Notes on the Way

25 September 1968

I have found some old papers, I do not know what they are. There is an envelope from you.

It is a question on Aphorisms.

"When I hear of a righteous wrath, I wonder at man's capacity for self-deception."

Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Aphorisms

It is wonderful!

There was a question: "It is always 'in good faith' that one deceives oneself: it is always for the good of others that one acts or in the interest of humanity and for serving you, it goes without saying. How does one come to deceive oneself and how to know it truly?"¹

It is terribly true.

Even yesterday, without even reading it, I had a long vision on the subject; it is astonishing. But it was on such a different plane....

Yes, when you take the higher part of your mind as judge of your action, then you can "deceive yourself in good faith". That is to say, the mind is incapable of seeing the truth and it judges by its own capacity, which is limited—not only limited but unconscious of the truth; so for the mind, it is in good faith, it does as well as it can. It is this.

Naturally, for those who are fully conscious of their psychic, it is not possible to deceive themselves, for if they refer their problem to the psychic, they can from there have the divine

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answer. But even for those who are in relation with their psychic, the answer has not the same character as the mind's, which is precise, categorical, absolute, asserting itself; it is something more of a tendency than an assertion, something which can still have different interpretations in the mind.

I come back to my experience of yesterday. After having looked at it, I came to the conclusion that it is impossible to reproach a human being who does as well as he can according to his consciousness, for how can he go beyond his consciousness?... This is just the error that the majority of people make: they judge one another according to their own consciousness, but the other has not their consciousness! Therefore they cannot judge (I speak only of people of goodwill, naturally). According to the vision of a more total or higher consciousness, another person deceives himself, but according to the person himself, he does to the utmost whatever he believes he must do.

This amounts to saying that it is absolutely impossible to lay the blame upon anyone who acts sincerely according to his own limited consciousness. And in fact, if we come to that, everyone in the world has a limited consciousness, excepting the Consciousness. It is only the Consciousness which is not limited. But every manifestation is necessarily limited, unless it comes out of itself and unites itself with the supreme Consciousness, then there... In what conditions can that be done?

It is the problem of identification with the Supreme, which is the Supreme One—One which is All.

(Silence)

There is a whole side of human thought that has the conception that identification with the supreme Consciousness can come only by annulling the individual creation, but Sri Aurobindo precisely has said that it is possible without abolishing the creation. They have this notion that creation must be abolished, for they limit the creation to the human level—it is impossible for

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man, but it is possible for the supramental being.And it is this that will make the supramental being essentially different: he will be able, without losing a limited form, to unite his consciousness with the supreme Consciousness.

But for man, it is impossible. That I know.

As I have said, you have it, you have the experience, but as soon as you want to express it, it is gone, it becomes again... (gesture of being closed). That is to say, the substance of which we are built up is not sufficiently purified, enlightened, transformed (it does not matter what word) to express the supreme Consciousness without deforming it.

(Silence. Mother enters into an experience.)

It is a certain opacity in Matter, in the substance that makes it unable to manifest the Consciousness... and it is this same (I do not know how to say it) opacity that gives it the sense of existing.

This is part of the experience of these last days. I have lived for... I do not know, for weeks, in a kind of fluidity—transparent fluidity—and as this transparent fluidity is replaced by this something that I call now "opacity", there comes a kind of concretisation of the existence of the body.

So, the direct contact of the psychic being with the substance of the body, without any intermediary, gives the sensation... is it a "sensation"? I do not know; it is not a sensation, it is not a perception; it is a kind of "felt vision" (and this vision is very precise, very precise) of the value of vibrations in relation to a higher vibration which is (all that I can say about it) more directly the expression of the supreme Vibration.

It is very difficult to express, but the body is going through an experience which it never had; it is as though passing from an imprecision to a precision, from a kind of fluidity to... it is not a concrete thing, but from a thing fluid—fluid and imprecise—to a thing precise. All the happenings (no matter how small), which

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vary, are the occasion for a new perception. Before,everything was fluid and imprecise; now it is beginning to be more precise—more precise, more exact. But it loses a little of its fluidity.

It is very difficult to express.

I had never thought of it. It is strange, it is not willed. Just now I have had the experience. So it is not yet very clear.

Indeed, the mind gives a precision that is lacking when it is not there. Its role in creation is just to give precision, to explain, and at the same time to limit.

An ordinary mind could ask: "But what is the advantage of this imprecision?"

There is no advantage!

It is altogether certain that when the Supramental manifests, it will replace the mental precision (how to say it?) that diminishes—the precision that limits and therefore falsifies things in part—by a clarity of vision, another kind of vision that does not diminish. It is that which is being built up.

Indeed, it can be said (it is not exactly this): in order to give precision, the mind limits and separates; and evidently there is a precision that can come from a more exact vision, without division and without separation. And it is that precision which will be the precision of the supramental vision. With the precision will come, at the same time, the vision of the relation of all things to one another, without separating them.

But that is something in preparation. It comes as a flash, for a minute, and then lapses back into its old way.

The same can be said of the vital. The vital gives an intensity which nothing else seems capable of giving; well, this same intensity exists in the Supramental, but without division. It is an intensity that does not separate.

These two experiences I have had, but very momentarily. These are things that are being worked out just at present.

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