Once, very long ago, when Sri Aurobindo was telling me about himself, that is, his childhood, his formation, I put the question to him, I asked him, "Why am I, as an individual being, so mediocre? I can do anything; all that I have tried to do I have done, but never in a superior way: always like this (gesture to an average level)." Then he answered me (at the time I took it as a kindness or commiseration), "That's because it gives great suppleness - a great suppleness and a vast scope; because people who have perfection in one field are concentrated and specialized." As I said, I took it simply as a caress to comfort a child. But now I realize that the most important thing is not to have any fixity: nothing should be set, definitive, like the sense of a perfection in the realization - that means a dead stop in the march forward. The sense of incapacity (with the meaning I said of mediocrity, of something by no means exceptional) leaves you in a sort of expectation (gesture of aspiration upward) of something better. So then, the most important thing is suppleness - suppleness. Suppleness and breadth: reject nothing as useless or bad or inferior - nothing; set nothing up as really superior and beautiful - nothing. Remain ever open, ever open. The ideal is to have this suppleness and receptivity and surrender, that is, so total an acceptance of the Influence that whatever comes, naturally, spontaneously and effortlessly the instrument adapts itself instantly to express it. With everything, of course: with the plastic arts, with music, with writing. (silence) The nature [of Mother] was rather shy, and as a matter of fact, there wasn't much confidence in the personal capacity (althoughthere was the sense of being able to do anything, if the need arose). Till the age of twenty or twenty-one I spoke very little, and never, never anything like a speech. I wouldn't take part in conversations: I would listen, but speak very little.... Then I was put in touch with Abdul Baha (the "Bahai"), who was then in Paris, and a sort of intimacy grew between us. I used to go to his gatherings because I was interested. And one day when I was in his room, he said to me, "I am sick, I can't speak; go and speak for me." I said, "Me! But I don't speak." He replied, "You just have to go there, sit quietly and concentrate, and what you have to say will come to you. Go and do it, you will see." Well then (laughing), I did as he said. There were some thirty or forty people. I went and sat in their midst, stayed very still, and then ... I sat like that, without a thought, nothing, and suddenly I started speaking. I spoke to them for a half-hour (I don't even know what I told them), and when it was over everybody was quite pleased. I went to see Abdul Baha, who told me, "You spoke admirably." I said, "It wasn't me!" And from that day (I had got the knack from him, you understand!), I would stay like that, very still, and everything would come. It's especially the sense of the "I" that must be lost - that's the great art in everything, for everything, anything you do: for painting, for ... (I did painting, sculpture, architecture even, I did music), for everything, but everything, if you are able to lose the sense of the "I," then you open yourself to ... to the knowledge of the thing (sculpture, painting, etc.). It's not necessarily beings, but the spirit of the thing that uses you. Well, I think it should be the same thing with language. One should be tuned in to someone in that way, or through that someone to something still higher: the Origin. And then, very, very passive. But not inertly passive: vibrantly passive, receptive, like that, attentive, letting "that" come in and be expressed. The result would be there to see.... As I said, we are limited by what we know, but that may be because we're still too much of a "person"; if we could be perfectly plastic it might be different: there have been instances of people speaking in a language they didn't know, therefore ... It's interesting.page 58-59 , Mother's Agenda , volume 8 , 18th Feb - 1967 |