The Mother

Agenda

Volume 8

May 20, 1967

(Mother gazes at a flower she called “divine purity”: lobelia longiflora.)

Can you tell me what divine purity is?... I no longer know. What can it mean?

Obeying the true Impulsion?

If we mean “divine purity in beings,” I quite understand, but if we mean “the Divine's purity,” I no longer understand.

Divine purity in beings means they are closed to any influence except the Divine's. (Mother counts the petals) Five petals...

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Soon afterwards

I go on seeing throngs of people whom I don't know. And with more than half, it's per-fect-ly useless: curiosity, pride, bragging. That's all. So they can say, “Oh, you know, I saw the Mother.” So what!

But the small children are still very nice. Very nice. About one out of ten or twelve was born under an “unlucky star,” which means the parents were in a very bad state when they conceived it. It happens. But most of the small ones are nice, really nice; and a few are remarkable.

It's the fashion to send me the kid's photo and to ask me for a name, so that I see a lot of them. And really, about one out of ten, yes, on average, is an ordinary child. But the others are very nice.

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Soon afterwards

There is increasingly a sort of pressure of the Consciousness to awaken all that's semiconscious, subconscious, and to reach down to the Inconscient; it's like something going down (gesture like a drift) with a pressure. And as it goes down, as the pressure increases, there is a sort of... (what can I call it?) a review or overall vision of the whole state of consciousness of the being and beings (gesture around). And the result is the perception of such imbecility!... When you live, while you live something (you don't even know what you live while you live it), you feel you are in a light, that you receive a direction, follow that direction, anyway that a light of consciousness is acting; and when there is that pressure of THE Consciousness (like that, from above; we could call it the “truth-consciousness,” or anything – THE consciousness), then all you did, all you thought, all you felt, all you saw, all those things which appeared to be conscious... it all becomes so imbecilic that you really need a very... (how should I put it?), not only a very complete faith, but a very complete surrender in order not to be crushed under the weight of that imbecility.

This whole morning I reviewed all sorts of movements of consciousness – not a recollection in thought or sensation or vision, but a recollection in the consciousness of whole periods of life, especially the life with Sri Aurobindo, because at the time, I felt I was relying on the divine Consciousness and acting under its pressure (I already felt that); so it's interesting that it should now look like an abyss of imbecility. And then, you wonder what Sri Aurobindo – he who was conscious – what he must have been feeling? How he must have been seeing all that around him, that swarm of people bustling and acting and stirring around him... (Mother takes her head in her hands). You say to yourself that if he had the consciousness which is now here (he surely had it! He had that consciousness), well, it was a marvel of patience. That's my conclusion.

You see, an undeniable goodwill, a will to do the right thing,¹ an attitude that seemed as good as it could be, and already the sense of a surrender and an effort to express not at all personal movements, but the guiding Will – all that, that whole attitude (which at the time seemed quite good), seen with today's consciousness!... (Mother takes her head in her hands) So it's easy to think that...

Sri Aurobindo surely had that consciousness, since he spoke about it – he had it, and he saw us living like that around him... what patience! What a marvel of patience.

The goodwill was obvious, but there's especially a sense of imbecility, something so blind in the perception.

(silence)

With every new descent, there was in this way a period in which things were seen from a certain standpoint: there was the standpoint of feelings, the standpoint of thoughts, and so on – a CERTAIN standpoint. But this time round, it's the standpoint of consciousness, and then... (swarming gesture).

And certainly, between the state of consciousness now trying to manifest and the higher state of consciousness that will manifest after some time, there will again be the same difference.

These experiences always start from the small circle of the individual as being the best known and most easily observable point, then they begin spreading, finally extending all over the earth. It's been like that every time. But then, the sense, the perception that the difference between what is and what's trying to be is so huge... It's only because the surrender is there (and has always been there! It wasn't denied at that time, far from it! It was there), that alone helps to go through.

The perception of that immense Wisdom, you know, total, carrying everything – in every detail, with all the conscious details – carrying everything towards the future perfection (a growing perfection, always a future perfection): that's what saves you from being crushed, otherwise... otherwise the contrast is a bit crushing.

These experiences always come after a great call in the cells, which feel their infirmity, their incapacity, their state which we might almost call a state of ignominy in comparison with the splendor we aspire for; the perception of the contradiction between what these cells are and what they aspire to be in order to be an expression of the Divine... It's always following that that these experiences come, as if to say, to show the road that has been traveled. But at this rate, between the road traveled and what remains to be traveled... it will take a great deal of time yet.

(silence)

We must be very patient.

¹ Mother is speaking about herself.

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