Questions and Answers 1956
There are two stages, you see. Onemay rise beyond the mind into
a certain domain, then beyond that domain pass into yet another
which is the origin of all things. This implies two successive
stages.
Who said that one can’t?
Sri Aurobindo is describing here what was to be done to
enter into contact with the Supermind and prepare the ground
for its manifestation; but now that it has entered the earthatmosphere,
I don’t see why a single, precise procedure should
be inflicted upon it in its manifestation. If it chooses to directly
illuminate an instrument which it finds suitable or ready or
adaptable, I don’t see why it should not do so.
And I repeat this: who has said that it cannot be otherwise?
Nobody. What Sri Aurobindo has described here is
quite another thing and, indeed, this is what did happen. It
was the preparation necessary for the manifestation to take
place. But now I don’t see why or on what basis a particular
process should be imposed upon the supramental action
and why it should not have the freedom to choose its own
means.
I think that all possibilities are predictable and that all sincere
aspiration and complete consecration will have a response,
and that the processes, means, transitions, transformations will
be innumerable in nature—not at all that things will happen
only in a particular way and not otherwise.
In fact, anything, everything that is ready to receive even a
particle or a particular aspect of the supramental consciousness
and light must automatically receive it. And the effects of this
consciousness and light will be innumerable, for they will certainly
be adapted to the possibilities, the capacity of each one
according to the sincerity of his aspiration.
The more total the consecration and the intenser the aspiration,
the more integral and intense can be the result. But
the effect of the supramental action will be countless in its
manifestations—multiple, innumerable, infinitely varied, not
necessarily following a precise line which is the same for all.
That is impossible. For it is contrary to the very nature of the
supramental consciousness.
The very quality of the atmosphere has changed.
The consequences are bound to be infinitely varied, but perceptible.
That is to say, it will be possible to distinguish the
consequences of ordinary movements from the consequences of
the supramental action, for these will have a particular nature,
a special character.
But that does not mean that anybody at all, at any moment
and in any way, is suddenly going to become a supramental
genius. That is not to be expected.
I was going to say, if one only noticed that one was a little
less stupid than before, that would already be something!
Will this influencemanifest in the field of education also?
Why do you want to deny it one field or another?
Because the system of education we follow still remains,
as Sri Aurobindo says, “a brilliant poverty of the human
intellect”.
You are speaking of the education which you give to your
students, is that it? But it is high time it changed!
People have a lamentable habit of copying what has been
done before and what is done by others. Long ago I told you
this. That argument: “This must be done, because this is what is
done everywhere!” I reply, “That is why perhaps it should not
be done! For if all others do it, what is the use of doing it here
also?”
But without your intervention, how can we do anything?
But why do you ask me that? You should first change your
system of education in accordance with the principles of the
Supermind. At least you should try. You must not ask, you must
do it. If you always move in the same rut, you can continue
indefinitely in that rut. You must try to get out of it.
Indeed, I am constantly discussing this subject. I think it
was just today or perhaps yesterday, I was pleading for the right
of everyone to remain in ignorance if it pleases him—I am
not speaking of ignorance from the spiritual point of view, the
world of Ignorance in which we live, I am not speaking of that.
I am speaking of ignorance according to the classical ideas of
education.Well, I say that if there are people who don’t want to
learn and don’t like to learn, they have the right not to learn.
The only thing it is our duty to tell them is this, “Now,
you are of an age when your brain is in course of preparation.
It is being formed. Each new thing you study makes one more
little convolution in your brain. The more you study, the more
you think, the more you reflect, the more you work, the more
complex and complete does your brain become in its tiny convolutions.
And as you are young, it is best done at this time.
That is why it is common human practice to choose youth as
the period of learning, for it is infinitely easier.” And it is obvious
that until the child becomes at least a little conscious of itself, it
must be subjected to a certain rule, for it has not yet the capacity
of choosing for itself.
That age is very variable; it depends on people, depends
on each individual. But still, it is understood that in the sevenyear
period between the age of seven and fourteen, one begins
to reach the age of reason. If one is helped, one can become a
reasoning being between seven and fourteen.
Before seven there are geniuses—there are always geniuses,
everywhere—but as a general rule the child is not conscious of
itself and doesn’t know why or how to do things. That is the
time to cultivate its attention, teach it to concentrate on what
it does, give it a small basis sufficient for it not to be entirely
like a little animal, but to belong to the human race through an
elementary intellectual development.
After that, there is a period of seven years during which it
must be taught to choose—to choose what it wants to be. If it
chooses to have a rich, complex, well-developed brain, powerful
in its functioning, well, it must be taught to work; for it is by
work, by reflection, study, analysis and so on that the brain is
formed. At fourteen you are ready—or ought to be ready—to
know what you want to be.
And so I say: if at about that age some children declare
categorically, “Intellectual growth does not interest me at all, I
don’t want to learn, I want to remain ignorant in the ordinary
way of ignorance”, I don’t see by what right one could impose
studies on them nor why it should be necessary to standardise
them.
There are those who are at the bottom and others who are at
another level. There are people who may have very remarkable
capacities and yet have no taste for intellectual growth. Onemay
warn them that if they don’t work, don’t study, when they are
grown up, they will perhaps feel embarrassed in front of others.
But if that does not matter to them and they want to live a nonintellectual
life, I believe one has no right to compel them. That
is my constant quarrel with the teachers of the school! They
come and tell me: “If they don’t work, when they are grown up
they will be stupid and ignorant.” I say: “But if it pleases them
to be stupid and ignorant, what right have you to interfere?”
One can’t make knowledge and intelligence compulsory.
That’s all.
Now, if you believe that by abstaining from all effort and
all study, you will become geniuses, and supramental geniuses at
that, don’t have any illusions, it won’t happen to you. For even
if you touch a higher light, through an inner aspiration or by a
divine grace, you will have nothing in there, in your brain, to be
able to express it. So it will remain quite nebulous and won’t in
any way change your outer life. But if it pleases you to be like
this, nobody has the right to compel you to be otherwise. You
must wait till you are sufficiently conscious to be able to choose.
Of course, there are people who at fourteen are yet like children
of five. But these—there’s little hope for them. Especially
those who have lived here.
Here’s something then which already changes your outlook
on education completely.
Essentially, the only thing you should do assiduously is to
teach them to know themselves and choose their own destiny,
the path they will follow; to teach them to look at themselves,
understand themselves and to will what they want to be. That
is infinitely more important than teaching them what happened
on earth in former times, or even how the earth is built, or
even... indeed, all sorts of things which are quite a necessary
grounding if you want to live the ordinary life in the world, for
if you don’t know them, anyone will immediately put you down
intellectually: “Oh, he is an idiot, he knows nothing.”
But still, at any age, if you are studious and have the will
to do it, you can also take up books and work; you don’t need
to go to school for that. There are enough books in the world
to teach you things. There are even many more books than
necessary. You can exhaust all subjects simply by going there to
Medhananda’s, to the Library. You will have enough to fill you
up to here! (Gesture)
But what is very important is to know what you want. And
for this a minimum of freedom is necessary. You must not be
under a compulsion or an obligation. You must be able to do
things whole-heartedly. If you are lazy, well, you will know what
it means to be lazy.... You know, in life idlers are obliged to work
ten times more than others, for what they do they do badly, so
they are obliged to do it again. But these are things one must
learn by experience. They can’t be instilled into you.
The mind, if not controlled, is something wavering and imprecise.
If one doesn’t have the habit of concentrating it upon
something, it goes on wandering all the time. It goes on without
a stop anywhere and wanders into a world of vagueness. And
then, when one wants to fix one’s attention, it hurts!
There is a little effort there, like this: “Oh! how tiring it is, it hurts!” So one
does not do it. And one lives in a kind of cloud. And your head
is like a cloud; it’s like that, most brains are like clouds: there
is no precision, no exactitude, no clarity, it is hazy—vague and
hazy. You have impressions rather than a knowledge of things.
You live in an approximation, and you can keep within you all
sorts of contradictory ideas made up mostly of impressions, sensations,
feelings, emotions—all sorts of things like that which
have very little to do with thought and... which are just vague
ramblings.
But if you want to succeed in having a precise, concrete,
clear, definite thought on a certain subject, you must make an
effort, gather yourself together, hold yourself firm, concentrate.
And the first time you do it, it literally hurts, it is tiring! But if you
don’t make a habit of it, all your life you will be living in a state
of irresolution. And when it comes to practical things, when
you are faced with—for, in spite of everything, one is always
faced with—a number of problems to solve, of a very practical
kind, well, instead of being able to take up the elements of the
problem, to put them all face to face, look at the question from
every side, and rising above and seeing the solution, instead of
that you will be tossed about in the swirls of something grey and
uncertain, and it will be like so many spiders running around in
your head—but you won’t succeed in catching the thing.
I am speaking of the simplest of problems, you know; I am
not speaking of deciding the fate of the world or humanity, or
even of a country—nothing of the kind. I am speaking of the
problems of your daily life, of every day. They become something
quite woolly.
Well, it is to avoid this that you are told, when your brain is
in course of being formed, “Instead of letting it be shaped by such
habits and qualities, try to give it a little exactitude, precision,
capacity of concentration, of choosing, deciding, putting things
in order, try to use your reason.”
Of course, it is well understood that reason is not the supreme
capacity of man and must be surpassed, but it is quite
obvious that if you don’t have it, you will live an altogether
incoherent life, you won’t even know how to behave rationally.
The least thing will upset you completely and you won’t even
know why, and still less how to remedy it. While someone who
has established within himself a state of active, clear reasoning,
can face attacks of all kinds, emotional attacks or any trials
whatever; for life is entirely made up of these things—unpleasantness,
vexations—which are small but proportionate to the
one who feels them, and so naturally felt by him as very big
because they are proportionate to him. Well, reason can stand
back a little, look at all that, smile and say, “Oh! no, one must
not make a fuss over such a small thing.”
If you do not have reason, you will be like a cork on a
stormy sea. I don’t know if the cork suffers from its condition,
but it does not seem to me a very happy one.
There, then.
Now, after having said all this—and it’s not just once I have
told you this but several times I think, and I am ready to tell it
to you again as many times as you like—after having said this,
I believe in leaving you entirely free to choose whether you want
to be the cork on the stormy sea or whether you want to have a
clear, precise perception and a sufficient knowledge of things to
be able to walk to—well, simply to where you want to go.
For there is a clarity that’s indispensable in order to be able
even to follow the path one has chosen.
I am not at all keen on your becoming scholars, far from
it! For then one falls into the other extreme: one fills one’s head
with so many things that there is no longer any room for the
higher light; but there is a minimum that is indispensable for
not... well, for not being the cork.
Who said that? People who don’t like physical education? Stiff
old teachers who can’t do exercises any longer? These?—I am
not asking for names!
Well, I don’t think so.
You remember the first article Sri Aurobindo wrote in the
Bulletin? He answers these people quite categorically.
I don’t think it is that. I am quite sure it is not that, I believe,
rather—and I put all the blame on myself—that you have been
given a fantastic freedom, my children; oh! I don’t think there
is any other place in the world where children are so free. And,
indeed, it is very difficult to know how to make use of a freedom
like that.
However, it was worthwhile trying the experiment. You
don’t appreciate it because you don’t know how it is when it
is not like that; it seems quite natural to you. But it is very
difficult to know how to organise one’s own freedom oneself.
Still, if you were to succeed in doing that, in giving yourself
your own discipline—and for higher reasons, not in order to
pass exams, to make a career, please your teachers, win many
prizes, or all the ordinary reasons children have: in order not
to be scolded, not to be punished, for all that; we leave out
all those reasons—if you manage to impose a discipline upon
yourself—each one his own, there is no need to follow someone
else’s—a discipline simply because you want to progress
and draw the best out of yourself, then... Oh! you will be far
superior to those who follow the ordinary school disciplines.
That is what I wanted to try.Mind you, I don’t say I have failed;
I still have great hope that you will know how to profit by
this unique opportunity. But all the same, there is something
you must find out; it is the necessity of an inner discipline.
Without discipline you won’t be able to get anywhere, without
discipline you can’t even live the normal life of a normal
man. But instead of having the conventional discipline of ordinary
societies or ordinary institutions, I would have liked and I
still want you to have the discipline you set yourselves, for the
love of perfection, your own perfection, the perfection of your
being.
But without that... Note that if one didn’t discipline the
body, one would not even be able to stand on two legs, one
would continue like a child on all fours. You could do nothing.
You are obliged to discipline yourself; you could not live in
society, you could not live at all, except all alone in the forest;
and even then, I don’t quite know. It is absolutely indispensable,
I have told you this I don’t know how often. And because I
have a very marked aversion for conventional disciplines, social
and others, it does not mean that you must abstain from all
discipline. I would like everyone to find his own, in the sincerity
of his inner aspiration and the will to realise himself.
And so, the aim of all those who know, whether they are
teachers, instructors or any others, the very purpose of those
who know, is to inform you, to help you. When you are in a
situation which seems difficult to you, you put your problem
and, from their personal experience, they can tell you, “No, it
is like this or it is like that, and you must do this, you must try
that.” So, instead of forcing you to absorb theories, principles
and so-called laws, and a more or less abstract knowledge, they
would be there to give you information about things, from the
most material to the most spiritual, each one within his own
province and according to his capacity.
It is quite obvious that if you are thrown into the world
without the least technical knowledge, you may do the most
dangerous things. Take a child who knows nothing, the first
thing he will do if he has any matches, for instance, is to burn
himself. So, in that field, from the purelymaterial point of view, it
is good that there are peoplewho know andwho can inform you;
for otherwise, if each one had to learn from his own experience,
he would spend several lives learning the most indispensable
things. That is the usefulness, the true usefulness of teachers
and instructors. They have learnt more or less by practice or
through a special study, and they can teach you those things it
is indispensable to know. That makes you save time, a lot of time.
But that is their only usefulness: to be able to answer questions.
And, in fact, you should have a brain which is lively enough to
ask questions. I don’t know, but you never have anything to ask
me or it is so seldom. But that shows a terrible mental laziness!
At times I tell you, “Don’t question, try to find out by
yourselves certain inner things”, that is understood; but when
I am here and tell you, “Haven’t you any questions to ask?”
—Silence.... So, that proves that you have no mental curiosity.
And I don’t ask you necessarily to put questions on what I have
just read; I am always ready to answer any question whatsoever,
asked by anyone. Well, I must say we are not very rich in questions!
It is not often that I have an opportunity of telling you
something.
I hasten to tell you that if you ask me technical questions on
the sciences, physics or whatever, I could very well answer, “I
know nothing about it, study your books or ask your teacher”;
but if you ask me questions in my field, I shall always answer
you.
So, one last attempt: Has anyone here a question to ask me?
(Silence)
Wonderful! (Mother laughs) Well, that’s all then.
Open to Sri Aurobindo's consciousness and let it transform your life.
- The Mother (26 September 1971)
