But when the hour of the Divine draws near,

The Mighty Mother shall take birth in Time

And God be born into the human clay

In forms made ready by your human lives.

Then shall the Truth supreme be given to men.

Savitri, Book XI, Canto I                       SRI AUROBINDO

The Divine gives itself to those who give themselves without reserve and in all their parts to the Divine. For them the calm, the light, the power, the bliss, the freedom, the wide-ness, the heights of knowledge, the seas of Ananda. ...........Sri Aurobindo

EDITORIAL

The Bride of Brahman

(Rig-Veda : X.109)

I AM going to tell you a story today, a story both for the old and the young, a very old and ancient story. Indeed it is from the Veda.

Once upon a time — of course I am speaking of a time when there was no time nor space, before the existence of time and space, when there existed only One Being, the nameless Being — named Brahman! To us, human beings, it is the Supreme Existence, the Lord, God or whatever one chooses to call him. He is also the Lord Surya, the luminous Truth, the sole Light of Lights. So then it once happened : this luminous Brahman looked at himself and found surprisingly that his luminosity, his brightness was getting dimmed, he was becoming darker and darker. He was at a loss, and confused. What was it due to? Then he thought of the Gods, his companions. They came-along immediately, and the foremost among them was Varuna :

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Varuna means also one who has the vast consciousness and vision. He can see far, far into the longest distance, into the unseen future. Then he found it out, what the matter was, and said : "Lord, your Shakti has gone away." Brahman and his Shakti, Brahmajaya, were one : they were both together, fused into one united single being always. Varuna said : "the Bride of Brahman has left Brahman." Now it was the task of all to find out where she had gone leaving Brahman in this state of darkness. Then it was always Varuna who through his sight, long sight, his penetrating vision found that Brahmashakti, the Divine Power has gone away far, very far, deep into the bosom of the Earth, and has disintegrated herself into material substances. She has become Matter, unconscious and dark like matter. The Gods found she was there one with ordinary creatures and things and objects. Then they conferred among themselves and decided : "We must awaken her, make her conscious of herself, take her back to her Lord, the Brahman — so can he also reclaim and regain his own identity." So the first of the Gods who approached her was the God Soma. Soma means the Moon or Delight, that is Ananda. The Gods said : It was Ananda, Delight, that joined them together, the Lord and the Shakti; so, for their union, their reunion, it is natural and in the fitness of things that Soma should lead the way and approach her. So all the Gods went together to her and explained to her the situation, and at last persuaded her to follow them in their path, the long journey, the return journey homeward. We may recollect here also the image of Parvati sojourning in her earthly mother's home and returning to Kailash, to her heavenly Lord.

There is also another, similar or parallel story in the Veda about the God Agni, about the disappearance of this very important God, Fire. He is, as you know, the God who presides over and even carries out the sacrifice, the Vedic ritual of yajna. Sacrifice cannot be done without fire, he is the Purohita, one installed in front of this great ceremony, — the ceremony, I may immediately disclose to you, of the advancement of consciousness. It starts with the kindling of fire — which means the symbol of the awakening of the aspiring will. Now the story runs : the sacrifice was to begin and all things were ready when all of a sudden it was found that the leader of the sacrifice, the Deity was not there. They all searched for him, he was found nowhere. He had fled. Then, as usual, once again all the Gods assembled

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and rummaged everywhere to catch the defaulter. Now the problem : where could he go after all? It was his duty to be present and begin the work, but at the critical moment he is not there! All went about in all directions, and at last found the Fire hiding — hiding where? — under water. Then the Gods approached him and asked : "O Fire, why are you hiding? Come out, your task is there." Fire answered : "No, I won't go, whatever you say, I remain here." — "But why?" — "It is a very difficult task. Many others before me had tried to do this job, undertaken to shoulder this responsibility. But none succeeded, at least completely. So I don't want to take the trouble of repeating a failure. It is a useless attempt." The Gods persisted, prayed, entreated : "No, Agni, it is your job. You will reap the full benefit of it, we assure you." The Gods in the end succeeded in pacifying and persuading the truant God.

Sacrifice means — as I have told you just now — the ascension of the consciousness. When we rise up from the ordinary material level, when we have moved towards the higher Light from out of the obscurity of the senses, that is ascension, and that is called sacrifice : for you move up by rejecting the lower strand, the lower levels of nature, and acquire the higher realities. The Fire is the fire that is the force of your heart, of your aspiration that you want to be something more than the ordinary mortal that you are. So it is indeed a tapasya, a strenuous effort to rise up — against the pull of gravity; indeed, it is a great trouble. Agni did not want to take the trouble because man, the normal man also refuses it. But as I said, there was a happy ending, for at last Agni agreed. Here we find Agni hiding under water. What does water signify? Water is the symbol of vitality, vital-power, the life-force. This also is a form of the same Consciousness-Force that is Agni, but robed, clothed in a material sheath, a hidden home as it were. It is to be released from there and move up.

Now we go back to our story. The Gods accompanied Brahma-jaya, the Bride of Brahman in her journey back home. But the story ^has a beginning, an earlier episode — a prologue as it were. Why did the Divine Bride leave at all her Lord? What was it that made her run away? — leaving him alone with whom she was once one in perfect union? The story is as the Upanishad reports, the Lord Brahman- was long — in fact for eternity — single, alone, the One Existence,

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the One Truth, undivided, indivisible; but at one time of his existence he became conscious that he was alone. So long he had not thought of it at all. No thought of being alone or of other people being around was there. He was simply Existence, existing. But now he felt, he saw that he was alone, and once you begin to think you cannot stop. Then he said : Alone how can one be happy? You must be two to become happy — ekākī na ramate. When you are alone you don't enjoy. So you must be two. Thus Brahman, the Supreme, divided himself into two, One divided two-fold : one part man, the other part woman; one part consciousness, the other part force, power; one part Brahman, the other part Brahmashakti. So long both the parts were there, but they were united, soldered as it were, fused into one being and person; Shakti and her Lord, Fire and its Flame — they were one and indivisible. But, as I said, when the thought came they must be two, in fact also they separated, Brahman separated himself from his Shakti and took Shakti out, and Shakti herself went out, and the two separated actually, stood face to face as it were. You may remember — I mean the elder generation — the drama that was staged here in the Theatre, directed by the Mother — "He and She" — and the play, the Lila of "He" and "She" was displayed, how they were one, how they sepatared, and the play of union and reunion. Now when they separated, in order to look closely and carefully they separated more and more, the distance grew slowly, so much so that they were completely separated, and the Shakti was so far away from her Lord that she went to the other extreme. Brahman was the supreme consciousness above, and She became the absolute dark Matter below. And Brahman too separated utterly the other way from his Shakti and went off in the contrary direction, towards Nothingness, Shunya as reported by the Buddhists.

Now the return journey. The Shakti cannot be for long away from her Lord, that cannot be the final stance. She is to come back to her Lord. This is the story of the redemption of material nature and her gradual transmutation into the higher Nature, regaining her status by the side of her Lord. The process or the series of steps described by the Veda remains always the same, for human beings also for their liberation from inferior nature and regaining the spiritual nature. The Veda says the Gods came one by one and led the Shakti up the way. First Soma came, that is to say, Delight touched the inner

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core of the fallen Nature and impelled her to awake and rise. As Ananda was the source of their first union, so for the reunion Ananda is the inspirer and the leader. Next Agni was directed to take the Shakti along with him on the way. Agni means, as I have said, the light and fire of aspiration to rise up. Agni first initiated the ignorant Shakti with a mantra, it is like a normal human initiation when you enter the spiritual life. You have to go to a Guru and the Guru gives you the mantra that awakens your consciousness. Now Agni gave as mantra the Divine word "Brahma" as the image of the Divine. She was to concentrate upon it till she became in consciousness identified with Him. She did so and after a time when she felt she recognised her Lord and accepted Him, the God Agni said : "Now proceed. You have to go to the second stage. Enlarge your being, enlarge your consciousness; what you have got now is the realisation that you are the Brahman, you are one with Him. Now you have to unite yourself with all beings, with all Gods, with all creatures, universalise yourself." So the Bride of Brahman from her individual realisation went forward into the universal where she met her Lord, dwelling in all beings and all creatures everywhere, — she entered into the mansion of all the Gods.

Now, you know there are three steps, three steps of consciousness, three steps of your being in its ascension towards the Supreme : first, your ordinary individual being with your particular name and form, that is the personal individual; then, coming out of that shell you learn to be one with all beings, all humanity, all things even. You become as large as creation itself; however, that is not the end. You have to go beyond, beyond, into what is known as the Transcendent, there you find the Supreme, the total, the Supreme Truth of your being. So the Bride of Brahman from her universal realisation went into the Transcendent, into her Lord, her own total Self. From her ignorant material formulation in her upward march she was shedding her scales as it were, of her inferior formations, putting on purer and higher and more glorious embodiments. Ultimately she found herself to be as she used to be originally and always and ever before the separation. When thus united the Gods were also included in their embrace and all found themselves happy at last.

It is said that this separation and this reunion meant a greater fulfilment upon earth. Without the separation the fulfilment also

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would not have happened upon earth. Earth would have remained as it is but because of the separation, that is to say, the Bride of Brahman separating herself from her Lord and coming down into Matter and becoming one with Matter, there rose the possibility, the inevitability of fusing her reality and the reality of Brahman into Matter.

The Divine Bride dropped down on earth and dived into Matter and became one with it. She became Matter, material Nature, dense, dark, heavy with all its weight. She became as the Veda names her, "Bhimajaya" — the mighty, the terrible spouse — in fact our Mahakali. She was originally the fair spouse — Saumyajaya. But there is to be a progress, a gain. So when she rises and is on her upward march she has now acquired the capacity to carry and lift with her the heaviest load of the Inconscient and gradually transmute it. In the final realisation all the Gods are to come to the forefront and all mankind are to come out as it were into the open and bask in the Solar Light and share in the delight of the union of the Divine Bride and her Bridegroom.

This is the drama that is happening, a real drama, it is not a fictitious story. It is an action that is happening in some other world in a subtler realm. It is repeated in those "heavens" as the Vedas say, and repeated so that it becomes more and more concrete, more and more real upon earth and finally is embodied and materialised upon earth.

In this cosmic drama one remarkable feature is to be observed. If there has been a descent there must inevitably follow an ascent. The Shakti has come down alone apparently, but she cannot be alone essentially. She comes down with her Lord behind in the background. In the utmost gloom of hard Matter, Brahman is also there, imbedded in its very core as an infinitesimal spark, a tiny particle of fight as it were. And that means an upward urge or élan, aspiration as we say is always there. That is what happens in fact when the Shakti reaches the bedrock of total unconsciousness, there is a rebounding movement, the movement of a boomerang as it were. That is the awakening of the inanimate Nature, her evolution, her initiation into the upward journey. In her growth, it is to be noted, the Lord also grows side by side with her unfoldment; that is to say, the Lord too manifests Himself more and more : this is a biune manifestation The

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two can never be separated, they were always together, the apparent separation or obscuration is only a play, a Lila, for a greater reunion.

I do not know but perhaps we of this age are very much near, may be to the very door of the final realisation of which they, the ancients, spoke, when really Matter, concrete, dull, obscure Matter, our material Mother — Bhimajaya of the Veda — will be transformed and our humanity even will have a share in the transformation. As it is now, these things, I have said, are repeated in other worlds, in the subtler realms, in subtler forms and subtler forces. The absolutely material form is not, but perhaps preparing just behind the rising dawn. All of you, all of us, will surely take part in the consummation in some form or other, earlier or later.

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HYMN TO SKAMBHA (THE PILLAR)

ATHARVA VEDA (X.7)

Part II

23. It is one whose wealth is always guarded by the three and thirty Gods — who knows today of this wealth protected all around by the Gods?

24. There where the Gods who know of the Brahman, worship the Brahman the most Ancient. He who knows them through direct sight¹ becomes indeed the Knower, Brahman itself.

25. Great is the Name of the Gods² who are born upon the Non-Being; that become one limb of the Pillar, thus said the ancient peoples.

26. There the Pillar gave birth to the ancient One and turned it round³; that is one ancient limb of the Pillar. This they have been knowing always.

27. From the body of That the thirty-three gods cut out each his respective limb — a few only who know of the Brahman know of the thirty-three gods.

28. People knew of Hiranyagarbha⁴ as the Supreme, the Insuperable⁵ but the Pillar was 'there existent before and sprayed the gold into the bosom of the creation.

29. In the Pillar lie the worlds, in the Pillar lies Tapas, in the Pillar lies Ritam firmly held; | the Pillar thou knowest directly. In Indra all is firmly established.

¹ Who has thus the immediate vision of all these gods.

² Great indeed are the Gods.

³ rolled it out.

⁴ The Golden Womb.

⁵ Unsurpassable.

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30. In Indra lie the worlds, in Indra the Divine Energy, in Indra lies the Truth-in-action firmly held. Indra thou knowest by direct sight; in the Pillar all is firmly established.

31. He calls the Name by the Name in front of the Sun, in front of the Dawn when the Unborn first came into being; indeed he moved into self-empire than¹ which no other supreme exists, none existent.

32. The Vast Earth measures out That, the mid realm is its great belly, the heaven it created as its head. We bow to the most Ancient, the Brahman.

33. The Sun and the ever-renewing Moon are the eyes of That. Agni is its mouth. We bow to this most Ancient, the Brahman.

34. The Winds are its higher and lower breath, the Angiras² became its eyes, That created the directions as openings to knowledge. To That the most Ancient, the Brahman we bow down.

35. The Pillar upholds here both Earth and Heaven. The Pillar upholds the vast Mid-Sphere, the Pillar upholds the six quarters; thus the Pillar has entered this wide creation.

36. That is born from Labour, That is born from the Supreme Energy. All the worlds it has encompassed. It created Soma³, the sole reality. To That the most Ancient, the Brahman I bow.

37. How is it that the wind does not move? How is it that the mind does not take delight⁴'? How is it that the waters impelled towards the Truth move no more?

38. A mighty Spirit within the creation, upon the waters is engaged in tapas — in That the gods, one and all, take refuge as the branches assemble around the trunk of the tree.

¹ beyond.

² Fire-adept Rishis.

³ Divine Delight.

⁴ has lost taste.

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39. To That through the hands and feet, through speech and hearing and sight, all the gods make their offering, to That, the Measureless in the measured. Of this Pillar speak — which one indeed it is?

40. The darkness slipped from him, He turns round from Evil, all Lights are in Him; Threefold¹ are they in the Lord of Creation.

41. He knows the golden reed lying in the waters. He is the secret Lord of Creation.

42. Two young maids, of different hue, weave assiduously a six-pronged web : One draws out the thread, the other holds it. They do not stop nor do they go to the end.

43. They are dancing about me, as it were, and I do not know which one belongs to the beyond.

44. A human it is who weaves, and also one who receives, a human it is who carries towards the other world. These radiances held firm the Heaven, created the Sama Songs for realising then-extensions.

¹ Sat-Chit-Ananda, body-life-mind.

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THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY

An Outline

CHAPTER 20

The Drive Towards Economic Centralisation

THE unity of the external life of a nation needs also the unity and uniformity of the law and the judiciary under a single sovereign authority. Logically, the determination of its rules of life should be the first business of a society. But life develops under the pressure of forces and subconscient necessities, and not according to mental logic; its organisation by the self-conscious mind comes not at the beginning but towards the end.

The development of the self-conscious mind enables the society to perfect the whole organisation of its life by means of the state. The more the state and the society become synonymous, the more perfect is this organisation. The coming of democracy and socialism is a sign that society is preparing to be a freely and consciously self-regulating organism. Modern democracy and modern socialism however, are far yet from that goal; Facism and Nazism have cut out the "freely" in this formula.

. In the early stages of society, there was no such thing as law, in its present sense. There was only a mass of binding habits fixed by the inner nature of the group-man and the pressure of his environment. They became institutions and crystallised into laws. These laws, moreover, made no distinctions between the political and the administrative, the social and the religious law. The ancient Jewish law and the law of Hindu India were of this type.

This ancient law was not fixed for all time; it grew, with the natural development of social habits in response to changing ideas and more and more complex needs. There was no constituted legislative authority, although the prophets and Rishis and kings and jurists exercised a determining influence according to their power and

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capacity. The king in India was an administrator and seldom the legislator.

Tradition did ascribe this ancient law to an original legislator — a Manu, Moses, Lycurgus. But modern research has discredited such ascriptions. Manu in the Indian Puranic tradition stands as a symbol of the larger but to us subconscient mentality of the race. An embodied Manu, a living Moses or Muhammad simply acts as a spokesman for the beings of this larger mind with which he gets into touch in a state of trance. This is quite different from the way modern man makes his laws through a constituted authority, by a rational process.

This rational process implied the creation of a central authority which gradually takes over the separated parts of the social activity. At first, this authority was the king, elective or hereditary.

Originally, he was only a war leader, and at home the head of the elders or the strong men but not the principal determinant of the nation's action. In war, his authority was supreme; at home he was only the executive ruler.

In the ancient monarchies, the conduct of war and peace had been centralised in the king; he was free to carry it out according to his own ideas and interests. A vestige of this survives even in modern European governments. They conduct their foreign policies according to their will and by means of a secret diplomacy subject only to a general criticism by the public or parliament. The latter are effectively consulted, whether for war or peace, only at the last moment. The demand for real parliamentary control of foreign policy and even for an open diplomacy is a sign of the progress towards a real democracy.

The central authority had a more difficult task in taking over the functions of internal government, for it had to meet many opposing interests. But it was bound in the end to control the executive and administrative functions, which consist in the main of the financial,

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the executive proper and the judicial powers.

The financial power implies the right to control the public purse and determine public expenditure. Whoever has this financial power naturally wields the sovereign authority in the state. Monarchy in its impulse towards despotic control has always sought to engross this power, even to the extent of confiscation and despoliation without judicial process. A ruler who has to bargain with his subjects over the amount and the methods of taxation can hardly claim to be the sole sovereign.

That is why the supreme political instinct of the English people chose the question of taxation as the vital issue in their struggle with the monarchy. Once they had won this battle, with the defeat of the Stuarts in Parliament, the transference of sovereignty from a despotic monarchy, first to the aristocracy, next to the bourgeoisie and finally to the entire people was only a question of time. In France on the other hand, the monarchy had retained this power over the public purse. It was the mismanagement of the public purse and the unwillingness to tax the enormous wealth of the aristocracy and clergy and the crushing taxation of the people that led to the Revolution.

In advanced modern countries, this control over the purse is in the hands of an authority which claims to represent the will of the people, and there is no appeal against its decisions. But even so, it is questions, not of taxation, but of the proper organisation and administration of the economic life of the society which are preparing the revolutions of the future.

(To be continued)

SANAT K. BANERJI

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MOTHER AND THE MODERN WORLD

THE Mother of the worlds does not come down to earth in a human body simply in order to create an Ashram. "It would be a very poor objective indeed," as she explained long ago to one of the disciples here.¹ She came at a time when the world was in the throes of a mighty change, in all the spheres of its life — in politics and international relations, in its social and economic structure, in its art and culture and science and thought and religion, and in its approach to spirituality. A mighty Power was needed to push it along the right lines of change; no single human will could do it.

Fin de Stèele Paris

Fin de Steele Paris was a sort of epitome of the world that called for a drastic change. It saw the Mother growing to maturity and preparing her Work.

France had got rid of monarchy and the old oppressive rule of the Bourbons and the Napoleonic dynasty. The new-born Republic had outlived its teething troubles, and the suppression or rather resignation of Boulangism seemed to suggest that monarchy would never return in the old form again. Republican France was coming out of her isolation in Europe by making friends with Czarist Russia and the German menace seemed to be receding. She was well on the way to be a great imperial Power, with her full share in the Partition of Africa and the added resources of the whole of Indochina. She had made up her quarrel up with England over the Fashoda affair in the Sudan, and the Prince of Wales, soon to become King Edward VII, was to forge the entente cordiale. She was a keen participant in the Hague Conference of 1899 that was to end all wars by banning some lethal weapons like the Dum Dum bullet, and setting up international tribunals. Hope was in the air.

Economically, the portents were equally as good. France had paid off the indemnity for the war with Prussia in record time. She was never so prosperous before. She invited the whole world to grand Exhibitions in Paris, once in the year of the Mother's birth, again about ten years later when the Eiffel Tower was erected to mark the status of France in the steel age. Agriculture and industry

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flourished, the Bourse in Paris was humming with activity. Railway lines were linking up the metropolis with remote regions. The first automobiles were on the road.

Society glittered with a bejewelled aristocracy. But movements were afoot to try out the second word of the Revolution gospel. Labour could form its own unions, and talk things over with the masters across the table. Even certain provisions were being made in the law to safeguard the workers against risks to their health. Most promising of all, women were coming into their own: they were demanding political rights and were even ready to fight for the suffrage; they would no longer be content to pull strings from behind the screen.

Paris retained its primacy in the world of culture. A knowledge of French and an acquaintance with the great masters of its literature were still the hallmark of civilisation, even in distant Russia. Many of the characters in Tolstoi's novels preferred to punctuate their conversation with elegant sentences in French. Rodin, Monet and Manet, Renoir and Goya were adding lustre to French art. Verlaine, Rimbaud and Mallarme, Flaubert and Zola and Anatole France were making daring experiments in literature. Becquerel and Pasteur and Pierre and Marie Curie were adding new dimensions to science. The great Opera House buzzed with delectable noise. Great musicians and virtuosos like Cesar Franck and Ysaye the violinist could charge the atmosphere with magic.

In the realm of thought, France was now committed to scientism and was determined to apply the objective methods of science to all fields, including philosophy. It was the heyday of positivism, inaugurated earlier in the century by Comte, and given a wide application by the versatile Renan and Taine. "Scientific" history was now the order of the day; Fustel de Coulanges was acclaimed for his detailed and objective survey of early political institutions.

Education had been made compulsory for all up to the age of thirteen; it was to be given free in the Government schools. Secondary schools had been opened for young girls. Most significant of all, the curriculum was secularised, and the religious orders gradually deprived of their ancient right to teach. Just after the turn of the century, the State was to withdraw its age-long patronage of the Roman Catholic Church.

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This was symptomatic of an age where religion and the religious spirit got pushed into the background. People still went to church and sermons were preached. But writers like Anatole France were soon to make fun of their belief in God; he dared describe Him as a Demiurge, and few seemed to have taken offence. Something of the old spirituality survived in rare monasteries and nunneries; it was all a myth and a hallucination for the positivist mind of the age. Any kind of occultism was suspect since the world had come to be governed by purely material laws. If morality had to have any place in the life of man, it was to be of the purely conventional type; one had only to be "respectable".

THE HOLLOWNESS

The hollowness of all this became more and more patent to the Mother as she grew up; she had been casting a critical glance around her even at the age of five. That made her so serious at times that she would not join at play. They came to call her the Sphinx.

It was the insincerity of it all, the self-deceptions and the deceiving of others that she felt most acutely, the disorder and the confusion of values to which these naturally led. Even as a child she knew that things were not in their place.²

All forms of government, the Mother declares, are full of falsehood or chimerical in their nature. For, "politics as it is practised, is a low and ugly thing, wholly dominated by falsehood, deceit, injustice, misuse of power, and violence."³ Of this she had enough evidence even when she was a school girl. A republic had succeeded monarchy in France. But there was no end to corruption in high places. A President had to tender his resignation because a member of his family was found trading in privileges. An innocent military officer was sentenced to long imprisonment on a baseless charge and refused a re-trial for long, simply in order to keep up the Government's "face"; this was the celebrated case of Dreyfus that tore the country asunder in the late nineties.

All the governments of Europe professed to work for peace. All of them were preparing for war. All of them knew that a Great War was coming; the only thing they did not know for certain was the exact date of its coming. "The diplomacy among nations is founded

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on lies," the Mother observes. "They claim to desire peace, and on the other hand arm themselves."⁴ The arms race was already on when the Hague Conference of 1899 ended its deliberations on world peace; it was assuming formidable proportions when the Conference dispersed again in 1907.

A solid economic base is indispensable for man or nation; the Mother has never associated spirituality with bareness. But what she has always stood against is the greed for money. And this was rampant in the world she knew. Nothing expresses her point of view more clearly than the paper she once read to a small group of spiritual seekers who used to meet at her residence in Paris shortly before she came to Pondicherry in 1914. She was describing the thoughts of all the people who dwelt in the city of Paris. Underlying all their thoughts there was one single thing : greed. "All, rich or poor, powerful or weak, the priviledged ones or the unfortunate, intellectuals or the unintelligent, learned or ignorant, want money, always more money in order to satisfy their greed."⁵ Universal education obviously had lacuna; to fill.

As for the socialites, she has little better to say, — the fashionable men about town, "who have no other aim than to have enjoyments and diversions of a physical nature."⁶ One is reminded of a true story she once told us in the course of one of her Evening Talks. There was a society woman she knew in Paris — she had known many like that. She was in very comfortable circumstances, living in a fine apartment, with a lot of servants and every kind of comfort. Mother once told her about a man of real worth who practically went without food because he had no money. She did not ask the woman to give him money — he would not take it. She merely suggested that she might give him some work or ask him to spend some time with her, explaining that the man had little money to buy food. And the woman exclaimed, quite spontaneously, "Come! come! there is always some bread and other eatables in the kitchen!"⁷

Mother has naturally a good word to say about the movement for the emancipation of women at the end of the century. They had so long borne silently all the injustices done to them by men; at last they had the courage to come out in open protest. And yet... in spite of all their bravado and all their apings of men's dress and hairdo — "they put on a collar and tie, and men's jackets, cut their hair

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short, and looked, or tried to look as masculine as they could. ..." the Mother added with a smile, "they were lamentably feminine; lamentably. They wanted to please, they wanted to attract attention, and if by mischance a man were to treat them as men, they were altogether annoyed."⁸ Mother happened to know all the feminists of the day. "All the social relations between men have so far been based only on fraud and falsehood"⁹.

Culture and elegance seemed to come to nought when put to the test of life. Mother recounts another story in this connection. There was a Charity Bazar in Paris, — she was then about eighteen. All the elegance and cultured elite of Paris attended the function. It so happened that the canvas tent in which the Bazar was held caught fire one day, through a short-circuit. There was a mad rush towards the exits. Men and women were trampled under foot. A well-known aristocrat, known for his elegance and his poetry, was seen testing the silver knob of his cane on the heads of ladies who barred his passage. This again is a true story, and caused a lot of scandal at the time.¹⁰ It might have happened anywhere.

France was proud of her art and literature. Mother had read a whole library of French literature, and she became intimately familiar with all the well-known artists around the turn of the" century. Most of these artists were devoted to their art, and the literary men had style and great power. But she was repelled by the ugliness of life which some of them described in such detail. Why could not they write of beautiful things? Why paint the ugly things when life was ugly enough for most people? These were questions she started asking herself when she was an adolescent.¹¹ And after the great days of the Impressionists were over, there began the reign of ugliness in art. They wanted to surpass the old masters by indulging in extravagances of all sorts. People get tired of beautiful things,¹² the Mother explains. Rembrandt was no good, Titian was a dauber in paint, Raphael was unspeakable, he was a shame. Even the works of Vinci — "you know, you have to take them and then leave them aside". This was the attitude of the avant-garde. Mother could never reconcile herself with this disparagement of beauty. In the world of forms, a lack of Beauty is a fault as great as a lack of truth in the world of ideas.¹³

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SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY

She was naturally attracted to Science, because of its sincerity in the search for the Real. And she devoted considerable time to its study, chemistry and mathematics and biology in particular. Yet here too she found an element of self-deception. For, with very few exceptions, most scientists believed and still believe that they will one day come to know the true truth of things by material means alone and that nothing but material force exists. They seem to forget that though their observations of the results are correct, the true causes are occult. It is the exclusivenesses of Science, its dogma of physicality, that stand in its way. Mother had high hopes for a long time that Science would discover the ultimate truths of existence. But an experience she had in 1962 made her change this view; since then she did not think it possible, "though certainly, the objective, scientific knowledge, pushed to its extremes, if it is possible for it to be absolutely total, would in any case take it to the threshold."¹⁴

The defect of science is shared by all positivist thought. The reason is simple. As the Mother observes, "even for entirely outward, concrete facts, where the element of personal appreciation does not enter, it is still the same thing. There is no human brain that can understand a thing in its totality. Even the most well-informed, even the most learned, even the most sincere man does not see a thing, and above all several things, in a total manner. He will say what he knows, what he understands; all that he does not know, all that he does not understand is not there. And that changes everything, absolutely."¹⁵ "This is the essential vice of the observing and reasoning intellect : it seeks to explain everything from its own limited view point, for it has no power to harmonise opposites.¹⁶ And yet it always seeks to explain everything. "But everything that one seeks to explain is explained by another thing, which has to be explained by another, which must be explained by another — indefinitely. And you may go the round of the universe explaining each thing by another. That explains nothing at all... That is why we say that the mind can know nothing; it can know nothing because it needs explanations."

That, in the Mother's view, has been the trouble with all metaphysical thinking, with all philosophy. "One has the impression that philosophy is always on the border-line of the Truth, like a tangent

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that approaches but never touches; there is something that escapes."¹⁷ Philosophy performs a useful function only in so far as it trains the mind to think coherently. "It has always seemed to me a gymnastic which is very interesting from the point of view of mental development, but has not much practical result."¹⁸ All these speculations, these arguments and deductions are "an occupation more or less interesting for people who have nothing else to do. But ... I dare riot say it very much aloud because it is not appreciated by intellectual people ... For me the solution lies elsewhere."¹⁹

And as for "scientific" history, it is hardly ever true to facts. Events have actually taken place quite differently from the way they are described. And why she says this is very easy to understand. "The human brain has not the capacity to record things with exactitude. History is constructed on the basis of memories, and the memories are always vague. If, for example, you take the written records, he who has written the records has chosen the events that have interested him, what he has seen, observed or known; and that is never but one small part of the whole. When the historians give their accounts ... they give a continuous narrative. But between the events or the times, there are gaps which they fill up as best they can, or rather just as they want, according to their mental or vital preferences. And that is the "history" that you are made to learn!"²⁰

RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY

As in the realm of science and philosophy and thought, it is the same story with religion and spirituality. "They have seized one corner and make it the all."²¹ That is where religion has gone wrong. Each of the great religions has in its origin a certain kind of experience. "The experience was real, complete in itself, convincing for him who had it. The formulation of it that he made was excellent — for him. But wanting to impose it on others is a fundamental mistake, which always has altogether disastrous results, always takes one far, very far from the Truth. That is why all the religions, however beautiful they be, have always driven men to the worst excesses. All the crimes, all the horrors that have been perpetrated in the name of religion are among the darkest spots of human history, and simply because of this small initial mistake: wanting that what is true for an

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individual should be true for the mass or the collectivity. The path has to be shown and the gates opened; but each one should walk on the path, pass through the gates, to his own personal realisation."²² This is what most religions have failed to do.

The Mother speaks from her own experience when she says that it is one of the great Beings of the Over mind plane — the world of 'Formateurs who have been entrusted with the evolution of the universe and have presided over the formation of the mind and its progress — whom most of the religions look upon as the Supreme. "It is generally to the gods of the Over mind that are addressed the prayers of the different religions, which most often choose for various reasons one of these gods and transform him for their personal use into the Supreme God."²³ These gods are divine in their origin, but they are not the Supreme Divine.

The modern world is not aware of this fact, because the schools of initiation do not now enjoy the authority they had in ancient times, in Egypt, in Chaldea, in India and even in Greece and Rome.

If occultism was anathema to the modern mind, spirituality was still more so, at least in the beginning of this century, and as exclusive as religion. The monastic ideal, the form generally recognised as representing spirituality, had failed. Perhaps it deserved to fail. For one thing, it was a gospel of escapism, an attempt at flight from the lures of the ordinary life. "You see," the Mother explains, "to be free from all attachment does not mean fleeing the opportunities of attachment. All these people who affirm their asceticism not only take to flight: they also give others a warning that they should not try it otherwise. It seems to be so evident: when you need to flee a thing in order not to experience it, that means that you are not above but still on that level. All that suppresses and diminishes or belittles does not liberate. Liberty has to be experienced in the totality of life and sensations."²⁴

That is the exact opposite of what the old spirituality aimed at. "They put themselves in a trance, they left their body in a state of immobility... And their body, naturally got dissolved after a time, and they entered into the Peace." And the Mother adds, "those who wish to remain grand, luminous, strong, powerful and so on and so forth, well, let them remain there; they cannot do anything for the earth."²⁵

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THE MALADY OF LIFE

But life on earth remains a hell for those who remain on earth. "Almost all," the Mother notes in her Diary, "are acquainted only with the material life, heavy, inert, conservative, obscure; their vital forces are so attached to this physical form of existence that even when left to themselves and outside the body, they are still wholly occupied with things incidental to matter and so painful and harassing. Those in whom has awakened the mental life are restless, tormented, agitated, arbitrary and despotic; and caught altogether in the whirl of transformations and renewals of which they dream, they are prepared to demolish everything without knowing on what to take their stand in order to build. And so, with their flashes of light that blind, they add to the confusion instead of making it cease."²⁶ Life as it is ordinarily lived, the Mother observes, is mainly a series of disputes, openly expressed or inwardly suppressed.²⁷

Hence arises her ardent prayer: "O! may the hatreds be appeased, the rancours effaced, fears dispelled, suspicions abolished, and the malevolence's overcome... O! may kindness, justice, peace, reign as sovereign masters... May the blind see, may the deaf hear. O! May all tears be dried, all suffering relieved, all anguish disappear."²⁸

Not emotional suffering alone, not the incertitudes of the mind alone and its proneness to criticism, but also the illnesses and pains and fatigue of the body, its disharmonies and uglinesses, the infirmities of age, together with the constant menace of death that accompanies man's life on earth.

This is the malady of the world. A root cause had to be discovered, a solution to the main problem.

THE MAIN PROBLEM

The Buddha found the root cause in the desire of man to live on earth. Abolish this desire, he said, and the problem will be solved. But this was like throwing away the baby along with the bath water. If the earth exists and man has been sent on earth to live here, even if for a short time, there must be a reason behind this, and for the suffering it entails. Mother finds the reason in his losing

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contact with his Origin and inner Inhabitant, the Lord. Let man re-establish the contact. Let him rely on the all-Power of the Lord to help him out of his difficulties, and his difficulties will cease to exist,— all his difficulties, mental and moral, vital and physical — provided the reliance is absolute, the confidence in the Grace constant in all circumstances.

But the world of men, the Mother found, does not want to believe in the possibility or existence of a Power infinitely greater than that of men or any other force, material or another. The problem is at bottom a psychological problem, or call it a pedagogic problem if you like. It is a question of educating the minds of people, old and young alike. It is a question of making them understand.

Mother has had any amount of personal experience of this all-mighty Power. Her problem was to "open up the comprehension (she indicated this by a gesture of making an opening at the top of the skull). It is this that is so difficult. The thing which they have not experienced is inexistent. Even if a sort of miracle happens before their eyes, they would have a physical explanation; it would not be for them a miracle, in the sense of an intervention of a force and a power other than material forces and powers... This has been lately the object of my work: how to deal with this refusal to know. It has been there for a long time... It is a kind of refusal — a refusal to accept a certain method of knowing which is not purely material, and a negation of the experience, the reality of the experience. How to convince them of that?"²⁹

One could use the methods of hypnosis. But they "are no use, they lead you nowhere... And then, there is the method of Kali, which is to give a good dressing down. But that, according to me, causes great havoc with little result...

"It seems that the only method that can overcome all resistances is the method of Love. But, the hostile forces have perverted that in such a way that quite a number of very sincere people, sincere seekers, are as if hardened against this method, because of the deformation.

"That is the difficulty. It is for this that it is taking time. However..."³⁰

SANAT K. BANERJI

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REFERENCES

1 Mother India, February 1953, p . 25.

2 Commentaires sur les Aphorismes, No. 66.

3 Ibid., No. 341; Mother India;, May 1954, p . 1.

4 Mother India, May, 1968, p . 245.

5 Bulletin, April 1977, p. 58.

6 Ibid.

7 Entretiens, 17.2.54.

8 Ibid., 16.5.55.

9 Mother India, May 1968, p . 45 .

10 Entretiens, 3.3.51.

11 Ibid., 26.2.51.

12 Ibid., 9.4.51.

13 Portieres Meditations, 29.1.17.

14 Commentaires, etc., Nos. 507 , 4 10, 110 ,75

15 Entretiens, 15.2.51.

16 Ibid., 28.3.56.

17 Ibid., 24.9.58.

18 Ibid., 22.I.58.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., 15.2.51.

21 Ibid., 15.2.58.

22 Ibid., 24.9.68.

23 Mother India, May 1960, p. 42.

24 Commentaires, etc.. No. 107.

25 Ibid., No. III.

26 Prieres et Meditations, 7.10.14.

27 Commentaires, etc., No. .8.

28 Prieres et Meditations, 8.4.14; 7.1.14.

29 Commentaires, etc., No. 110.

30 Ibid.

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WORDS OF THE MOTHER: A FORCE IN ACTION

TRUE REPOSE

THE minute one stops going forward, one falls back. The moment one is satisfied and no longer aspires, one begins to life. Life is movement, it is effort, it is a march forward, the scaling of a mountain, the climb towards new revelations, towards future realisations. Nothing is more dangerous than wanting to rest. It is in action, in effort, in the march forward that repose must be found, the true repose of complete trust in the divine Grace, of the absence of desires, of victory over egoism.

True repose comes from the widening, the universalisation of the consciousness. Become as vast as the world and you will always be at rest. In the thick of action, in the very midst of the battle, the effort, you will know the repose of infinity and eternity.

TO UNDERSTAND THE SUPREME TRUTHS

You have been put into contact with a world of truth, you live within it, the air you breathe is full of it; and yet how few of you know that these truths are valuable only if they are put into practice, and that it is useless to talk of consciousness, knowledge, equality of soul, universality, infinity, eternity, supreme truth, the divine presence and... of all sorts of things like that, if you make no effort yourselves to live these things and feel them concretely within you. . . . You must know that very persistent efforts, a very steadfast endurance are necessary to master the least weakness, the least pettiness, the least meanness in one's nature. . . .

You are still very young, but you must learn right away that to reach the goal you must know how to pay the price, and that to understand the supreme truths you must put them into practice in your daily life.

FACE THE FURNACE OF INNER PURIFICATION

At the moment we are at a decisive turning-point in the history of the earth, once again. From every side I am asked, "What is

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going to happen?" Everywhere there is anguish, expectation, fear. "What is going to happen?..." There is only one reply: "If only man could consent to be spiritualised."

And perhaps it would be enough if some individuals became pure gold, for this would be enough to change the course of events.... We are faced with this necessity in a very urgent way.

This courage, this heroism which the Divine wants of us, why not use it to fight against one's own difficulties, one's own imperfections, one's own obscurities? Why not heroically face the furnace of inner purification so that it does not become necessary to pass once more through one of those terrible, gigantic destructions which plunge an entire civilisation into darkness?

This is the problem before us. It is for each one to solve it in his own way.

RELIGION AND TRUE SPIRITUAL LIFE

Religion exists almost exclusively in its forms, its cults, in a certain set of ideas, and it becomes great only through the spirituality of a few exceptional individuals, whereas true spiritual life, and above all what the supramental realisation will be, is independent of every precise, intellectual form, every limited form of fife. It embraces all possibilities and manifestations and makes them the expression, the vehicle of a higher and more universal truth.

A new religion would not only be useless but very harmful. It is a new life which must be created; it is a new consciousness which must be expressed. This is something beyond intellectual limits and mental formulae. It is a living truth which must manifest.

Everything in its essence and its truth should be included in this realisation. This realisation must be an expression as total, as complete, as universal as possible of the divine reality. Only that can save humanity and the world.

TO BE A TRUE LEADER

Sri Aurobindo speaks of . . . the invariable good humour one must have in all circumstances, this self-forgetfulness: not to throw one's own little troubles on others; when one is tired or uncomfortable,

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not to become unpleasant, impatient. This asks for quite some perfection, a self-control which is a great step on the path of realisation. . . . To forget oneself is one of the most essential conditions for being a true leader: to have no selfish interests, to want nothing for oneself, to consider only the good of the group, of the whole, the totality that depends on one; to act only with that aim in find, without wanting any personal profit from one's action. . . .

... To be a true leader one must be completely disinterested and efface from oneself as much as possible all self-regard and all selfish movements. To be a leader one must master one's ego, and master one's ego is the first indispensable step for doing yoga.

CONTROL OF THE BODY

Those who despise physical activities are people who won't be able to take a single step on the true path of integral yoga, unless they first get rid of their contempt. Control of the body in all its forms is an indispensable basis. A body which dominates you is an enemy, it is a disorder you cannot accept. It is the enlightened will in the mind which should govern the body, and not the body which should impose its law on the mind. When one knows that a thing is bad, one must be capable of not doing it. When one wants something to be realised, one must be able to do it and not be stopped at every step by the body's inability or ill-will or lack of collaboration; and for that one must follow a physical discipline and become master in one's own home.

It is very fine to escape into meditation and from the height of one's so called grandeur look down on material things, but one who is not master in his own home is a slave.

ONE MUST OBEY REASON

Man was made to be a mental being, and merely to be a man. .. life must be dominated by reason and not by vital impulses. This should be taught to all children from their infancy. . . . The first thing which should be taught to every human being as soon as he is able to think, is that he should obey reason which is a super-instinct of the species. Reason is the master of the nature of mankind. One must

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obey reason and absolutely refuse to be the slave of instincts. And here I am not talking to you about yoga, I am not talking about spiritual life, not at all; it has nothing to do with that. It is the basic wisdom of human life, purely human life ! every human being who obeys anything other than reason is a kind of brute lower than the animal. That's all. And this should be taught everywhere; it is the basic education which should be given to children.

The reign of reason must come to an end only with the advent of the psychic law which manifests the divine Will.

MEDITATION

It is always better, for meditation, ... to try to concentrate in a centre, the centre of aspiration, one might say, the place where the flame of aspiration burns, to gather in all the energies there, at the solar plexus centre and, if possible, to obtain an attentive silence as though one wanted to listen to something extremely subtle, something that demands a complete attention, a complete concentration and total silence. And then not to move at all. Not to think, not to stir, and make that movement of opening so as to receive all that can be received ... to be silent, as totally silent as possible, in an attentive concentration, and then be still.

If one succeeds in this, then, when everything is over, when one comes out of meditation, some time later — usually not immediately — from within the being something new emerges in the consciousness: a new understanding, a new appreciation of things, a new attitude in life — in short, a new way of being.

INNER ASPIRATION

There comes a moment when, free from everything, one needs practically nothing, and one can use anything, do anything without this having any real influence on the state of consciousness one is in. This is what really matters. To try through outer gestures or arbitrary decisions which come from a mental consciousness aspiring for a higher life can be a means, not a very effective one but still a sort of reminder to the being that it ought to be something other than what it is in its animality — but it's not that, it's not that at all ! A

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person who could be entirely absorbed in his inner aspiration, to the point of not giving any thought or care to these external things, who would take what comes and not think about it when it doesn't, would be infinitely farther on the path than someone who undertakes ascetic practices with the ideas that this will lead him to realisation.

THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS

The only thing that is truly effective is the change of consciousness; it is the inner liberation through an intimate, constant union, absolute and inevitable, with the vibration of the supramental forces. The preoccupation of every second, the will of all the elements of the being, the aspiration of the entire being, including all the cells of the body, is this union with the supramental forces, the divine forces. And there is no longer any need at all to be preoccupied with what the consequences will be. What has to be in the play of the universal forces and their manifestation will be, quite naturally, spontaneously, automatically, there is no need to be preoccupied with it. The only thing that matters is the constant, total, complete contact — constant yes, constant — with the Force, the Light, the Truth, the Power, and that ineffable delight of the supramental consciousness.

That is sincerity. All the rest is an imitation, it is almost a part one plays for oneself.

JUDGING OTHERS

Unless your vision is constantly the vision of the Divine in all things, you have not only no right but no capacity to judge the state which others are in. And to pronounce a judgment on someone without having this vision spontaneously, effortlessly, is precisely an example of the mental presumptuousness of which Sri Aurobindo always spoke.... And it so happens that one who has the vision, the consciousness, who is capable of seeing the truth in all things, never feels the need to judge anything whatever. For he understands everything and knows everything. Therefore, once and for all, you must tell yourselves that the moment you begin to judge things, people, circumstances, you are in the most total human ignorance.

In short, one could put it like this : when one understands, one

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no longer judges and when one judges, it means that one doesn't know.

THE GREAT ADVENTURE

There are people who love adventure. It is these I call, and I tell them this : "I invite you to the great adventure."

It is not a question of repeating spiritually what others have done before us, for our adventure begins beyond that. It is a question of a new creation, entirely new, with all the unforeseen events, the risks, the hazards it entails — a real adventure, whose goal is certain victory, but the road to which is unknown and must be traced out step by step in the unexplored. Something that has never been in this present universe and that will never be again in the same way. If that interests you ... well, let us embark. What will happen to you tomorrow — I have no idea.

One must put aside all that has been foreseen, all that has been devised, all that has been constructed, and then ... set off walking the unknown. And — come what may! There.

THE WILL FOR PROGRESS

One may be deeply disgusted with what exists and wish ardently to come out of all this and attain something else; one may — and this is a more positive way — one may feel within oneself the touch, the approach of something positively beautiful and true, and willingly drop all the rest so that nothing may burden the journey to this this new beauty and truth.

What is indispensable in every case is the ardent will for progress, the willing and joyful renunciation of all that hampers the advance : to throw far away from oneself all that prevents one from going forward, and to set out into the unknown with the ardent faith that is the truth of tomorrow, inevitable, which must necessarily come, which nothing, nobody, no bad will, even that of Nature, can prevent from becoming a reality — perhaps of a not too distant future — a reality which is being worked out now and which those who know how to change, how not to be weighted down by old habits, will surely have the good fortune not only to see but to realise.

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THE BIRTH OF A NEW WORLD

People sleep, they forget, they take life easy — they forget, forget all the time .... But if we could remember . . . that we are at an exceptional hour, a unique time, that we have this immense good fortune, this invaluable privilege of being present at the birth of a new world, we could easily get rid of everything that impedes and hinders our progress.

So, the most important thing, it seems, is to remember this fact; even when one doesn't have the tangible experience, to have the certainty of it and faith in it; to remember always, to recall it constantly, to go to sleep with this idea, to wake up with this perception; to do all that one does with this great truth as the background, as a constant support, this great truth that we are witnessing the birth of a new world.

We can participate in it, we can become this new world. And truly, when one has such a marvellous opportunity, one should be ready to give up everything for its sake.

CHILDREN SHOULD BE TAUGHT.....

One dreams of miracles when one is young, one wants all wickedness to disappear, everything to be always luminous, beautiful, happy, one likes stories which end happily .... Children should be taught, "Yes, this is what you must try to realise and not only is it possible but it is certain if you come in contact with the part in you which is capable of doing this thing. This is what should guide your life," organise it, make you develop in the direction of the true reality which the ordinary world calls illusion." . . .

...When a child is full of enthusiasm, never throw cold water on it, never tell him, "You know, life is not like that!" You should always encourage him, tell him, "Yes, at present things are not always like that, they seem ugly, but behind this there is a beauty that is trying to realise itself. This is what you should love and draw towards you, this is what you should make the object of your dreams, of your ambitions."

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GO FARTHER

Always man takes upon his shoulders an interminable burden. He does not want to drop anything of the past and he stoops more and more under the weight of a useless accumulation.

You have a guide for a part of the way but when you have travelled this part leave the road and the guide and go farther! This is something men find difficult to do. When they get hold of something which helps them, they cling to it, they do not want to move any more. Those who have progressed with the help of Christianity do not want to give it up and they carry it on their shoulders; those who have progressed with the help of Buddhism do not want to leave it and they carry it on their shoulders, and so this hampers the advance and you are indefinitely delayed.

Once you have passed the stage, let it drop, let it go! Go farther.

NEVER TRY TO PULL THE FORCE

I would like to recommend something to you. In your desire for progress and your aspiration for realisation, take great care not to attempt to pull the forces towards you. Give yourself, open yourself with as much disinterestedness as you can attain through a constant self-forgetfulness, increase your receptivity to the utmost, but never try to pull the Force towards you, for wanting to pull is already a dangerous egoism. You may aspire, you may open yourself, you may give yourself, but never seek to take. When things go wrong, people blame the Force, but it is not the Force that is responsible: it is ambition, egoism, ignorance and the weakness of the vessel.

Give yourself generously and with a perfect disinterestedness and from the deeper point of view nothing bad will ever happen to you. Try to take and you will be on the brink of the abyss.

THE ONE UNSHAKABLE SUPPORT

There is only one thing to do: to proceed on one's way keeping one's own faith and certitude, and to pay no heed to contradictions and denials.

There are people who need the support and trust and certitude

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of others to feel comfortable and to be at ease — they are always unhappy because, of course, they will always come across people who do not believe, and so they will be upset and it will trouble them. One must find one's certitude within oneself, keep it in spite of everything and go one's way whatever the cost, to the very end. The Victory is for the most enduring.

" To maintain one's endurance in spite of all oppositions, the support must be unshakable, and one support alone is unshakable, that of the Reality, the Supreme Truth.

It is useless to look for any other. This is the only one that never fails.

THE ONE THING NECESSARY

As soon as one is convinced that there is a living and real Truth seeking to express itself in an objective universe, the only thing that seems to have any importance or value is to come into contact with this Truth, to identify oneself with it as perfectly as possible, and to no longer be anything but a means of expressing it, making it more and more living and tangible so that it may be manifested more and more perfectly. All theories, all principles, all methods are more or less good according to their capacity to express that Truth; and as one goes forward on this path, if one goes beyond all the limits of the Ignorance, one becomes aware that the totality of this manifestation, its wholeness, its integrality is necessary for the expression of that Truth, that nothing can be left out, and perhaps that there is nothing more important or less important. The one thing that seems necessary is a harmonisation of everything which puts each thing in its place, in its true relation with all the rest, so that the total Unity may manifest harmoniously.

PEACE AND PROGRESS

In this age of anguish, tension, hypertension, this sovereign peace is the best received aid of all, the most welcome, the solace people ask and hope for. For many it is still the true sign of a divine intervention, of divine grace.

In fact, no matter what one wants to realise, one must begin by

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establishing this perfect and immutable peace; it is the basis from which one must work; but unless one is dreaming of an exclusive, personal and egoistic liberation, one cannot stop there. There is another aspect of the divine grace, the aspect of progress which will be victorious over all obstacles, the aspect which will propel humanity to a new realisation, which will open the doors of a new world and make it possible not only for a chosen few to benefit' by the divine realisation but for their influence, their example, their power to bring to the rest of mankind new and better conditions.

A HIGHER PEACE

Consciousness has been given to man so that he can progress, can discover what he doesn't know, develop into what he has not yet become; and so it may be said that there is a higher state than that of an immobile and static peace: it is a trust total enough for one to keep the will to progress, to preserve the effort for progress while ridding it of all anxiety, all care for results and consequences. This is one step ahead of the methods which may be called "quietist", which are founded on the rejection of all activity and a plunging into an immobility and inner silence, which forsake all life because it has been suddenly felt that without peace one can't have any inner realisation ....

The next step is to face the problem, but with the calm and certitude of an absolute trust in the supreme Power which knows, and can make you act. And then, instead of abandoning action, one can act in a higher peace that is strong and dynamic.

DIVINE GRACE AND THE ARGUMENT OF WEAKNESS

Correcting an ignorance is like eliminating darkness: you light a lamp, the darkness disappears. But to make a mistake once again when you know it is a mistake, is as if someone lighted a lamp and you deliberately put it out.... That corresponds exactly to bringing the darkness back deliberately. For the argument of weakness does not hold. The divine Grace is always there to help those who have decided to correct themselves, and they cannot say, "I am too weak to correct myself." They can say that they still haven't taken the resolution to correct themselves, that somewhere in the being there is something

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that has not decided to do it, and that is what is serious.

The argument of weakness is an excuse. The Grace is there to give the supreme strength to whoever takes the resolution ....

... In the case of ignorance which is to be enlightened, it is enough, as I said, to light the lamp. In the case of conscious relapse, what is necessary is a cauterisation.

THE EFFORT FOR PROGRESS - I

You are almost entirely incapable of knowing whether you are making progress or not, for very often what seems to us to be a state of stagnation is a long — sometimes long, but in any case not endless — preparation for a leap forward. We sometimes seem to be marking time for weeks or months, and then suddenly something that was being prepared makes its appearance, and we see that there is quite a considerable change and on several points at a time.

As with everything in yoga, the effort for progress must be made for the love of the effort for progress. The joy of effort, the aspiration for progress must be enough in themselves, quite independent of the result. Everything one does in yoga must be done for the joy of doing it, and not in view of the result one wants to obtain.... Indeed, in life, always, in all things, the result does not belong to us. And if we want to keep the right attitude, we must act, feel, think, strive spontaneously, for that is what we must do, and not in view of the result to be obtained.

THE EFFORT FOR PROGRESS - II

As soon as we think of the result we begin to bargain and that takes away all sincerity from the effort. You make an effort to progress because you feel within you the need, the imperative need to make an effort and progress; and this effort is the gift you offer to the Divine Consciousness in you, the Divine Consciousness in the Universe, it is your way of expressing your gratitude, offering yourself; and whether this results in progress or not is of no importance. You will progress when it is decided that the time has come to progress and not because you desire it.

If you wish to progress, if you make an effort to control yourself

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for instance, to overcome certain defects, weaknesses, imperfections, and if you expect to get a more or less immediate result from your effort, your effort loses all sincerity, it becomes a bargaining.

REFERENCES

The passages under this title have been selected from Questions and Answers 1957-p8, Volume Nine of the Collected Works of the Mother (Centenary Edition). The page numbers of the text in this issue are in italics while the corresponding page numbers of Centenary Volume Nine are in roman figures .

29:65   29:70-71   29:74  30:77  30:80-81  31 :81-82   31:101-02   32:114-15   32:118   33:118-19   33:133-34   34:150-51   34:158   35:158-59   35:161-62   36:197-98   36 :241-42   36:225   37:257   37:298   38:305   38:306-07   39:316   39:316-17

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REVIEW

The Quest for Political and Spiritual Liberation By June O' Connor. Associated University Presses, Cranbury, New Jeresy, p. 153.

THE author chooses a limited theme for her study : what is the content of political liberation according to Sri Aurobindo and what are the implications of spiritual liberation in his thought. She examines considerable documentary material available on the first question and draws upon the basic writings of Sri Aurobindo and of some of his commentators for the second. She observes rightly that Sri Aurobindo's approach to life, in whatever aspect, has always been governed by an integral spiritual vision which sees the world-movement as a manifestation of a Divine Reality and the evolution of Consciousness as the process. In this perspective, she points out, history is linear, not cyclical.

She asks whether there is not some inconsistency in Sri Aurobindo's stress on the 'ends' in political matters and his subsequent approval of the Gita's message to renounce the fruit of works. And she is right in holding that the two standpoints belong to two different orders of life with two different goals. (P. 62)

She has some difficulty in reconciling Sri Aurobindo's endorsement of values of liberty, fraternity and equality with his defence of the principle underlying the Caste System. Sri Aurobindo justifies the quartette as originally expressed in the social system in ancient times when there was a real mobility of status, and one's social category was determined solely by guna and karma, temperament and proclivity, and not by birth. His emphasis on the integration of all the four values — knowledge, strength, harmony, service — in each individual raises the question to an altogether higher level.

There is one more point on which the author has doubts. Referring to Sri Aurobindo's implicit acceptance of ādeś, spiritual intimation, she asks whether it may not be possible that one is deluded. Would it not be safer to check with other voices i.e. other authorities? The fact is that in spiritual fife there is a kind of certitude which admits of no doubt. It has a finality and stamp of truth that are quite different from anything that reason or mental discrimination can ever provide. Of course there is a spiritual discrimination that is always

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active in these circumstances throwing light upon and exposing inferior or partial communications.

The writer remarks that though Sri Aurobindo believed in his earlier days that political sphere and spiritual sphere could be joined, he tended, in later years, to treat politics as a distraction and a taboo in spiritual quest. We would point out that there are politics and politics. Sri Aurobindo dissociated himself from politics as practised in the modern age but he does anticipate a stage in the collective evolution of humanity when politics will become truly the art of polity and it is there that spiritual consciousness will have a definitive role to play.

The book is eminently readable and the discussion is vigorous and healthy.

M. P. PANDIT

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The Mother comes in order to bring down the supramental and it is the descent which makes her full manifestation here possible.

SRI AUROBINDO

 

 

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