The Mother

Agenda

Volume 7

July 9, 1966

V. asked me a question about the Americans and Vietnam, so I answered him (Mother looks very amused and hands the text of her answer to Satprem):

Question:

Are the Americans' presence and intervention in Vietnam justifiable?

Mother's answer:

From what point of view do you ask the question?

If it is from the political point of view – politics is in complete falsehood and I am not concerned with it.

If it is from the moral point of view – morality is the shield ordinary men brandish to protect themselves from the Truth.

If it is from the spiritual point of view – the Divine Will alone is justifiable and It is what men travesty and distort in all their actions.

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A little later

There's a question I'd like to ask you in connection with the last aphorism.... You started saying that regardless of all the unnecessary overactivity of people, there was underneath that great current of irresistible Power DOING things despite everything, despite people....

So, what's your question?

But that great current of Power needs instruments in order to express itself, doesn't it?

A brain.

But not just a brain, precisely. That Power can express itself, as in the past, in a mental or overmental way; it can express itself vitally through force; it can express itself through muscles; but how can it express itself physically (because you often speak of a “material power”), purely, directly? What's the difference between the Action up above and true Action here?

Every time I have been conscious of the Power, the experience has been similar. The Will from above is expressed by a vibration, which certainly gets clothed in vital power but acts in a subtle physical. There is a perception of a certain quality of vibration, which is difficult to describe but gives a sense of something coagulated (not broken up), something that feels denser than air, extremely homogeneous, with a golden luminosity, an AWESOME power of propulsion, and which expresses a certain will – it doesn't have the nature of human will but more the nature of vision than that of thought: it's like a vision imposing itself in order to be realized, in a domain very close to material Matter, but invisible except to the inner vision. And That, that Vibration, exerts a pressure on people, on things, on circumstances, in order to fashion them according to its vision. And it's irresistible. Even people who think the opposite, who want the opposite, do what is willed without wanting it; even things that are opposed in their very nature are turned around.

For national events, relations between nations, terrestrial circumstances, that's how it acts, constantly, constantly, like an AWESOME Power. So then, if you are yourself in a state of union with the divine Will, without the thought and all the conceptions and ideas interfering, you follow, see, and know.

The resistance of inertia in consciousnesses and in Matter are the reason why that Action, instead of being direct and perfectly harmonious, becomes confused, full of contradictions, shocks and conflicts. Instead of everything working out “normally,” I might say, smoothly (as it should), all that resisting, opposing inertia causes things to start clashing together in a tangled movement, with disorder and destruction, which are made necessary only by the resistance but were NOT indispensable: they might not have been – they should not have been, to tell the truth. Because that Will, that Power, is a Power of perfect harmony in which each thing is in its place, and It organizes everything wonderfully: It comes as an absolutely luminous and perfect organization, which you can see when you have the vision. But when It descends and presses down on Matter, everything starts seething and resisting. So to want to ascribe to the divine Action and the divine Power the disorder and confusion and destruction is yet more human nonsense. It's inertia (not to speak of ill will), it's inertia that CAUSES the catastrophe. It isn't that the catastrophe is willed, or even that it's foreseen: it is CAUSED by the resistance.

Then, added to this is the vision of the action of the Grace that comes and mitigates the results wherever possible, that is to say, wherever it's accepted. And that's what explains that the aspiration, the faith, the complete trust of the human, terrestrial element, have a power of harmonization, because they allow the Grace to come and mend the consequences of blind resistance.

It's a clear, very clear vision, clear even in the details.

If one wanted to, one could prophesy by telling what one sees. But there is a sort of supercompassion preventing that prophecy, because the Word of Truth has a power of manifestation, and to express the result of resistance would make that state more concrete and would lessen the action of the Grace. That's why even when one sees, one cannot speak, one MUST NOT speak.

But Sri Aurobindo certainly meant that this Power or this Force is what does everything – everything. When you see It or are one with It, at the same time you know, and you know that That is the only thing that really acts and creates; the rest is the result of the field or the world or the matter or the substance in which It acts – it's the result of resistance, but it's not the Action. And to unite with That means that you unite with the Action; to unite with what's below means that you unite with the resistance.

So then, because they fidget, stir, bustle, want to do this and that, think, make plans... they imagine they're doing something (!) – they just resist.

Later, a little later, I'll be able to give examples for very small things, showing how the Force acts, and what interferes and mixes in, or what is driven by that Force but distorts its movement, and the result, that is to say, the physical appearance as we see it. Even an example for a very small thing without any world importance gives a clear notion of the way in which everything occurs and is distorted here.

For everything, everything, all the time, all the time, that's how it is. And when you do the yoga of the cells, you realize it's the same thing: there is the action of the Force acting, and then... (Mother laughs) what the body does with that Action!

(silence)

There immediately comes the why and the how. But that belongs to the realm of mental curiosity, because the important fact is to put a stop to the resistance. That's the important thing, putting a stop to the resistance so the universe may become what it must be: the expression of a harmonious, luminous, marvelous power, incomparably beautiful. Afterwards, once the resistance has ceased, if out of curiosity we want to know why it occurred... it will no longer matter. But right now, it's not by looking for the why that we will be able to bring about the remedy: it's by taking the true position. That's the only thing that matters.

Putting a stop to the resistance through complete surrender, complete self-giving, in all the cells if one can do it.

They are beginning to have that intense joy of being only through the Lord, for the Lord, in the Lord....

When that is established everywhere, it will be fine.