February 25, 1961The Mother
Agenda
Volume 2
February 25, 1961
(Mother gives Satprem some flowers.)
This one is the Constant Remembrance of the Divine.1 This is Life Energy2 and Purified Life Energy.3 Then Faithfulness4: the peace of Faithfulness – Faithfulness to the Divine, of course, that's understood! This is Divine Solicitude5; this is the Aspiration for Transformation,6 and the response: see how beautiful it is – like velvet! it's the Promise of Realization.7 Here is Light Without Obscurity,8 and finally Realization9 – the first flower from the tree at Nanteuil.10
There you are.
You can easily make a speech using flowers and I have noticed that this can effectively replace the old Vedic images, for instance, which no longer hold meaning for us, or the ambiguous phraseology of the ancient initiations. Flower language is much better because it contains the Force and is extremely plastic – since it's not formulated in words, each one is free to arrange and receive it according to his own capacity. You can make long speeches using flowers!
I have nothing more to say now, except that the same situation prevails.
The Darshan went rather well, much better than I was expecting; but the following two days it was difficult here [in the body]. Then one night (I don't remember which), I... I can't say “grumbled,” but... (it wasn't my body “grumbling,” it is very docile and doesn't protest), but I sometimes find that... well, I found it a little exaggerated that day. “All the same,” I said, “this may be demanding a bit too much of it!” And then (Mother laughs) the whole night through, each time I awoke and looked (not with my physical eyes), I saw serpents! They were drawn up straight in a circle – magnificent cobras with white bellies, pearl gray backs and flecks of gold on their hoods! They surrounded me, watching, exactly as though they were saying, “All the necessary energy is there! You needn't worry!” So I concluded that this whole affair11 must have its utility – it can't be simply the body's lack of plasticity and incapacity to receive. It must have a usefulness – but what?... I haven't understood. Perhaps I will get the explanation later, once it's over.
And the next afternoon, I closed my eyes while I was bathing and what did I see but an enormous, magnificent cobra! It gazed at me, almost smiling, and stuck out its tongue! “Good,” I said, “then everything is all right! (laughing) I have only to hold on.”
So, that's all I have to say.
And what about you?... Nothing to say?
(long silence)
There's an American living in Madras, a rather important man, it seems, and an intimate friend of Kennedy, the new President. He has read and reread all of Sri Aurobindo's books and is extremely interested. He wrote to Kennedy that he would like him to come here so he can bring him to the Ashram. This man has posed a very interesting question, drawing an analogy.... Deep in a forest, a deer goes to quench its thirst; no one is aware of it, yet someone who has made a special study of deer hunting would know by the tracks that the deer had passed by – not only what particular type of deer, but its age, size, sex, etc. Similarly, there must be people with a spiritual knowledge analogous to that of hunters, who can detect, perceive, that a person is in touch with the Supermind,
while ordinary people know nothing about it and wouldn't notice. So he asks, “I would like to know by what signs such a person can be recognized?”
It is a very intelligent question.
I replied very briefly in English. I haven't brought my answer with me, but I can tell you right away that there are two signs – two certain, infallible signs. I know them through personal experience, for they are two things that can ONLY come with the supramental consciousness; without it, one cannot possess them – no yogic effort, no discipline, no tapasya can give them to you, while they come almost automatically with the supramental consciousness.
The first sign is perfect equality as Sri Aurobindo has described it (you must know it, there's a whole chapter on equality, samatā, in The Synthesis of Yoga) – exactly as he described it with such wonderful precision! But this equality (which is not “equanimity”) is a particular STATE where one relates to all things, outer and inner, and to each individual thing, in the same way. That is truly perfect equality: vibrations from things, from people, from contacts have no power to alter that state.
In my reply I mentioned this first, though I didn't give him all these explanations. I put it in a few words as a kind of test of his intelligence, and in a somewhat cryptic form to see if he would understand.
The second sign is a sense of ABSOLUTENESS in knowledge. As I have already told you, I had this with my experience [of January 24]. This state CANNOT be obtained through any region of the mind, even the most illumined and exalted. It's... not a “certainty,” it's (Mother lowers both hands like an irresistible block descending), a kind of absoluteness, without even any possibility of hesitation (there's no question of doubt), or anything like that. Without (how to say it?).... All mental knowledge, even the highest, is a “conclusive” knowledge, as it were: it comes as a conclusion of something else – an intuition, for instance (an intuition gives you a particular knowledge, and this knowledge is like the conclusion of the intuition). Even revelations are conclusions. They're all conclusions – the word “conclusion” comes to me, but I don't know how to express it. This isn't the case, however, with the supramental experience – a kind of absolute. The feeling it gives is altogether unique – far beyond certainty, it is... (Mother again makes the same irresistible gesture) it is a FACT, things are FACTS. It is very, very difficult to explain. But with that... one naturally has a complete power – the two things always go together.
“In my reply to this
man I didn't speak of “power” because the power is almost a consequence and I didn't want to speak of consequences.) But the fact remains: a kind of absoluteness in knowledge springing from identity – one is the thing one knows and experiences: one is it. One knows it because one is it.
When these two signs are present (both are necessary, one is incomplete without the other), when a person possesses both, then you can be sure he has been in contact with the Supermind. So people who speak about receiving the Light... well, (laughing) it's a lot of hot air! But when both signs are present, you can be sure of your perception.12
(silence)
It is quite evident that with these two things, you truly... it's what Sri Aurobindo says: you step into another world, you leave this entire hemisphere behind and enter another one. That's the feeling.
The day it's established, it will be good.
(silence)
And it results neither from an aspiration nor a seeking nor an effort nor a tapasya nor anything else: it comes, bang! (same irresistible gesture) And when it goes away, something like... like an imprint in the sand remains – in the consciousness. The consciousness is like a layer of sand on which the experience has left an imprint. If you stir about too much, the imprint vanishes; if you remain very still, it.... But it's only an imprint. And it can't be imitated. What's marvelous is that it can't be imitated! All the rest, all the ascetic realizations, for example, can be imitated, but you can't imitate this, it is... there is no equivalent.
It's like the extraordinary feeling I had in my experience that night [January 24] – the individuality, even in its highest consciousness, even what's known as the atman13 and the soul, had nothing to do with it. For it comes like this (same gesture), with an absoluteness. There is NO individual participation – it's a decision coming from the Supreme.
It's the same thing for the rest: all your aspiration, all your tapasya, all your efforts, all that is “individual” – absolutely no effect. It comes, and there it is.
There is only one thing you can do – ANNUL YOURSELF as much as possible. If you can annul yourself completely, then the experience is total. And if your “disappearance” could be constant, the experience would be constantly there – but that's still far away.... I don't know if all this... (Mother looks at her body).
(silence)
Obviously, the body needed a test, a VERY SEVERE test, because... from a personal viewpoint, it's the only explanation I can find for all these disorders. There are many explanations from a general viewpoint, but.... Anyway, I will know the day I am told – all these imaginings are useless. But from a personal viewpoint.... You see, for a long time (more than a year now, probably almost two), this body hasn't felt its limits.14 It is not at all its former self; it is scarcely more than a concentration now, a kind of agglomeration of something; it is not a body in a skin – not at all. It's a sort of agglomeration, a concentration of vibrations. And even what is normally called “illness”... (but it is not illness, these are not illnesses, they are functional disorders), even these functional disorders don't have the same meaning for the body as they have for the doctor, for instance, or for ordinary people. It's not like that, the body doesn't feel it like that. It feels it rather as... as a kind of difficulty in adjusting to some new vibratory need.
(silence)
Formerly, when it couldn't do its work, the body had a kind of impatience – a feeling that despite all its aspiration and goodwill
to be a fit instrument, these disorders were barring the way. Even this has completely gone.
Now the body has a kind of extraordinary smile for everything. At the end of the day, with the accumulation of everything coming from the people I have seen and the work I have done, when I have to push and pull myself just to climb the stairs because my legs are like... iron rods, without any will (that's the most terrible part: they don't respond to the will), even at times like these, when my arms are what pull me up the stairs (no longer my legs), the body doesn't protest, doesn't protest. Then it begins walking back and forth for japa. And after half an hour of walking, things are infinitely better (Mother makes a gesture of the Force descending into her body).
(silence)
But the body itself doesn't know why this is happening.... And in fact, it finds it unnecessary to try: it's like that because it's like that. And were it called upon, it would say, “Very well, when conditions ought to be otherwise, they will be otherwise.” That's exactly its position.
(silence)
Evidently this was necessary.
We shall see.
(silence)
All this [the world, the Ashram] is held in my consciousness with a kind of essential compassion applying equally to all things, all difficulties, all obstacles. I receive letters by the dozens, as you know, and each person comes to me with his own little misery or problem, inner or outer (a tiny pimple becomes... a mountain). When people come to me, my inner consciousness always responds in the same way, with a kind of... equality and compassion for all. But when people are talking to me or I am reading a letter and my body grows conscious of what it calls the “to-do” they make over their miseries, it has a kind of feeling (I mean there is a feeling in the cells): “Why do they take things like that! They are making things much more difficult.” The body understands. It understands that their way of taking the least little difficulty in such a blind, egotistical and self-centered manner, increases its difficulties furiously!
It's 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 attitude – a NORMAL attitude, quite simple, uncomplicated – ahh, 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 “doesn't 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, it's reduced to its minimum, and I mean purely materially, in the material vibration itself.
Almost (I say “almost” because the body hasn't had every experience), but almost all pains can be reduced to something absolutely negligible. (Of course, some pains it hasn't had, but it has had a sufficient number!) It's 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 doctor's consciousness or anyone else's, 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 isn't a factor, or rather it's a factor that can be easily dealt with. It's not that: it is Matter; Matter (probably cellular matter, or...) losing its capacity to respond to the will, to will-power. But why?... I don't know! It depends upon the particular disorganization; but why is it like that? I don't 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 doesn't last – but I still haven't found it. Although there's 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 doesn't respond. Here and there, groups of cells fail to respond, and the Force cannot act. So what must be found is....
(silence)
Even in this, right now, in what I am saying, there's a sense of tapasya; there's the whole inner consciousness making the body do a tapasya. But my knowledge and my certainty (what I KNOW) is
that it may be a necessary preparation, but it is NOT what accomplishes the work.15 Rather, it is something acting like that (Mother abruptly turns her hand over to indicate a reversal of states). And when it goes “like that,” it is done, all is done. All is done.
Are these disorders necessary for it to become “like that”?... I have my doubts. I have my doubts. But the question can't even be asked, because what it implies seems to verge on a fatalism having no truth in itself – it is not a fatalism, not at all. What is it?... Something that defies expression.
(silence)
Even the body, the body itself, has the constant perception of bathing in the vibration of the CONCRETE divine Presence; so certainly from a psychological standpoint there is not the slightest shadow in the picture. Even from the material standpoint, this Presence is here. Yet although it is here, felt, perceived and experienced, there is still this disorder! (I call it disorder.)
(long silence)
It is a great Mystery... oh!
(silence)
All is a great Mystery.
(silence)
What Sri Aurobindo calls “the Great Secret” – a GREAT secret.
The day we find it... things will change.
(silence)
How clearly one sees and knows that even the HIGHEST, the most luminous intelligence can understand nothing, nothing – it is idiotic to try.
(silence)
All our aspirations, all our seekings, all our ascents always remind me of that flower I gave you the other day16: it's something like that (Mother makes a vague, ethereal gesture), vibrating, vibrating, vibrating, very luminous, very delicate, essentially very
lovely... (silence) but it is not THAT (Mother again turns her hand over to indicate an abrupt reversal). It is not That.
(silence)
It is the VERY NATURE that changes, it is... something else.
Always, when this feeling of absoluteness – an absolute – comes (in whatever realm it may be), it carries EVERYTHING within it, it is....
(silence)
Even “absolute” is not strong enough (Mother makes a gesture of a solid block descending). That is why one speaks of an irrevocable, irremediable absolute... but I don't know how to express it. And NOTHING BUT this Absolute exists, there is nothing else. There is only that.
And everything is there in it.
When that comes, all is well.
(silence)
So, mon petit, I have talked the whole time and we still haven't done anything – another day without working! (Mother laughs)
It's a curious thing... speaking evidently helps me follow the experience. But I can't just begin speaking all alone up in my room! And talking to a tape recorder is useless. Up to now, it certainly flows the best with you – by far. I haven't tried with others, although occasionally I've said something to Nolini, but his receptivity is fuzzy (I don't know whether you can understand this impression: it's as though my. words were going into cotton-wool). Once, as I told you, I spoke with R., and with him I felt that three quarters of it was absolutely lost – and as a matter of fact it was. But with you I begin to SEE, and the need to formulate makes me concentrate on my vision. And this I experience with you more than I ever have with anyone. So....
So you are bearing the consequences!
Well, then – do you need anything?... Nothing?... Petit, when I have something especially good for lunch, I always feel like giving it to you!...
1 Lonicera japonica (Japanese Honeysuckle).
2 Chrysanthemum, yellow.
3 Chrysanthemum, white.
4 Quisqualis indica.
5 Malvaviscus arboreus.
6 Millingtonia hortensis (Indian Cork Tree).
7 Tropaeolum majus (Nasturtium).
8 Eucharis grandiflora (Amazon Lily).
9 Delonix regia (Gul Mohur Tree).
10 One of the Ashram houses.
11 The physical disorder that had principally attacked Mother's legs.
12 The following is the exact text of Mother's reply to this American gentleman:
Two irrefutable signs prove that one is in relation with the Supermind:
1. A perfect and constant equality.
2. An absolute certainty in knowledge.
To be perfect, the equality must be invariable and spontaneous, effortless, towards all circumstances, all happenings, all contacts, material or psychological, irrespective of their character and impact.
The absolute and indisputable certainty of an infallible knowledge through identity.
Mother then made the following commentary regarding the “impact” of circumstances, happenings, etc.:
“There is no longer this kind of opposition between what is an agreeable impact and what is a disagreeable one. There are no more ‘agreeable’ things and ‘disagreeable’ things: they are simply vibrations one registers. Usually when people receive a shock they do this (gesture of recoil), then they reflect, concentrate, and finally restore peace. But equality does not mean that! That's not what it is. The state must be SPONTANEOUS, constant and invariable.”
13 Atman: the Self or Spirit.
14 Here Mother gradually goes into trance and all the rest of this conversation will take place in a state of trance.
15 I.e., it is not through any effort or tapasya that the true change is brought about.
16 Barringtonia speciosa (“Supramental Action”).