The Mother

Agenda

Volume 7

February 26, 1966

(After the translation of “Savitri” – the dialogue with Death)

Behold the figures of this symbol realm....

Here thou canst trace the outcome Nature gives

To the sin of being and the error in things

And the desire that compels to live

And man's incurable malady of hope.

(X.IV.64 3)

But she will answer you!... I'd like to know what she will answer him.

(silence)

If we follow to its end the idea with which Sri Aurobindo wrote this, Death would be the principle that created Falsehood in the world.... It's obviously either Falsehood that created Death, or Death that created Falsehood.

It's rather Falsehood that created Death!

Logically, yes.

According to the story (if it can be called a story) that Théon told, it was Falsehood that created Death. But according to what we've just read, Death would be what created Falsehood.... Obviously it must be neither this way nor that! It must be something else, which we should find.

(silence)

Théon's idea (which also fits with the teaching here in India in which they say it was the sense of separation that created the whole Disorder – Death, Falsehood and all the rest), Théon's idea was that those first four Emanations, that is, Consciousness, Love, Life, and Truth (Love was the last, I think, but I no longer remember what he said), those four individual emanated Beings, according to him, in full consciousness of their power and existence, cut themselves off from their Origin. In other words, they wanted to depend only on themselves, they didn't even feel the need to keep the connection with their Origin (I am putting it very materially). So then, that cut is what instantly caused Consciousness to become Unconsciousness, Love to become Suffering (it wasn't Love – it was actually Ananda which became Suffering), Life to become Death and Truth to become Falsehood. And they hurled themselves into the creation like that. Then, there was a second creation, which was the creation of the gods, to mend the mischief caused by those four (the story is told in almost a childlike way in order not to be abstract, in order to become concrete). The gods are the second emanation and they came to mend. In India and everywhere, they were given various names and functions, and they are found in the Overmind region, that is to say, above the physical quaternary, the material quaternary. And the function of those gods is to mend the damage wrought by the others. And the region in which the others (the first Emanations) concentrated is the vital region.

All this can be translated philosophically, intellectually and so on. It is told as a story so that the most physical intellectuality may understand. But in principle, it's the separation from the Origin that created the whole Disorder. And, as far as I know, in India too the Upanishads say the same thing; Sri Aurobindo, at any rate, says that Disorder came with the sense of Separation. So those are different ways of saying the same thing. In one case, seen in a certain way, it's a willed separation; in the other case, it's an inevitable consequence – inevitable consequence of... of what? I don't know.

Because, according to theogonies, the gods have remained in contact with their Origin and they feel themselves to be the representation of the Origin, as in the Indian theogony in which they say that Shiva is the representative of the Supreme – Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver, Shiva, the transformer – and all three are conscious representatives of the Supreme, but partial ones.

It's perfectly obvious that those are only manners of speaking. There are indeed entities, they do exist, but... it's only a way of telling the story; in one way or another, it's the same thing. Metaphysics is also one way of telling the story. And one isn't truer than the other.

(silence)

But to me, the problem is to find... You know, I am after the process that will lead to the power to undo what was done.

When people asked Théon, “How did things come to happen that way?” (he used to say that the first Emanation and the next three separated themselves), “Why did they separate themselves?”, he would reply very simply (laughing), “Why is the world as it is, in this state of disorder? Why is it like that?... That's not the interesting point: the interesting point is to make it what it must be.” But after all those years, there is something in me that would like to have the power or the key: the process. And is it not necessary to feel or live or see (but “see,” I mean, see actively) how it went this way (Mother bends her wrist in one direction) in order to be able to go that way (she bends it in the opposite direction)? That's the question.

(silence)

What's interesting is that now that this mind of the cells has been organized, it appears to be going with dizzying speed through the process of human mental development all over again, in order to reach... the key, precisely. There is of course the sense that the state we are in is a false unreality, but there is a sort of need or aspiration to find, not a mental or moral “why,” nothing of the sort, but a HOW – how it got twisted this way (Mother bends her wrist in one direction), in order to straighten it out (gesture in the opposite direction).

The pure sensation has the experience of the two vibrations [the false and the true, the twisted and the straight vibrations], but the transition from one to the other is still a mystery. It's a mystery, because it cannot be explained: neither when it goes this way (gesture to the false direction) nor when it goes that way (gesture to the true direction).

So there is something that says like Théon, “Learn to BE that way [on the true side] and stay that way.” But there is an impression that the “stay that way” must depend on knowing why one is that way or how one is that way?

I don't know if I make myself understood!...