the form of a narrative. At other times it may be a simple answer to a particular question. There are many kinds and varieties of record, different according to the types or levels of consciousness that you go to.
Naturally the process is not easy and available to every-body, as an ordinary book. It requires a special aptitude and special discipline.
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07.11 - The Problem of Evil, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The universe and its creator are not separate things, they are one and identical in their origin. The universe is God himself projected into Space (and Time). So the universe is the Divine in one aspect or another. You cannot divide the two, making one the creator and the other, his work, the watch-maker and his watch. You put your idea of the Divine upon him and ask, why he has created such a nasty world. If the Divine were to answer, It is not I, it is yourself. Become myself again, you will no longer feel and see as you do now you are not yourself, therefore your question and your problem! Indeed, when you unite your consciousness with the divine consciousness there is no longer any problem. Everything appears then natural and simple, and correct and as it should be. It is when you cut yourself from your origin and stand outside, in front of him and against him that all the trouble begins. Of course you may ask, how is it that the Divine has tolerated a part of himself going out and separating itself and creating all this disorder? I would reply on behalf of the Divine, If you want to know, you had better unite yourself with the Divine, for that is the only way of knowing why he has done so. It is not by questioning him by your mind that you will get the answer. The mind cannot know. And repeat, when you come to this identification, all problems are solved. The feeling, one can explain, that things are not all right, that they should be otherwise comes precisely from the fact that there is a divine will unfolding itself in a continuous progression, that things that were and are have to give place to things that shall be and shall be better and better than they have been. The world that was good yesterday will no longer be so tomorrow. The universe might have appeared quite harmonious in some other age but now appears quite discordant: it is because we see the possibility of a better universe. If we found it as it should be, we would not do what we have to do, we would not try to make it better. Even so, we would conceive the Divine in a very human way; for we remain imprisoned within ourselves, confined to this consciousness of ours which is like a grain of sand in the infinite immensity. You want to understand the immensity? That is not possible. It is possible only under one condition; be one with the immensity. The drop of water cannot very well ask how the ocean is: it has to lose itself into the ocean.
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07.29 - How to Feel that we Belong to the Divine, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To have such an experience, you must first have the will for it; you must will and aspire, try to be less and less an egoist, to have less and less the feeling of being a particular person. You must have then within you this flame, this ardent yearning, this need of union. It is a kind of luminous enthusiasm that possesses you, an irresistible necessity of your being to dissolve in the divine and not to be separate. True, it is a state that does not last longin the beginningyou have the contrary experience immediately after. But if you continue, persist in your will and aspiration, the other state will come again. The two alternate for a time till the complete fusion is achieved. Finally there is no longer the distinction of your personal being and the Divine Being, the two are one. There is no more the state of yearning towards an ecstatic sense of submission in which the two are still separate. The state of fusion and mingling, of complete identity is extremely simple and supremely spontaneous. I heard once from an Indian Sufi at Paris of this state of consciousness. They too know of it.
Is that then the final stage, no more progress after that?
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07.30 - Sincerity is Victory, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
To be sincere and to be candid are not the same thing. To be candid means a simplicity based, in a large measure, upon an ignorance of things. A child is candid, because he is simple and ignorant and hides nothing; he is incapable of it and has no will to deceive anyone. But sincerity is different.
Sincerity is a most difficult thing to have, but it is also the most effective of things. If you have sincerity, you are sure of victory. But it must be true sincerity. Sincerity means that all the elements of your being, all its movements, each and every one, from the most spiritual to the most physical, from the inmost to the outermost, from the top-most to the bottom-most, all parts, severally and wholly and equally are turned to the Divine,' they ask for nothing else than the Divine, they live for and by the Divine.
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07.31 - Images of Gods and Goddesses, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
Well when a little child draws a picture of an object, is there any likeness? It is about the same or even worse here. For the child is simple and sincere, while the image-maker is full of prejudices and preconceived ideas, stuffed with things he has heard or read. And he is tied to his constructions. But at times, here and there, very rarely indeed, artists appear with an inner vision, with a great aspiration and a great purity of soul; they do things that are acceptable. But they are exceptions, the contrary is the rule.
I have seen some of these forms in the vital world and also in the mental world; they are truly creations of man. There is a Power from beyond that manifests, but in this triple world of Ignorance man creates God Himself in his own image and beings that appear there are more or less the outcome of the creative human thought. So at times we do have things that are truly frightful. I have seen formations that are so obscure, so un-understandable, so inexpressive! There are some divine beings that are treated worse than the others. Take, for example, this poor Mahakali. What has man made of her, wildly terrible, a nightmare beyond imagination! Such creations however live in a very inferior world, in the lowest vital world; and if there is anything there of the original being, it is such a far off reflection that it is hardly recognisable. And yet it is that which is pulled by the human consciousness. When, for example, an image is made and installed and the priest calls down into it a form, an emanation of a god, through an inner invocation there is usually a whole ceremony in this connectionif the priest is someone having the power of evocation, then the thing succeeds (what Ramakrishna did in the Kali temple). But generally priests are people with the commonest ideas and the most traditional training and education; when they think of the gods they give them attributes and appearances which are popular, which belong normally to entities of the vital world, at best to mental formations but which do not represent in any way the truth of the beings behind. All the idols in temples or the household gods worshipped by the many are inhabited by beings who know only how to lead you to unhappiness and disaster. They are so far away from the divinity that one means to worship. There are certain family Kalis that are real monsters. I have even advised some to throw such an image into the Ganges to get rid of the evil influence emanating from it. But of course it is always the fault of man and not of the divinity. For man wishes so much to make his gods in his own image.
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07.36 - The Body and the Psychic, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The matter is not so simple. I have told you often that the psychic being is the result of an evolution, that is to say, it is the expression of the divine consciousness that has entered and spread itself into Matter and slowly raises Matter and develops it so that it may return to the Divine. The psychic being is formed progressively by the divine centre through many lives or incarnations. There comes a time when it attains a kind of perfection, the perfection of its growth and formation. It has then often an aspiration towards greater realisation, a further progress to manifest better or further the Divine. As the result of this pull, it generally draws towards itself a being of a higher order, from a higher plane, from the Overmind, as Sri Aurobindo calls it, a being of involution who incarnates in the psychic being. These overmental entities are termed gods and divinities by men. Now when the fusion takes place, of a god into a psychic being, the latter naturally increases in stature and partakes of the nature of the god and acquires also the capacity to produce emanations; that is to say it throws out of itself a part which possesses an independent existence and can incarnate in others. In this way there may be not only two but several emanations or projections of the same original being. In other words, there may be a single psycho-divine origin but many personalities coming out of it. That is how it happens sometimes that different people feel a sort of affinity and even identity, and with reason, because they carry within them the same deity, out of which they, that is, their psychic being came. It is not the same thing as the doubling of the personality where in throwing oneself out of oneself one loses a portion, as when you cut a body into two: there are only two halves. Here the projection is a whole and independent personality. If you emanate a being out of you, you remain whole and entire without losing anything of yourself and the emanation too is a being whole and entire living its independent life.
II
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07.42 - The Nature and Destiny of Art, #Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol 03, #Nolini Kanta Gupta, #Integral Yoga
The decline comes in the normal course of evolution which follows a spiral movement. From the beginning of the last century to the middle of it, art became totally a debased thing, commercial, obscure, ignorant, something very far from its true nature and function. But the spirit of art cannot die; only as it rose as a movement of protest or revolt, the forms it chose were equally bizarre. In attempting to counteract the general debasing of taste it went to the other extreme, as is the character of all movements of nature. One was a servile copy of nature, it was pointed out or not even that. In those days it used to be called photographic art, if one were to condemn it: But now it is no longer a term of condemnation, for photography has developed into a consummate art. Neither could it be truly called realism, for there are realistic paintings which belong to a very high order. That art was conventional, artificial, I lifeless. Now the reaction to this movement said: we do not concern ourselves with physical life any more, the reality as we see with outward eyes is no longer our business; we want instead to express the vital life, the mental life. Hence came a whole host of reformers and rebelscubists, surrealists, futurists and so onwho sought to create art with their head. They forgot the simple truth that in art it is not the head that commands, but the feeling of beauty in the heart. So art landed into the most absurd, ridiculous and frightful of worlds. Indeed with the two wars behind us we have gone further in that direction. Each war has brought down a world in decomposition. And now we seem to be in the very heart of chaos.
Perhaps we are at the bottom of the curve and it is time to mount up. This disintegration is a necessary prelude; it is even from a certain point of view a better condition than that of the epoch of Queen Victoria or the Second Empire in France, the age of the practical, successful bourgeoisie, of snug contentment and dull mediocrity, of death in life. As I say, the movement of progress follows a curve. In a certain epoch some fine things are expressed in a fine way. Then follows an epoch which is tired of the old things, wants to find new things and express them in a new way. The age of Louis XIV, for example, was an age dominated by the sense of artistic creation and it represented the peak of a certain type of the truly beautiful in art and life. In the course of social evolution other ideas, other needs appearedthose of a commercial age. So the curve took a downward course. For there is nothing so antagonistic to art as commerce. For the association of commerce with art means the popularisation of something which is exceptional: it is putting within the reach of all and sundry a thing which is understood and appreciated only by the chosen few, the elite. Perhaps it is because of this, because art has no outlet in the world, it has in these days turned to other directions, into the domains of the mental and the vital, into sideways and bypaths of consciousness. When, however, better conditions prevail, when instead of the spirit of mercantilism, there appears upon earth the sense of a more beautiful reality, then art will be reborn and come to its own. That seems to be still a long way off.
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