Questions and Answers 1956
I think so. There seems to be no possibility of its happening
other-wise. But it is a very relative question. Perhaps our way
of life could become a little more divine without becoming
altogether divine.
We always call “Divine” all that we are not but wish to be. All
that seems to us infinitely superior, not only to all that we have
done, but to all that we feel we can do; all that surpasses both
our conception and our present possibilities, we call “Divine”.
I say this, not as a joke, but because I am quite convinced
that if we go back some thousands of years, when men spoke
of the Divine—if ever they did speak of the Divine, as I believe
—they spoke perhaps of a state like that of the godheads of
the Overmind; and now this mode of being of the Overmind
godheads who, obviously, have governed the earth and formed
many things on earth for a very long time, seems to us far inferior
to what we conceive the Supermind to be. And this Supermind,
which is, precisely, what we now call the Divine and try to bring
down on earth, will probably strike us in the same way a few
thousand or million years hence as the Overmind does today.
And I am sure that in the manifestation, that is, in His selfexpression,
the Divine is progressive. Outside the manifestation
He is something we cannot conceive; but as soon as He manifests
in this kind of perpetual becoming, well, He manifests more and
more of Himself, as though He were reserving for the end the
most beautiful things in His Being.
As the world progresses, what He expresses in the world
becomes what we might call more and more divine.
So Sri Aurobindo has used the word Supermind to explain
to those who are in the outer and evolutionary consciousness
and who have some idea of the way in which the earth has
developed—to explain to them that this something which is
going to be beyond all this, and superior to human creation, to
man, whom he always calls the mental being—this something
which is going to come will be greater and better than man; and
so he calls it supramental in order to make himself understood.
But we could just as well say that it is something more divine
than what has been manifested before.
And this he himself says, in what I read today, that it is
infinite, that it has no limits.1 That is to say, there will always
be a growing perfection; and what now seems to us imperfect
must have been the perfection for which certain ages in earth’s
history aspired.
There is no reason why this should stop. If it stopped, it
would be finished. It would be a new Pralaya.
Mother, I have not understood this: “It is for this meaningful
development of consciousness by thought, will,
emotion, desire, action and experience, leading in the
end to a supreme divine self-discovery, that Man, the
mental being, has entered into the material body.”
The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 82 – 83
Why has the mental being taken a material body? Is that what
you are asking?
Sri Aurobindo says, “leading in the end to a supreme
divine self-discovery”.
The divine discovery is the discovery of the Divine in oneself.
So man, that is, the mental being—for what we call man is
a physical body with a mental being within, a mental being
manifested in a body, a physical body—so the mental being has
incarnated and become man in order to find within himself the
divine Being, the divine Presence.
Why? Are you asking why? It’s a funny way of going about
it! (Laughter)
I don’t know if he is going to explain it here, I don’t remember
now, but one thing is certain, that this marvellous thing,
the divine Presence in Matter, which is at the origin of the formation
of the psychic being, belongs in its own right to life on
earth.
So—we have already said this many times, I believe—our
earth which from the astronomical point of view seems to be
only a small insignificant planet in the midst of all the stars and
all the worlds, our earth has been formed to become the symbol
of the universe and the point of concentration for the work of
transformation, of divine transmutation.
And because of that, in this Matter which was perhaps
the most obscure and most inconscient of all the Matter of
the universes, there plunged and incarnated directly the Divine
Consciousness, from the supreme Origin right into the obscurest
Matter, without going through any intermediate stages, directly.
Consequently, the two extremes touch, the Supreme and the
most inconscient, and the universal circle closes. And so earthly
life is the easiest means, one might say, or the most rapid, of
becoming conscious of the Divine.
And it is so true that even the great cosmic Individualities,
when they want to be converted or to unite with the Origin, take
a physical body for that, because it is more convenient for them,
for it can be done faster and better than if they had to progress
through all the states of being, from any one of the states of
being in the universe to the supreme Origin.
It is easier to come down into a human body and find the
divine Presence there, it is quicker. Imagine the serpent biting its
tail, it makes a circle, doesn’t it? So, if something wants to be
united with the Divine, it is easier to enter the tail than to go
the whole round of the body! As the head bites the tail, well,
if you enter the tail you are immediately in contact with the
head, otherwise you have to go all the way round to reach the
head.
(To the child) Mind you, I am not quite sure if this is what
he means, but any way it is one explanation.
(Silence)
Mother shows the white Champak flower she is holding in her
hand. She has named the flower “Psychological Perfection”.
Who remembers this?
(Counting the petals) One, two, three, four, five psychological
perfections. What are the five psychological perfections?
For they can be changed. And in fact, to tell you my secrets,
every time I give it to someone, they are not always the same
psychological perfections. That depends on people’s needs. Even
to the same person I may give at different times different psychological
perfections; so it’s not fixed. But the first time this
flower was named “Psychological Perfection” (I remember very well it
was at a gathering up there where Prosperity2 now is,
where I go on the first of the month; there was a gathering and
we had decided the five psychological perfections), at that time
they were noted down, but as for me it is something very fluid—
I told you it depends on the circumstances and needs—I don’t
remember what was chosen the first time.
So, if someone knows it, he can tell us, we’ll compare.
I am not sure.
You are not sure. Is there anyone who is sure?
Aspiration, devotion, sincerity and faith.
That makes only four, so far.
And surrender.
Surrender? Someone told me something else.
(To a disciple) You, do you know?Well, then, come and tell
us.
In English, Mother?
Ah, no, my child, this is a French class, not in English!
Faith, sincerity, aspiration, devotion, surrender.
But that’s what he just said. (Turning to another disciple) You
—a little while ago, you told me “faithfulness”.
I said that, but it’s not faithfulness, instead of faithfulness
it’s faith.
But why should there not be faithfulness? I didn’t put it down,
because I didn’t try to recall anything, I simply wrote down what
seemed to me the most important and most general. But it may
be put in various ways.
In any case, what is always there, in all combinations and
to whomever I give it, the first among them all is sincerity. For
if there is no sincerity, one cannot advance even by half a step.
So that is the first, and it is always there.
But it is possible to translate it by another word, if you
prefer it, which would be “transparency”. I shall explain this
word:
Someone is in front of me and I am looking at him; I look
into his eyes. And if this person is sincere or “transparent”,
through his eyes I go down and I see his soul—clearly. But
—this is precisely the experience—when I look at somebody
and see a little cloud, then I continue, I see a screen, and then
sometimes it is a wall, and afterwards it is something quite
black; and all this must be crossed, and holes bored in order to
go through; and even then I am not sure if at the last minute
I may not find myself before a door of bronze so thick that I
shall never get through and see his soul; so, of such a person I
can immediately say that he is not sincere. But I can also say,
figuratively, that he is not transparent. That is the first thing.
There is a second, which is obviously, as indispensable if you
want to go forward; it is to have faith. Or another word, which
seems more limited but is for me more important, because (it is
a question of experience) if your faith is not made of a complete
trust in the Divine, well, you may very easily remain under the
impression that you have faith and yet be losing all trust in the
divine Power or divine Goodness, or the Trust the Divine has in
you. These are the three stumbling-blocks:
Those who have what they call an unshakable faith in the
Divine, and say, “It is the Divine who is doing everything, who
can do everything; all that happens in me, in others, everywhere,
is the work of the Divine and the Divine alone”, if they follow this with
some kind of logic, after some time they will blame the
Divine for all the most terrible wrongs which take place in the
world and make of Him a real demon, cruel and frightful—if
they have no trust.
Or again, they do have faith, but tell themselves, “Well, I
have faith in the Divine, but this world, I see quite well what it’s
like! First of all, I suffer so much, don’t I? I am very unhappy, far
more unhappy than all my neighbours”—for one is always far
more unhappy than all one’s neighbours—“I am very unhappy
and, truly, life is cruel to me. But then the Divine is divine, He is
All-Goodness, All-Generosity, All-Harmony, so how is it that I
am so unhappy? He must be powerless; otherwise being so good
how could He let me suffer so much?”
That is the second stumbling-block.
And the third: there are people who have what may be
called a warped and excessive modesty or humility and who tell
themselves, “Surely the Divine has thrown me out, I am good
for nothing, He can do nothing with me, the only thing for me
is to give up the game, for He finds me unworthy of Him!”
So, unless one adds to faith a total and complete trust in the
Divine Grace, there will be difficulties. So both are necessary....
Now, we have put “devotion” in this series. Yes, devotion is
all verywell, but unless it is accompanied bymany other things it
toomay make many mistakes. Itmay meet with great difficulties.
You have devotion, and you keep your ego. And then your
ego makes you do all sorts of things out of devotion, things
which are terribly egoistic. That is to say, you think only of
yourself, not of others, nor of the world, nor of the work, nor
of what ought to be done—you think only of your devotion.
And you become tremendously egoistic. And so, when you find
out that the Divine, for some reason, does not answer to your
devotion with the enthusiasm you expected of Him, you despair
and fall back into the same three difficulties I was just speaking
about: either the Divine is cruel—we have read that, there are
many such stories, of enthusiastic devotees who abuse the Divine
because He is no longer as gentle and near to them as before,
He has withdrawn, “Why hast Thou deserted me? Thou hast
abandoned me, O monster!...” They don’t dare to say this, but
think it, or else they say, “Oh! I must have made such a serious
mistake that I am thrown out”, and they fall into despair.
But there is another movement which should constantly
accompany devotion.... That kind of sense of gratitude that the
Divine exists; that feeling of a marvelling thankfulness which
truly fills you with a sublime joy at the fact that the Divine exists,
that there is something in the universe which is the Divine, that
it is not just the monstrosity we see, that there is the Divine,
the Divine exists. And each time that the least thing puts you
either directly or indirectly in contactwith this sublime Reality of
divine existence, the heart is filled with so intense, so marvellous
a joy, such a gratitude as of all things has the most delightful
taste.
There is nothing which gives you a joy equal to that of
gratitude. One hears a bird sing, sees a lovely flower, looks at
a little child, observes an act of generosity, reads a beautiful
sentence, looks at the setting sun, no matter what, suddenly
this comes upon you, this kind of emotion—indeed so deep,
so intense—that the world manifests the Divine, that there is
something behind the world which is the Divine.
So I find that devotion without gratitude is quite incomplete,
gratitude must come with devotion.
I remember that once we spoke of courage as one of the
perfections; I remember having written it down once in a list.
But this courage means having a taste for the supreme adventure.
And this taste for supreme adventure is aspiration—an aspiration
which takes hold of you completely and flings you, without
calculation and without reserve and without a possibility of
withdrawal, into the great adventure of the divine discovery, the
great adventure of the divine meeting, the yet greater adventure
of the divine Realisation; you throw yourself into the adventure
without looking back and without asking for a single minute, “What’s going
to happen?” For if you ask what is going to
happen, you never start, you always remain stuck there, rooted
to the spot, afraid to lose something, to lose your balance.
That’s why I speak of courage—but really it is aspiration.
They go together. A real aspiration is something full of courage.
And now, surrender. In English the word is “surrender”,
there is no French word which gives exactly that sense. But Sri
Aurobindo has said—I think we have read this—that surrender
is the first and absolute condition for doing the yoga. So, if we
follow what he has said, this is not just one of the necessary
qualities: it is the first attitude indispensable for beginning the
yoga. If one has not decided to make a total surrender, one
cannot begin.
But for this surrender to be total, all these qualities are necessary.
And I add one more—for so far we have only four —I add
endurance. For, if you are not able to face difficulties without
getting discouraged and without giving up, because it is too
difficult; and if you are incapable... well, of receiving blows and
yet continuing, of “pocketing” them, as they say—when you
receive blows as a result of your defects, of putting them in your
pocket and continuing to go forward without flagging—you
don’t go very far; at the first turning where you lose sight of your
little habitual life, you fall into despair and give up the game.
The most... how shall I put it? the most material form of
this is perseverance. Unless you are resolved to begin the same
thing over again a thousand times if need be... You know, people
come to me in despair, “But I thought it was done and now I
must begin again!” And if they are told, “But that’s nothing,
you will probably have to begin again a hundred times, two
hundred times, a thousand times; you take one step forward
and think you are secure, but there will always be something
to bring back the same difficulty a little farther on. You think
you have solved the problem, you must solve it yet once again;
it will turn up again looking just a little different, but it will be
the same problem”, and if you are not determined that: “Even if it
comes back a million times, I shall do it a million times, but
I shall go through with it”, well, you won’t be able to do the
yoga. This is absolutely indispensable.
People have a beautiful experience and say, “Ah, now this
is it!...” And then it settles down, diminishes, gets veiled, and
suddenly something quite unexpected, absolutely commonplace
and apparently completely uninteresting comes before you and
blocks your way. And then you say, “Ah! what’s the good of
having made this progress if it’s going to start all over again?
Why should I do it? I made an effort, I succeeded, achieved
something, and now it’s as if I had done nothing! It’s indeed
hopeless.” For you have no endurance.
If one has endurance, one says, “It’s all right. Good, I shall
begin again as often as necessary; a thousand times, ten thousand
times, a hundred thousand times if necessary, I shall begin again
—but I shall go to the end and nothing will have the power to
stop me on the way.”
This is most necessary. Most necessary.
So here’s my proposal: we put surrender first, at the top of
the list, that is, we accept what Sri Aurobindo has said—that to
do the integral yoga one must first resolve to surrender entirely
to the Divine, there is no other way, this is the way. But after that
one must have the five psychological virtues, five psychological
perfections, and we say that these perfections are:
Sincerity or Transparency
Faith or Trust (Trust in the Divine, naturally)
Devotion or Gratitude
Courage or Aspiration
Endurance or Perseverance.
One form of endurance is faithfulness, faithfulness to one’s
resolution—being faithful. One has taken a resolution, one is
faithful to one’s resolution. This is endurance.
There you are.
If one persists, there comes a time when one is victorious.
Victory is to the most persistent.
Open to Sri Aurobindo's consciousness and let it transform your life.
- The Mother (26 September 1971)
