Questions and Answers 1956
It is the soul entering into a state in which it observes without
acting. A witness is one who looks at what is done, but does not
act himself. So when the soul is in a state in which it does not
participate in the action, does not act through Nature, simply
draws back and observes, it becomes the witness soul.
If one wants to stop the outer activities, this is the best
method. One withdraws into one’s soul, to the extreme limit of
one’s existence, in a kind of immobility—an immobility which
observes but does not participate, does not even give orders.
That’s all.
You don’t understand?
When one wants to detach oneself from something, from a
certain movement or activity or state of consciousness, this is
the most effective method; one steps back a little, watches the
thing like that, as one would watch a scene in a play, and one
doesn’t intervene. And a moment later, the thing doesn’t concern
you any longer, it is something which takes place outside you.
Then you become very calm.
Only, when you do this, you never remedy anything in the
outer movement, it remains what it is, but it no longer affects
you. We have said this already I don’t know how many times:
it is only a first step, it helps you not to feel much troubled
by things. But things remain as they are—indefinitely. It is a
negative state.
Is this what Sri Aurobindo speaks about when he says:
“the separative aspect is liberative”?
Ibid., p. 115
Yes. It liberates, precisely. It’s just that. One practises it for that,
don’t you see, for liberation, in order to be free from attachments,
free from reactions, free from consequences. Those who
understand the Gita in this way, tell you that—they don’t understand
much further than that—they tell you, “Why do you
want to try and change the world? The world will always be
what it is and remain what it is, you have only to step back,
to detach yourself, to watch it as a witness watches something
which doesn’t concern him—and leave it alone.” That was my
first contact with the Gita in Paris. I met an Indian who was a
great Gita enthusiast and a very great lover of silence. He used
to say, “When I go to my disciples, if they are in the right state
I don’t need to speak. So we observe silence together, and in the
silence something is realised. But when they are not in a good
enough state for this, I speak a little, just a little, to try to put
them in the right state. And when they are in a worse state still,
they ask questions!” (Laughter)
But he was the one who didn’t want to change the world,
wasn’t he? the one who said we were revolutionaries?
Oh, that’s to excuse your questions! (Laughter)
No, that was one way of understanding the Gita; these
people always quote—I believe in a truncated form the sentence
about there being no fire without smoke.1Perhaps this was true
a thousand years ago or even five hundred years ago, but now
it is a stupidity. So you can’t use this sentence to explain things:
“Why do you worry about the state the world is in?—There is
no fire without smoke.”
It is not true.
But still, it is one point of view. I think every point of view
is necessary—if each one keeps to his own place and doesn’t
try to impede the others. If he had just added: “My experience
is like that”, it would have been all right; but he used this to
criticise what others were doing. And there he was wrong.
That means he was not truly sincere?
Why? Perhaps he was sincere in his own conviction.... You mean
when one makes propaganda, one is not sincere?
He believes he is sincere.
No, excuse me, he is convinced. He had neglected—perhaps
out of politeness—to tell me about the fourth state, which was
still worse: that in which after having asked the question, one
begins to discuss the answer. That is really the limit!
If you arrive at the conception of the world as the expression
of the Divine in all His complexity, then the necessity for
complexity and diversity has to be recognised, and it becomes
impossible for you to want to make others think and feel as you
do.
Each one should have his own way of thinking, feeling and
reaction; why do you want others to do as you do and be like
you? And even granting that your truth is greater than theirs—
though this word means nothing at all, for, from a certain point
of view all truths are true; they are all partial, but they are true
because they are truths but the minute you want your truth to be
greater than your neighbour’s, you begin to wander away from
the truth.
This habit of wanting to compel others to think as you do,
has always seemed very strange to me; this is what I call “the
propagandist spirit”, and it goes very far. You can go one step
further and want people to do what you do, feel as you feel, and
then it becomes a frightful uniformity.
In Japan I met Tolstoy’s son who was going round the world
for “the good of mankind’s great unity”. And his solution was
very simple: everybody ought to speak the same language, lead
the same life, dress in the same way, eat the same things.... And I
am not joking, those were his very words. Imet him in Tokyo; he
said: “But everybody would be happy, all would understand one
another, nobody would quarrel if everyone did the same thing.”
Therewas no way ofmaking him understand that it was not very
reasonable! He had set out to travel all over the world for that,
and when people asked him his name he would say “Tolstoy”
—now, Tolstoy, you know... People said, “Oh!”—some people
didn’t know that Tolstoy was dead—and they thought: “Oh!
what luck, we are going to hear something remarkable”—and
then he came out with that! Well, this is only an exaggeration of the same attitude.
Anyway, I can assure you that there comes a time when one
no longer feels any necessity at all, at all, of convincing others
of the truth of what one thinks.
When someone criticises what I am, the truth I am
realising, when others criticise...
You may politely tell him, “Mind your own business.” But you
must leave it at that. You want to convince someone who criticises
that he is wrong to criticise?—The more you tell him, the
more will he be convinced that he is right!
Not him, but others who follow...?
Oh! you are afraid they will make adverse propaganda....
It doesn’t matter at all. We had an instance like that, which
was very amusing. Someone whom I won’t name, came here and
wrote in one of the leading French newspapers an absolutely
stupid article which was... well, which showed the stupidity of
the man and was extremely violent against the Ashram—that’s
not the reason I call him a fool, but still...Well, the result—one
of the results—of this article was that we received a letter from
someone: “I have read the article, I want to come to the Ashram
immediately.”
This can have just the opposite effect.
Open to Sri Aurobindo's consciousness and let it transform your life.
- The Mother (26 September 1971)
