Questions and Answers (1957-1958)

23 January 1957

"The meeting of man and God must always mean a penetration and entry of the Divine into the human and a self-immergence of man in the Divinity.

"But that immergence is not in the nature of an annihilation. Extinction is not the fulfilment of all this search and passion, suffering and rapture. The game would never have been begun if that were to be its ending.

"Delight is the secret. Learn of pure delight and thou shalt learn of God.

"What then was the commencement of the whole matter? Existence that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being and plunged into numberless trillions of forms so that it might find itself innumerably.

"And what is the middle? Division that strives towards a multiple unity, ignorance that labours towards a flood of varied light, pain that travails towards the touch of an unimaginable ecstasy. For all these things are dark figures and perverse vibrations.

"And what is the end of the whole matter? As if honey could taste itself and all its drops together and all its drops could taste each other and each the whole honeycomb as itself, so should the end be with God and the soul of man and the universe.

"Love is the key-note, Joy is the music, Power is the strain, Knowledge is the performer, the infinite All is the composer and audience. We know only the preliminary discords which are as fierce as the harmony shall be great; but we shall arrive surely at the fugue of the divine Beatitudes."

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Thoughts and Glimpses, SABCL, Vol. 16, p. 384

How can one "learn of pure delight"?

First of all, to begin with, one must through an attentive observation grow aware that desires and the satisfaction of desires give only a vague, uncertain pleasure, mixed, fugitive and altogether unsatisfactory. That is usually the starting-point.

Then, if one is a reasonable being, one must learn to discern what is desire and refrain from doing anything that may satisfy one's desires. One must reject them without trying to satisfy them. And so the first result is exactly one of the first observations stated by the Buddha in his teaching: there is an infinitely greater delight in conquering and eliminating a desire than in satisfying it. Every sincere and steadfast seeker will realise after some time, sooner or later, at times very soon, that this is an absolute truth, and that the delight felt in overcoming a desire is incomparably higher than the small pleasure, so fleeting and mixed, which may be found in the satisfaction of his desires. That is the second step.

Naturally, with this continuous discipline, in a very short time the desires will keep their distance and will no longer bother you. So you will be free to enter a little more deeply into your being and open yourself in an aspiration to... the Giver of Delight, the divine Element, the divine Grace. And if this is done with a sincere self-giving—something that gives itself, offers itself and expects nothing in exchange for its offering—one will feel that kind of sweet warmth, comfortable, intimate, radiant, which fills the heart and is the herald of Delight.

After this, the path is easy.

Sweet Mother, what is the true Delight of being?

That very one of which I am speaking!

Then, Sweet Mother, here when Sri Aurobindo speaks of

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an existence "that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being", what is this delight?

The delight of existing.

There comes a time when one begins to be almost ready, when one can feel in everything, every object, in every movement, in every vibration, in all the things around—not only people and conscious beings, but things, objects; not only trees and plants and living things, but simply any object one uses, the things around one—this delight, this delight of being, of being just as one is, simply being. And one sees that all this vibrates like that. One touches a thing and feels this delight. But naturally, I say, one must have followed the discipline I spoke about at the beginning; otherwise, so long as one has a desire, a preference, an attachment or affinities and repulsions and all that, one cannot—one cannot.

And so long as one finds pleasures—pleasure, well, yes, vital or physical pleasure in a thing—one cannot feel this delight. For this delight is everywhere. This delight is something very subtle. One moves in the midst of things and it is as though they were all singing to you their delight. There comes a time when it becomes very familiar in the life around you. Of course, I must admit that it is a little more difficult to feel it in human beings, because there are all their mental and vital formations which come into the field of perception and disturb it. There is too much of this kind of egoistic asperity which gets mixed with things, so it is more difficult to contact the Delight there. But even in animals one feels it; it is already a little more difficult than in plants. But in plants, in flowers, it is so wonderful! They speak all their joy, they express it. And as I said, in all familiar objects, the things around you, which you use, there is a state of consciousness in which each one is happy to be, just as it is. So at that moment one knows one has touched true Delight. And it is not conditioned. I mean it does not depend upon... it depends on nothing. It does not depend on outer circumstances,

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does not depend on a more or less favourable state, it does not depend on anything: it is a communion with the raison d'être of the universe.

And when this comes it fills all the cells of the body. It is not even a thing which is thought out—one does no reason, does not analyse, it is not that: it is a state in which one lives. And when the body shares in it, it is so fresh—so fresh, so spontaneous, so... it no longer turns back upon itself, there is no longer any sense of self-observation, of self-analysis or of analysing things. All that is like a canticle of joyous vibrations, but very, very quiet, without violence, without passion, nothing of all that. It is very subtle and very intense at the same time, and when it comes, it seems that the whole universe is a marvellous harmony. Even what is to the ordinary human consciousness ugly, unpleasant, appears marvellous.

Unfortunately, as I said, people, circumstances, all that, with all those mental and vital formations—that disturbs it all the time. Then one is obliged to return to this ignorant, blind perception of things. But otherwise, as soon as all this stops and one can get out of it... everything changes. As he says there, at the end: everything changes. A marvellous harmony. And it is all Delight, true Delight, real Delight.

This demands a little work.

And this discipline I spoke about, which one must undergo, if it is practised with the aim of finding Delight, the result is delayed, for an egoistic element is introduced into it, it is done with an aim and is no longer an offering, it is a demand, and then.... It comes, it will come, even if it takes much longer—when one asks nothing, expects nothing, hopes for nothing, when it is simply that, it is self-giving and aspiration, and the spontaneous need without any bargaining—the need to be divine, that's all.

Mother, will you explain this "drop of honey"?

Oh! the honey.... But that is an image, my child.

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He says: "If one could imagine...." It is simply to give a more concrete approach than intellectual abstractions. He says: If you can imagine, for example, a honeycomb, well.... a honeycomb which would have the capacity to taste itself and at the same time each drop of honey; not only to taste itself as honey, but to taste itself in each drop, being each drop of the honeycomb, and if each one of these drops could taste all the others, itself and all the others, and at the same time if each drop could taste, could have the taste of the whole honeycomb as if it were itself.

So, it would be a honeycomb capable of tasting itself and tasting in detail all the drops in the honeycomb, and each drop capable of tasting itself and all the others individually and the honeycomb as a whole, as itself.... It is a very precise image. Only you must have some power of imagination!

Like that I understand. I am asking what it means.

Honey is something delicious, isn't it? So, these are the sweetnesses of divine Delight.

And just now, when I was evoking this joy which is in things, spontaneous, simple, this joy which is at the heart of everything, well, for the physical body it has something truly... oh! naturally, the taste of honey is very crude and gross in comparison—but something like that, something extremely delicious. And very simple, very simple and very integral in its simplicity; very complete in its simplicity and yet very simple.

You see, this is not something to be thought out, one must have the power to evoke it, one must have some imagination. So, if one has this capacity, one can do that simply by reading, then one can understand.... It is an analogy, it is only an analogy, but it is an analogy which truly has a power of evocation.

But everyone will imagine something different, won't he, Mother?

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Obviously. But that doesn't matter! It will be good for him.

(Silence)

Is that all?

I had brought some questions I have been asked, but I think it is already rather late. (Mother glances at some questions.)

There is one which is terribly intellectual which we shall leave for another day. There is another... which is only a semblance, and then there is a third which is interesting but needs a detailed reply, and this evening it is already a little late.

However here is a question which can be answered very easily, it is from one of my own writings where it is said:

"It is a great mistake to suppose that the Divine Will always acts openly in the world."

And then in Sri Aurobindo's Synthesis of Yoga:

"If we see unity everywhere, if we recognise that all comes by the divine will... etc."

And something else, from my Prayers and Meditations:

"It is Thou who art the doer in each thing and each being, and he who is near enough to Thee to see Thee in all actions without exception, will know how to transform each act into a benediction."

10 December 1912

And so, I am asked how to reconcile these contradictions. But I don't see any contradiction. For in the first sentence it is said: "It is a great mistake to suppose that the Divine Will always acts openly in the world...." I should say: it is extremely rare for it to act openly. It always acts, but not openly. And when it acts

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openly, that is what men call "miracles". And it is something extremely rare. Most of the time it does not act openly, but that doesn't mean it does not act. It doesn't act openly, that's all. So there's no contradiction. That was all I meant. It is an altogether superficial contradiction arising from a misunderstanding of the words.

The Divine Will acts, but not openly. When it acts openly, well, men call that miracles. That's all. But that does not prevent it from acting.

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