Questions and Answers 1956
What is ordinarily called a spiritual experience is the intense need
for something other than the life one lives, and most often this
awakens after difficulties or disappointments or pain or sorrow,
all these things which bring unhappiness and at the same time
arouse the aspiration for a better state. It is this that is generally
at the root of spiritual experiences: it is something negative.
The positive need to know the Divine and unite with Him
usually comes much later. I say usually; there are exceptions, but
usually it is at first a flight from the miseries of life which pushes
you towards the spiritual life. Very few people, if they were in a
state of perfect inner and outer harmony and nothing unpleasant
or painful happened to them, very few people would think of
the Divine; they would not concern themselves with Him, they
would be content with the half-measures of ordinary things and
would not seek for an absolute. That is what Sri Aurobindo
means.
But, when one has found this spiritual life, one realises that it
is everywhere behind all appearances, as well as directly, without
appearances. Behind appearances it also exists; this is what he
says: we must find and reconcile these oppositions. There is a
place or a state of consciousness in which they are reconciled.
But, first, one must go like this (a gesture of ascent), and
then one comes back like this (a gesture of descent). There!
Sri Aurobindo writes here: “And yet there is not only
in him [the seeker] or before him this eternal self-aware
Existence, this spiritual Consciousness, this infinity of
self-illumined Force, this timeless and endless Beatitude.
There is too, constant also to his experience, this universe
in measurable Space and Time, some kind perhaps
of boundless finite, and in it all is transient, limited,
fragmentary....”
Ibid., pp. 111 – 12
“Boundless finite”—what does that mean?
It is an attempt at formulating something which cannot be
formulated.
In fact, one could almost say that the details are finite
and the whole is infinite, but he doesn’t say “infinite”, he says
“boundless”—boundless in space and boundless in time, but
still limited in itself. Each detail has its own limit and the whole
has none.
Sweet Mother, another thing I haven’t understood: “At
times these two states of his spirit [the consciousness
of eternity and the consciousness of the world in time seem to exist
for him alternately according to his state
of consciousness; at others they are there as two parts of
his being, disparate and to be reconciled, two halves, an
upper and a lower or an inner and an outer half of his
existence. He finds soon that this separation in his consciousness
has an immense liberative power, for by it he
is no longer bound to the Ignorance, the Inconscience.”
The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 112
I don’t understand this.
It is because you carry this division within you and can taste of an
eternal life that the outer life seems unreal to you; and therefore,
because of this opposition, you begin to do what is necessary
to pass from the outer life to the divine life. If there were no
opposition in the being, if you were a middle term between
the two, like that, this could last indefinitely; you would not
objectify your difficulty and your need, you would continue to
live as you do, without thinking, by force of habit.
Also because of this opposition, one part of the being acquires
the habit ofwatching over the other. Otherwise you would
live without even realising what you do, automatically.
(Turning to a disciple) Something over there?
Why is it that “All the Timeless presses towards the play
in Time; all in Time turns upon and around the timeless
Spirit”?
Ibid., p. 112
Because it is like that, my child. All that is unmanifested wants to
manifest, and all that is manifested tries to return to its Origin.
It is as if you asked me, “Why is the earth round and why
are the sun and the planets there?” It is like that, the law of the
universe is like that.
Most of these things are simply statements of fact; but there
are no explanations, for one can’t givemental explanations.
One can give some, but each thing one wants to explain is explained
by another, which has to be explained by another, which has
to be explained by another—indefinitely. And you can go right
round the universe, and with one thing explaining another, it
explains nothing at all.
The only thing one can do is to say, “It is like that.”
That is why it is said that the mind can know nothing: it can
know nothing because it needs explanations. An explanation is
valuable only to the extent it gives you a power to act on the
thing explained, otherwise what’s the good of it? If explaining
something does not give you the power to change it, it is absolutely
useless, because, as I said, the explanation you give entails
another explanation, and so on. But if through an explanation
you obtain some power over a thing, to make it different from
what it is, then it’s worth the trouble. But this is not the case. So
you go on turning round and round in this way, on the surface,
instead of springing up into the air towards a new height.
Is that all?
(Turning to a disciple) Yes, yes, you have already asked your
question, but still, you may ask it aloud if you like.
Sri Aurobindo speaks of a first realisation where one
sees on the one hand the eternal Existence, Brahman,
and on the other the existence of the world, Maya,
as two contradictions; then there is another realisation,
the supramental, and he says, “The once conflicting but
now biune duality of Brahman-Maya stands revealed to
him as the first great dynamic aspect of the Self of all
selves....”
Ibid., p. 113
When this is realised, does it mean that our lower nature
has consented to change? At that time, is the duality seen
as biune? Of course. I don’t understand your question.
So far there is this duality of which he has spoken.
It is an appearance, it is not a fact.
When one realises that the duality does not exist...
That means one has gone behind the appearances, one has
established a fact which was always there.
Is that a promise?
But look, after all, when one has made a progress, one has made
a progress! I don’t understand your question. If you make a
progress, you make a progress; if you perceive a truth behind an
illusion, usually this is considered a progress.
But here, he further explains that even the lower nature...
Yes, but as you have realised that it is one and the same
thing.... That’s what I was saying a while ago: when you have
an explanation, does it suffice to change your outer nature? Has
it changed, are you different from what you were in your outer
nature?
No.
No. Then something more is required. This is what I meant; an
explanation is not enough, something else is needed. Evidently,
it is a progress to know something one did not know before,
but unless this knowledge becomes dynamic and changes into a
power for transformation, it is not much use.
You understand? Good.
(Turning to a child) You want to ask a question? Speak up,
take courage. Sweet Mother, how can one increase one’s understanding?
One’s understanding? Well, by increasing one’s consciousness,
by going beyond the mind, by widening one’s consciousness,
deepening one’s consciousness, by reaching regions beyond the
mind.
When this talk was first published in 1962, Mother added the
following commentary to the last question.
I would add one thing now: experience. Changing knowledge
into experience. And experience will automatically lead you to
another experience.
But by “experience” I mean something quite different from
what it is usually taken to mean. It is not to experience what
one knows—that is of course obvious—but instead of knowing
and understanding—even a knowledge much higher than
mental knowledge, even a very integral knowledge—it is to
become the Power which makes that be. Fundamentally, it is to
become the Tapas of things—the Tapas of the universe.
It is always said that at the beginning of the Manifestation
there is Sachchidananda, and it is put in this order: first, Sat, that
is to say, pure Existence; then Chit, the self-awareness of this
Existence; and Ananda, the delight of Existence which makes
it continue. But between this Chit and Ananda, there is Tapas,
that is to say, the self-realising Chit. And when one becomes this
Tapas, the Tapas of things, one has the knowledge which gives
the power to change. The Tapas of things is what governs their
existence in the Manifestation.
When one is there, one has the feeling of so tremendous a
power!—It is the universal power. One has the feeling of a total
mastery over the universe.
Open to Sri Aurobindo's consciousness and let it transform your life.
- The Mother (26 September 1971)
