July 25, 1962The Mother
Agenda
Volume 3
July 25, 1962
(Mother listens to Satprem read a passage on mental silence from his manuscript on Sri Aurobindo.)
It's very good.
It's dull.
Is this the end of the chapter?
What about the next one?
That's just it, I don't know.
You don't know yet?
First I was planning to speak about consciousness, what consciousness is; then I realized it would be better to speak of the vital first.... Before anything can be achieved, the vital has to be quieted.
Not necessarily.
Personally, I think I would begin with consciousness and deal with the vital afterwards.
But if I speak of consciousness it will lead me to speak of the ascent of consciousness, followed by the supraconscient. Can I speak about all that before the vital?
Yes.
(silence)
In fact, if I look at the order my own yoga took.... When I was five years old (I must have begun earlier, but the memory is a bit vague and imprecise)... but from five onwards, in my consciousness (not a mental memory but – how can I put it? – it's noted, a notation in my consciousness)... well, I began with consciousness. Of course I had no idea what it was. But my first experience was of the consciousness here (gesture above the head), which I felt like a Light and a Force; and I felt it there (same gesture) at the age of five.
It was a very pleasant sensation. I would sit in a little armchair made especially for me, all alone in my room, and I... (I didn't know what it was, you see, not a thing, nothing – mentally zero) and I had a VERY PLEASANT feeling of something very strong, very luminous, and it was here (above the head). Consciousness. And I felt, “That's what I have to live, what I have to be.” Not with all those words, naturally, but... (Mother makes a gesture of aspiration Upward). Then I would pull it down, for it was... it was truly my raison d'être.
That is my first memory – at five years old. Its impact was more on the ethical side than the intellectual; and yet it took an intellectual
form too, since.... You see, apparently I was a child like any other, except that I was hard to handle. Hard in the sense that I had no interest in food, no interest in ordinary games, no liking for going to my friends' houses for snacks, because eating cake wasn't the least bit interesting! And it was impossible to punish me because I really couldn't have cared less: being deprived of dessert was rather a relief for me! And then I flatly refused to learn reading, I refused to learn. And even bathing me was very hard, because I was put in the care of an English governess, and that meant cold baths – my brother took it in stride, but I just howled! Later it was found to be bad for me (the doctor said so), but that was much later. So you get the picture.
But whenever there was unpleasantness with my relatives, with playmates or friends, I would feel all the nastiness or bad will – all sorts of pretty ugly things that came (I was rather sensitive, for I instinctively nurtured an ideal of beauty and harmony, which all the circumstances of life kept denying)... so whenever I felt sad, I was most careful not to say anything to my mother or father, because my father didn't give a hoot and my mother would scold me – that was always the first thing she did. And so I would go to my room and sit down in my little armchair, and there I could concentrate and try to understand... in my own way. And I remember that after quite a few probably fruitless attempts I wound up telling myself (I always used to talk to myself; I don't know why or how, but I would talk to myself just as I talked to others): “Look here, you feel sad because so-and-so said something really disgusting to you – but why does that make you cry? Why are you so sad? He's the one who was bad, so he should be crying. You didn't do anything bad to him.... Did you tell him nasty things? Did you fight with her, or with him? No, you didn't do anything, did you; well then, you needn't feel sad. You should only be sad if you've done something bad, but....” So that settled it: I would never cry. With just a slight inward movement, or “something” that said, “You've done no wrong,” there was no sadness.
But there was another side to this “someone”: it was watching me more and more, and as soon as I said one word or made one gesture too many, had one little bad thought, teased my brother or whatever, the smallest thing, it would say (Mother takes on a severe tone), “Look out, be careful!” At first I used to moan about it, but by and by it taught me: “Don't lament – put right, mend.” And when things could be mended – as they almost always could – I would do so. All that on a five to seven-year-old child's scale of intelligence.
So it was consciousness.
Next came the period of learning and developing, but on an ordinary mental level – school years.1 Curiosity made me want to learn to read. Did I tell you how it happened? When I was around seven, just under seven, my brother, who was eighteen months older, used to bring big pictures home from school with him (you know, pictures for children with captions at the bottom; they're still used nowadays) and he gave me one of them. “What's written there?” I asked. “Read it!” he said. “Don't know how,” I replied. “Then learn!” “All right,” I told him, “show me the letters.” He brought me an A-B-C book. I knew it within two days and on the third day I started reading. That's how I learned. “Oh-oh,” they used to say, “this child is backward! Seven years old and she still can't read – disgraceful!” The whole family fretted about it. And then lo and behold, in about a week I knew what should have taken me years to learn – it made them think twice!
Then, school years. I was a very bright student, always for the same reason: I wanted to understand. I wasn't interested in learning things by heart like the others did – I wanted to understand them. And what a memory I had, a fantastic memory for sounds and images! I had only to read a poem aloud at night, and the next morning I knew it. And after I had studied or read a book and someone mentioned a passage to me, I would say, “Ah, yes – that's on page so and so.” I would find the page. Nothing had faded, it was all still fresh. But this is the ordinary period of development.
Then at a very young age (about eight or ten), along with my studies I began to paint. At twelve I was already doing portraits. All aspects of art and beauty, but particularly music and painting, fascinated me. I went through a very intense vital development during that period, with, just like in my early years, the presence of a kind of inner Guide; and all centered on studies: the study of sensations, observations, the study of technique, comparative studies, even a whole spectrum of observations dealing with taste, smell and hearing – a kind of classification of experiences. And this extended to all facets of life, all the experiences life can bring, all of them – miseries, joys, difficulties, sufferings, everything – oh, a whole field of studies! And always this presence within,
judging, deciding, classifying, organizing and systematizing everything.
Then conscious yoga made a sudden entry into the picture when I met Théon; I must have been about twenty-one. Life's orientation changed, a whole series of experiences took place, with the development of the vital giving interesting occult results.
Then, a period of intensive mental development, mental development of the most complete type: a study of all the philosophies, all the conceptual juggling, in minute detail – delving into systems, getting a grasp on them. Ten years of intensive mental studies leading me to... Sri Aurobindo.
So I had all this preparation. And I am giving you these details simply to tell you it all began with consciousness (I knew very well what consciousness was, even before I had any word or idea to explain it), consciousness and its force – its force of action, its force of execution. Next, a detailed study and thorough development of the vital. After that, mental development taken to its uppermost limit, where you can juggle with all ideas; a developmental stage where it's already understood that all ideas are true and that there's a synthesis to be made, and that beyond the synthesis lies something luminous and true. And behind it all, a continual consciousness. Such was my state when I came here: I'd had a world of experiences and had already attained conscious union with the Divine above and within – all of it consciously realized, carefully noted and so forth – when I came to Sri Aurobindo.
From the standpoint of shakti, this is the normal course: consciousness, vital, mental and spiritual.
Is it different for men? I don't know. Sri Aurobindo's case was quite special, and apart from him I don't see any convincing example. But generally speaking, what is most developed in a man, along with the mind, is the physical consciousness; the vital is very impulsive, practically ungoverned. That's my experience of the hundreds and hundreds of men I have met. There's normally a physical strength built up through games and exercises, and side by side a more or less advanced, but primarily mental development, very mental. The vital is terribly impulsive and barely organized, except in artists, and even there.... I lived among artists for ten years and found this ground to be mostly fallow. I mingled with all the great artists of the time, I was like a kid sister to them (it was at the turn of the century, with the Universal Exposition in 1900; and these were the leading artists of the epoch); so I was by far the youngest, much younger than any of them – they were all thirty, thirty-five, forty years old, while I was nineteen or twenty. Well I was much more advanced in their own field – not in what I was producing (I was a perfectly ordinary artist), but from the viewpoint of consciousness: observations, experiences, studies.
I am not sure, but it seems to me that the problem of consciousness ought to come first.
That's how I had started to do it.
Well, I think so. What happened to me in life is extremely logical, very, very logical (it wasn't me, I didn't decide anything – you don't make decisions at the age of five). Each stage was prepared by the preceding one.
But then what is this consciousness we feel like a force inside us? For instance, sometimes in meditation it rises, then descends; it's not fixed anywhere. What is this consciousness?
The Shakti!
Some receive it from above; for others, it rises from below (gesture to the base of the spine). As I once told you, the old system always proceeds from below upwards, while Sri Aurobindo pulls from above downwards. This becomes very clear in meditation (well, in yoga, in yogic experience): for those who follow the old system, it's invariably the kundalini at the base [of the spine] rising from center to center, center to center, until the lotus (in an ironic tone) bursts open here (gesture at the crown of the head). With Sri Aurobindo, it comes like this (gesture of descending Force) and then settles here (above the head); it enters, and from there it comes down, down, down, everywhere, to the very bottom, and even below the feet – the subconscient – and lower still, the inconscient.
It's the Shakti. He said, you know (I am still translating it), that the shakti drawn up from below (this is what happens in the individual process) is already what could be called a “veiled” shakti (it has power, but it is veiled). While the Shakti drawn down from above is a PURE Shakti; and if it can be brought down carefully and slowly enough so that it isn't (how shall I put it?) polluted or, in any case, obscured as it enters matter, then the result is immediately much better. As he has explained, if you start out with this feeling of a great power in yourself (because it's always a great power no matter where it awakens), there's inevitably a danger of the ego meddling in. But if it comes pure and you are very careful
to keep it pure, not to rush the movement but let it purify as it descends, then half the work is done.
It's a problem. When you contact the Supraconscient and the Shakti emerges at the crown of the head, it's something rising from below, isn't it? Is it then another movement, an ascending movement...?
That is the consciousness of the jiva [soul], the personal, individual consciousness.
It's something that grows....
It is the individual consciousness. Aspiration is almost always an expression of the psychic being – the part of us that's organized around the divine center, the small divine flame deep within human beings. You see, this divine flame exists inside each human being, and little by little, through all the incarnations and karma and so on, a being takes shape around it, which Théon called the “psychic being.” And when the psychic being reaches its full development, it becomes a kind of bodily or at any rate individual raiment of the soul. The soul is a portion of the Supreme – the jiva is the Supreme in individual form. And since there is only one Supreme, there is only one jiva, but with millions of individual forms. This jiva begins as a divine spark – immutable, eternal and infinite too (infinite in possibility rather than dimension). And through all the incarnations, whatever has received and responded to the divine Influence progressively crystallizes around the jiva, which becomes more and more conscious as well as more and more organized. Ultimately it becomes a completely conscious individual being, master of itself and moved exclusively by the divine Will. That is to say, an individual expression of the Supreme. This is what we call the “psychic being.”
Generally speaking, those who practice yoga have either a fully developed, independent psychic being which has taken birth again to do the Divine's work, or else a psychic being in its last incarnation wanting to complete its development and realize itself.
This is what aspires, this is what has the contact.
So, when you're told “become conscious of your psychic being,” it's for the being formed by external Nature to contact the divine Presence through the psychic being. Then the psychic takes charge of the whole being; in fact, it is the inner Guide.... Well, when I
was a little child, this “person” (which wasn't a person, but an expression of a certain consciousness and will) was actually the psychic presence; there was something else behind, but that's a rather special case. And what happened to me happens to everyone whose psychic being has deliberately incarnated: the psychic being guides your life, and if you let it act freely, it arranges ALL circumstances – it's truly wonderful!... I have seen – not only for myself but for so many people who also had conscious psychic beings – that everything is arranged with a view to... not at all your personal egoistic satisfaction, but your ultimate progress and realization. And all circumstances of life, even those you call “disastrous,” are there to lead you where you have to go as swiftly as possible.
Yours is more than a psychic being. As I have told you, your psychic being is accompanied by something which has come for a special purpose, with a particular intellectual power – a luminous, conscious power – which has come from regions higher than the mind, regions Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind, to do a special work. It is here (gesture enveloping the chest and head) and, along with the psychic, it's trying to organize everything. This, in your psychic, is what you are feeling. It must have great power.... Don't you feel a kind of luminous force?
Oh, yes, I feel it!
Well, that's what it is.
That must be why I can't distinguish between the Force coming from above and the Force coming from within.
A time comes when you don't make this distinction any more.2
That's why it's hard for me to speak about it; I don't know what's coming from above and what's coming from below.
To speak about it....
You know, everything I have just told you is.... One always feels “on the verge of” or “nearly” or “almost.” There's something bordering on but always tangential to the Truth – never to the point, always beside it. As soon as we speak, it's an approximation.
We would have to say it all in one breath.
Yes, that's it. That's just the thing! How can we say everything in one breath? That's exactly it.
It's clear to me that for writing... we need a kind of global expression.
Yes, that's what Sri Aurobindo always says! As soon as we start describing something, here's what happens (gesture of taking one step after another); and the moment that happens, the real thing is lost.
We just have to make the best of it.
No, writing isn't satisfying, you know; it's no way to express anything.... Music?
Not much better.
Painting is worse.
No....
(silence)
I have wondered: if a human being developed an exceptionally powerful vocal organ and could consciously connect what he wanted to say or what had to be expressed with this organ, with the voice, and then simply let it flow out under this Influence, that might come nearest to the real thing.
I have had a few brief moments of this kind of experience; but even then it seemed rather paltry. Paltry, a whole realm eludes you.... I remember the period when I used to sit down at the organ at midnight on December 31, without the least notion of what I was going to play or sing, and I would let the Force come – it would play, then the sound, the voice came, and then in the voice, the words. I never wrote anything in advance. And it's because people began noting down what I was saying (of course they got it all mixed up) that I started writing it down beforehand;
that was much later, when I stopped coming at midnight. But in the early days, long, long ago when Sri Aurobindo was here, that's how it was; I didn't know what I was going to play or what I would say. And the sound came first, then the voice, and then in the voice, the words – like something condensing, concretizing.
It was quite powerful, but incomplete. Incomplete.
(silence)
You would really need to add a play of lights, too. But nothing artificial.
(long silence)
The conscious and deliberate manipulation of certain luminous vibrations in addition to sound.
Thought, by comparison (thought as we now know it), is much more material. Thought – formulation in words – is much lower down on the scale.
Some thoughts.... Are they thoughts?... It's something much higher than thought, much higher than ideas.... It is the VISION OF KNOWLEDGE in an extremely luminous region where vibrations are very precise and very strong; and this is obviously what, as it descends, translates into sounds and words (but this is much lower down). In the form closest to the Origin, they are luminous vibrations.
But the human mind latches on to everything and copies it!
It makes a copy: all these light shows, everything they're making nowadays. Like this taste for theater and cinema.... It has its effect, though, doesn't it? But it's a copy.
We are monkeys.
(long silence)
Mon petit, I don't think I am mistaken: begin with consciousness.
And don't waste your time noting all this down, it's not worth it.
But it's so interesting! I do it in the afternoon and I work in the morning.
To be interesting it would have to be systematic, using various examples. But then it would make an endless story....
Anyway, the periods of my life have been as clear as could be, distinctly defined, preparing everything for my coming here.
Many, many things in my life have completely vanished – I don't remember them any more, they're gone from my consciousness – everything that was useless. But there is a very clear vision of everything that was preparing the jiva for its action here. Even before coming and meeting Sri Aurobindo, I had realized everything needed to begin his yoga. It was all ready, classified, organized. Magnificent! A superb mental construction... which he demolished within five minutes!
How happy I was! Aah!... It was really the reward for all my efforts.
Nothing! I knew nothing any more, understood nothing at all – not a single idea left in my head! Everything I had carefully built up over so many years (I was past thirty-five, I think), through all my experiences: conscious yoga, non-conscious yoga, life, experiences lived, classified and organized (oh, what a monument!)... crash! It all came tumbling down. Magnificent. I hadn't even asked him.
I had tried to get complete mental silence – you know, what you just described,3 this kind of mental stillness he speaks of (when you have it, anything can pass through your head without causing the least ripple), but I had never succeeded. I had tried, but couldn't do it. I could be silent when I wanted to, but as soon as I stopped thinking solely of that, stopped wanting only that, the invasion resumed and the work had to be done all over again.
That's all I had told him (not in great detail, in a few words). Then I sat down near him and he began talking with Richard, about the world, yoga, the future – all kinds of things – what was going to happen (he already knew the war would break out; this was 1914, war broke out in August, and he knew it towards the end of March or early April). So the two of them talked and talked and talked – great speculations. It didn't interest me in the least, I didn't listen. All these things belonged to the past, I had seen it all (I too had had my visions and revelations). I was simply sitting beside him on the floor (he was sitting in a chair with Richard facing him across a table, and they were talking). I was just sitting there, not listening. I don't know how long they went on, but all at once I felt a great Force come into me – a peace, a silence, something massive! It came, did this (Mother sweeps her hand across her forehead), descended and stopped here (gesture at the chest).4 When they finished talking, I got up and left. And then I noticed that not a thought remained – I no longer knew anything or understood anything, I was absolutely BLANK. So I gave thanks to the Lord and thanked Sri Aurobindo in my heart.
And I was very careful not to disturb it; I held it like that for I don't know how long, eight or ten days. Nothing – not one idea, not one thought, nothing – a complete BLANK. In other words, from the outside, it must have looked like total idiocy.
But I was living in my inner joy – nothing stirring. I spoke as little as possible and it was like something mechanical, it wasn't me. Then slowly, slowly, as though falling drop by drop, something was built up again. But it had no limits, it had no... it was vast as the universe and wonderfully still and luminous. Nothing here (the head), but THERE (gesture above the head); and then everything began to be seen from there.
And it has never left me – you know, as a proof of Sri Aurobindo's power it's incomparable! I don't believe there has ever been an example of such a (how can I put it?)... such a total success: a miracle. It has NEVER left me. I went to Japan, I did all sorts of things, had all possible kinds of adventures, even the most unpleasant, but it never left me – stillness, stillness, stillness...
And it was he who did it, entirely. I didn't even ask him, there was no aspiration, nothing (there were my previous efforts; I knew it had to come, that's all). But on that day I hadn't mentioned it to him, I wasn't thinking about it, I wasn't doing anything – just sitting there. And outwardly he seemed to be fully engrossed in his conversation about this and that and what was going to happen in the world....
That's the real way.
But I have never been able to do it for anyone – not like that, with such plenitude – never, never.... It's fantastic! It was stupendous!... Truly we can say that only the Lord can do such a thing, He alone. Without the slightest effort, without even seeming to... he didn't even seem to concentrate, nothing, just like that.
You never met him, did you?
Yes, I had a “darshan.”
Ah, you saw him!
I also had an experience the first year I stayed here (although I didn't know it was an experience)....
Ah!
One night during my first year here, he came and placed his hand over my heart, and in my dream I wept and wept and wept.... Afterwards I told myself, “What a strange imagination!” I took it for imagination!
Oh, mon petit, how wonderful!
He put his hand on my heart and I wept. I wept in my dream, just as hard as I could.
It's psychic, the psychic contact.
Oh, then... it's not going to be so difficult.
Good... good.
Still, there's a difference when one has met him [physically].
I saw him once, I had a darshan in 1948.
Oh, when Baron was here!5
Now that's interesting. In '48... ah, he was still in good health. He had had a broken leg.
How long did you stay here the first time?
Until 1949, I think.
Oh, so he too knew you were predestined! If he saw you, he knew it.
That's good.
That's good, petit, very good, don't worry! (Mother laughs.)
It's getting late.
Do you want some cheese?
No, you already gave me some, I have plenty!
I ask because it's all I have to give! (Mother laughs.)
So see you Saturday then, with the “consciousness.”
Well... all right, maybe.
1 Mother clarified: “Actually, a growth of consciousness was going on throughout those years of study; I didn't learn things by rote, I needed to understand them; and as soon as I understood something, I knew it. In other words, because the learning period was not yet intellectual, it can be considered part of the period of consciousness development.”
2 Of course! We can dip into it with our head or with the tips of our toes, but everything bathes in this same river of Force (except what's shut up within the walls of our minds). At certain moments, or in certain places, we are less hardened and it naturally “enters” there. And so we call it the Shakti “From above” or the Shakti “from below” or “from within.” But when the walls tumble down, there is neither high nor low – we are drenched in it.
3 Mother is referring to a letter of Sri Aurobindo's which Satprem had quoted in his manuscript: “...in the calm mind, it is the substance of the mental being that is still, so still that nothing disturbs it. If thoughts or activities come, they do not rise at all out of the mind, but they come from outside and cross the mind as a flight of birds crosses the sky in a windless air. It passes, disturbs nothing, leaving no trace. Even if a thousand images or the most violent events pass across it, the calm stillness remains as if the very texture of the mind were a substance of eternal and indestructible peace. A mind that has achieved this calmness can begin to act, even intensely and powerfully, but it will keep its fundamental stillness – originating nothing from itself but receiving from Above and giving it a mental form without adding anything of its own, calmly, dispassionately, though with the joy of the Truth and the happy power and light of its passage.” (Cent. Ed., XXIII. 637.)
4 Mother specified: “It encompassed the three active mental centers [the forehead, between the eyebrows, and the throat].”
5 The former governor of “French India” with whom Satprem came to work in the Pondicherry government. Actually, Satprem most probably saw Sri Aurobindo in 1946 and not in '48.