Questions and Answers (1956)

5 December 1956

Now we are going to read what should be done to realise what was expressed in the five preceding paragraphs:

"Transform reason into ordered intuition; let all thyself be light. This is thy goal.

"Transform effort into an even and sovereign over-flowing of the soul-strength; let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy goal.

"Transform enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy; let all thyself be bliss. This is thy goal.

"Transform the divided individual into the world-personality; let all thyself be the divine. This is thy goal.

"Transform the animal into the Driver of the herds; let all thyself be Krishna. This is thy goal."

Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Glimpses, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 377

This is what ought to be done.

I believe there is no need for any explanations, it is quite clear.... Unless you have some questions? Yes? (To a child) Very well, ask your question.

Here it is written: "Transform enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy"?

Yes, this means that it has no cause.

Usually one feels pleasure or joy or enjoyment due to this thing or due to that—from the most material things to things psychological or even mental. For example, to take a mental thing, you read a sentence which gives you a great joy, for it brings you a light, a new understanding; so that joy is a joy which has an object, it is because you read that sentence that

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you feel this joy, if you had not read the sentence, you would not have felt the joy. In the same way, when you hear beautiful music or when you see a beautiful picture or a beautiful landscape, that brings you joy; without those things you would not have felt that joy; it is these which brought you the joy. It is a joy which has an object, which has a cause.

What Sri Aurobindo says is that this enjoying, this joy, this pleasure, on whatever level it be, high or low, must be replaced by an inner bliss which is communicated to the whole being and is continuous, "even", that is, something that needs no reason, no cause for its existence. The cause is the contact with the divine Bliss which is everywhere and in all things. So once you are in relation with this universal and eternal Bliss, you no longer need an outer object, an outer cause to have joy; it is objectless, and being objectless it can be continuous, "even". Whatever the outer circumstances, whatever you may be doing, you are in the same state of joy, for this joy does not depend upon outer things, it depends upon your inner condition. You have found the source of joy in yourself, that is, the divine Presence, communion with the Divine; and having found this source of joy in yourself, you need nothing else, nothing whatsoever to have this joy. And as it has no cause, it does not cease; it is a constant state.

(To the child) Do you understand? Not very well? Yes—ah!

Does anyone else have a question on what I have just read?

The last paragraph, Sweet Mother: "Transform the animal into the Driver of the herds; let all thyself be Krishna."

Oh! that is an image.

The animal—that's all the instincts of the physical being, the needs of the physical being and all the habits, all the impulses, all the movements of the physical being, the need for food, the

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need for sleep, the need for activity, indeed all that constitutes the animal part of the being. And then Sri Aurobindo gives the image of Krishna, whom he describes as the Driver of the herds, which is only an image; this means that it is the divine Consciousness which takes possession of all the activities of the physical being and directs and guides all those activities, all its needs, which controls and governs all the movements of the physical animal in man. Sri Aurobindo uses what could be called Indian mythology, taking Krishna as the symbol of the Divine and the herds as the symbol of the animal instincts and animal needs of man. So instead of being one of the animals of the herd, you become the one who leads the herds and governs all their movements instead of allowing them to dominate him.... One is bound; in ordinary life one is bound to all these activities of the physical life and all the needs it represents—the need for food, sleep, activity, rest, etc.—well, instead of being an animal, that is, one subjected to these things and obliged to submit to them, one becomes the Driver of the herd whom Sri Aurobindo calls Krishna, that is, the Divine who takes possession of all the movements of the being and guides and leads them in accordance with the divine Truth.

Sweet Mother, when one has a world-personality, does one still need the individual personality?

Need?... I don't understand.

What is its use?

But it is the individual personality which is transformed into the world-personality. Instead of having the sense of the individual as he ordinarily is—this altogether limited individual who is one little person amidst so many millions and millions of others, a little separate person—instead of feeling like that, this separate

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isolated individual, this little person amidst all the others, becomes aware of the world-individuality, the world-personality, and naturally becomes divine. It is a transformation. It is one thing being transformed into the other.

And Sri Aurobindo does not mean that one loses one's body, he does not speak of the body; he speaks of the vital consciousness, the psychological consciousness, the sense of the separate individual. Just think, you, child, you are one person amidst so many others, aren't you? Well, instead of being like that, you feel you are the world-personality; this sense of division and separation goes away, this limitation disappears. But you remain in your body, you are not compelled necessarily to lose your body; the body is something else.

And it is precisely the body that he is speaking about in the last paragraph: "Transform the animal into the Driver of the herds." When one becomes a divine consciousness, a divine personality, then one can become the master of all the bodily activities, because one is superior to them; one is not bound to these activities, not subject to them, one dominates them, one has a greater consciousness than that of the individual, of the little separate individual; one can make just a little more progress and instead of being subject to all these animal needs of the being, one dominates them. But these are not two consciousnesses, one superimposed on the other, it is one consciousness being transformed into another.

(Looking at the child) I am afraid she doesn't understand at all! She is looking at me completely bewildered!

You are wondering how in a body like this, you can be different from what you are? Well, you can! (Laughing) It is something that can happen!

(Silence)

(Mother looks at some written questions.) Here is the exact complement of your question. I am asked:

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"What are the characteristic features of a world-personality?"

The most characteristic feature is precisely this change of consciousness. Instead of feeling like a little, isolated person, separated from others, one feels one is a universal person, containing all others and intimately united and identified with all others.

And I am asked:

"How does this person speak and act?"

Speak!... The question is not very well put, for if you ask how he speaks, well, he speaks as everybody does, with his voice, his tongue, his mouth and with words! If you were to ask what is the nature of what he says... obviously, if he expresses the state of consciousness in which he lives, he expresses a universal state of consciousness, and seeing things in a different way from ordinary men, he will express them differently, in accordance with what he sees and feels. As for acting... if all the parts of his being are in harmony, his action will obviously express his state of consciousness.

Now, there are people who have very decisive experiences in one part of their being, but these are not necessarily translated, or at least not immediately, in the other parts of their being. It is possible that through sadhana or concentration or through Grace, somebody has attained the consciousness of a world-personality, but that he still continues to act physically in quite an ordinary, nondescript way, because he has not taken care to unify his whole being, and though one part of his being is universally conscious, as soon as he begins to eat, to sleep, walk, act, he does this like all human animals. That may happen. So, it is again a purely personal question, it depends on each one, on his stage of development.

But if it is someone who has taken care to unify his being,

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to identify all its parts with the central truth, then naturally he will act with a total absence of egoism, with an understanding of others, an understanding which comes to him from his identification with others—and so he will act like a sage. But that depends on the care he has taken to unify his whole being around the central consciousness.

For example, to take the most positively material things like food and sleep: it is quite possible that, if he has not taken care to infuse, as it were, his new consciousness into his body, his need for food and sleep will remain almost the same and that he won't have much control over them. On the other hand, if he has taken care to unify his being and has infused his consciousness into the elements constituting his body, well, his sleep will be a conscious sleep and of a universal kind; he will be able to know at will what goes on here or anywhere, in this person or that other, in this corner of the world or any other; and his consciousness, being universal, will naturally put him in contact with all the things he wants to know. Instead of having a sleep that's unconscious and useless, except from a purely material point of view, he will have a productive and altogether conscious sleep.

For food it will be the same thing. Instead of being a slave to his needs, usually in almost entire ignorance of what he needs, well, he will be perfectly conscious, at once of the needs of his body and the means of governing them. He will be able to control his needs and rule them, transform them according to the necessity of what he wants to do.

But this requires a great self-mastery and the realisation of what Sri Aurobindo says in this last paragraph, that is, instead of remaining below, subject to the laws of Nature, dominated by these laws and compelled to submit to them, failing which one is completely unbalanced, one becomes the master, one looks at these things from above, knows the truth of these things and imposes it upon the body which should normally accept it without any difficulty.

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Anything else on the same subject?

Mother, what does "ordered intuition" mean? ("Transform reason into ordered intuition.")

Ordered intuition.... For at the beginning, when one enters into contact with the realm of intuition, it is a sort of spasmodic contact; that is, from time to time, for more or less explicable or conscious reasons, one suddenly has an intuition or is possessed by the spirit of intuition; but it is not methodical, not a phenomenon which occurs at will, organised and obeying a central will. But Sri Aurobindo says that if the entire reason is transformed—he speaks of transformation, you know—if the reason is transformed into the very essence, the substance of intuition, then the whole inner movement of the inner mind becomes a movement of intuition, organised as the reason is organised, that is, it becomes active at will, answers all needs and comes into the being in accordance with a methodical system. It is not something which appears and disappears one doesn't know how or why; it is the result of the transformation of the reason, which is the higher part of the human mind, into a light higher than the mental light, a light of intuition. So it becomes ordered, organised, instead of being spasmodic and uncoordinated.

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