Aphorism 60 - There is no mortality. it is only the Immortal who can die; the mortal could neither be born nor perish. The Immortal can pass from the condition of life to the condition of death (but not 'death' as we understand it); 'can die' means 'can change condition.' The Immortal can pass from this condition to that condition and back and forth again. We call it 'death,' but it has nothing to do with either life or death. They are changes of state. (silence) I've had this notebook [[The notebook of a disciple who asks questions on the Aphorisms which Mother 'must' answer regularly. ]] for days - don't feel like answering. You're not well? I think I am! I'm not sick, in any case. No, I don't need to be concerned with my body. It's not that.... Probably the word-machine isn't working. Whatever I read seems stupid to me, whatever I am living seems stupid to me; as for the way others understand things, it's dumbfounding! No, the mind must have gone on strike. It's uninteresting. page 203-204 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 2nd May - 1961 |
Aphorism 62 - I heard a fool discoursing utter folly and wondered what God meant by it; then I considered and saw a distorted mask of truth and wisdom. Is there really no such thing as utter stupidity or absolute falsehood? Is there always a truth behind?Practically speaking, there can be no absolute falsehood, since the Divine is behind everything. It's like asking if certain elements will disappear from the universe. What can it mean, the destruction of a universe? Once we are out of our stupidity, what can we call 'destruction'? Only the form is destroyed, the appearance (that, yes - all appearances are destroyed, one after the other). It is also said (it's written everywhere) that the adverse forces will either be converted - that is, become aware of their own divinity and become divine - or be destroyed. But what does 'destroyed' mean? Their form? Their form of consciousness can be dissolved, but what about the 'something' which brings it - and everything else - into existence? How can that 'something' be destroyed? This, mon petit, is difficult to comprehend. The universe is a conscious objectification of That which exists from all eternity. Well, how can the All cease to be? The infinite and eternal All, without limits of any kind - how can anything be thrown out of it? There is nowhere to go! (You can rack your brains over it, you know!) Go where? There is only THAT. page 241 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 27th June - 1961 |
63 - God is great, says the Mahomedan. Yes, He is so great that He can afford to be weak, whenever that too is necessary. 64 - God often fails in His workings; it is the sign of His illimitable godhead. 65 - Because God is invincibly great, He can afford to be weak; because He is immutably pure, He can indulge with impunity in sin; He knows eternally all delight, therefore He tastes also the delight of pain; He is inalienably wise, therefore He has not debarred Himself from folly. That's not how it is, mon petit! This is precisely how the modern Western attitude has become twisted compared to the ancient attitude, the attitude - it isn't exactly ancient - of the Gita. It's extremely difficult for the Western mind to comprehend vividly and concretely that ALL is the Divine. It is so impregnated with the Christian spirit, with the idea of a 'Creator' - the creation on one side and God on the other! Upon reflection, one rejects this, but ... it has entered into our sensations and feelings, and so - spontaneously, instinctively, almost subconsciously - one credits God with all one considers to be the best, the most beautiful, and especially with what one wishes to attain, to realize. (Each individual, of course, changes the content of his God according to his own consciousness, but it's always what he considers to be the best.) And just as instinctively, spontaneously and subconsciously, one is shocked by the idea that things one doesn't like or doesn't approve of or which don't seem to be the best, could also be God. I am putting this purposely into rather childish terms so that it will be clearly understood. But this is the way it is. I am sure of it because I have observed it in myself for a VERY long time, and I had to.... Due to the whole subconscious formation of childhood - environment, education, and so forth - we have to DRUM into this (Mother touches her body) the consciousness of Unity : the absolute, EXCLUSIVE unity of the Divine - exclusive in the sense that nothing exists apart from this Unity, even the things which seem most repulsive. Sri Aurobindo also had to struggle against this because he too received a Christian education. And these Aphorisms are the result - the flowering - of the necessity to struggle against the subconscious formation which has produced such questions (Mother takes on a scandalized tone): 'How can God be weak? How can God be foolish? How....' But there is nothing but God! He alone exists, there is nothing outside of Him. And whatever seems repugnant to us is something He no longer wishes to exist - He is preparing the world so that this no longer manifests, so that the manifestation can pass beyond this state to something else. So of course we violently reject everything in us that is destined to leave the active manifestation. There is a movement of rejection. Yet it is He. There is nothing other than He! This should be repeated from morning to night, from night to morning, because we forget it every minute. There is only He, there is nothing other than He. He alone exists, there is no existence without Him. There is only He! page 251-52 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 47h July - 1961 |
There are some reflections a little further on ... (Mother leafs
through the text and stops at Aphorism 68). Oh, he has such
wonderful things to say!
68 - The sense of sin was necessary in order that man might become disgusted with his own imperfections. It was God's corrective for egoism. But man's egoism meets God's device by being very dully alive to its own sins and very keenly alive to the sins of others.(Mother laughs) Marvelous! In any case, there it is - asking that kind of question is still taking the attitude of those who make a distinction between what is Divine and what is not Divine, or rather what is God and what is not God. 'How can He be weak?' It's a question I could never ask. I quite understand. But when one speaks of the Lila, the divine play, it implies that He in some way remains in the background and doesn't really 'get into the act,' as they say - that He's no really part of the game, but simply watches.Yes, yes He is! He is totally involved in it. He Himself is the Play. It must be remembered that there are all these gradations of consciousness: when we speak of God and his Play we are speaking of God in his transcendent state, beyond everything, beyond all the degrees of matter; when we speak of the Play we are speaking of God in his material state. So we say that God transcendent is watching and playing - in Himself, by Himself, with Himself - his material game. But all language - all language! - is a language of Ignorance. All means of expression, all that is said and all the ways of saying it, are bound to partake of that ignorance. And that's why it's so difficult to express something concretely true; to do so would require extremely lengthy explanations, themselves, of course, fully erroneous. Sri Aurobindo's sentences are sometimes very long for precisely this reason - he is trying to get away from this ignorant language. Our whole way of thinking is wrong! page 253 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 7h July - 1961 |
70 - Examine thyself without pity, then thou wilt be more charitable and pitiful to others. Very good! (Mother laughs) That's very good. It's very good for everyone, isn't it? Especially for those who think they're so
superior. But it really does correspond to something very deep. This is exactly the experience I have been going through these past few days; since the day before yesterday it seems to have reached its peak, and this morning it developed into a comprehensive vision, an earth-encompassing vision. It's almost like a reversal of attitude. Actually, people have always taken themselves for victims hounded by adverse forces - the courageous fight back, the rest lament. But increasingly there has been a very concrete vision of the role the adverse forces play in the creation, of their almost absolute necessity as goads to make the creation progress and become its Origin again. And there was such a clear vision that one should accomplish one's own transformation - that's what we must pray for, what we must work out - rather than demand the conversion or abolition of the adverse forces. And this is all from the terrestrial, not the individual standpoint (for the individual standpoint, it's quite clear): I am speaking from the terrestrial standpoint. And there was the sudden vision of all the error, all the incomprehension, all the ignorance, all the darkness and - even worse - all the ill will in the earth's consciousness, which felt responsible for the prolongation of those adverse forces and beings and offered them up in a great ... it was more than an aspiration, it was a sort of holocaust, so that the adverse forces might disappear, might no longer have any reason to exist, no longer need to be there to point out all that has to change. The adverse forces were necessitated by all these negations of the divine life. And this movement of earth consciousness towards the Supreme, the offering of all these things with such extraordinary intensity, was a kind of reparation so that those adverse forces might disappear. The experience was very intense. It crystallized around a small nucleus of experiences too personal to mention (because I wasn't the only one involved), which translated into this: "Take all my wrongdoings, take them all, accept them, obliterate them, and may those forces disappear." That's essentially what this aphorism says, seen
from the other end. So long as a single human consciousness carries the
possibility of feeling, acting, thinking or being in opposition to the
great divine Becoming, it is impossible to blame anyone else for it; it is
impossible to blame the adverse forces, which are kept in the creation
as a means of making you see and feel how far you still have to go. It was like a memory,[[ Questioned about the meaning of these words, Mother said, "The state I was in was like a memory." ]] an eternally present memory of that consciousness of supreme Love emanated by the Lord onto earth - INTO earth - to draw it back again to Him. And truly it was the descent of the very essence of the divine nature into the most total divine negation, and thus the abandonment of the divine condition to take on terrestrial darkness, so as to bring Earth back to the divine state. And unless That, that supreme Love, becomes all-powerfully conscious here on Earth, the return can never be definitive. It came after the vision of the great divine Becoming.[[ See conversation of January 12, 1962. ]] "Since this world is progressive," I was wondering, "since it is increasingly becoming the Divine, won't there always be this deeply painful sense of the nondivine, of the state that, compared with the one to come, is not divine? Won't there always be what we call 'adverse forces,' in other words, things that don't harmoniously follow the movement?" Then came the answer, the vision of That: "No, the moment of this very Possibility is drawing near, the moment for the manifestation of the essence of perfect Love, which can transform this unconsciousness, this ignorance and this ill will that goes with it into a luminous and joyous progression, wholly progressive, wholly comprehensive, thirsting for perfection." It was very concrete. And it corresponds to a state where you are so PERFECTLY identified with all that is, that you concretely become all that is antidivine - and so you can offer it up. It can be offered up and really transformed through this offering. This sort of will in people for purity, for Good (which in ordinary mentality is expressed by a need to be virtuous) is actually the GREAT OBSTACLE to true self-giving. It's the root of Falsehood, the very source of hypocrisy: the refusal to take up one's share of the burden of difficulties. And that's what Sri Aurobindo has touched on in this aphorism, directly and very simply.
page 46-47 - Mother's Agenda, volume 3, 21st Jan. - 1962 |
71 - A thought is an arrow shot at the truth; it can hit a point, but
not cover the whole target. But the archer is too well satisfied with
his success to ask anything farther.
But that's obvious! So obvious (to us).
Yes, but how do you cover the whole target?Stop being an archer! The image is lovely. It's perfect for people who imagine they have found Truth. It's a good thing to tell those who think they have found the truth ... simply because they've managed to touch one point. Yet how many times have we said that that's not enough! page 66 - Mother's Agenda, volume 3, 3rd Feb. - 1962 |
78 - When knowledge is fresh in us, then it is invincible; when it is old, it loses its virtue. This is because God moves always forward. So, what's your question? The knowledge referred to here is intellectual or spiritual, but for the supramental yoga, knowledge is... what kind of knowledge is it? A knowledge in the body, a physical knowledge?Sri Aurobindo is speaking here of knowledge through inspiration or revelation. In other words, when something suddenly descends and illuminates your understanding: all of a sudden, you feel you know a certain thing for the very first time, because it comes to you directly from the domain of Light, the domain of true knowledge, and it comes with all its innate force of truth - it illuminates you. And indeed, when you've just received it, it seems as though nothing could resist that Light. And if you make sure to let it work in you, it brings about as much transformation as it can in its own domain. It is a fairly common experience. When it occurs, and for some time afterwards (not very long), everything seems to organize itself quite naturally around that Light. Then, little by little, it blends with all the rest. The intellectual awareness of it remains, formulated in one way or another - that much is left - but it's like an empty husk. It no longer has the driving force that transforms all movements of the being in the image of that Light. And this is what Sri Aurobindo means: the world moves fast, the Lord moves ever forward, and all that remains is but a trail He leaves in His wake: it no longer has the same instantaneous and almighty force it had at the MOMENT He projected it into the world. It's like a rain of truth falling, and anyone who can catch even a drop of it receives a revelation. But unless they themselves advance at a fantastic pace, the Lord and His rain of truth will already be far, far away, and they'll have to run very fast to catch up! This is an image I have always seen. That's what he means. Yes, but for this knowledge to really have a transformative power...?It is the higher Knowledge, Truth expressing itself, what he calls "the true knowledge"; and that knowledge transforms the whole creation. But He seems to let it rain down constantly, you see, and if you don't hurry up (laughing), you get left behind! But have you never felt a sort of dazzling flash in your head? And then: "Aha! That's it!" Sometimes it's something that was known intellectually, but it was drab and lifeless; and then all at once it comes as a tremendous power, organizing everything in the consciousness around that Light - it doesn't last very long. Sometimes it lasts a few hours, sometimes a few days, but never longer, unless one is very slow in one's movement. And meanwhile, you know (laughing), the Source of Truth is moving on and on and on.... But these are all psychological transformations. What is the knowledge needed to transform Matter, the body?For the moment, mon petit, I can't say anything about that; I just don't know. Is it another kind of knowledge?No, I don't think so. (silence) It may be another kind of action, but not another kind of knowledge. |