Questions and Answers (1955)

16 March 1955

This talk is based upon Bases of Yoga, Chapter 5, "Physical Consciousness, etc.". This evening the reading ends with the following lines:

"The subconscient is the main cause why all things repeat themselves and nothing ever gets changed except in appearance. It is the cause why people say character cannot be changed, the cause also of the constant return of things one hoped to have got rid of for ever... All too that is suppressed without being wholly got rid of sinks down there and remains as seed ready to surge up or sprout up at any moment."

But it is not hopeless, because if it were hopeless never could we attain physical transformation.

There.

Now, questions.

Sweet Mother, how should we reject something in the vital so that it doesn't enter the subconscient?

Ah!

There is a great difference between pushing back a thing simply because one doesn't want it and changing the state of one's consciousness which makes the thing totally foreign to one's nature. Usually, when one has a movement one doesn't want, one drives it away or pushes it back, but one doesn't take the precaution of finding within oneself what has served and still serves as a support for this movement, the particular tendency, the fold of the consciousness which enables this thing to enter the consciousness. If, on the contrary, instead of simply making

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a movement of reprobation and rejection, one enters deeply into his vital consciousness and finds the support, that is, a kind of particular little vibration buried very deeply in a corner, often in such a dark corner that it is difficult to find it there; if one starts hunting it down, that is, if one goes within, concentrates, follows as it were the trail of this movement to its origin, one finds something like a very tiny serpent coiled up, something at times quite tiny, not bigger than a pea, but very black and sunk very deeply.

And then there are two methods: either to put so intense a light, the light of a truth-consciousness so strong, that this will be dissolved; or else to catch the thing as with pincers, pull it out from its place and hold it up before one's consciousness. The first method is radical but one doesn't always have at his disposal this light of truth, so one can't always use it. The second method can be taken, but it hurts, it hurts as badly as the extraction of a tooth; I don't know if you have ever had a tooth pulled out, but it hurts as much as that, and it hurts here, like that. (Mother shows the centre of the chest and makes a movement of twisting.) And usually one is not very courageous. When it hurts very much, well, one tries to efface it like this (gesture) and that is why things persist. But if one has the courage to take hold of it and pull it until it comes out and to put it before himself, even if it hurts very much... to hold it up like this (gesture) until one can see it clearly, and then dissolve it, then it is finished. The thing will never again hide in the subconscient and will never again return to bother you. But this is a radical operation. It must be done like an operation.

You must first have a great deal of perseverance in the search, for usually when one begins searching for these things the mind comes to give a hundred and one favourable explanations for your not needing to search. It tells you, "Why no, it is not at all your fault; it is this, it is that, it is the circumstances, it is the people, these are things received from outside—all kinds of excellent excuses, which, unless you are very firm in your resolution, make you let go, and then it is finished; and so, after

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a short time the whole business has to be started again, the bad impulse or the thing you didn't want, the movement you didn't want, comes back, and so you must begin everything over again—till the day you decide to perform the operation. When the operation is done it is over, one is free. But, as I said, you must distrust mental explanations, because each time one says, "Yes, yes, at other times it was like that, but this time truly, truly it is not my fault, it is not my fault." There you are. So it is finished. You must begin again. The subconscient is there, the thing goes down, remains there, very comfortably, and the first day you are not on your guard, hop! it surges up again and it can last—I knew people for whom it lasted more than thirty-five years, because they did not resolve even once to do what was necessary.

Yes, it hurts, it hurts a little, that's all; afterwards it is finished. So there we are.

Nothing?... Nobody has anything to say? You, no? You have something to ask, you?

Outside the subject.

Outside the subject? This subject includes everything. So how can it be outside the subject? The subconscient, we are told, is universal.

Mother, when one is here and is following the integral yoga here, isn't...

"One is here" means "one is in the Ashram" or "one is in the class"? In the class? No! (Laughter)

We are in the class and in the Ashram also.

Ah, good! So?

Is it sure that in the next life too one will be here or in

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the Ashram? Or will it be that one will go somewhere else for other experiences?

This depends on the cases. First, what do you call the next life? You mean for people who have left their body and will take another?

Yes.

Well, it depends absolutely on the condition in which they died and their last wish, and on the resolution of the psychic. It is not a mechanical or imposed thing, it is different for each one.

I have already told you many times that, for the destiny which follows after death, the last state of consciousness is usually the most important. That is, if at the moment of death one has the intense aspiration to return to continue his work, then the conditions are arranged for it to be done. But, you see, there are all the possibilities for what happens after death. There are people who return in the psychic. You see, I have told you that the outer being is very rarely preserved; so we speak only of the psychic consciousness which, indeed, always persists. And then there are people for whom the psychic returns to the psychic domain to assimilate the experience they have had and to prepare their future life. This may take centuries, it depends on the people.

The more evolved the psychic is, the nearer it is to its complete maturity, the greater the time between the births. There are beings who reincarnate only after a thousand years, two thousand years.

The closer one is to the beginning of the formation, the closer are the reincarnations; and sometimes even, altogether at the lower level, when man is quite near the animal, it goes like this (gesture), that is, it is not unusual for people to reincarnate in the children of their children, like that, something like that, or just in the next generation. But this is always on a very primitive

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level of evolution, and the psychic being is not very conscious, it is in the state of formation. And as it becomes more developed, the reincarnations, as I said, are at a greater distance from one another. When the psychic being is fully developed, when it no longer needs to return to earth for its development, when it is absolutely free, it has the choice between no longer coming back to earth if it finds that its work lies elsewhere or if it prefers to remain in the purely psychic consciousness, without reincarnating; or else it can come when it wants, as it wants, where it wants, perfectly consciously. And there are those who have united with forces of a universal order and with entities of the Overmind or elsewhere, who remain all the time in the earth atmosphere and take on bodies successively for the work. This means that the moment the psychic being is completely formed and absolutely free—it when it is completely formed it becomes absolutely free—it can do anything it likes, it depends on what it chooses; therefore one can't say, "It will be like this, it will be like that"; it does exactly what it wants and it can even announce (that has happened), at the moment of the death of the body, what its next reincarnation will be and what it will do, and already choose what it is going to do. But before this state, which is not very frequent—it depends absolutely on the degree of development of the psychic and the hope formulated by the integral consciousness of the being—there is still the mental, vital and physical consciousness, united with the psychic consciousness; so at that moment, the moment of death, the moment of leaving the body, it formulates a hope or an aspiration or a will, and usually this decides the future life.

So one can't ask a question saying, "What happens and what should be done?" All possible things happen, and everything can be done.

Everyone has one thing in mind: he asks a general question but in his mind it is an altogether particular question; but this—these things one does not discuss in public.

(Mother turns to Pavitra) Pavitra, you have a question?

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(Pavitra answers that he hasn't) Ah, that's a pity.

Mother, here it is said that the light of truth is not always at one's disposal...

It is always there; but one can't always use it.

But if...

It is always there; it is everywhere; but it is not at your disposal in the sense that you don't know how to make use of it.

But if one went to you to ask how?

Ah! But one must not ask personal questions. Of course if you ask me, "What should I do?"—anyone at all among you—I shall tell you, "My children, it is very easy, you have only to call me, and then when you feel the contact, well, you put it upon the thing till that part has understood."

But here too you must know, it hurts a little; I am warning you, you see, because the thing is clinging somewhere, and in order to pull it out you must have courage; and when you put the light of truth, well, it burns, sometimes it smarts, you see; you must know how to bear it. The sincerity must be sufficient to... instead of shutting yourself up again and saying, "Oh! It hurts", you must open very wide and receive fully.

Some people have all kinds of little things like this in their head, dark little things. Some people have them here (Mother points to the heart), others have them lower down, for each one it depends... but for each one it is the same thing, it is always... I am saying this because it is very remarkable that if one does the work—whoever it may be—the result is always the same, wherever it may be, whether in the head or the chest or in all the centres of consciousness, if one pushes the investigation far enough, step by step, step by step, untiringly, one always reaches

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something; from far it looks like a pea... like the peas... a little black pea; but if one draws near carefully enough—it depends on the degree of concentration—one perceives that it is like a very tiny... serpent, the size of a microbe, but it is very small, all coiled up like that, rolled upon itself like that. Then one takes it by the tail and pulls it out.

Sweet Mother, are there as many serpents as bad movements?

Yes, precisely! (Laughter) That makes a lot, quite an army. When it is in the head it is troublesome, because it is still more difficult to discover them, and one is so full of wrong ideas that it is very difficult to put any order in there. Where it is easiest to find and cure is here (Mother shows the centre of the chest), but it is there that it hurts most; however it is the place where one finds it most easily and cures it most radically. Lower down in the vital it is more obscure and entangled—it is quite muddled. It is all mixed up and there are many of these things—when they are there, there are many. You must put some order there first before finding them. There are some which are entangled like this (gesture). For example, many people have the tendency to fly into a rage—suddenly it takes possession of them. Pouff! They get terribly angry. It is here that one must look for the cause; and here it is all entangled, like this, all mixed up, and one must go very deep and very fast because this spreads with the swiftness of a flood; and when it has spread, it is quite a mass of... like a black smoke which rises and burdens the consciousness, and it is very, very difficult to put any order in there. But when one feels that the fury is going to rise up, if one hurries there immediately like that in the vital centre, and goes there with a torch which lights up well, one can find the corner. If one finds the corner, hop! one does this, gets hold of it, and it is finished, the anger falls instantaneously, even before one has had the time to say a word. I give this example; there are hundreds of others.

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All affairs of feelings, vanity, ambition, passion—passion... yes, but still not only material passion: I mean (I don't like to use the word because it is a travesty, but still) what men call love—all that, it is there one finds it, all attachments, all sentimentality, all this, it is in there.

And in the head?

Ah! In the head it is all the perversions of thought, all the treacheries—treacheries, there is a huge number of them: one betrays one's soul so often and so persistently, it is frightful—all the decisions, the points of view and favourable explanations, as I was telling you, and then a kind of habit of criticizing... What one doesn't want to hear, when there is something higher which makes you feel your fault, there is a habit of immediately finding an explanation and a severe criticism of the idea or thought; or else some people turn it into ridicule; there are people who immediately oppose it with another idea or some commonplace notion or other. You can't imagine the bazaar there is in the head! It is something terrible. If you were to look really objectively at what is going on in there, it is frightful—before you put some order, see clearly, arrange all that, see that two contradictory ideas are not lined up parallel.

I know a large number of people who shelter in their minds contradictory ideas, not organised or synthesized—there is no question of a synthesis for them—but like... an almost fraternal cohabitation among things which are mortally opposed, that is, ideas which cannot lodge together. You can arrange them in a vast synthesis but that of course is a work of a higher order; yet two things, two ideas which have absolutely contradictory consequences in action and are absolutely contradictory explanations of the same fact... and these two things are there, side by side, they are even sometimes so close that one feels they are joined and live together without being troubled by the ridiculousness of their association.

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I should one day give you a series of examples. Very often I tell you this, I have never given any examples; but one day I shall collect a number of examples for you and then give them to you. You will see this; if it were not sad it would be funny. Most men who have this don't even notice it, it does not trouble them. If you have some ideas about things—you should surely have some ideas about things, about the world, about life, about the purpose of existence, the aim of existence, the future realisation; in fact you do have many ideas—well, try this little game one day: put all these ideas before yourself, like this, and then arrange them; you will see how easy it will be and you will perhaps have much fun; you will find surprising things.

Already, this work alone, just this work of bringing them out, of simply putting them side by side in front of you, all the ideas you have on any subject whatever, as though you were obliged to write them out as an exercise—you see, a composition you are asked to write: "What do you think of this thing, this subject?" and you are obliged to make a draft of it—put all the ideas side by side, and you will see, it will be amusing. Unless you are in the habit of having a central idea, if possible a fixed central truth around which you arrange all the ideas, you organise them in a logical order with the right relation between each of them, each one in its place, and you make a kind of monument of it—if you have never done this and you try to read in your mind, you will see something there, really. In fact, I tell you, if it were not sad it would be very funny. One can't imagine to what an extent one can, within the space of an hour, think about the most contradictory things, and without any astonishment.

It is a good exercise to put it down: All right, I am going to write a short essay on "What is... (take this, take anything at all, it doesn't matter), what is the goal life aims at?" Or else "What is the purpose of existence upon earth?" or "Why are men born in order to die?" anything at all, take things like that. I don't say take "Why did you play football today and will play

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basketball tomorrow?" no, not things like that, because these you can always explain. I am speaking to you of things a little more general. Put that before you and then line up the ideas you have on the subject, you will see it will be amusing.

Sometimes while reading a text one has ideas, then Sweet Mother, how can one distinguish between the other person's idea and one's own?

Oh! This, this doesn't exist, the other person's idea and one's own idea.

Nobody has ideas of his own: it is an immensity from which one draws according to his personal affinity; ideas are a collective possession, a collective wealth.

Only, there are different stages. So there is the most common level, the one where all our brains bathe; this indeed swarms here, it is the level of "Mr. Everybody". And then there is a level that's slightly higher for people who are called thinkers. And then there are higher levels still—many—some of them are beyond words but they are still domains of ideas. And then there are those capable of shooting right up, catching something which is like a light and making it come down with all its stock of ideas, all its stock of thoughts. An idea from a higher domain if pulled down organises itself and is crystallised in a large number of thoughts which can express that idea differently; and then if you are a writer or a poet or an artist, when you make it come lower down still, you can have all kinds of expressions, extremely varied and choice around a single little idea but one coming from very high above. And when you know how to do this, it teaches you to distinguish between the pure idea and the way of expressing it.

Some people cannot do it in their own head because they have no imagination or faculty for writing, but they can do it through study by reading what others have written. There are, you know, lots of poets, for instance, who have expressed the

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same idea—the same idea but with such different forms that when one reads many of them it becomes quite interesting to see (for people who love to read and read much). Ah, this idea, that one has said it like this, that other has expressed it like that, another has formulated it in this way, and so on. And so you have a whole stock of expressions which are expressions by different poets of the same single idea up there, above, high above. And you notice that there is an almost essential difference between the pure idea, the typal idea and its formulation in the mental world, even the speculative or artistic mental world. This is a very good thing to do when one loves gymnastics. It is mental gymnastics.

Well, if you want to be truly intelligent, you must know how to do mental gymnastics; as, you see, if you want really to have a fairly strong body you must know how to do physical gymnastics. It is the same thing. People who have never done mental gymnastics have a poor little brain, quite over-simple, and all their life they think like children. One must know how to do this—not take it seriously, in the sense that one shouldn't have convictions, saying, "This idea is true and that is false; this formulation is correct and that one is not and this religion is the true one and that religion is false", and so on and so forth... this, if you enter into it, you become absolutely stupid.

But if you can see all that and, for example, take all the religions, one after another and see how they have expressed the same aspiration of the human being for some Absolute, it becomes very interesting; and then you begin... yes, you begin to be able to juggle with all that. And then when you have mastered it all, you can rise above it and look at all the eternal human discussions with a smile. So there you are master of the thought and can no longer fly into a rage because someone else does not think as you, something that's unfortunately a very common malady here.

Now, there we are. Nobody has any questions, no?

That's enough? Finished!

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