The New World is there and yet we see a mounting confusion amidst humanity. What are the deeper reasons for this confusion? What is the way, the attitude we must take towards it? This talk explores some of these aspects of the confusion that preceeds the hour of the New creation.
Words of Sri Aurobindo
“I know that this is a time of trouble for you and everybody. It is so for the whole world. Confusion, trouble, disorder and upset everywhere is the general state of things. The better things that are to come are preparing or growing under a veil and the worse are prominent everywhere. The one thing is to hold on and hold out till the hour of light has come.”
Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 26, p. 168, June 2, 1946
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“The extreme acuteness of your difficulties is due to the yoga having come down against the bed-rock of Inconscience which is the fundamental basis of all resistance in the individual and in the world to the victory of the Spirit and the Divine Work that is leading toward that victory. The difficulties themselves are general in the Ashram as well as in the outside world….
“Doubt, discouragement, diminution or loss of faith, waning of the vital enthusiasm for the ideal, perplexity and a baffling of the hope for the future are the common features of the difficulty. In the world outside there are much worse symptoms such as the general increase of cynicism, a refusal to believe in anything at all, a decrease of honesty, an immense corruption, a preoccupation with food, money, comfort, pleasure, to the exclusion of higher things, and a general expectation of worse and worse things awaiting the world. All that, however acute, is a temporary phenomenon for which those who know anything about the workings of the world-energy and the workings of the Spirit were prepared. I myself foresaw that this worst would come, the darkness of night before the dawn; therefore I am not discouraged. I know what is preparing behind the darkness and can see and feel the first signs of its coming. Those who seek for the Divine have to stand firm and persist in their seeking; after a time, the darkness will fade and begin to disappear and the Light will come.”
Letters on Yoga, SABCL, Vol. 26, pp.169-170, April 9, 1947
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Words of the Mother
Last night, I had the vision of what this supramental world could become if men were not sufficiently prepared. The confusion existing at present upon earth is nothing in comparison to what could take place. Imagine that every powerful will has the power to transform matter as it likes! If the sense of collective oneness did not grow in proportion to the development of power, the resulting conflict would be yet more acute and chaotic than our material conflicts.
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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.
This we could repeat to people endlessly, but it is extraordinarily true just now!
To hold on and hold out.
So be it!
(Laughing) Things have never been so bad! And strangely – strangely enough – there is behind all that a kind of SOLIDITY that has never been there before. I have noticed this since yesterday. Outwardly, things have never been so confused, so complicated, so unpleasant, so difficult, yet there is somewhere (as if underneath or within, I don’t know how to explain) a solidity, something that has a solid evenness … like a base that NOTHING can shake. This I have never felt previously. I have felt it for the last two days.
As though something were established that is UNSHAKABLE. And outwardly, things have never been so catastrophic. I find this interesting.
And then, even from the point of view of light, there was (till the last few days) a sort of bright light of a more or less childlike trust and a more or less childlike hope!
February 15, 1958
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In the end, I am absolutely convinced that confusion is to teach us to live from day to day, that is to say, without being preoccupied with what may happen or what will happen, just concerning ourselves from day to day with what we have to do. All thinking and foreseeing and devising and all that furthers disorder a lot.
To live almost from minute to minute, to be like this (gesture turned upward), attentive only to the “thing” one has to do every moment-and to let the All-Consciousness decide … We never know things, even with the most general vision; we never know things except VERY partially – very partially. So our attention is drawn to this, drawn to that, but such and such other thing exists, too. And to give a lot of importance to dangerous or harmful things is to give them strength.
(Mother goes into a contemplation)
