Why do we still see and encounter the Adverse forces? How can we tackle them? The present talk is based on the Mother’s further revelations on this subject.
Words of the Mother
…. all sorts of things may happen before the final Victory is won. Because, for us, the scale is very small; even if it were of terrestrial proportions, it would be a very small scale; but on a universal scale…. These forces have their place and their action, their universe, and as long as their place and their action are maintained, they will be here. So before their action can be exhausted or become useless, many things can happen….
Individually, however, there is almost instantaneous bliss. But this is not a true solution … it’s a solution in the long run, by repercussion. To have true command here in this world, all of that must be mastered.
And this is the confusion made by all those people who believed that their … what they called their ‘personal salvation’ was the salvation of the world – it’s not true at all! It isn’t true – it’s a personal salvation.
But all of that is wonderfully, accurately expressed and explained in Savitri. Only you must know how to read it! The entire last part, from the moment she goes to seek Satyavan in the realm of Death (which affords an occasion to explain this), the whole description of what happens there, right up to the end, where every possible offer is made to tempt her, everything she must refuse to continue her terrestrial labor … it is my experience exactly.
January 22, 1961
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But it will take a long time. We mustn’t imagine that it will be done in the blink of an eye – I am ready to spend years on it (if it comes quicker, so much the better).
But it’s the key. The key…..
This Power … is it Love?
Well … yes …. It is the essence of Love.
it translates itself into Love. And of course I am not at all speaking of the human, physical quagmire; I am speaking of the most wonderfully beautiful and pure Love imaginable. This Power is the origin of that Love, and it is in the Supreme.
And it has always been said that That and That alone could bring the adverse forces to a halt.
December 23, 1961
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But I understand your question. You want to know if this has an effect on all identical vibratory modes in the world…. In principle, yes. But the effects may not be immediately visible; in the first place, our field of observation is nothing – materially, what do we know? … Only our immediate surroundings – that’s nothing. In 1920, for example, I had an experience of that type, which resulted in a symbolic but terrestrial action. It was a vision (I don’t remember enough details to make it interesting) where each nation was represented by a symbolic entity, and there was a certain type of horror – of terror, rather. A certain “will of terror” was trying to manifest in that gathering of all nations. And I was witness to the whole thing. I remember it being a very conscious and rather long and detailed vision with a more intense reality than physical things have (it was in the subtle physical). And after it was over and I had done what needed to be done (I am not saying what because I don’t remember all the details, and without accuracy it loses its value), when I came out of it I could say with total conviction: “Terror has been overcome in the world.” Of course, it’s not literally true, plenty of people still feel terror, but a certain type of terror was as if undermined at the foundations. What had already manifested kept on and is gradually being exhausted, but the terror that was trying to increase and dominate the life of nations was stopped cold.
I have had other similar experiences – on Durga’s day, for instance, when Sri Aurobindo was still here (you know, that’s the day when Durga masters an asura; she doesn’t kill him, she masters him). Well, each year one particular type of thing was undermined (and my experiences were never mental: the experience would suddenly come, and AFTERWARDS I would realize it was Durga’s day), and each time I used to tell Sri Aurobindo, “Look – today this (or that) thing has been cut off at the roots.” That’s how it works with the adverse forces – yes, like something being uprooted from the world. Whatever has already spread out keeps going and follows its karma, but the SOURCE is dried up. That’s also what happened (it was in 1904, I believe) when the Asura of Consciousness and Darkness made his surrender and was converted; he told me, “I have millions and millions of emanations, and these will keep on living, but their source has now run dry.”[[This seems to refer to the being Mother endowed with a body (in 1906, at Tlemcen), and who went to set up the revolution in China. ]] How much time will it take to exhaust it all? … We can’t say, but the source has dried up and that is something extremely important. In 1920, that terror was trying to spread all over the world and to become really catastrophic; and then in my inner vision I could see that a whole movement had dried up at its source. This means that little by little, little by little, little by little … the karma is being exhausted.
The same goes for these little physical movements. Things don’t seem to be “initiated” any more, I mean they’re no longer being generated. But everything that’s already present in the world has to be exhausted.
I can see more rapid methods, but they are essentially part of the supramental world.
To change a karma, to stop a karma, to withdraw a certain number of vibrations from circulation, as it were, requires yet another movement, another movement altogether – and that Power isn’t yet at hand. That’s what will yield visible, tangible results. The other movement has very tangible and concrete results, but they’re invisible (to human observation, that is, which is much too limited and superficial). But it obviously does have results. That vision of terror clearly diverted the course of events that nations were being pushed into. But only someone with inner vision can see it.
August 8, 1962
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Behind the Titan attacking us particularly now, there is something else. This Titan has been delegated by someone else. He has been there since my birth, was born with me. I felt him when I was very young, but only gradually, as I became conscious of myself, did I understand WHO he was and what was behind him.
This Titan has been specially sent to attack this body, but he can’t do it directly, so he uses people in my entourage. It is something fated: all those around me, who are close to me, and especially those capable of love, have been attacked by him; a few have succumbed, such as that girl in my entourage who was absorbed by him. He follows me like a shadow, and each time there is the least little opening in someone near me, he is there.
The power of this Titan comes from an Asura. There are four Asuras. Two have already been converted, and the other two, the Lord of Death and the Lord of Falsehood, made an attempt at conversion by taking on a physical body – they have been intimately associated with my life. The story of these Asuras would be very interesting to recount … The Lord of Death disappeared; he lost his physical body, and I don’t know what has become of him.’ As for the other, the Lord of Falsehood, the one who now rules over this earth, he tried hard to be converted, but he found it disgusting!
At times he calls himself the ‘Lord of Nations.’ It is he who sets all wars in motion, and only by thwarting his plans could the last war be won … This one does not want to be converted, not at all. He wants neither the physical transformation nor the supramental world, for that would spell his end. Besides, he knows … We talk to each other; beyond all this, we have our relationship. For after all, you see (laughing), I am his mother! One day he told me, ‘I know you will destroy me, but meanwhile, I will create all the havoc possible.’
This Asura of Falsehood is the one who delegated the Titan that is always near me. He chose the most powerful Titan there is on earth and sent him specially to attack this body. So even if one manages to enchain or kill this Titan, it is likely that the Lord of Falsehood will delegate another form, and still another, and still another, in order to achieve his aim.
In the end, only the Supramental will have the power to destroy it. When the hour comes, all this will disappear, without any need to do anything.
March 26, 1959
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Actually, people have always taken themselves for victims hounded by adverse forces – the courageous fight back, the rest lament. But increasingly there has been a very concrete vision of the role the adverse forces play in the creation, of their almost absolute necessity as goads to make the creation progress and become its Origin again. And there was such a clear vision that one should accomplish one’s own transformation – that’s what we must pray for, what we must work out – rather than demand the conversion or abolition of the adverse forces.
And this is all from the terrestrial, not the individual standpoint (for the individual standpoint, it’s quite clear): I am speaking from the terrestrial standpoint.
And there was the sudden vision of all the error, all the incomprehension, all the ignorance, all the darkness and – even worse – all the ill will in the earth’s consciousness, which felt responsible for the prolongation of those adverse forces and beings and offered them up in a great … it was more than an aspiration, it was a sort of holocaust, so that the adverse forces might disappear, might no longer have any reason to exist, no longer need to be there to point out all that has to change.
The adverse forces were necessitated by all these negations of the divine life. And this movement of earth consciousness towards the Supreme, the offering of all these things with such extraordinary intensity, was a kind of reparation so that those adverse forces might disappear.
The experience was very intense. It crystallized around a small nucleus of experiences too personal to mention (because I wasn’t the only one involved), which translated into this: “Take all my wrongdoings, take them all, accept them, obliterate them, and may those forces disappear.”
….. So long as a single human consciousness carries the possibility of feeling, acting, thinking or being in opposition to the great divine Becoming, it is impossible to blame anyone else for it; it is impossible to blame the adverse forces, which are kept in the creation as a means of making you see and feel how far you still have to go.
It was like a memory, an eternally present memory of that consciousness of supreme Love emanated by the Lord onto earth – INTO earth – to draw it back again to Him. And truly it was the descent of the very essence of the divine nature into the most total divine negation, and thus the abandonment of the divine condition to take on terrestrial darkness, so as to bring Earth back to the divine state. And unless That, that supreme Love, becomes all-powerfully conscious here on Earth, the return can never be definitive.
It came after the vision of the great divine Becoming. “Since this world is progressive,” I was wondering, “since it is increasingly becoming the Divine, won’t there always be this deeply painful sense of the nondivine, of the state that, compared with the one to come, is not divine? Won’t there always be what we call ‘adverse forces,’ in other words, things that don’t harmoniously follow the movement?” Then came the answer, the vision of That: “No, the moment of this very Possibility is drawing near, the moment for the manifestation of the essence of perfect Love, which can transform this unconsciousness, this ignorance and this ill will that goes with it into a luminous and joyous progression, wholly progressive, wholly comprehensive, thirsting for perfection.”
It was very concrete.
And it corresponds to a state where you are so perfectly identified with all that is, that you concretely become all that is antidivine – and so you can offer it up. It can be offered up and really transformed through this offering.
This sort of will in people for purity, for Good (which in ordinary mentality is expressed by a need to be virtuous) is actually the GREAT OBSTACLE to true self-giving. It’s the root of Falsehood, the very source of hypocrisy: the refusal to take up one’s share of the burden of difficulties. And that’s what Sri Aurobindo has touched on in this aphorism, directly and very simply.
Do not try to be virtuous. See to what extent you are united, ONE with all that is antidivine. Take up your share of the burden; accept to be impure and false yourself, and in so doing you will be able to take up the Shadow and offer it. And insofar as you are able to take it and offer it, things will change.
Don’t try to be among the pure. Accept to be with those who are in darkness and, in total love, offer it all.
From the moment this was seen and DONE, the full power came back – the great creative Power.
(silence)
Most likely the experience could take place only because the time had come for all this to be offered up.
The point is not to perpetuate those things, but to offer them up.
Because the time has come to manifest this Power, which is a power of Love – of LOVE, not merely of identity – of Love, of perfect Love; for perfect Love alone can offer.
It happened this morning, with great simplicity, but at the same time it had something so vast and almighty in it, as if the Universal Mother were turning towards the Lord and saying, “At last! We are ready.”….
In those realms, you know, “now” sometimes stretches over many years. I won’t say it’s going to be instantaneous…..
It’s like opening a door just a crack and catching a glimpse of what’s beyond….
It was the same experience when I told Sri Aurobindo that India was free; it was the Universal Mother speaking from what could be called Her origin – it was from that level – and the thing took thirty-five years to come down on Earth.
When I had the experience that the time had come for the supramental Force to descend on Earth, I followed the effects of that descent, I followed the effects and the consequences in my consciousness. But to ordinary eyes it was something like what happened with India’s liberation – it’s possible, of course, that the Supermind did come down, but for the moment its effects are more than veiled.
The first rather tangible manifestation was this vision of the boat; with that, things became more concrete, it radically changed something in the attitude.
We’re at another stage now….
This recent period has been very difficult. I see clearly that it was a preparation – to prepare the way for that experience. It came to reverse the attitude, the attitude of struggling to surmount, subdue and abolish everything antidivine in creation.
Up till now, this attitude was probably (not probably – certainly) necessary to prepare things. But now there’s a sort of sudden reversal, as if the moment had come for the creative principle, the force, the universal creative Force to say, “This too is Me. For it is time for it to disappear. This too is Me: I no longer treat it as an enemy to get rid of; I accept it as Myself, so that it truly does become Me.”
And it was preceded by a kind of anguish: “Will there always be something that, compared with the state to come, seems antidivine?” No: after a long preparation, it becomes capable of feeling divine – and thus of being divine.
Looking at things externally, in terms of present material reality, there is still a lot of ground to be covered before the new manifestation becomes an actual fact. What we have now is probably the seed of the thing – like the seed of India’s freedom, which later blossomed.
( When S published extracts from this conversation in the Ashram Bulletin of April 1962, Mother had this passage modified (over his protests). Instead of “Do not try to be virtuous,” She put “Do not try to seem virtuous”; and she added: “There’s a drawback here. People never understand anything, or rather they understand everything in their own way. They would take this sentence as an encouragement to get into mischief, to misbehave, to entertain wrong feelings, and then proclaim, ‘We are the Lord’s favorites!’ … There was something like it in one of Sri Aurobindo’s letters, you remember – a letter to people who wanted to bring all the impurities in themselves out to the surface; he told them that was definitely not the way!)
January 21, 1962
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You know, what lends force to the opposition is superstitious ignorance – superstitious in the sense of a sort of faith or at least of belief in Destiny, in Fate. It’s ingrained, as if woven into the human substance. They have the same superstition, the same superstitious belief in what is favorable to them as in what is unfavorable; in the divine Power as in the adverse power – it’s the SAME attitude. And that’s why the divine Power doesn’t have its full force, and also precisely why the adverse force has so much power over them, because it’s absolutely a movement of Falsehood, of Ignorance – of total Ignorance.
Recently, I was following the thing down to the smallest detail, in everybody’s mentality. Even in those who have read Sri Aurobindo, who have studied Sri Aurobindo, who have understood, who have come into contact with that region of light, it’s still there – it’s still there. It’s very … yes, it’s very tightly woven into the most outward and material part of the consciousness. It’s a kind of submissiveness, which may be quite rebellious, but which gives a sense, as you said, of something hanging over your head and shoulders: a sort of Fate, of Destiny.
So there is the good destiny and the bad destiny; there is a divine force which one regards as something entirely beyond understanding, whose designs and aims are perfectly inexplicable, and the submission, the surrender consists in accepting – blindly – all that happens. One’s nature revolts, but revolts against an Absolute against which it is helpless. And all of that is Ignorance. Not one of all those movements is true – from the most intense revolt to the blindest submission, it’s all false, not one true movement….
AWAKE AND WILL
Naturally men take “will” for their own whims, which have nothing to do with a will – they’re all impulses.
“To will” means “to will with the supreme Will.” And it’s as if it were the key that opens the door to the future:
AWAKE AND WILL
But beware of willing the wrong way because that’s no longer a will, it’s a whim – don’t confuse the two. Will with the supreme Will.
We shouldn’t hunch our shoulders – it makes us grumble terribly within ourselves and it’s useless.
Oh, (Mother holds up her head) that feeling of the head rising above all that, of emerging above …
But we’re so totally enslaved to very small things – the very small things of the body: its needs (or supposed needs). I see all the entreaties that come from everywhere, and it all revolves around the same thing (even those who think they’ve understood that the consciousness must be general – not collective, but terrestrial – they’re slaves to the reactions of their body), it all revolves around two things: sleep-food-sleep-food-sleep … (Mother draws a circle). Even with those who profess that they have “no interest” in those things, they still have the power to cause reactions in their consciousness: a sleepless night or poor digestion, or an upset digestive system – there you are. It has the power to weigh down on their faith and to take away its capacity of action. It’s a kind of attachment – an involuntary and mechanical attachment – to that need for sleep and that need for food. And I don’t mean people who love to eat or lazy people who like to sleep – I don’t even mean that, which is all the way down, that’s not it: I mean those who aren’t interested in food and would really like to replace sleep with something else, something more interesting, even those – all, all, all of them.
And even this body, which has been worked on and kneaded for years … It’s in the subconscient of the body. And so that was the answer, it was said to the body:
AWAKE AND WILL
And as usual, it was full of humor. Something said: “You grumble all the time, you moan all the time, you complain all the time, what’s the use? –
AWAKE AND WILL!”
And that submissiveness, you know, that acceptance of the worst, with the idea that it comes from the Lord! Not only that, but almost imagining the worst as a trial, as a test to find out if you’re really surrendered – that’s another stupidity! If you need to imagine such things in order to find out if you really haven’t revolted, it means there is still somewhere the germ or residue of revolt.
And the fear of being selfish, the fear of being rebellious – it means it’s still there, otherwise you wouldn’t have that fear.
We are so small, so small. The smaller we are, the more we revolt. We want to break everything because we are so small – when you are vast, you don’t need to break anything. You only have to be.
AWAKE AND WILL.
November 23, 1963
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It had rather seemed to me that they should be kept at a distance. With Théon, the adverse forces and hostile beings were often mentioned, they occupied a big place in self-development and in action. As for Sri Aurobindo, he used to say that that notion was useful mostly from the psychological and personal standpoint, because struggling with difficulties is easier when you see them as coming from “outside,” as an attack from outside, than if you think they are part of your own nature. Not that he denied their existence, far from it, but the path depends a lot on the attitude you take and on the mental construction you have, naturally.
Sri Aurobindo insisted rather on Oneness: he used to say that even what we consider to be the worst adversaries are still a form of the Supreme, which, deliberately or not, consciously or not, helps in the general transformation. This seems to me vaster, deeper, more comprehensive.
And I tried to base action on this rather than on constant battle with opposing forces. Because, granted this idea, it makes sense that if you make the necessary progress, if you have the divine knowledge and consciousness, the very purpose of those forces disappears, and consequently they can’t stay.
September 30, 1964
About Savitri | B1C3-04 The Growth of Divinity in Man (pp.25-26)