Questions and Answers (1954)

18 August 1954

This talk is based upon Chapter 6 of The Mother by Sri Aurobindo.

Sweet Mother, I didn't understand this: "This is the power of Mahalakshmi and there is no aspect of the Divine Shakti more attractive to the heart of embodied beings."

That means men. It is another way of saying human beings upon the earth, beings upon earth. There are also... it means animals also. She is very, very loving towards animals and animals love her very much; even the most ferocious ones become very gentle with her, and that is why instead of using the words "human beings", he has used "embodied beings", beings with a body upon earth.

(Silence)

Questions?

Sweet Mother, I did not understand: "She throws the spell of the intoxicating sweetness of the Divine...."

Did not understand? Because you don't have a poetic mind, so... It is a poetic image to express... You must not understand these things with a positivist mind; you must have a little feeling for the harmony of words and phrases.

"Maheshwari lays down the large lines of the world-forces...." What does this mean: "the large lines of the world-forces"?

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It means that she makes the plan of what the world ought to be. So she lays down the large lines of the plan, of what the world should be, of the universe. She has a vision of the whole, a global creation; instead of seeing the details she sees the totality of things, she lays down the large lines of the plan, and what the creation should be like, towards what it ought to advance, and then what the results will be. She has a universal vision, she is less concerned with the details than with the whole.

"All the work of the other Powers lean on her [Mahasaraswati] for its completeness...."

Mahasaraswati. Yes, because she is... (silence) precisely the goddess of perfection. For her everything must be done down to the last detail, and done in an absolutely perfect way. And she wants, she insists that it should be done physically, totally, materially, that it should not remain in the air, you see, like a mental or vital action, but that it should be a physical realisation in all its details, and all the details be perfect, that nothing be neglected. So all that the others undertake in the other domains she concretises and brings to its material perfection.

I have a question from the last lesson. Here Sri Aurobindo has written: "All the scenes of the earth-play have been like a drama arranged and planned and staged by her [the Mother as the Mahashakti] with the cosmic Gods for her assistants and herself as a veiled actor." So this means that everything that happens here has already been staged on a higher plane. So everything is predestined Mother. Then there is no free-will?

It is not like that. It is put like that and it is one particular way of seeing things. But in fact, it is... it (After a silence) It could be said with as much exactness, that at each moment the entire universe is recreated, and both are equally true.

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(Long silence)

If we take the world as it is, like a chemical compound of a certain nature, with all the inevitable consequences resulting from the composition of this body, and if we think that in this composition there can enter at any moment a new element, it will necessarily change the composition of the whole, you understand? Well, it is something like that, on a greater and more complicated scale; but it is something like that.

The universe is a mass of elements which form a certain compound, and in accordance with this compound all things are organised—as in an internal organisation, you see (Mother makes a movement as of holding a globe between her hands), quite strictly. But this is not a culmination; it is something in the course of construction. And at any moment at all, through a certain kind of action, one or several new elements may be introduced into the whole, and immediately necessarily, all the internal combination change. Well, the universe is something like that.

I am speaking of the material universe. The material universe is a concretisation of a certain aspect, a certain emanation of the Supreme. But this concretisation is progressive—and not necessarily constant, not necessarily regular, but answering to a much more subtle law of freedom.

In this compound new elements penetrate and change the whole organisation. So, this organisation which was in itself perfect and unfolding itself according to its own law, is almost suddenly changed and all the internal relation become different. So this gives the impression of something either incoherent or unexpected or of a miracle according to how one looks at the problem. And this makes for two concomitant things: a determinism which would be absolute in itself if there were not this freedom, absolute also, of the unexpected and additional in the universe. I don't know if you have followed, but I have tried to express that.

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But how is this addition made?

Eh, this addition?...

This addition of a new element...

Yes. By the aspiration of the supreme Consciousness.

The aspiration of the supreme Consciousness?

Yes. It is at work in this world and, working in this world, for the necessity of the work, it works for a certain end, you see, to bring the darkened consciousness back to its normal state of divine consciousness. And each time in its work it meets with a new obstacle, a new thing to conquer or transform, it calls to a new Force. (Mother opens her hand.) And this new Force is like a new creation. And so, as everything has its correspondence, it may be said in the same way that each being has in its different domains—a human being—it has in its different domain a destiny which is, so to speak, absolute. But it has also the capacity, through aspiration, to enter into contact with a higher domain and introduce the action of this higher domain in these more material determinisms. And there it is still the same thing; these two things combined: a determinism which we could call "horizontal" (to make it understandable) in each domain, which is absolute, and the intervention of other domain or a much higher domain, in that determinism, which changes it completely. So, everyone at the same time is a set of determinisms which seem quite absolute, and has a total freedom to bring in the intervention of states of being or states of consciousness or forces of a higher domain; and calling these forces and bringing them into the external determinisms alters everything completely.And it is only thus that things can give the impression of the unexpected, the unknown and of freedom.

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Mother is this what we call "Grace"?

(After a silence) From a certain point of view, yes. That is, without the Grace this could not happen. (Silence) But it is not... unless one brings everything back to the Grace. There is certainly a state of consciousness and a vision of things which make you refer everything back to the Grace and finish by discovering that it alone exists, and that it alone does everything. But unless one goes to this extreme, before this, one can very well imagine that there is an element of personal aspiration in the being and that the Grace answers. That's a way of speaking. The other one also is a way of speaking. The thing is more subtle than that, more unseizable. It is very difficult to express these things in words, because, necessarily, it takes on a mental rigidity and there is a whole part of reality which disappears. But if one has the experience, one understands very well. The conclusion: one must have the experience.

Sweet Mother, what is a "divine disgust"?

Ah, my child! (Silence) It is a disgust that is full of a total compassion.

It is something that takes upon itself the bad vibration in order to cure others of it. The consequences... (silence) of a wrong and low movement—instead of throwing it back with cold justice upon the one who has committed the mistake, it absorbs it, in order to transform it within itself, and diminishes as far as possible the material consequences of the fault committed. I believe that the old story about Shiva who had a black stain on his neck because he had swallowed all that was bad in the world, is an imaginative way of expressing this divine disgust. It made a black stain on his neck.

Mother, when the Divine takes upon Himself human suffering....

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Yes...

...does this suffering have the same effect upon Him as upon us? That is, does He feel pain and sorrow as we feel them?

No! I can say, No! For, obviously there is an essential difference between a state of ignorance and a state of knowledge. Something painful happens to you, let us say; and in the ignorance this painful thing takes on a particular quality. But if you receive this painful thing in a state of knowledge, it does not have the same effect. Let us take even a material thing, say, a very material blow, a good blow like this (gesture). Well, when one is in the ordinary human state of ignorance the blow has its full effect. It depends exclusively on its violence, on what has given the blow and who has received it, you see. But if the same blow is given in the same way and by the same thing to a being who has knowledge instead of ignorance, instantaneously the reaction of the body will be such as to make the consequences... reduce the consequences to the minimum. And this is a concrete fact! This can go to the extent of even annulling the consequences altogether sometimes. It can go as far as that; that is, it can abolish the consequences, because the reaction is one of knowledge, instead of being a reaction of ignorance. So one cannot say that it is the same thing.

In moral things this is quite obvious, you see, because instead of receiving an emotional shock, for instance, with all the egoistic blindness of ordinary emotion, one objectivises, sees what it is, sees the combination in the vibration; and instantly one throws upon it light, knowledge and truth, and all things are put back in their place. That happens instantaneously. But I insist that even on the most material body, and in the most material way, the effect is not the same. Besides, it is very simple to understand, for if the effect were the same, it would have no happy consequence of any kind for the Divine to take upon Himself bad things! Because they would remain just what they are, and the

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universe would continue to be what it is. It is because He has the power of transforming these obscure vibrations into vibrations of light that He can take everything upon Himself. Otherwise, not only would this be useless, but it would be impossible, it would be an absurdity.

It is the material blow one receives...

Eh?

"Knowledge" means what, here?

"Knowledge" means what? If you have knowledge—the internal knowledge of the cells, of their existence, their composition, of the results of the blow, that is, the effect of the blow on the cells, and if at the same time you have the knowledge of what these cells ought to be and how they ought to react to the blow they receive, instead of a process like that of physical nature, which takes hours or days or months to mend something that is damaged, you can do it immediately. And, in fact, this is what happens!

(After a silence) It is all a... it is a description of a very tiny part of the action. For when the action is integral and perfect, to this purely material knowledge there is added an internal knowledge, and a power to bring into play forces like the supramental forces, which can do instantaneously what takes in the material world a fairly long time, you see. There too, when one succeeds in bringing in not only the material knowledge which allows you to put things in their place as quickly as possible but also in making a supramental power and knowledge intervene, so that the force of truth can be projected upon the place—in such a way that everything is put under the influence of this force, and that things, elements, the cells and everything, everything constituting them, all become receptive to this supramental power and the organisation is made according to a law of truth—then

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this may be even an opportunity not only of curing the effects of the blow, repairing the damage caused by the accident, but of making great progress in the general consciousness—and on the particular point also—a great progress in the receptivity of forces, in adaptation to these forces, in response to their influence.

This is how something bad can be turned into something very good, when one has the power. It is an unlimited power, this, in the sense that if one has made a mistake and done something serious, if one has the power to bring this truth-consciousness, this supramental force, and let it act, it is an occasion for a tremendous progress. (Silence) Which means that one should never feel discouraged; or even if one has made mistakes many a time, one must keep the will not to make them any longer, and be sure that one day or another one will triumph over the difficulty if one persists in one's will.

There we are!

Sweet Mother, why is Mahasaraswati the youngest of the four?

Because her work came last; so she came last. (Silence) It is in this order that they manifested, in the order given here. These aspects are like the attributes of the Mother, which manifested in succession according to the necessities of the work; and the necessity of perfection was the last, so she is the youngest.

But these four are independent of one another?

To a certain extent, but not totally. It is always the same thing. There is an independence which at times seems to be total, and at the same time a very close link and even one which is, so to say, absolute. The central consciousness, that is to say, here in the material world, is the Mahashakti, you know. Well, she always has the power to control the action of these different

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aspects—though they are quite independent and act according to their own aspiration. And yet she can control them, in the sense that if...

Take, for example, the instance of Kali. If Kali decides that she is going to intervene and the Mahashakti, who has naturally a much more total and general vision of things, sees that the moment for intervention is not opportune or that it is too soon, well, she can very easily put a pressure upon Mahakali and tell her, "Keep quiet." And the other is obliged to keep quiet; and yet she acts quite independently.

But why doesn't she let Mahakali act? For here he says that if Mahakali intervenes what would have taken centuries can take place now.

I say it is for this that Mahakali is there and does her work. But Mahakali has a particular way of seeing the work; and when one has the total vision, one can see that this, you know... She sees only her side of the work, and when one sees the whole, one may say, "Ah, no, this is not quite the time!" (Silence)

Ah! I think it is time to stop.

Last time you said that Madame David-Neel did not know how to swallow up her creation and that you taught her the "trick" of doing it.

(Pavitra repeating aloud) Madame David-Neel did not know how to swallow up her creation....

Ah, yes, and so?... You want me to give you the trick? (Laughter) First wait till you know how to make these creation and I shall give you the "trick" afterwards! (Laughter)

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