Questions and Answers 1956
Once or twice, as a game, you took one of your books or
Sri Aurobindo’s and opened a page at random, and read
out a sentence. Can these sentences give one a sign or an
indication? What should we do to get a true answer?
Everybody can do it. It is done in this way: you concentrate.
Now, it depends on what you want. If you have an inner problem
and want the solution, you concentrate on this problem;
if you want to know the condition you are in, which you are
not aware of—if you want to get some light on the state you
are in, you just come forward with simplicity and ask for the
light. Or else, quite simply, if you are curious to know what
the invisible knowledge has to tell you, you remain silent and
still for a moment and then open the book. I always used to
recommend taking a paper-knife, because it is thinner; while
you are concentrated you insert it in the book and with the tip
indicate something. Then, if you know how to concentrate, that
is to say, if you really do it with an aspiration to have an answer,
it always comes.
For, in books of this kind (Mother shows “The Synthesis of
Yoga”), books of revelation, there is always an accumulation
of forces—at least of higher mental forces, and most often
of spiritual forces of the highest knowledge. Every book, on
account of the words it contains, is like a small accumulator of
these forces. People don’t know this, for they don’t know how
to make use of it, but it is so. In the same way, in every picture,
photograph, there is an accumulation, a small accumulation
representative of the force of the person whose picture it is,
of his nature and, if he has powers, of his powers. Now, you,
when you are sincere and have an aspiration, you emanate a
certain vibration, the vibration of your aspiration which goes and
meets the corresponding force in the book, and it is a higher
consciousness which gives you the answer.
Everything is contained potentially. Each element of a whole
potentially contains what is in the whole. It is a little difficult to
explain, but you will understand with an example: when people
want to practise magic, if they have a bit of nail or hair, it
is enough for them, because within this, potentially, there is all
that is in the being itself. And in a book there is potentially—not
expressed, not manifest—the knowledge which is in the person
who wrote the book. Thus, Sri Aurobindo represented a totality
of comprehension and knowledge and power; and every one of
his books is at once a symbol and a representation. Every one
of his books contains symbolically, potentially, what is in him.
Therefore, if you concentrate on the book, you can, through the
book, go back to the source. And even, by passing through the
book, you will be able to receive much more than what is just
in the book.
There is always a way of reading and understanding what
one reads, which gives an answer to what you want. It is not
just a chance or an amusement, nor is it a kind of diversion.
You may do it just “like that”, and then nothing at all happens
to you, you have no reply and it is not interesting. But if you
do it seriously, if seriously your aspiration tries to concentrate
on this instrument—it is like a battery, isn’t it, which contains
energies—if it tries to come into contact with the energy which
is there and insists on having the answer to what it wants to
know, well, naturally, the energy which is there—the union of
the two forces, the force given out by you and that accumulated
in the book—will guide your hand and your paper-knife or
whatever you have; it will guide you exactly to the thing that
expresses what you ought to know.... Obviously, if one does it
without sincerity or conviction, nothing at all happens. If it is
done sincerely, one gets an answer.
Certain books are like this, more powerfully charged than
others; there are others where the result is less clear. But generally,
books containing aphorisms and short sentences—
not very long philosophical explanations, but rather things in a
condensed and precise form—it is with these that one succeeds
best.
Naturally, the value of the answer depends on the value of
the spiritual force contained in the book. If you take a novel, it
will tell you nothing at all but stupidities. But if you take a book
containing a condensation of forces—of knowledge or spiritual
force or teaching power—you will receive your answer.
So now, what do you want to know? I have explained the
mechanism to you; you want me to do it? Is that what you
wanted, or did you only want to know how it is done?
No, Mother, before the class, as we had no questions I
opened many books and tried to find something in this
way, but I couldn’t find anything.
You didn’t find anything, because probably at that time there
was no curiosity in your mind!
There are many explanations in this book [The Synthesis of
Yoga], so if you tumble into the midst of an explanation... It
should be rather a book like Thoughts and Glimpses, or Prayers
and Meditations, or Words of the Mother; also Questions and
Answers.
We tried the Letters of Sri Aurobindo, Mother, the third
series.
The Letters?... Give me the book. Isn’t this the one about literature?
Yes, Mother.
Then it’s the worst of them all! (Laughter)
No, it is the second series.
Then I am going to draw first for the collectivity. That is, what
will answer and express the collective state of all those who
are gathered here. We are going to see what it will do. (Mother
concentrates and inserts a small card in the book.)
My child, this is in English! I must translate it off-hand.
My card was on this, which indeed seems to me quite a
general problem for everybody here: the true attitude in work.
(Laughter) Sri Aurobindo says this, that the true attitude in work
comes “when the work is always associated with the thought of
the Mother, done as an offering to her, with the call to do it
through you.” This is the sentence I have found, I think that’s
not bad for a beginning!
Now, does anyone want me to draw for him?
I.
You! And what do you want? Do you want to know the state
you are in, or what?
The state I ought to be in.
(Mother concentrates for a moment, opens the book and reads
silently.) This is the problem you are interested in: the purpose
of the Avatar:
“I have said that the Avatar is one who comes to open
the Way for humanity to a higher consciousness....”
This is where I put my paper-knife. He adds this:
“If nobody can follow the Way, then either our conception
of the thing, which is also that of Christ and
Krishna and Buddha also, is all wrong or the whole life and action
of the Avatar is quite futile.”
Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 22, p. 408
I don’t know if this is a problem which you have been thinking
about, but anyway this is what has come in reply.... It was
obviously for someone who had asked him: “The Avatar comes
and opens the Way, but if there is nobody to follow him, what
happens?” Sri Aurobindo says: either his conception is wrong or
his life is quite futile. That is to say, if a divine Power comes on
earth to open the Way to a higher realisation and it so happens
that there is nobody on earth to follow the path, it is quite
obvious that it was useless for him to come. But as a matter of
fact, I don’t think it has ever happened.
Let me see the end of the sentence.... Yes, it is in reply to
someone who said:
“There is no way and no possibility of following it”, and
“that all the struggles and sufferings of the Avatar are
unreal and all humbug”—
That well-known English word! This person declared that there
was
“no possibility of struggle or effort for one who represents
the Divine.”
That is to say, the denial of the life of all those mentioned here.
And Sri Aurobindo adds that
“Such a conception makes nonsense of the whole idea
of Avatarhood;” and “there is then no reason in it, no
necessity in it, no meaning in it.”
He adds (Mother laughs):
“The Divine being all-powerful can lift people up without
bothering to come down on earth.”
He can do it just like this (gesture), he is all-powerful, he has
only to pull them up and then they will be lifted up. Why should
he come and take all this trouble here?
And Sri Aurobindo says in conclusion:
“It is only if it is a part of the world-arrangement that he
should take upon himself the burden of humanity and
open the Way that the Avatar has any meaning.”
Letters on Yoga, pp. 408 – 09
There he touches on a problem you were concerned about, no?
You have never asked yourself this question: what was the purpose
of a divine incarnation in a human body, whether it was
necessary or not, and how it happened and why it happened?
This question has never interested you? No?
Not in this way.
Not in this way. Then it was in reply to something you were not
conscious of. I know what it was an answer to, but you were
not conscious.
Ah! does anyone else want anything? Nobody?... Oh! how
shy you all are.
Me.
Ah! what are we going to find for you? (Mother opens the
Letters....) These are answers to people who want scholarly
knowledge. You want to know in Indian terminology what
the transcendental Mother is?... People always ask scholarly
questions—there is no life in them, it goes on only in the head.
Wait, I am going to try with this (Mother takes The Synthesis
of Yoga), we’ll see if by any chance we can find something.
(Mother concentrates and opens the book.) Ah! this answers
very well:
“The most disconcerting discovery is to find that every
part of us—intellect, will, sense-mind, nervous or
desire self, the heart, the body—has each, as it were,
its own complex individuality and natural formation
independent of the rest;...”
This is the very thing for you ! (Laughter)
It continues, he explains:
“...it neither agrees with itself nor with the others nor
with the representative ego which is the shadow cast
by some central and centralising self on our superficial
ignorance.”
Why! this is really very fine. (Mother reads again:) “The representative
ego which is the shadow cast by some central and
centralising self on our superficial ignorance.” And then:
“We find that we are composed not of one but many personalities
and each has its own demands and differing nature.
Our being is a roughly constituted chaos into which
we have to introduce the principle of a divine order.”
Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 69
This is indeed very fine.
(Another disciple) I had prepared a question. (He takes
the Synthesis and reads:) “The central Consciousness in
its turn will take up more and more the outer mental
activities of knowledge and turn them into a parcel of
itself or an annexed province; it will infuse into them its
more authentic movement and make a more and more spiritualised
and illumined mind its instrument in these
surface fields, its new conquests.... There will be less and
less individual choice, opinion, preference, less and less
of intellectualisation, mental weaving, cerebral galleyslave
labour; a Light within will see all that has to be
seen, know all that has to be known, develop, create,
organise....
“But this cannot be the whole scope of the transformation....
For, if it were so, knowledge would still
remain a working of the mind, liberated, universalised,
spiritualised....”
The Synthesis of Yoga, pp. 137 – 38
So, what do you want to know?
That means that the spiritualised mind is of no value at
all!
Sri Aurobindo says,
“If it were so, knowledge would still remain a working
of the mind,” the mind “liberated, universalised, spiritualised,
but still, as all mind must be, comparatively
restricted, relative, imperfect in the very essence of its
dynamism.”
I don’t understand.
Yes, it’s clear to me that you haven’t understood! He says it is
not like that. That is not what happens, for if it were like that,
it would be absurd.
He says later:
“The spiritualised mind will exceed itself and transmute
into a supramental power of knowledge.”
Ibid., p. 138
If the spiritualised mind continues to function like the ordinary
mind, there would be no difference. But in fact that is just the
opposite of what happens.
But when it is spiritualised, how can it function as before?
You must not read just one sentence and not read what goes
ahead and what follows, because in this way one can prove
anything at all.
But here, with you, one doesn’t need to go through all
these experiences, isn’t that so, Mother?
Need to go through.... But he has said all along that everyone
follows his own path, in his own way, and that no two paths are
alike, and each one has his own road. So, what “need”, need
for whom? For you? I don’t know. Go through what? Putting
one’s ideas in some order? That is quite necessary for everybody
perhaps.
I don’t know what you want to know!
To reach the Supermind, Sri Aurobindo says there are
stages: first, the mind, then the purified mind, the illumined
mind and all that.... Is it necessary for everyone
to go through all these stages?
(After a silence) It is likely that a sequence of this kind always
occurs. But the duration of the stages and their importance vary
considerably according to individuals.... For some the passage
may be rapid enough to be hardly perceptible, while for others
it may take a very long time; and according to the nature of
the resistance in each one, the stress on one or another of these
stages varies enormously.
For some, it may be so rapid that it seems almost instantaneous,
as though it didn’t exist. For others it may take years.
There is one phenomenon which obviously seems indispensable
if one wants the realisation to become stable.... Experiences
come, touch the consciousness, sometimes bring great illuminations,
then get blurred, retreat into the background and, outwardly,
in your ordinary consciousness, you don’t feel that there
is a great change, a great difference. And this phenomenon may
occur very often, may repeat itself for many years. Suddenly you
get a sort of revelation, like an illumination, you are in the true
consciousness and have the feeling of having got hold of the real
thing. And then, slowly or suddenly, it seems to recede behind
you, and you seek but do not find that there is any great change
in you.... These things seem to come as heralds or as promises:
“See, it will happen”, or to tell you, “Well, have faith, it will be
like that.”
And this may recur very often. There is progress, obviously,
but it is very slow and hardly apparent.
But then, suddenly—perhaps because one is sufficiently
prepared, perhaps simply because the time has come, and it has
been so decreed—suddenly, when such an experience occurs,
its result in the part of the being where it takes place is a complete
reversal of consciousness. It is a very clear, very concrete
phenomenon. The best way of describing it is this: a complete reversal.
And then the relation of the consciousness with the other
parts of the being and with the outer world is as if completely
changed. Absolutely like an overturning. And that reversal no
longer comes back to the same old place, the consciousness no
longer returns to its former position—Sri Aurobindo would say
“status”. Once this has happened in any part of the being, this
part of the being is stabilised.
And until that happens, it comes and goes, comes and goes,
one advances and then has the impression of marking time,
and one advances again and then marks time again, and sometimes
one feels as though one were going backwards, and it is interminable—
and indeed it is interminable. It may last for
years and years and years. But when this reversal of consciousness
takes place, whether in the mind or a part of the mind,
whether in the vital or a part of the vital, or even in the physical
consciousness itself and in the body-consciousness, once this is
established, it is over; you no longer go back, you do not ever
return to what you were before. And this is the true indication
that you have taken a step forward definitively. And before this,
there are only preparations.
Those who have experienced this reversal know what I am
speaking about; but if one hasn’t, one can’t understand. One
may have a kind of idea by analogy, people who have tried to
describe yoga compare it with the reversal of a prism: when you
put it at a certain angle, the light is white; when you turn it
over, it is broken up. Well, this is exactly what happens, that
is to say, you restore the white. In the ordinary consciousness
there is decomposition and you restore the white. However, this
is only an image. It is not really that, this is an analogy. But the
phenomenon is extremely concrete. It is almost as though you
were to put what is inside out, and what is outside in. And it
isn’t that either! But if you could turn a ball inside-out, or a
balloon—you can’t, can you?—if you could put the inside out
and the outside in, it would be something like what I mean.
And one can’t say that one “experiences” this reversal—
there is no “feeling”, it is almost a mechanical fact—it is extraordinarily
mechanical. (Mother takes an object from the table
beside her and turns it upside down....) There would be some
very interesting things to say about the difference between the
moment of realisation, of siddhi—like this reversal of consciousness
for example—and all the work of development, the
tapasya; to say how it comes about.... For the sadhana, tapasya
is one thing and the siddhi another, quite a different thing. You
may do tapasya for centuries, and you will always go as at a
tangent—closer and closer to the realisation, nearer and nearer,
but it is only when the siddhi is given to you... then, everything is changed,
everything is reversed. And this is inexpressible, for as
soon as it is put in words it escapes. But there is a difference—a
real difference, essential, total—between aspiration, the mental
tension, even the tension of the highest, most luminous mind
and realisation: something which has been decided above from
all time, and is absolutely independent of all personal effort, of
all gradation. Don’t you see, it is not bit by bit that one reaches
it, it is not by a small, constant, regular effort, it is not that: it is
something that comes suddenly; it is established without one’s
knowing how or why, but all is changed.
And it will be like that for everybody, for the whole universe:
it goes on and on, it moves forward very slowly, and then one
moment, all of a sudden, it will be done, finished—not finished:
it’s the beginning!
(Silence)
It is usually the first contact with the psychic being which brings
this experience, but it is only partial, only that part of the consciousness—
or of the activity in any part of the being—that
part of the consciousness which is united with the psychic has
the experience. And so, at the moment of that experience, the
position of that part of the consciousness, in relation to the other
parts and to the world, is completely reversed, it is different. And
that is never undone. And if you have the will or take care or are
able to put into contact with this part all the problems of your
life and all the activities of your being, all the elements of your
consciousness, then they begin to be organised in such away that
your being becomes one unity—a single multiplicity, a multiple
unity—complex, but organised and centralised around a fixed
point, so well that the central will or central consciousness or
central truth has the power to govern all the parts, for they are
all in order, organised around this central Presence.
It seems to me impossible to escape from this necessity if one
wants to be and is to be a conscious instrument of the divine Force.
You may be moved, pushed into action and used as unconscious
instruments by the divine Force, if you have a minimum
of goodwill and sincerity. But to become a conscious instrument,
capable of identification and conscious, willed movements, you
must have this inner organisation; otherwise you will always be
running into a chaos somewhere, a confusion somewhere or an
obscurity, an unconsciousness somewhere. And naturally your
action, even though guided exclusively by the Divine, will not
have the perfection of expression it has when one has acquired
a conscious organisation around this divine Centre.
It is an assiduous task, which may be done at any time and
under any circumstances, for you carry within yourself all the
elements of the problem. You don’t need anything from outside,
no outer aid to do this work. But it requires great perseverance,
a sort of tenacity, for very often it happens that there
are bad “creases” in the being, habits—which come from all
sorts of causes, which may come from atavistic malformation
or also from education or from the environment you have lived
in or from many other causes. And these bad creases you try
to smooth out, but they wrinkle up again. And then you must
begin the work over again, often, many, many, many a time,
without getting discouraged, before the final result is obtained.
But nothing and nobody can prevent you from doing it, nor any
circumstance. For you carry within yourself the problem and the
solution.
(Silence)
And to tell the truth, the most common malady humanity suffers
from is boredom.Most of the stupidities men commit come from
an attempt to escape boredom. Well, I say for certain that no
outer means are any good, and that boredom pursues you and
will pursue you no matterwhat you try to escape from it; but that
this way, that is, beginning this work of organising your being
and all its movements and all its elements around the central Consciousness
and Presence, this is the surest and most complete
cure, and the most comforting, for all possible boredom. It gives
life a tremendous interest. And an extraordinary diversity. You
no longer have the time to get bored.
Only, one must persevere.
And what adds to the interest of the thing is that this kind of
work, this harmonisation and organisation of the being around
the divine Centre can only be done in a physical body and on
earth. That is truly the essential and original reason for physical
life. For, as soon as you are no longer in a physical body, you
can no longer do it at all.
And what is still more remarkable is that only human beings
can do it, for only human beings have at their centre the divine
Presence in the psychic being. For example, this work of self development
and organisation and becoming aware of all the
elements is not within the reach of the beings of the vital and
mental planes, nor even of the beings who are usually called
“gods”; and when they want to do it, when they really want
to organise themselves and become completely conscious, they
have to take a body.
And yet, human beings come into a physical body without
knowing why, most of them go through life without knowing
why, they leave their body without knowing why, and they have
to begin the same thing all over again, indefinitely, until one day,
someone comes along and tells them, “Be careful! you know,
there is a purpose to this. You are here for this work, don’t miss
your opportunity!”
And how many years are wasted.
Open to Sri Aurobindo's consciousness and let it transform your life.
- The Mother (26 September 1971)
