April 7, 1961The Mother
Agenda
Volume 2
April 7, 1961
X tells me you're feeling better now....
X hears about it from the doctor. He asks the doctor and the doctor tells him whatever he likes. X says to him, “I will completely cure her,” and the doctor replies, “That's impossible – it can't be cured!” So X says, “You have no faith,” and the doctor replies, “You're living in illusions”!
The truth is that the body is holding its own quite well. But it's a formidable affair. They1 are multiplying by the millions; so you can see it will take time to get rid of them! They circulate throughout the body, sometimes for two, three or four hours at night, pricking and stinging from inside out; they prick like fiery needles. And they go everywhere, in the legs, the trunk, the arms – they're really having fun! But anyway, it's subsiding: the legs are better. It's not quite right yet, but it's coming along. It's nothing.
*
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Later
Each time X comes here, all the difficulties rise up to their maximum, they seem to become absolute. And I understand why: his power acts in a domain full of human pettiness. What a domain! Oh, awful! And we're not out of it yet: quarrels, divisions, misunderstandings, bad will.... I fully understand that it all has to come up in order to be healed. But it gives me a tremendous amount of work!
Anyway....
In your case, it is very clear: each time he comes, everything seems to go askew. And the only reason for it is the conflict between the force he brings down (of course, when he comes I encourage it to come down!), and the inner resistances; and this creates the Contradiction, which becomes more and more pronounced.
It speeds up the work, but at the same time it makes it a bit... taxing.
As for him, even now his way of working consists in eliminating all obstacles – just the opposite of what Sri Aurobindo was doing.
Sri Aurobindo used to envelop them, like this (Mother opens her arms to embrace everything), and then act upon them so that they would no longer be obstacles. But the first thing X said when he first came to the Ashram was, “Oh, there are a lot of elements which shouldn't be here!” And he would talk about a “purge”: eliminate, eliminate, eliminate. But if you eliminate everything from life which is unresponsive to the Divine, what will be left?
He certainly hasn't understood Sri Aurobindo's yoga. And it's useless to try to explain anything to him.
He began to understand after a year, and he understands much better now. But he is shut up in his construction. He doesn't have the kind of personality that can see the earth as something very small. And that's basically what is needed with Sri Aurobindo: the earth must be seen as just a small field of experience... within an eternity.
But that is difficult.
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(After the work, Mother embarks on another topic.)
I am continuing my reading of the Veda. I had to stop for some days because of a sore throat. But anyway, I'm starting again.
The Vedas, after all, were written by people who remembered a radical experience, which must have taken place on earth at a given moment, as an example of what was to come. (This always happens in the yoga: a first radical experience comes like a herald of the future realization.) So in the terrestrial yoga – in the yoga of the earth, of the planet earth – there was a moment when it came; they who are called the forefathers must have created, through their effort and their yoga, at least an image of the supramental realization. And those who wrote the Vedas, who composed all these hymns, remembered or kept the tradition of that experience. And oh, mon petit, it had the same effect on me as when I read the “Yoga of Self-Perfection” in The Synthesis of Yoga (Mother catches her breath): there is such a gulf between what we are, what life on earth and human consciousness now are, even among the most enlightened, the most advanced, and THAT!...
I don't know if it's because I have been so violently attacked – bludgeoned-by all these malevolent energies, but in any case, I sensed acutely the FORMIDABLE immensity of what has to be done... in order for THAT to be realized.
(silence)
When external difficulties subside, when the body becomes passive and quiet, when it is not constantly demanding attention, then you can LIVE in this supramental consciousness and it does not seem so difficult; you feel it is so victorious in its essence that it will end all difficulties.
But for this to come about, you must remain for a while on those higher reaches and not be constantly, constantly dragged down below where you have to fight each minute simply to LAST – to last in all ways: not just personally, but collectively.2 It's a minute-to-minute bout, simply to last. And how long do we have to last for the thing to be done?...
It is a difficult period.
And there has been a decline in everyone's health. Many people are sick. The illnesses are of a more serious nature – there has been a decline.
You have to look at all this with a smile, of course (and I do), but I must say that... the enthusiastic side (you know, that fire of enthusiasm)... has been dampened. Well, there's no need to get excited – it will take time.
We just have to keep on going, keep on moving: one step after another, one step after another, one step after another, without asking how many steps it's going to take, or recalling how many we've taken.
What we really have to do is come alive from minute to minute, living always in the present moment, stubbornly, like this (Mother puts a fist on the arm of her chair, then another, and so on, in a slow, dogged, unrelenting march).
Yet Sri Aurobindo seemed to say that things would be easier once the Supermind came down.
Yes. Yes, obviously! But easier than what, mon petit?
I don't know. I have reread some of his writings where he seemed to say the work would be easier. What happened, why isn't it like that? He seemed to be saying everywhere: things will be easier, the work will be easier...
Yes. But “easier” is only relative.
You mean that even so it's easier than before?
Ah, yes! I mean that something is being done which couldn't be done before.
Ah!...
(silence)
It's not something “miraculous,” you know. To be really satisfied, the human mind always needs some kind of miracle. In its thought, the miraculous is associated with the Divine. I know, because I was born like that. I felt like that when I was very young. And only because life has dealt me some extremely brutal denials have I come to this kind of... sober and reasonable attitude. You know (I told you this the other day), it's disgusting! (Mother laughs) All the bloom has gone... banished by the hard knocks of life. For I was born with this feeling that... yes, that Truth is something miraculous, which has only to show itself to prevail.
It would be like that – without the adverse forces.
The universe would be like that, if it had not been for the deviation of the adverse forces – I see it very clearly. The perversion, the cold-blooded and cruel perversion of sheer malevolent will keeps it from being like that. That's what intervenes.... They all call it an “accident,” but a lot of good that does us! The fact is there.
The adverse force is what keeps the Divine from blossoming miraculously whenever He appears. Because I know that wherever Matter is not under the influence of this adverse will to any degree, it blossoms immediately. And everything in the human heart, in human consciousness, in human thought, all that is slightly sheltered from this adverse influence – sheltered by the psychic, the divine Presence – blossoms, becomes... immediately becomes marvelous, without any obstacle – all the obstacles come from that source. So it's all very well to call it an “accident,” but....
It's obviously reparable, there's no doubt about that, but at what price? And how it complicates things!
We are told it will be all the more beautiful later – I am absolutely sure of this – I don't doubt it for a minute, but....
The world as it is, really... say what you like, even upon the most perfect heights, it's woeful. It is woeful.
There have been moments, you know, in supreme experiences of perfect union in a wondrous Love, when I have turned towards the world – simply turned the consciousness for a second towards the world as it is... (with the aspiration, I remember, for EVERYTHING to participate) and in that state of ecstasy, really, there were... tears of burning sorrow. It happened just like that.
Theoretically, it shouldn't be that way, but in fact it is. Something will never be perfect until this accident has been abolished.
That is my experience.
And to come to this experience I had to pass through a state of the most supreme indifference, where the whole terrestrial manifestation is an illusion; I passed through that, I had my experience BEYOND that. And beyond that... at the moment of supreme ecstasy came fiery tears of grief.
(silence)
I have wondered, at times, whether some extraordinary tapasya might not achieve that.... But....
(silence)
But the indispensable foundation is truly an indomitable courage and unflinching endurance – from the most material cells of the body to the highest consciousness, from top to bottom, entirely. Without that, we're pretty useless.
And I am really in the most favorable conditions, because my body says “yes.” It says yes, yes, yes – it doesn't complain. This may be the sense behind all this illness and difficulty.... Not a single day of complaint.
The night before last I was again awakened at midnight (not “awakened”: I came out of my trance) with those stings burning from inside out, from the tips of the feet up to here, everywhere, in the back... it lasted four hours, non-stop. Well, my body didn't once complain. Not once did it ask for it to stop; it just kept quiet, saying: “Thy Will be done.” And not only saying it but FEELING it, quietly – four hours of minuscule tortures. It didn't say a thing.
Saying nothing is elementary for me! But the body didn't say anything – it didn't even fidget; it didn't even have, you know, that feeling of, “When will it be over?”
Nothing. It just stayed quiet, quiet. I was like a statue in my bed, stinging from head to toe. So I really can't complain! The instrument I have been given is of truly good quality. An unflinching goodwill.
But without any doubt, this is diabolical.
(silence)
Well, mon petit.
And if you really want to please me (I believe you do!), if you want to please me, concentrate on the book on Sri Aurobindo – you can't imagine how much I am interested! And as I LOOK, I see into the future (not with this little consciousness), I see that it's a thing of GREAT importance. It will have a great action. So, I want to clear the way for you now, for us to have time.
I will surely need a quiet mind to prepare the work.3
Yes, yes of course.
To finish this reading and assimilate it quietly. I don't feel capable of writing at all, unless I can receive the inspiration.
But you will receive it!
Yes, I have faith in that.
I haven't the slightest doubt. It's a certainty, a certainty.
I have never written or spoken to X about this, but through mental contact I have told him I don't know how many times: “Satprem has a work to accomplish that is INFINITELY more important than reciting mantras. If it can help him to discipline himself, fine, but it's nothing more; he will not accomplish his work by reciting mantras. He has something to do and he will do it.” I have hammered that into his head (Mother laughs).
So, petit, see you tomorrow.
1 See conversations of February 11 (p. 73) and March 7 (p. 114).
2 Note that just a few days earlier, the Ashram coffers were completely empty. Mother had sold the last of her jewels: “It is not for the upkeep of any [Ashram] department that I have sold my jewels; it is for food, lodging [of the sadhaks] and wages for domestic servants.”
3 Satprem is referring to the enormous amount of material work he had in addition to seven hours of daily japa.