Gratitude towards the Embodied Divine (HH 112)

We share some passages on Gratitude and on the Avatara, the Divine Descent in humanity and mortality, the birth of the Eternal in Time.

Words of the Mother

Last time I told you I was looking for the twelve attributes (Mother takes out a sheet of paper). Here they are, someone found this.

Sincerity, Humility, Gratitude, Perseverance

Aspiration, Receptivity, Progress, Courage

Goodness, Generosity, Equanimity, Peace

The first eight concern the attitude towards the Divine, and the last four towards humanity.

And we also found a text from Sri Aurobindo (with a colored chart of the twelve petals):

January 19, 1972

* * *

The body consciousness is still very timid, very timid in the sense that it doesn’t have confidence in itself. It feels that if it isn’t constantly vigilant, watching, watching, observing, discerning, some things (gesture below) may get through that shouldn’t get through. That’s what hinders. And that is why this certainty comes more and more: no criticism, no criticism at all, none at all, don’t see what shouldn’t be – see only WHAT SHOULD BE.

It’s a great victory to be won – a great victory.

And all the more great and difficult since (certainly because of the necessities of the work) I am surrounded only by people who are on the other side. I don’t have around me a single optimist. All that people tell me, all that they bring to me, is always the vision (more or less clear and complete) of what should go; but the vision of what should be … I have never found it except in Sri Aurobindo. It’s only in sudden gusts, in flashes, now and then, and only when he wrote (never when he spoke) that you could find that sort of sharp thing, of sharp discernment, like in what we translated the other day. Otherwise, when he spoke, when he was with people, there was never a negative criticism.

No one else.

From my earliest childhood (when I was five, my memories at five) and for more than eighty years, I have always been surrounded with people who brought me an abundance of revolt, discontent, and then, more and more so, cases (certain cases have been very acute and still are) of sheer ingratitude – not towards me, that doesn’t matter at all: towards the Divine. Ingratitude … that is something I have often found very, very painful – that it should exist. It’s one of the things I have seen in my life that seemed to me the most … the most intolerable – that sort of acid bitterness against the Divine, because things are as they are, because all that suffering was permitted. It takes on more or less ignorant, more or less intellectual forms … but it’s a kind of bitterness. It takes sometimes personal forms, which makes the struggle even more difficult because you can’t mix in questions of persons – it’s not a personal question, it’s an ERROR to think that there can be a single “personal” movement in the world; it’s man’s ignorant consciousness which makes it personal, but it isn’t: it’s all terrestrial attitudes.

It came with the Mind; animals don’t have that. And that’s why I feel a sweetness in animals, even the supposedly most ferocious, which doesn’t exist in man.

(long silence)

And yet, of all movements, the one that gives perhaps the most joy – an unalloyed joy, untainted by that egoism – is spontaneous gratitude.

It is something very special. It isn’t love, it isn’t self-offering…. It’s a very FULL joy. Very full.

It is a very special vibration unlike anything other than itself. It is something that widens you, that fills you – that is so fervent!

It is certainly, of all the movements within the reach of human consciousness, the one that draws you the most out of your ego.

And when it can be a gratitude without motive, that vibration (basically, the vibration of what exists towards the Cause of existence) … then a great many barriers vanish instantly.

(Mother contemplates that vibration of gratitude for a long time)

When you can enter that vibration in its purity, you realize immediately that it has the same quality as the vibration of Love: it is directionless. It isn’t something going from one thing to another, it doesn’t go from here to there (gesture from low to high) or there to here … it is (round gesture) simultaneous and total.

I mean it isn’t something that needs the two poles in order to exist; it doesn’t go from one pole to the other or from the other to the one: it’s a vibration which in its purity is the same as the vibration of Love, which doesn’t go from here to there or from there to here – the two poles of existence.

It exists in itself for its own delight of being. (And what I am saying spoils it a lot.)

Like Love.

Men have repeated ad nauseam that nothing exists without those two poles, that those two poles are the cause of existence and everything revolves around them (Mother shakes her head), but that’s not the way it is. This means that man, in his ordinary outward consciousness, cannot understand anything beyond that. There we are. That we know. But in its essence (Mother again shakes her head), Love is not like that.

Ultimately, gratitude is only a very slightly colored hue of the essential Vibration of Love.

(meditation)

December 21, 1963

* * *

Today I have been asked to speak to you about the Avatar.

…..I could speak to you of a very old tradition, more ancient than the two known lines of spiritual and occult tradition, that is, the Vedic and Chaldean lines; a tradition which seems to have been at the origin of these two known traditions, in which it is said that when, as a result of the action of the adverse forces — known in the Hindu tradition as the Asuras—the world, instead of developing according to its law of Light and inherent consciousness, was plunged into the darkness, inconscience and ignorance that we know, the Creative Power implored the Supreme Origin, asking him for a special intervention which could save this corrupted universe; and in reply to this prayer there was emanated from the Supreme Origin a special Entity, of Love and Consciousness, who cast himself directly into the most inconscient matter to begin there the work of awakening it to the original Consciousness and Love.

In the old narratives this Being is described as stretched out in a deep sleep at the bottom of a very dark cave, and in his sleep there emanated from him prismatic rays of light which gradually spread into the Inconscience and embedded themselves in all the elements of this Inconscience to begin there the work of Awakening. If one consciously enters into this Inconscient, one can still see there this same marvellous Being, still in deep sleep, continuing his work of emanation, spreading his Light; and he will continue to do it until the Inconscience is no longer inconscient, until Darkness disappears from the world—and the whole creation awakens to the Supramental Consciousness.

And it is remarkable that this wonderful Being strangely resembles the one whom I saw in vision one day, the Being who is at the other extremity, at the confines of form and the Formless. But that one was in a golden, crimson glory, whereas in his sleep the other Being was of a shining diamond whiteness emanating opalescent rays.

In fact, this is the origin of all Avatars. He is, so to say, the first universal Avatar who, gradually, has assumed more and more conscious bodies and finally manifested in a kind of recognised line of Beings who have descendeddirectly from the Supreme to perfect this work of preparing the universe so that, through a continuous progression, it may become ready to receive and manifest the supramental Light in its entirety.

In every country, every tradition, the event has been presented in a special way, with different limitations, different details, particular features, but truly speaking, the origin of all these stories is the same, and that is what we could call a direct, conscious intervention of the Supreme in the darkest matter, without going through all the intermediaries, in order to awaken this Matter to the receptivity of the Divine Forces.

The intervals separating these various incarnations seem to become shorter and shorter, as if, to the extent that Matter became more and more ready, the action could accelerate and become more and more rapid in its movement, more and more conscious too, more and more effective and decisive. And it will go on multiplying and intensifying until the entire universe becomes the total Avatar of the Supreme.

May 28, 1958

* * *

A Vision of the Mother before coming to Pondicherry

I slept and now I am awake.

I slept upon the western waters, and now I enter the ocean in order to explore its depths. Its surface is green as beryl, tinted silver by the moonlight. Beneath, the water is sapphire-blue and soon becomes faintly luminous.

I lay down upon undulations that shimmered like the ripples in moire, and now I descend, rocked from one undulation to the next by a gentle regular motion, borne straight towards the west. As I glide downwards, the water grows more luminous and is streaked with wide silvery currents.

Thus I go on descending for a long time, rocked from undulation to undulation, down and ever further down. Suddenly, looking upward, I notice a gleam of pink; I draw nearer and see a coral-like shrub, as large as a tree, clinging to a blue rock. Water creatures come and go in countless variety. Now I stand on the fine bright sand. I look around me in wonder. There are mountains and valleys, fantastic forests, strange flowers which could almost be animals, fish one could take for flowers – there is no separation, no interval between stationary and moving beings. Everywhere are colours, soft or vivid and iridescent, yet always refined and in harmony with one another. I walk on golden sand and gaze at all this beauty, which is bathed in a faint pale-blue radiance dotted with tiny circling spheres, red or green or golden.

How marvellous are the depths of the sea! Everywhere one feels the presence of the One in whom all harmonies dwell!

I continue westwards, with no fatigue or lessening of speed. Scene follows scene in incredible variety; there, on a rock of lapis lazuli, are fine and delicate sea-weeds, like long blond or violet hair; here are great rose-coloured walls, all spangled with silver; there are flowers which seem carved from enormous diamonds; and here are goblets as fine as if they had been wrought by the most skillful of craftsmen, containing what look like drops of emerald throbbing with alternate pulsations of shadow and light.

Now I have entered on a path of silver sand between two walls of rock as blue as sapphire; the water becomes more clear and luminous.

Suddenly, at a turn in the path, I find myself before a cave which appears to be made of wrought crystal, all sparkling with rainbow light.

Between two iridescent columns stands a tall being; his face is that of a very young man, and is framed with short fair curls; his eyes are as green as the sea. He wears a light -blue tunic, and on his shoulders are great snow-white fins in place of wings. On seeing me, he stands back against a column to let me pass. Hardly have I crossed the threshold when an exquisite melody strikes my ears. Here the water is all iridescent, the ground is strewn with nacreous pearls; the entrance and the vault, from which graceful stalactites are hanging, are like opal, and delectable perfumes fill the air. Galleries, nooks and recesses open on every side, but straight in front of me I see a great light, and towards that I direct my steps. This light is made of wide rays of gold, silver, sapphire and emerald and ruby, all issuing from a point too distant for me to distinguish what it is, and streaming out in all directions. I feel myself being drawn towards their centre by a powerful attraction.

Now I can see the source of these rays and I behold an oval of white light, haloed by a splendid rainbow. The oval is lying horizontally, and I sense that the one whom the light hides from my view is deep in sleep. I stand long at the outer edge of the rainbow, peering through the light to see the one who lies sleeping in such splendour. Unable to distinguish anything in this way, I enter first the rainbow, and then the shining white oval. Now I see a marvellous being, lying on what seems to be a mass of white down; his lithe, incomparably beautiful body is clothed in a long white robe. Of his head, which rests on his folded arm, I can see only his long locks, the colour of ripe grain, flowing down over his shoulders. A powerful and sweet emotion floods through me at this magnificent sight, and also a profound reverence.

Has the sleeper senses my presence? Now he awakes, and rises in all his grace and beauty. He turns towards me and his eyes meet mine, eyes that are mauve and shining, full of infinite sweetness and tenderness. Without a word, he bids me a loving welcome, to which my whole being joyously responds; then, taking me by the hand, he leads me to the couch he has just left. I lie down upon this downy whiteness and the harmonious visage leans over me. A sweet flow of force suffuses me entirely, vitalizing, revivifying each cell.

Then, surrounded by the splendid rainbow hues, wrapped in soothing melodies and exquisite perfumes, beneath that powerful and tender gaze, I fell asleep in a beatific repose. And in my sleep I learned many beautiful and useful things.

Of all the marvellous things that I understood without the sound of words, I shall mention only one.

Wherever there is beauty, wherever there is radiance, wherever there is progress towards perfection, be it in the Heavens of the heights or in the heavens of the depths, there, surely, beings will be found in the form and likeness of man – man, the supreme agent of terrestrial evolution.

Feb 4 2015