In the universe there is an inexhaustible source of energy that asks only to be replenished; if you know how to go about it, it is replenished. Instead of draining life and the energies of our earth and making of it something parched and inert, we must know the practical exercise for replenishing the energy constantly. And these are not just words; I know how it's to be done, and science is in the process of thoroughly finding out - it has found out most admirably. But instead of using it to satisfy human passions, instead of using what science has found so that men may destroy each other more effectively than they are presently doing, it must be used to enrich the earth: to enrich the earth, to make the earth richer and richer, more active, generous, productive and to make all life grow towards its maximum efficiency. This is the true use of money. And if it's not used like that, it's a vice - a 'short circuit' and a vice.

But how many people know how to use it in this way? Very few, which is why they have to be taught. What I call 'teach' is to show, to give the example. We want to be the example of true living in the world. It's a challenge I am placing before the whole financial world: I am telling them that they are in the process of withering and ruining the earth with their idiotic system; and with even less than they are now spending for useless things - merely for inflating something that has no inherent life, that should be only an instrument at the service of life, that has no reality in itself, that is only a means and not an end (they make an end of something that is only a means) - well then, instead of making of it an end, they should make it the means. With what they have at their disposal they could ... oh, transform the earth so quickly! Transform it, put it into contact, truly into contact, with the supramental forces that would make life bountiful and, indeed, constantly renewed - instead of becoming withered, stagnant, shrivelled up: a future moon. A dead moon.

We are told that in a few millions or billions of years, the earth will become some kind of moon. The movement should be the opposite: the earth should become more and more a resplendent sun, but a sun of life. Not a sun that burns, but a sun that illumines - a radiant glory.

page 205 , Mother's Agenda , volume 1 , 4th Oct. - 1958
But as it's all-powerful, a certain receptivity must be prepared on earth so its effects are not devastating. Sri Aurobindo has explained it in one of his letters. Someone asked him, 'Why doesn't this Love come now?', and he replied something like this: If divine Love in its essence were to manifest on earth, it would be like an explosion; for the earth is not supple enough or receptive enough to widen to the measure of this Love. The earth must not only open itself but become wide and supple. Matter - not just physical Matter, but the substance of the physical consciousness as well - is still much too rigid.

page 21 , Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 10th Jan. 1961

The recollection of those times is stored somewhere in the terrestrial memory, that region where all the earth's memories are inscribed. Those who contact this memory can tell you that the earthly paradise still exists somewhere. [[ This is the origin of such legends as Shangri-la. But 'psychics' most often confuse two planes of reality, attributing to their SUBTLE vision a physical reality which it does not have or no longer has: they have merely entered into contact with the memory of a place - for places, like beings, have a memory. ]] But it doesn't exist materially.... I don't know, I don't see it.

page 123 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 11th March - 1961

Yes. The earth is a representative and symbolic world, a kind of crystallization and concentration of the evolutionary labor giving it a ... more concrete reality. It has to be taken like this: the history of the earth is a symbolic history. And it is on earth that this Descent takes place (it's not the history of the universal but of the terrestrial creation); the Descent occurs in the individual TERRESTRIAL being, in the individual terrestrial atmosphere.

page 281 - Mother's Agenda , volume 2 , 28th July - 1961

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.


Do not try to be virtuous. See to what extent you are united, ONE with all that is antidivine. Take up your share of the burden; accept to be impure and false yourself, and in so doing you will be able to take up the Shadow and offer it. And insofar as you are able to take it and offer it, things will change. [[When Satprem published extracts from this conversation in the Ashram Bulletin of April 1962, Mother had this passage modified (over his protests). Instead of "Do not try to be virtuous," she put "Do not try to seem virtuous"; and she added: "There's a drawback here. People never understand anything, or rather they understand everything in their own way. They would take this sentence as an encouragement to get into mischief, to misbehave, to entertain wrong feelings, and then proclaim, 'We are the Lord's favorites!' ... There was something like it in one of Sri Aurobindo's letters, you remember - a letter to people who wanted to bring all the impurities in themselves out to the surface; he told them that was definitely not the way! " (See Sri Aurobindo's two letters on psychoanalysis in the Addendum.) ]]

Don't try to be among the pure. Accept to be with those who are in darkness and, in total love, offer it all.

(silence)

From the moment this was seen and DONE, the full power came back - the great creative Power.

(silence)

Most likely the experience could take place only because the time had come for all this to be offered up.

The point is not to perpetuate those things, but to offer them up.

Because the time has come to manifest this Power, which is a power of Love - of LOVE, not merely of identity - of Love, of perfect Love; for perfect Love alone can offer.

It happened this morning, with great simplicity, but at the same time it had something so vast and almighty in it, as if the Universal Mother were turning towards the Lord and saying, "At last! We are ready."

That was my experience this morning.

Do you mean to say there's been a progress on Earth?

Yes, on Earth; it's the Earth's history that's in question.

page 47-48 - Mother's Agenda, volume 3, 21st Jan. - 1962

Perhaps there once was a jiva.... I don't know, I don't remember; all I remember now is ... ultimately, an evolving universe, with a special concentration on the affairs of the earth, because the Lord has decided that the time has come to ... to change something. That's all. To change something.

page 313 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 14th Aug 1962.

I think that as the Supramental descends, the subtle physical will have a greater and greater action on earth, because it is the world where the new creation will be formed before it "descends," before it becomes absolutely visible and concrete.

page 35 , Mother's Agenda , volume 4 , 18th Jan 1963

Sri Aurobindo told me that there are three difficulties, and they are the three things that have to be conquered for the earth to be ready (this is from the purely outward point of view, I am not speaking of psychological factors): government, money, health.

Of the three, health is the most directly connected to the inner transformation, but not completely so because it constantly depends on what comes in from outside: influences, vibrations - the contagion from the outside. You have to eat: everything you receive along with food - it's fantastic! There's so much that eating represents a considerable work - the physical digestion is nothing, but the work of assimilation and adaptation of all the rest is considerable. Consequently, of the three, health is the most directly under the influence of the inner progress, but, as I said, not completely so. Therefore, that too has to be conquered.

As for money, when Sri Aurobindo was here there was no problem: all that we needed came. Yet the last two years were beginning to be more difficult and he kept saying, I think I already told you, that it resulted from the wrong attitude of the people around; that this wrong attitude represented a considerable problem - it has gone from bad to worse, it has become quite acute.

As for government, it has followed an opposite curve: in the beginning, it was frightfully hostile, I mean, simply to be able to stay here we had to struggle every minute. And Sri Aurobindo told me that probably both health and money would give way at once; maybe health first and money afterwards, but not with a big difference. And he added, "As for the government, there is but one solution, only one: it is to BE the government." If you are not the government, you will never be able to conquer it, except when the earth is transformed - but then there won't be any work left! This is the situation. Things have been like this for ... forty, fifty years - more than forty years.

page 355 , Mother's Agenda , volume 4 - 19th Oct 1963



There is always this inner will to ... (gesture of pressure to establish peace). As if it were, I can't say a last conflict, but it's becoming ... it's becoming immediate.

It's like a conflict between the forces that want to destroy the earth and the terrestrial transformation. if those forces can be checked, can be mastered or rendered powerless, then the earth's progress and transformation will go on soaring up - magnificent! But now ... monsters seem to be coming up from every side to prevent that.


page 146 , Mother's Agenda , volume 10 , 19th April - 1969

But do we know how long the earth has existed?

Yes Mother, it's been calculated.
Ah?

Yes, it was calculated: I don't know exactly how many billionsof years - but it's billions of years. [[Four and a half billion years, according to the current estimate. ]] And they have also calculat

ed the end!

Ah! And?

I think it's still quite far ahead But it appears the end of theearth is scientifically inevitable - because of progressive cooling

and changes in the gravitational field. [[It is said that in five billion years the sun will become a "red giant" and burn its planets. The cooling period would come much later. ]]

Theon used to say that up to now there had been ... that this was the seventh creation; there had been six creations before which were "reabsorbed" - just as you said. And this one was the seventh, but it wouldn't be reabsorbed, it would transform itself. There we are. Instead of that destruction by the sun which so far has ultimately led to the disappearance of the creation, this time the creation would go on transforming itself, to become again the Supreme and manifest Him.


Theon and Sri Aurobindo didn't know each other, you see, they never met each other, they didn't even know of each other's existence. Yet Theon proclaimed... (I don't remember what he called the new world) what Sri Aurobindo calls the "Supramental." What's remarkable - interesting, you know, strikingly interesting - is that without knowing each other, with totally different approaches, they reached the same conclusion.

And we are precisely at the time when ... the other creations had come to an end; but instead of coming to an end, this one will be transformed. How? I have no idea.

The interesting thing in man is that materially speaking, he is ... a mere nothing, a second lost in eternity - a tangled web of weaknesses - but in terms of consciousness, he has the capacity to understand. His consciousness is capable of contacting the supreme Consciousness. So naturally there are all those who wanted to merge back into that Consciousness, but Sri Aurobindo said: the point is not to merge back into it but to make the world capable of manifesting that supreme Consciousness.

That's ultimately the whole point.

How did they arrive at the same conclusion? ... There must have been a reason for them to know the same thing at the same time, in totally different countries and without ever knowing about each other.

And I met one and the other.

Greatly interesting, obviously.

Greatly interesting, because this physical being [Mother's] was not born in an important position, quite the contrary (gesture indicating an ordinary background).... The only thing I remember well is when I was a little girl (five or six years old, I can't say exactly), a very little girl, seated in a little armchair made especially for me, and I would feel a GREAT Force (Mother raises a finger above her head) above my head. And already at that age Oust the way a child can think, you know) I knew "that" was sure to accomplish great things.... I didn't understand anything, I didn't know anything.

(silence)

And now it's transformation instead of pralaya. [[The destruction or end of a world (apocalypse). ]]


page 265-66 , Mother's Agenda , volume 13 , 9th Aug - 1972-1973