Questions and Answers (1955)

6 July 1955

Mother reads from Lights on Yoga, "Planes and Parts of the Being".

Sweet Mother, here it is written: "Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is close." Then, Mother, what happens to the central being afterwards?

This depends absolutely on the different instances. We said that the central being and the psychic being are the same thing but the part which stays and is in the Divine stays and is in the Divine. The psychic is the delegate of this Divine in the earth life, for the growth on earth. But the part of the central being which is identified with the Divine remains identified with the Divine and does not change. Even during life it is identified with the Divine, and after death it remains what it was in life, for it this makes no difference. It is the psychic being which has alternations of experience and assimilation, experience and assimilation. But the Jivatman is in the Divine and remains in the Divine, and doesn't move from there; and it is not progressive. It is in the Divine, it is identified with the Divine, it remains identified with the Divine, not separated. It makes no difference to it, whether there is an earthly body or not.

Then, Sweet Mother, is everyone's central being the same?

No, for we are told that it is identified in multiplicity. It is the eternal truth of each being. From one point of view they are identical, from another they are multiple; because the truth of each being is an individual truth, but it is identified with the

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Divine. It is outside the manifestation but it is the origin of the manifestation. It is a unity which is not a uniformity.

It is indeed the same thing that I was explaining last time; each one is different and yet each one is identical. If you approach the Divine from various angles, He seems to you different, because of the angle from which you approach Him. It is the same thing for the Manifested. But in this angle it is all the same, if I may say so, the complete unity of the Divine which one attains. It is the meeting point which is different but beyond the meeting point it is a single totality.

It is very difficult to put it in words. But it is an experience which one can have. It is as though there were innumerable doors or paths by which one could reach the Divine. So when one approaches he does so from a certain angle, he enters by a certain door, but as soon as he has gone right in, he realises that it is a single oneness, it is only the path leading to it or the particular approach which is different.

Sweet Mother, "the Jivatman ... the moment it presides over the dynamics of the manifestation, knows itself as one centre of the multiple Divine, not as the Parameshwara."

That's exactly what I have just said. I am not going to begin all over again.

What?

Sweet Mother, when Sri Aurobindo was in Alipore,¹ Vivekananda came for fifteen days and explained something special to him. What part of Vivekananda was it, the psychic being or the atman?

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It could very well be his mind. It could very well be the mind because he had unified his mind around his psychic being. Therefore his mind could continue to exist indefinitely. It partakes of the immortality of the psychic being. It could very well be his mind.

Mother, can one enter into communion with his Jivatman without the ego being dissolved?

That's what Sri Aurobindo says. He says that the ego survives the physical life, the bodily life; this is perfectly correct. There is a vital ego and a mental ego which can continue to exist for quite a long time. But one can have experiences without the ego being dissolved. Otherwise who would have experiences? How many people are there who have dissolved their ego? There can't be very many, I think.

When one has an experience it is as though one went through his ego to have his experience, and one can, if he continues, end up by diminishing the hardness—the obscurity and hardness—of the ego, making it more and more plastic and permeable by multiplying the experiences. That's something one feels very clearly, that one passes through something like a hard shell which prevents him from having the experience; one passes through, has the experience, and when he comes back, he again has the impression of going through a shell which shuts him in, imprisons him for a long time. That's how it is. But those who have succeeded in entering consciously into contact with their psychic being can keep this contact...

To pass completely to the other side of the ego so that it no longer intervenes, a fairly long time is needed, it doesn't happen at all immediately. And then you feel that thing which, seen from within, suffocates you; and seen from outside it has an insignificant consistency, but it prevents the being from feeling integrally the intensity of the experience; it is like a layer which diminishes the intensity of the vibrations and the intensity of the

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consciousness, and you feel that. You feel it as something very fixed and very opaque. Many people certainly have experiences but they don't remember them; that's because when they pass through this layer of the ego, they forget everything, they lose everything, lose the memory of their experience. But when one has formed the habit, perhaps the memory is a little dimmed, hasn't the intensity and exactness, but it remains.

Is that all? Nothing else?

Mother, the other day you said that when one thinks of someone or something, one part of this thought goes there at once.

Yes.

For example, I think of someone who is in Calcutta, then if my thought goes there, I ought to have the knowledge of...

Thought is only conscious of thought in the mental world. So you can become very conscious of the mental atmosphere of Calcutta, of the thought of the person to whom you go, but of nothing else, absolutely nothing that has to do with the vital and physical.

To be conscious of the vital you must go there in the vital, and this is already an exteriorisation which leaves the body at least more than three-fourths in trance. And if you want to see things physically, you must go out in your most material subtle physical and then here you leave your body in a cataleptic state; and these things are not to be done without someone being with you who understands them and can guard you.

But the mental exteriorisation occurs constantly. It puts you in contact only with the mental world. Perhaps if you are very conscious and the person you go to see is very conscious, and if at that moment he has formed opinions or ideas about something

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happening in Calcutta, then you can become conscious of the ideas of this person on what is happening—indirectly—but you are not directly conscious of the thing.

Mother, when one imagines something, does it not exist?

When you imagine something, it means that you make a mental formation which may be close to the truth or far from the truth—it also depends upon the quality of your formation. You make a mental formation and there are people who have such a power of formation that they succeed in making what they imagine real. There are not many of these but there are some. They imagine something and their formation is so well made and so powerful that it succeeds in being realised. These are creators; there are not many of them but there are some.

If one thinks of someone who doesn't exist or who is dead?

Ah! What do you mean? What have you just said? Someone who doesn't exist or someone who is dead? These are two absolutely different things.

I mean someone who is dead.

Someone who is dead!

If this person has remained in the mental domain, you can find him immediately. Naturally if he is no longer in the mental domain, if he is in the psychic domain, to think of him is not enough. You must know how to go into the psychic domain to find him. But if he has remained in the mental domain and you think of him, you can find him immediately, and not only that, but you can have a mental contact with him and a kind of mental vision of his existence.

The mind has a capacity of vision of its own and it is not the

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same vision as with these eyes, but it is a vision, it is a perception in forms. But this is not imagination. It has nothing to do with imagination.

Imagination, for instance, is when you begin to picture to yourself an ideal being to whom you apply all your conceptions, and when you tell yourself, "Why, it should be like this, like that, its form should be like this, its thought like that, its character like that," when you see all the details and build up the being. Now, writers do this all the time because when they write a novel, they imagine. There are those who take things from life but there are those who are imaginative, creators; they create a character, a personage and then put him in their book later. This is to imagine. To imagine, for example, a whole concurrence of circumstances, a set of events, this is what I call telling a story to oneself. But it can be put down on paper, and then one becomes a novelist. There are very different kinds of writers. Some imagine everything, some gather all sorts of observations from life and construct their book with them. There are a hundred ways of writing a book. But indeed some writers imagine everything from beginning to end. It all comes out of their head and they construct even their whole story without any support in things physically observed. This truly is imagination. But as I say, if they are very powerful and have a considerable capacity for creation, it is possible that one day or other there will be a physical human being who realises their creation. This too is true.

What do you suppose imagination is, eh? Have you never imagined anything, you?

And what happens?

All that one imagines.

You mean that you imagine something and it happens like that, eh? Or it is in a dream...

What is the function, the use of the imagination?

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If one knows how to use it, as I said, one can create for oneself his own inner and outer life; one can build his own existence with his imagination, if one knows how to use it and has a power. In fact it is an elementary way of creating, of forming things in the world. I have always felt that if one didn't have the capacity of imagination he would not make any progress. Your imagination always goes ahead of your life. When you think of yourself, usually you imagine what you want to be, don't you, and this goes ahead, then you follow, then it continues to go ahead and you follow. Imagination opens for you the path of realisation. People who are not imaginative—it is very difficult to make them move; they see just what is there before their nose, they feel just what they are moment by moment and they cannot go forward because they are clamped by the immediate thing. It depends a good deal on what one calls imagination. However...

Men of science must be having imagination!

A lot. Otherwise they would never discover anything. In fact, what is called imagination is a capacity to project oneself outside realised things and towards things realisable, and then to draw them by the projection. One can obviously have progressive and regressive imaginations. There are people who always imagine all the catastrophes possible, and unfortunately they also have the power of making them come. It's like the antennae going into a world that's not yet realised, catching something there and drawing it here. Then naturally it is an addition to the earth atmosphere and these things tend towards manifestation. It is an instrument which can be disciplined, can be used at will; one can discipline it, direct it, orientate it. It is one of the faculties one can develop in himself and render serviceable, that is, use it for definite purposes.

Sweet Mother, can one imagine the Divine and have the contact?

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Certainly if you succeed in imagining the Divine you have the contact, and you can have the contact with what you imagine, in any case. In fact it is absolutely impossible to imagine something which doesn't exist somewhere. You cannot imagine anything at all which doesn't exist somewhere. It is possible that it doesn't exist on the earth, it is possible that it's elsewhere, but it is impossible for you to imagine something which is not already contained in principle in the universe; otherwise it could not occur.

Then, Sweet Mother, this means that in the created universe nothing new is added?

In the created universe? Yes. The universe is progressive; we said that constantly things manifest, more and more. But for your imagination to be able to go and seek beyond the manifestation something which will be manifested, well, it may happen, in fact it does—I was going to tell you that it is in this way that some beings can cause considerable progress to be made in the world, because they have the capacity of imagining something that's not yet manifested. But there are not many. One must first be capable of going beyond the manifested universe to be able to imagine something which is not there. There are already many things which can be imagined.

What is our terrestrial world in the universe? A very small thing. Simply to have the capacity of imagining something which does not exist in the terrestrial manifestation is already very difficult, very difficult. For how many billions of years hasn't it existed, this little earth? And there have been no two identical things. That's much. It is very difficult to go out from the earth atmosphere with one's mind; one can, but it is very difficult. And then if one wants to go out, not only from the earth atmosphere but from the universal life!

To be able simply to enter into contact with the life of the earth in its totality from the formation of the earth until now, what can this mean? And then to go beyond this and enter into

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contact with universal life from its beginnings up to now... and then again to be able to bring something new into the universe, one must go still farther beyond.

Not easy!

That's all?

(To the child) Convinced?

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