August 11, 1962The Mother
Agenda
Volume 3
August 11, 1962
(Satprem asks for an explanation of this sentence from August 4: “...it is easier to feel wider, higher, vaster than the world, THAN AN INDIVIDUAL. For it is easier to take everything in, to embrace and change it from outside, than to change it from inside.”)
Yes, it is easier (for a Being or a Force or a Consciousness) to feel vaster than the earth than an individual.1
Than an individual?...
(Mother laughs) It's crystal clear to me!...
It's a sort of reply to something I am translating in The Synthesis of Yoga. You know, there are these three aspects that must always be kept united in one's consciousness: jiva (the individual), Shakti, and Ishwara (the Supreme). He gives a wonderful description of how we have all three together in a kind of inner hierarchy. So while reading that (as I translate I have all the experiences, they come spontaneously), I kept saying to myself, “No, that jiva hampers me; that jiva hems me in! It's not natural to me.” What's natural to me is... it's probably Mahashakti. There is always that sense of creative Power, and of the Lord. The infinite, marvelous, innumerable joy of the Lord, you see, which is so intermingled with the Power – you can sense the presence of the Lord, yet you cannot distinguish or differentiate between the two. It's all a delectable play. So to introduce the individual, the jiva, into this spoils everything, makes everything so small!
I wanted to put all this into my sentence.
And I said it because it's quite natural for people reading in the light of their own experience to get the feeling of an individual being who is united with That – it doesn't work that way with me, I can't do it! I can't. The other movement is natural, spontaneous, wonderful – the delight of being and the delight of living. But as soon as the jiva comes, oh, I feel so hemmed in.2
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(Then Mother comments on a passage from the same conversation of August 4 where she spoke of “this sort of immense universal sieve... that gives the precision.”)
It's very interesting! The fabric of the sieve serves as a filter, as it were, and that's what gives the precision.
And the Light that descends.... You see, it's as though... as though I am SEEING that eternal, universal, immense, wondrous Vibration from without, from within, from above, from below, from everywhere at the same time. And at a certain place there's something so fine, delicate, of a silver-gray (something that's spread all around the world, all around the creation), and THE Vibration passes through it and... it becomes ideas. Not ideas, something higher than ideas – the origin of ideas. Things take form. And the sieve is fine, fine, fine, so fine and tenuous, and it's everywhere (gesture enveloping the earth).
And it's there all the time!... I saw it the other day, I am seeing it now – it seems to be a permanent feature. And it's the origin of all intellectual formulations (those closest to the Truth, of course, with no distortion). Very interesting.
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(On August 4, Mother also spoke of the constant interchange of vibrations making it “childish” to imagine that solitude could facilitate the yoga. And she added: “The only possible solution is so perfect a union with the supreme Vibration that everything is automatically put under His influence.”)
I had the experience for several hours this morning. It started in the middle of the night and lasted through the morning until... I was inundated with people. It began during the night in quite a powerful manner (in the body, all this is in the body), with a formidable sensation of power (so much so that in the middle of the experience I suddenly thought, “I have to tell this to Satprem tomorrow...” – right in the midst of the experience!). And THE Vibration seemed so utterly present (“present”... I have the feeling it's always “present,” but it was perceived, which gives it a kind of efficacy – a kind we can grasp). It was like that all morning until eight or eight-thirty; after eight o'clock the experience slowly faded. It began around eleven at night and lasted till then. And so... yes, it's exactly what I say there: it automatically puts each thing in its place.
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(A little later, regarding the conversation of August 8, where Mother said that with that inner joy of the Presence, “all suffering becomes negligible”:)
Oh, during those hours the Presence lasted this morning, what I say here became so obvious, so obvious! You see (there's nothing but the Lord, of course), it's exactly as if the Lord were seeing all things (and this body is part of what He sees!), seeing all things and laughing, laughing – forever laughing at all the tragedy... the tragedy of this existence! And I was seeing Him right here, you know, there was nothing but Him – immense, marvelous, yet at the same time scaled to the size of the earth, almost to the size of this room, you could say! He was here, in everything – in all the past, all the future, in all places, in everything. And He was smiling, smiling with the consciousness of that joy – it's not “joy,” “joy” sounds pallid. And there was no excitement, nothing of what human consciousness mixes into these things, only... an eternal certitude, a crystal clear vision of the most MINUTE details. And all of this simultaneously, just like that, with a smile. And... although I can't say what is He and what is me, I have the joy of perceiving Him (that isn't abolished), and yet I am nowhere in particular! Still I have the joy, I feel the joy of perceiving Him.
It's difficult to describe. It lasted from around midnight until eight o'clock.
And it was all happening naturally, spontaneously; you couldn't even say it was situated “somewhere”: it was just happening. It's another... it's another way of being.
It will probably be that way one day – nothing will have the power to make one fall back into the old movement.
For I got up, walked around, washed and so on – nothing could shake That; everything went smoothly, they [Mother's activities] didn't take up any room, (laughing) they were off somewhere and didn't disrupt anything!
And I see nothing but THAT – that Consciousness. It's a Consciousness, a Presence. And all, all is there, you see, all is there together, the Power, the Presence, the Consciousness, that joy and Love.... And all of that together almost gives the impression of... a Form, that Vibration of golden light, a crimson-gold which is the most material supramental light – a Form. A Form, and no form – yet it's a Form!
(silence)
All right, mon petit.
There are some interesting things there.
All together, it [the Agenda] is going to be something interesting.
I should say so! It's a gold mine, a world!
Good.
It's going all right, mon petit. And I am more and more certain that I have given you your true name (this seems to be coming out of the blue, but...). The more I come into conscious contact with the future (because it is right HERE, you see, just as we are pushing to go forward, it is pushing to descend), well... it's good. It's good.
Don't worry – don't worry; simply let yourself BE what you truly are.
1 Mother undoubtedly means than TO FEEL LIKE an individual.
2 See Sri Aurobindo's poem, “The Cosmic Spirit”:
I have broken the limits of embodied mind
And am no more the figure of a soul
The burning galaxies are in me outlined....
(Cent. Ed., V. 151.)