January 10, 1961The Mother
Agenda
Volume 2
January 10, 1961
I have a stack of unread letters this high and an even bigger stack I've read but haven't answered. How can I work on the Aphorisms when I am constantly hounded by people “pulling” on me simply because they have written! If I don't answer immediately, they say (not in words, but...): “So you're not answering my letter!”
These are not very favorable conditions!
Everything is in an awful confusion.
(silence)
What is the next aphorism?
49 – To feel and love the God of beauty and good in the ugly and the evil, and still yearn in utter love to heal it of its ugliness and its evil, this is real virtue and morality.1
Do you have a question?
How can one collaborate in curing the evil and ugliness seen everywhere? By loving? What is the power of love? What effect can an individual consciousness, acting alone, have on the rest of mankind?
How to collaborate in curing evil and ugliness?... We can say that there's a kind of hierarchic scale of collaboration or action; a negative cooperation and a positive cooperation.
To begin with, there's what could be called a negative way, the way expounded by Buddhism and similar religions: the refusal to see. To be in a state of such purity and beauty that there is no perception of evil and ugliness. It's like something that doesn't touch you because it doesn't exist in you. This is the perfection of the negative method.
It is quite elementary: never take notice of evil, never speak of the evil present in others, never perpetuate the vibrations of evil by observation, criticism or giving undue attention to the evil deed. This is what Buddha taught: each time you mention an evil you help spread it.
This skirts the issue.
Nevertheless, it ought to be a very general rule; yet its critics have a reply: “If you don't see evil you can never cure it. If you leave someone to his squalor he will never emerge from it.” (It's not exactly true, but it's how they legitimize their actions.) In this aphorism, Sri Aurobindo has anticipated these objections: it is not through ignorance or unconsciousness or indifference that you fail to see evil – you can see and even feel it, but you refuse to collaborate in spreading it by giving it the force of your attention or the support of your consciousness. And for that, you must yourself be above the perception and sensation – able to see evil or ugliness without suffering, without feeling shocked or troubled. You see them from a height where such things do not exist, yet you have the conscious perception of them – they don't affect you, you are free. This is the first step.
The second step is to be POSITIVELY conscious of the supreme Goodness and Beauty behind all things and supporting all things, permitting them to exist. Once you have seen Him, you can perceive Him behind the mask and the distortion – even ugliness, even cruelty, even evil are a disguise for that Something which is essentially good or beautiful, luminous, pure.
With this comes TRUE collaboration. For when you have this vision, this awareness, when you live in this consciousness, you also get the power to PULL That into the manifestation on earth and put it into contact with what, for the time being, distorts and disguises; thus the deformation and disguise are gradually transformed by the influence of the Truth behind.
Here we are at the top rung on the scale of collaboration.
Put this way, there is no need to bring the principle of love into our explanation. But if we want to know or understand the nature of the Force or Power that permits and accomplishes this
transformation (specially in the case of evil, but for ugliness to some extent as well), we see that of all powers, Love is obviously the mightiest, the most integral – integral in that it applies to all cases. It's even mightier than the power of purification which dissolves bad wills and is, in a way, master over the adverse forces, but which doesn't have the direct transforming power; because the power of purification Must FIRST dissolve in order to form again later. It destroys one form to make a better one from it, while Love doesn't need to dissolve in order to transform: it has the direct transforming power. Love is like a flame changing the hard into the malleable, then sublimating even the malleable into a kind of purified vapor. It doesn't destroy: it transforms.
Love, in its essence and in its origin, is like a white flame obliterating ALL resistances. You can have the experience yourself: whatever the difficulty in your being, whatever the weight of accumulated mistakes, the ignorance, incapacity, bad will, a single SECOND of this Love – pure, essential, supreme – melts everything in its almighty flame. One single moment and an entire past can vanish. One single TOUCH of That in its essence and the whole burden is consumed.
It's easy to understand how someone who has this experience can spread it and act upon others, since to have it you must touch the unique, supreme Essence of the whole manifestation – the Origin and the Essence, the Source and the Reality of all that is; then you immediately enter the realm of Unity where there is no more separation among individuals: it's a single vibration that can repeat itself endlessly in outer forms.2
If you go high enough, you come to the Heart of everything. Whatever manifests in this Heart can manifest in all things. This is the great secret, the secret of divine incarnation in an individual form. For in the normal course of things, what manifests at the center is only realized in the outer form with the awakening and RESPONSE Of the will within the individual form. But if the central Will is constantly, permanently represented in one individual, he can then serve as an intermediary between that Will and all beings, and will FOR THEM. Whatever this being perceives and consciously offers to the supreme Will is replied to as if it came from each individual being. And if individuals happen to be in a more or less conscious and voluntary relationship with this representative being, their relationship increases his efficacy and the supreme Action can work in Matter in a much more concrete and permanent way. This is the reason for these descents of what could be called “polarized” consciousnesses that always come to earth for a particular realization, with a definite purpose and mission – a mission decided upon before the actual embodiment. These mark the great stages of the supreme incarnations upon earth.
And when the day comes for the manifestation of supreme Love – a crystalized, concentrated descent of supreme Love – that will truly be the hour of Transformation, for nothing will be able to resist That.
But as it's all-powerful, a certain receptivity must be prepared on earth so its effects are not devastating. Sri Aurobindo has explained it in one of his letters. Someone asked him, “Why doesn't this Love come now?”, and he replied something like this: If divine Love in its essence were to manifest on earth, it would be like an explosion; for the earth is not supple enough or receptive enough to widen to the measure of this Love. The earth must not only open itself but become wide and supple. Matter – not just physical Matter, but the substance of the physical consciousness as well – is still much too rigid.
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Wouldn't it be better if each time you answered these questions on the Aphorisms verbally?
Ah, that's always better! With pencil and paper I have to look at what I'm writing and it holds me back like a leash.
Then why don't you just speak? T or Z could come and listen to you – they would be overjoyed!
Oh no, my child, you don't see at all! To speak I must have a receptive atmosphere! The idea of talking aloud all alone in my room would never occur to me. Sound doesn't come: what comes is a direct transmission – and if I manage to connect it to my hand and write it's transmitted, although it always gets somewhat pulled down. I can be doing anything at all, it doesn't matter, but it must be something that doesn't monopolize my attention, like brushing my hair in the morning for example: then it comes directly and nothing stops it! But I would never think of uttering a word! That only happens when I find some receptivity in front of me, something I can use.
What I say to people depends entirely upon their inner state. That's precisely why I had such enormous difficulty at the Playground3 – the atmosphere was so mixed! It was a STRUGGLE to find someone receptive so I could speak. And if I'm in the presence of people who understand nothing, I can't say a word. On the other hand, some people come prepared to receive and then suddenly it all comes – but usually there's no tape-recorder!
I have replied endlessly, I have given all sorts of explanations about the organization of the School, about World Union,4 about the true way to organize industry (its true functioning) – so many things! If all that were compiled we could publish brochures! Sometimes I've spoken three-quarters of an hour non-stop to people who listened with delight and were receptive but quite incapable of making a written report of it. At times like that we could have used one of your machines! But when things are organized in advance, it may well be that nothing comes out at all – mentalizing stops the flow. if I is in front of me, I can't say anything to her because she doesn't understand. I already have trouble writing to her – what I have to say is always brought down a bit; but if she were here in the room and I had to speak to her, nothing at all would come out!
No, when we feel like it and when she doesn't raise any question about an aphorism – at least not an impossible question – we'll do this: I will speak here, it's much easier for me. This way things come that I haven't seen before; while when I write like that, they are usually things I've seen on other occasions (not that I try to recall them, they are there and simply come back). But when there's a new contact, something new always comes.
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(A little later, Mother made the following remark concerning the Agenda of December 13, 1960, where she speaks of the physical Mind's. “disbelief” and defeatist reactions as intimately linked to the body's illnesses.)
This defeatist Mind is still functioning – and in full swing!
When we get out of that....
I want to be able to act directly without its help – do what Sri Aurobindo said: be rid of it!
1 Sri Aurobindo's aphorisms appear in the Cent. Ed. Vol. XVII, pp. 79-159.
2 Later, Satprem asked Mother, “Is it a single vibration that CAN REPEAT itself endlessly or that REPEATS itself endlessly?” Mother replied: “I meant several things at once. This single vibration is in static latency everywhere but when you realize it consciously you have the power to make it active wherever you direct it; that is, one doesn't ‘move’ something, but makes it active by the insistence of the consciousness wherever you focus it.”
3 Twice a week, during the period of the Playground Talks, Mother would publicly reply to questions put to her by the disciples assembled at the Ashram Playground.
4 World Union – a “movement” launched through the personal initiative of a disciple.