The Mother

Agenda

Volume 10

April 9, 1969

How are you?

Ah, it's better. Yes, since last time, I've felt an improvement.

Oh, good.

I think that's what was affecting me for the past year [i.e., those occult schemings]. Because it was always at night that those headaches and eyeaches used to come-always.

At night... it's disgusting!

I think I could resume my work, couldn't I?

No hurry.

Do you have some news?

There's a question Id like to tell you about. It's about the publication of Sri Aurobindo's books in France. You know that we sent The Synthesis of Yoga and The Human Cycle.¹ The woman who looks after those publications hasn't reacted very well. And not because of the translation (which she finds good), but because of Sri Aurobindo and the text itself She rather arrogantly passes judgment on Sri Aurobindo, whom she doesn't understand at all but has sized up at a glance. A sort of arrogance ...

What has she read?

“The Synthesis of Yoga.”

!!! (Mother laughs)

She is an eager disciple of Zen, so she writes that Zen says in one sentence what Sri Aurobindo says in millions of words. She says one could “cut out nine tenths of Sri Aurobindo's text without removing any of its substance” – you see the arrogance!²

It means she doesn't understand anything.

She doesn't understand anything, but of course she's understood everything!

Is it recently that you got this letter?

Two days ago.

Have you replied?

No.

Don't.

I felt like replying to tell her... Do you know the thought that occurred to me? It's that we don't need to go and beg all those people to tell them that Sri Aurobindo is great: we can just publish him here ourselves.

But of course! That's my impression.

They disgust me, these intellectuals.

(Mother laughs) Oh, yes!

For the past two days I've been in a state of indignation-not indignation; I feel outraged. I feel like striking at these people.

(Mother laughs) They're idiotic.

But I mean we shouldn't even write to ask them to send the manuscripts back.

My thought was to leave it at that (with an inner action) and not to say anything anymore. It will act naturally: there will be someone who will understand after a year, two years... we don't know. Like that – we should put a force on the manuscript that will let it be put it into contact with someone who will understand, who will suddenly realize: “Oh, but we have this and haven't used it!” After a year, two years...³ You understand, we close the door to the person who wrote this letter; let her find herself behind a closed door-that's all, silence. And then, we put the Force on the manuscript, and one day it will come into the hands of someone who will understand.

These intellectuals are terrible.

Oh, they're stupid.

It's a fortress. Such conceit ...

(Mother laughs) They're stupid.

It's even very visible in the atmosphere: as soon as people think they're very intelligent, it's FINISHED, they completely cut themselves off from the true light. That's it. They become self- sufficient, so... (Mother laughs)

It doesn't matter, it's better this way: we'll publish it here.

Do I ask her for the manuscript?

Leave it. One day... one day it'll come into the hands of the one who will understand.⁴

*
*   *

Soon afterwards

In Canada there's a whole movement now. They've just asked me for a message for a Canadian group (Mother looks for a note).

Auroville also, I am constantly telling them two things (hammering gesture): “For those who want to be free, there is only one freedom, that is to be united to the Supreme; and to be united to the Supreme, one must no longer have any desires!” So they're like this (Mother remains open- mouthed). Very amusing!

So I've put the same thing here:

(Satprem reads)

“A new consciousness is at work upon earth to prepare the coming of the superhuman being.

“Open yourselves to this consciousness if you aspire to serve⁵ the Divine Work.

“To come into contact with this new consciousness, the essential condition is no longer to have any desires and to be wholly sincere.”

That's what they must be told again and again (same hammering gesture). I am constantly, constantly impelled to repeat it to them.

There are all the time little incidents with this Consciousness, which are quite amusing, showing why desires are... it really feels they're rubbish. And it shows why; for instance, it shows the body all those little desires it has, and how they prevent the Force from acting. That's very interesting. The body is beginning to understand. It's beginning to feel in an extremely precise and clear way that the MOMENT it's aware of itself-the moment it's aware of itself and of the rest in relation to itself-it falls into a hole; and the moment it's aware of the Force acting-the Force acting, the Consciousness acting – then this (Mother touches the skin of her hands) has no more than a wholly relative reality, wholly relative .... It's like using an instrument for a particular purpose-it's quite like that – but with the immense advantage of not being separate, of feeling like a sort of condensation of the Consciousness. The body is learning well, it sees, it can see that in tiny details, all the time: as soon as it feels it's “something” and the Force is “something else,” there's a pain here, a pain there, this goes wrong, that goes awry .... A world... a complex and thoroughly ugly world. And when it has a movement... (how could I put it?), the opposite of condensation, like a dilation, something like a dilation in the consciousness, then limits grow dim, they fade away, everything becomes supple, and pain goes away... PHYSICALLY.

It's an experience the body is given day after day, now on one spot, now on another, now for one thing, now for another, and it goes through all that. You know, it's... absolutely wonderful.

There's all the old habit, which simply has to be conquered. All the old habit which, as soon as there is a slackening, goes like this (gesture of falling back); it's like a rubber band that you let go of, and it all starts up again: you have a pain, you... And the moment the body identifies with this Vibration, everything becomes like a... radiant expression of the Consciousness, and then everything is smooth (I don't know how else to put it), free from clashes or difficulties; then, if you let yourself go like that, it becomes a marvel. It becomes a marvel. Unfortunately, there's the whole influence of the outer world which makes it difficult for the body to be CONSTANTLY like that and makes it tend to fall back into the ordinary way That's why it can't settle in permanently.

The body is becoming conscious as if it had a truth-vision to see all the previous falsehood. All that it did, even when the inner being knew and the consciousness was growing more enlightened and there was a general goodwill... all the silly things done because of that sense of a separate personality, all that is becoming clear, very clear, and with this nascent vision. While it's in this state where the vision is clear, everything simply becomes wonderful – but it can't last. It can't last mostly because of the constant contact... (gesture around Mother). But even without contact, at night, for example, it can remain in that state for an hour, two hours, and suddenly – one doesn't know what happens – ah! it falls back into the old way, and then... Then you get a pain here, a pain there, a sense of unease... oh, you're disgusted. Then, simply, when you climb back again and all those divisions disappear, then everything is so clear! So clear, so transparent, and so simple! So simple...

Life could be so marvelously simple and beautiful .... Man has really made it idiotic.

I quite understand it was necessary to churn matter, but... the time has come for this to end, for a way out to be found.

The impression is that the visible form is as much (at least as much) the result of how you are seen by others, at least as much as of how you yourself are .... I don't know how to explain that. But there is a way of being which results from the true consciousness and is felt quite concretely, but which is... not exactly in contradiction with, but wholly different from the way you see yourself according to others' vision of yourself .... The eyes are beginning to see in both ways. The old way is partly veiled by the new, and when someone else sees you, you see yourself the way others see you .... It's hard to explain.

That's why something must be found for it to be independent of everybody's influence.

At night, for instance, the body is taller, and it's active, it does things (it's this subtle body that does things, is active and has an existence of which it is wholly conscious), and it's different from this (Mother touches the skin of her hands), but in the subtle physical it's a PHYSICAL body, and it's already something permanent, in the sense that you REMAIN the same, you find things again as you left them (they exist permanently, though they aren't visible with the ordinary vision, but they have a logical and continuous existence). So, there, the form is the true expression – the true expression of the state of consciousness; while here, the form is the result of... (Mother laughs) we could say of all the falsehood spread about in the consciousness.

People who see me at night (those who have this vision in the subtle world) don't see me like this (Mother points to her body): they see me as I am, and they tell me-they say, “Oh, but you are like this, like that....”

But for the one to take the place of the other...?

And this Consciousness can explain wonderfully (not with words: by making you have experiences one side by side with the other). For example, many people say they can't realize the difference between an aspiration, a spiritual effort, and a desire; for them the two are hard to tell apart in the sensation; this Consciousness explains it, and shows you, gives you the one and the other, and the difference – wonderful! Wonderfully exact. Now the body KNOWS, it knows perfectly well the difference – and it's a huge difference-between aspiration or effort, the vibration that makes you become a thing or obtain a thing, and desire. Now the body knows. It knows. It has had such a demonstration in every detail with food .... For a very long time the body has been quite indifferent to food (that's probably the reason), but it has been given a demonstration with one thing, the relationship with that thing; it has been shown how desire is and how the harmony is that makes the thing beneficent. So as to understand clearly, it has also been shown how total indifference isn't good either – it's not like that, neither desire nor total indifference, neither this nor that, but like this (Mother seems to follow a tiny vibration with her fingertip): in a certain way, with a certain vibration, the thing you take is neutral (that is, it can't harm you, it's neutral); if you take the same thing with a certain vibration, it's beneficent; and then, the body is shown how vibrations of desire are disastrous – all of it in detail. Tiny little things, but so clear, so precise!... It takes place while you're eating, so it's perfectly concrete.

It's a mentor, this Consciousness. It knows, mon petit! It knows loads of things that men don't know!

All that goes on in people, their reactions, their movements... And it's in contact with birds, in contact with flowers – they respond, birds respond very well .... It's really interesting, one could write very interesting things, but there are too many of them!

(silence)

Are the nights better?

Yes, yes, Mother!

Just fall asleep in this Consciousness – just call it, call it... (Mother makes a gesture of wrapping herself in it), it's very comfortable, oh!... It's a kind of golden softness – very comfortable – and the body feels it very clearly.

ADDENDUM

(We publish here the letter Satprem wrote to the editor of Fayard publishers, as we find it touches – or touched – on a difficulty quite central to the Western mind. Since 1969, things have much changed.)

March 27, 1969

I had felt your reaction. It does not surprise me. It is precisely one of the general difficulties to be conquered. Perhaps the most hardened one (it seems especially localized in France): the intellectual difficulty It is really a veil that blocks one's view and makes one read or understand things on a very narrow range. It almost seems as if people are looking through a slit and catch a thin layer, tiny and bright, and all the rest eludes them: mountaintops are cut off, abysses are filled, and there remains one “pure” line. And if one happens to try and open them to a broader view, the line of sight gets lost in the “mists” or “muggy vapors” you mention. A curious phenomenon .... I do not know if you trust me, but I will tell you that every sentence of Sri Aurobindo is the expression or translation of a precise experience, and not only is it like a world enclosed in a few words, but it also contains the vibration of the experience, almost the quality of light of the particular world he contacts; and through the words one contacts, or can very well contact, the experience. I tell you, Sri Aurobindo is full of marvels – pure marvels – and I discover new ones every time I read his texts again, I say to myself, “Oh, how well he saw this!” And if there happens to be some haziness, I am sure a discovery remains to be made there. Sri Aurobindo never used one word too much. As soon as he comes to the mentally obvious – what would be for you precisely the starting point of a brilliant development – he cuts off. He smiles and leaves you hanging in midair – oh, he is surprisingly “discreet,” as you yourself put it, for a man who wrote thousands of pages!

You have not stepped into Sri Aurobindo. On the other hand, I quite understand if intellectuals so easily step into Zen! But I do not want to compare merits. With Sri Aurobindo, I am content to see and smile .... You have “better understood” my book, you say it has brought you “more than Sri Aurobindo” – but of course! That does not surprise me, I am afraid: I simply entered the regions of the “mentally obvious” he neglected, I climbed down a number of degrees. The “lines of force” you felt are simply the little strings I hung here and there to try and hook people on to the true lines of force that seem to elude them completely, because they see and feel just at the level of the mental slit. But I will tell you again, if you have the least trust in me, that Sri Aurobindo is a tremendous giant and not one word of his is without a full meaning .... Some time ago I wanted to have a music lover (a Westerner nurtured on true music like myself, formed in music) listen to a music of genius composed by an Indian; well, this poor boy could make no sense of it! He could not hear! His musical slit was open at one particular level, and he literally could not hear what was above – a true marvel, immense streams of music flowing straight from the Origin of Music.⁶ For him, it had no “structure,” it was “shapeless” music – whereas I saw, I could see that marvel, I knew where it was coming from, I could touch that world, and as soon as that high musical tension slackened in the least, I instantly felt that it came down to touch a center on a lower level .... It was the same thing in Egypt. For weeks I lived in an ecstatic state in Upper Egypt; I was with people who were looking at “ruins,” seeing beautiful “statues” – while for me those “statues” were living, those places talked to me, those so-called ruins were full of overflowing life ....

So what to do?

Sri Aurobindo often said or hinted that writing, for him, was a sort of concession to the mental world, but that he might very well have done without writing, and that his real Action, in fact, took place in silence. Sri Aurobindo was not a writer, but an evolutionary leaven, a tremendous impelling Force, like the Mother. So we may say that his books, even if poorly understood, or misunderstood, act as vehicles for this Force, and that we should just “take the plunge” and publish them anyhow, until the day that famous mental slit will open, and people will gape open-mouthed. The Work gets done in spite of mental incomprehension, even in spite of mental “comprehension”! Only, it is a pity that people do not see the beauty of the Play and do not consciously take part in it.

Before one takes a first step into the great Kingdom, I think one must have definitively felt all mental comprehension, all mental illumination, and naturally all mental explanation, to be worthless or inadequate .... For more than ten years I have not read any book, but if I am given one in my hands, I immediately know the level of its vibration, In order to see clearly, one must get out of it, obviously. The same goes for the little individual – renouncing the individual is what you call “saintliness,” but it's merely the beginning of Humanity! Does one “renounce” an anthill? – One gets out of it! And it is wide and joyful. We are right in the middle of human infancy.

S.

¹ Sent to Fayard publishers.

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² “This heap of sentences which could be divided by ten without cutting into their substance.”

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³ The first volume of The Synthesis of Yoga will appear in France in 1972, coincidentally in April, exactly three years later.

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⁴ As a curiosity, we publish in addendum the letter Satprem wrote to this editor of Fayard publishers before receiving her letter about Zen and Sri Aurobindo.

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⁵ Mother first wrote “collaborate with,” then changed it to “serve” and made a few other minor corrections.

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⁶ Unfortunately, this spark of genius was soon extinguished.

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