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There is the whole Chaldean tradition, and there is also the Vedic
tradition, and there was very certainly a tradition anterior to both
that split into two branches. Well, all these occult experiences have
been the same. Only the description differs depending upon the country
and the language. The story of creation is not told from a metaphysical
or psychological point of view, but from an objective point of view, and
this story is as real as our stories of historical periods. Of course,
it's not the only way of seeing, but it is just as legitimate a way as
the others, and in any event, it recognizes the concrete reality of all
these divine beings. Even now, the experiences of Western occultists and
those of Eastern occultists exhibit great similarities. The only
difference is in the way they are expressed, but the manipulation of the
forces is the same.
I learned all this through Theon. Probably, he was .. I don't
know if he was Russian or Polish (a Russian or Polish Jew), he never
said who he really was or where he was born, nor his age nor anything.
He had assumed two names: one was an Arab name he had adopted
when he took refuge in Algeria (I don't know for what reason). After
having worked with Blavatsky and having founded an occult society in
Egypt, he went to Algeria, and there he first called himself 'Aia Aziz'
(a word of Arabic origin meaning 'the beloved'). Then, when he began
setting up his Cosmic Review and his 'cosmic group,' he called
himself Max Theon, meaning the supreme God (!), the greatest God! And no
one knew him by any other name than these two - Aia Aziz or Max Theon.
He had an English wife.
He said he had received initiation in India (he knew a little
Sanskrit and the Rig-Veda thoroughly), and then he formulated a
tradition which he called the 'cosmic tradition' and which he claimed to
have received - I don't know how - from a tradition anterior to that of
the Cabala and the Vedas. But there were many things (Madame Theon was
the clairvoyant one, and she received visions; oh, she was wonderful!),
many things that I myself had seen and known before knowing them which
were then substantiated. page 219 - Mother's Agenda, volume 1, 4th Nov. - 1958 |
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So personally, I am convinced that there was indeed a tradition
anterior to both these traditions containing a knowledge very close to
an integral knowledge. Certainly, there is a similarity in the
experiences. When I came here and told Sri Aurobindo certain things I
knew from the occult standpoint, he always said that it conformed to the
Vedic tradition. And as for certain occult practices, he told me that
they were entirely tantric - and I knew nothing at that time, absolutely
nothing, neither the Vedas nor the Tantras.
So very probably there was a tradition anterior to both. I have
recollections (for me, these are always things I have LIVED), very
clear, very distinct recollections of a time that was certainly VERY
anterior to the Vedic times and to the Cabala, to the Chaldean
tradition. page 220 - Mother's Agenda, volume 1, 4th Nov. - 1958
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I have brought you a whole discourse! (Mother gives Satprem some flowers) First, the goal of the Vedas: Immortality. [[Gomphrena globosa (purple Amaranth). ]] That was their goal: the Truth that led to Immortality. Immortality was their ambition. I don't think it was physical immortality - but I am not sure, because they do speak of the forefathers and this refers to the initiatory tradition prior to the Vedas as well as the Kabbala, and immortality on earth is spoken of there: the earth transformed - Sri Aurobindo's idea. So although they didn't explicitly state it, perhaps they knew. I knew when I caught it: it was at the Playground. [[Until 1958, Mother went daily to the Ashram Playground, from 5 p.m. to 9 or 10 in the evening, to see people and give her direct spiritual help to some 2,000 disciples who passed before her one by one. ]] Certain people poisoned me with a mosquito bite - the instant the mosquito bit me, I knew, because it so happens I am a little bit conscious! But I controlled it like this (gesture of holding the disease in abeyance and under control), so it couldn't stir. Probably it would never have stirred if I hadn't had that experience [of January 24] and the body didn't need to be made ready. For the body to be 'ready,' a host of things belonging to the dasyus, as the Vedas say, can't be stored inside it! These are very nasty little dasyus (laughing), they have to be chased away! When the disease came back, I said to myself, 'Very well, this means it must be dealt with in a new way.' page 115-16 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 7th March - 1961 |
It was certainly with the progress of evolution, the march of evolution, when the mind began to develop for and in itself, that ALL the complications, all the deformations began. Indeed, this story of Genesis that seems so childish does contain a truth. The old traditions like Genesis resembled the Vedas in that each letter [[In Genesis, Hebraic letters. ]] was the symbol of a knowledge; it was the pictorial résumé of a traditional knowledge, just as the Veda contains a pictoral résumé of the knowledge of its time. But what's more, even the symbol had a reality in the sense that there was truly a period when life upon earth (the first manifestation of mentalized Matter in human forms) was still in complete harmony with all that preceded it. It was only later that.... page 121 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 11th March - 1961 |
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I am continuing my reading of the Veda. I had to stop for some days because of a sore throat. But anyway, I'm starting again.
The Vedas, after all, were written by people who remembered a
radical experience, which must have taken place on earth at a given
moment, as an example of what was to come. (This always happens in the
yoga: a first radical experience comes like a herald of the future
realization.) So in the terrestrial yoga - in the yoga of the earth, of
the planet earth - there was a moment when it came; they who are called
the forefathers must have created, through their effort and their
yoga, at least an image of the supramental realization. And those who
wrote the Vedas, who composed all these hymns, remembered or kept the
tradition of that experience. And oh, mon petit, it had the same effect
on me as when I read the 'Yoga of Self-Perfection' in The Synthesis of Yoga (Mother catches her breath): there
is such a gulf between what we are, what life on earth and human
consciousness now are, even among the most enlightened, the most
advanced, and THAT! ... page 152 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 7th April - 1961 |
After more than a month I have resumed my translation [of The Synthesis of Yoga], and I fell exactly - it's splendid! - exactly on the passage that helped me understand what has happened, why there are all these difficulties. And the Synthesis and the Veda go hand in hand, so reading that passage brought some improvement; it's like being able to shift position, you know, so that now it's a bit better. Anyway.... page 157 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 8th April - 1961 |
And in the evening before going to sleep I read the Vedas, which aggravates the situation. Because those people remember - either they have heard of it, or they remember it themselves - a supramental realization; and they describe it all so beautifully that it makes you feel very far from it, so very, very far.... page 166 - Mother's Agenda, volume 2, 15th April - 1961 |
About the discovery of the Supermind in the Veda and by Sri Aurobindo. There is something I don't quite grasp.Because in the Veda it's incomplete. No, they had a hint, like a vision of the 'thing,' but there is no proof that they realized it. What's more, had they realized it, it seems to me that we would certainly have found some traces - but no traces remain. Theon knew something about it, and he called it 'the new world' or 'the new creation on earth and the glorified body' (I don't remember his exact terminology); but he knew of the Supermind's existence - it had been revealed to him and he announced its coming. He said it would be reached THROUGH the discovery of the God within. And for him, as I told you the other day, this meant a greater density - which seems to be a correct experience. Well, on my side, I have made investigations and had innumerable visions concerning the earth's history, and I spoke about it a good deal with Sri Aurobindo.... According to what Sri Aurobindo saw and what I saw as well, the Rishis had the contact, the experience - how to put it? ... A kind of lived knowledge of the thing, coming like a promise, saying, 'THAT is what will be.' But it's not permanent. There's a big difference between their experience and the DESCENT - what Sri Aurobindo calls 'the descent of the Supermind': something that comes and establishes itself. Even when I had that experience [the 'first supramental manifestation' of February 29, 1956], when the Lord said, 'The time has come,' well, it was not a complete descent; it was the descent of the Consciousness, the Light, and a part, an aspect of the Power. It was immediately absorbed and swallowed up by the world of Inconscience, and from that moment on it began to work in the atmosphere. But it was not THE thing that comes and gets permanently established; when that happens, we won't need to speak of it - it will be obvious! Although the experience of '56 was one more forward step, it's not.... It's not final. And what the Rishis had was a sort of promise - an INDIVIDUAL experience. page 375-76 - Mother's Agenda, volume -2 , 5th Nov. 1961 |
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Sweet Mother,
When I read the Veda I thought I understood that the Rishis,
finding the passage blocked above (since they would fall into ecstasy and lose their hold over the body), set out to find the
Supermind
by the downward path.
But reading Sri Aurobindo, I seemed to understand the opposite:
that FIRST he rose up, and then made the Light redescend to open the
passage, and that the pressure of the Light from above is what opens the
doors below, in Matter.
I would like to understand the process.
With all my love,
Signed: Satprem
(Mother's reply) It is by rising to the summit of consciousness through a progressive ascent that one unites with the Supermind. But as soon as the union is achieved, one knows and one sees that the Supermind exists in the heart of the Inconscient as well. When one is in that state, there is neither high nor low. But GENERALLY it is by REDESCENDING through the levels of the being with a supramentalized consciousness that one can accomplish the permanent transformation of physical nature. There is no proof that the Rishis used another method, although, to effect this transformation (if they ever did), they must necessarily have fought their way through the powers of inconscience and obscurity.page 376-77 - Mother's Agenda, volume -2 , 6th Nov. 1961 |
One day, I don't remember on what occasion, I saw what had motivated the "forefathers" who wrote the Vedas: it was the need for immortality; they were in quest of immortality. [[Mother added the beginning of this paragraph later: "I had forgotten to mention part of the experience!" ]] page 436 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 27th Nov. 1962 |