Questions and Answers (1954)

26 May 1954

This talk is based upon Sri Aurobindo's Elements of Yoga, Chapter 8, "The Psychic Opening".

Sweet Mother, when we see you in a dream, is it always a symbolic dream?

No, not necessarily. It can be a fact. This means that instead of seeing physically, one sees in the subtle physical or the vital or the mind. But one sees something of me: for instance, if I send out a force or a thought or a movement, an action to someone, in his atmosphere this takes my form, in his mental consciousness it takes my form. So he sees it. It is a fact. I send something and he sees it. It is not my whole being (there the interpretation goes wrong most of the time), but it is something of myself.

But this always has some significance, Mother, hasn't it?

Certainly it has significance. It has mostly even a very precise aim: either it is that I want to do something or to say something to someone, or it is that I want to change something in that person or give him some needed knowledge or else I want to put someone on his guard against something—put him on his guard, tell him to be careful—or else I come to answer a question at times.

Symbolic dreams... symbolic dreams are usually very coherent, one remembers everything, to the least detail; it is more living, more real, more intense than the material life, and it is fairly rare. When one returns from a symbolic dream, one remembers everything, all the details, and feels that one has lived for those moments a much in tenser and truer life than the physical one.And it leaves a very deep impression upon you.

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This does not happen very often, you know. Usually it comes when it is very necessary.

Has anyone any dreams to narrate?

It would be interesting. I could give you an example. If you have a dream to relate, I could explain it to you.

Sweet Mother, I have a dream to tell.

Ah! You have one. Let us hear your dream.

One day, when you were giving blessings, I went to you, you took me in your arms and embraced me for quite some time.

And then? That's all?

You said something to me, but...

But what it was you don't remember!

No.

(Another child) Mother, sometimes I see you weeping in my dreams.

What? I am weeping?

Yes, You, weeping.

I, I weep? (Laughter)

Yes.

Wait a little!... That's when one is very sad oneself, isn't it?

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Perhaps.

That, indeed, is very symbolic. It means precisely... no, I shall tell you afterwards. But generally speaking, it means this: that every time one is unhappy, well, it is one more suffering added to the collective suffering of the Divine.

It is from a state of deep compassion that the Divine acts in Matter and this deep compassion is translated in Matter precisely by this psychic sorrow which is spoken about here.¹ We read that this evening. That is as though something were reversed, it is the same thing but reversed in this way (Mother joins her hands and then opens them as in an offering).

Well, the Divine's state of compassion is translated in the psychic consciousness by a sorrow that is not egoistic, a sorrow that is the expression of the identification through sympathy with universal sorrow. In the Prayers and Meditations I have said this (in one of the later ones), I have described at length an experience in which way I say, "I wept... the sweetest tears of my life",² because it was not over myself that I wept, you understand. Well, that is it. You know, human beings always suffer because of egoistic causes, humanly. Even when, for instance (I have explained this often), they lose someone they loved, and suffer and weep, it is not over the state of that person they weep, for most of the time, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, they do not know the state of the person, they cannot even know whether that person is happy or unhappy, whether he is suffering or in peace, but it is over the sense of separation they themselves experience, because they loved to have that person near them and he has gone. So, always at the root of human sorrow there is

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a turning back upon oneself, more or less conscious, more or less—how to put it?—acknowledged, but it is always that. Even when one weeps over another's misery, there is always a mixture. There is a mixture, but as soon as the psychic gets mingled in the sorrow, there is an element of "reversed compassion" (that's what I was trying to explain a moment ago) which comes into the being and, if one can disentangle the two, concentrate upon that, come out of one's ego and unite with this reversed compassion, through this one can come into contact with the great universal Compassion which is something immense, vast, calm, powerful, deep, full of perfect peace and an infinite sweetness. And this is what I mean when I say that if one just knows how to deepen one's sorrow, go right to its very heart, rise beyond the egoistic and personal part and go deeper, one can open the door of a great revelation. That does not mean that you must seek sorrow for sorrow's sake, but when it is there, when it comes upon you, always if you can manage to rise above the egoism of your sorrow—seeing first which is the egoistic part, what it is that makes you suffer, what the egoistic cause of your suffering is, and then rising above that and going beyond, towards something universal, towards a deep fundamental truth, then you enter that infinite Compassion, and there, truly it is a psychic door that opens. So, if someone sees me shedding tears, if at that moment one tries to unite completely—you understand, to enter into these tears, melt in them—this can open the door. One can open the door and have the full experience, a very exceptional experience, which leaves a very deep mark upon your consciousness. Usually it is never effaced. But if the door closes again, if once again you become what you are in your ordinary movements, that still remain somewhere behind and you can go back to it in moments of intense concentration; you can go back to it and you feel once again that immensity of an infinite sweetness, a great peace, which... understands everything but not intellectually, which has compassion for all things, which can embrace all things and so heal all things.

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Naturally, it is always the same thing: one must... must sincerely want to be healed, for otherwise it does not work. If one wants to have the experience solely for the experience's sake and then the next minute one returns to what one was before, this does not work. But if sincerely one wants to be healed, if one has a real aspiration to overcome the obstacle, to rise—rise above oneself, to give up all that pulls one back, to break the limits, become clear, purify oneself of all that blocks the way, if truly one has the intense will not to fall back into past errors, to surge up from the darkness and ignorance, to rise into the light, stripped of all that is too human, too small, too ignorant—then that works. It works, works powerfully. At times it works definitively and totally. But there must be nothing that clings to the old movements, keeps quiet at the moment, hides itself, and then later shows its face and says, "Yes, yes, it is very fine, your experience, but now it is my turn!" Then, when that happens, I do not answer for anything, because sometimes, as a reaction it becomes worse. That is why I always come back to the same thing, say always the same thing: one must be truly sincere, truly.

One must be ready, if there is something which is clinging, clinging tightly, one must be ready to tear it away completely, without its leaving any trace behind. This is why at times one makes the same mistake and repeats it, until the suffering is sufficiently great to impose a total sincerity. One must not try that method, it is bad. It is bad because it destroys many things, it wastes much energy, spreads bad vibrations. But if one can't do otherwise, well, in the intensity of suffering one can find the will for perfect sincerity.

And there is a moment—in everyone's life there is a moment—when this need for perfect sincerity comes as a definitive choice. There is a moment in one's individual life, also a moment in the collective life when one belongs to a group, a moment when the choice must be made, when the purification must be done. Sometimes this becomes very serious, it is almost a

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question of life and death for the group: it must make a decisive progress... if it wants to survive.

(Silence)

No other dreams?

(The first child) Sweet Mother, you did not give the explanation of my dream.

There is no explanation, my child. You saw something of which you are not conscious in your physical being, that's all. The Forces are always there, full of tender affection, love, help, of... but one is not aware of this because one lives in too narrow, too small a consciousness. There is no need of any explanation, these things are not explained. It is a fact. If you like, there is an experience, a fact, something happens—there is also its translation in your brain. When you wake up it is a sort of interpretation of your dream which you remember. It is very rarely that one is conscious at the time the experience occurs and conscious of the experience as it really is. For that one must be very wakeful during the night, quite awake in one's sleep. Usually this is not the case. There is one part of the being which has an experience; when that part of the being which had gone out of the body re-enters it, brings back the experience, the brain receives a contact with this experience, translates it by images, words, ideas, impressions, feelings, and when one wakes up one catches something of this, and with that makes a "dream". But it is only a transcription of something that has happened—which has an analogy, a similarity, but which wasn't exactly what one receives as a dream.

In your experience of the night which produced the dream, you entered into contact with these Forces which always envelop, help, sustain, and... you understand, don't you?—which are full of love and tenderness, which help and welcome all those

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who come—which, in fact, are there, everywhere at work all the time. So you became aware of that. When you woke up, this was translated through images you know, that is, that you come to see me, receive blessings, and then as there was a new feeling—that of contact with this Force which envelops and helps—this gave you the impression that I was taking you in my arms and embracing you. It was translated in this way. The fact is there; the translation is that of your brain.

Some people make me do very funny things at night! I have heard all kinds of extraordinary stories. But it is always the same thing: there is a fact behind, they entered into contact either with an emanation or with a force or an action, as I was saying just now, but then, in their brain it was translated by images which at times are very astonishing! But that, of course, is their translation. As for me, when they tell me all that, it gives me the exact picture of the state of their mental, vital and physical consciousness. Just the deformations in the translation suffices for me to know what the state of their mind is. And I cannot tell them, "It was not I", for it was I! Only they have changed this in their own way, which is at times quite surprising! Still, in the present instance, the image is very fine.

Here we are, my children, anything else?

Sweet Mother, last week I had a dream.

Very well, tell us.

It was an afternoon after a storm and I was on the seashore. The sea had receded very far and there was a village where I saw horses of stone. There were four horses, perhaps, in black stone, and above them there was a white horse, in marble perhaps, and this one was shining with many colours.

It was when the sea had receded?

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Yes.

Was it local or general? I mean, was it any sea or the sea here? Were you on the shore here?

It was at the Tennis Ground.

Oh! You were watching from the Tennis Ground?

Yes. I could see the lighthouse also.

The lighthouse. Four black horses and one white horse.

The number is not certain.

Ah!

The white horse was one alone.

Necessarily.

Perhaps it concerns the future of Pondicherry. It is a pity you don't remember the number. It could have given an indication. There had been a kind of tempest?

Yes, a storm.

And the sea had receded afterwards?

Yes.

Ah! It is symbolical.

The sky was then very clear.

Yes, yes. After the storm the sky clears up.

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I can't tell definitively because some information is missing. But still, it concerns perhaps the future of Pondicherry. We shall see that.

But you can tell the future of Pondicherry without the dream!

Without the dream? (Laughter) Ah!

Very well, for the moment we are in the storm. We shall see when the sea recedes. (Laughter)

(Another child) I had a dream in which I went for blessings and you gave me three flowers: "mental honesty", next "surrender", and last, I think, "quiet mind".

It is very good. It is very necessary! (Laughter)

It is a fact. You have only to take it like that and make an effort to have a quiet mind, see that this mind surrenders and becomes perfectly honest. It is very good, it is a programme—and later to be concentrated on.

Voilà, my children, is that all?

I think we shall stop.

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