The Mother

Agenda

Volume 1

July 2, 1958

Ramdas¹ must be a continuation of the line of Chaitanya, Ramakrishna, etc....

(silence)

A subject for this evening...

Something I have never said completely. On the one hand, there is the attitude of those in yesterday evening's film:² God is everything, God is everywhere, God is in he who smites you (as Sri Aurobindo wrote – “God made me good with a blow, shall I tell Him: O Mighty One, I forgive you your harm and cruelty but do not do it again!”), an attitude which, if extended to its ultimate conclusion, accepts the world as it is: the world is the perfect expression of the divine Will. On the other hand, there is the attitude of progress and transformation. But for that, you must recognize that there are things in the world which are not as they should be.

In The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo says that this idea of good and bad, of pure and impure, is a notion needed for action; but the purists, such as Chaitanya, Ramakrishna and others, do not agree. They do not agree that it is indispensable for action. They simply say: your acceptance of action as a necessary thing is contrary to your perception of the Divine in all things.

How can the two be reconciled?

I recall that once I tried to speak of this, but no one followed me, no one understood, so I did not insist. I left it open and never pursued it further, for they could not decipher anything or find any meaning in what I was saying. But now I could give a very simple answer: Let the Supreme do the work. It is He who has to progress, not you!

Ramdas does not at all consider that the world as it is, is good.

No, but I know all these people, I know them thoroughly! I know Chaitanya, Ramakrishna and Ramdas thoroughly. They are utterly familiar to me. It doesn't bother them. These are people who live with a certain feeling, who have an entirely concrete experience and live in this experience, but they don't care at all if their formation – they have not even crystallized it, they leave it like that, vague – contains things that are mutually contradictory, because, in appearance, they reconcile them. They do not raise any questions, they do not have the need for an absolutely clear vision; their feeling is absolutely clear, and that's enough for them. Ramakrishna was like that; he said the most contradictory things without being bothered in the least, and they are all exactly and equally true.

But this crystal clear vision Sri Aurobindo had, where everything is in its place, where contradictions no longer exist – they never soared to that height. This was the thing, this really crystalline, perfect supramental vision, even from the standpoint of understanding and knowledge. They never went that far.

(Soon afterwards)

Each element, let us say each individual element (even though it is not exactly like that), is in its place according to whether the Grace acts on the individual or on the collectivity.

When the Grace acts on the collectivity, each thing, each element, each principle, is put in its place as the result of a karmic logic in the universal movement. This is what gives us the impression of disorder and confusion as we see it.

When the Grace acts on the individual, it gives to each the maximum position according to what he is and what he has realized.

And then, there is a super-grace, as it were, which works in a few exceptional cases, which places you not according to what you are but according to what you are to become, which means that the universal cosmic position is ahead of the individual's progress.

And it is then that you should keep silent and fall on your knees.

¹ Ramdas: a yogi from Northwest India who followed the path of love (bhakti). His whole yoga consisted in repeating the name Ram. He founded the Anand-ashram in Kanhargad, Kerala. He was born in 1884 and died in 1963.
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² Bishnupriya, a Bengali film.
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