Mother's Chronicles - Book Three

2

The Cosmic Tradition

They met 'ere long.'

By that time Mirra had read every available scrap of the Cosmic Philosophy. "Theon called it 'The Tradition'." She drank and she drank at this fount of knowledge. It seemed to her that she had long thirsted for something which was now being given to her in abundance. And she just could not get enough of it.

"You know," said Mother to Satprem, "the 'Cosmic' had quite an interesting action in my life. I was completely against 'God.' The European notion of God was utterly repulsive to me." She added picturesquely, "You see, the idea of God sitting placidly in his heaven, then creating the world, and next looking pleasurably at it, and later telling you, 'How well done it is!' 'Oh,' I said, 'I won't have that monster!'

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And naturally, at the same time, that prevented me from having any experience. But with the 'Cosmic Teaching' about the inner god — Théon's key idea was this: the inner god (Mother touched her breast), the one who is inside each of us —"brrf!" She made a gesture as if walls crumbled. "The experience was stunning. I am very grateful to him for it. That was the means; by following his instructions and seeking within my being, behind the solar plexus, I found. I found it, I had an experience ... an absolutely convincing experience.

"I had this experience before I came here. I had the experience before coming, before knowing Sri Aurobindo. So it was as though three-fourths of the work were done.... I didn't have the mental knowledge—my mental knowledge was nothing remarkable — but it's not necessary to the experience. If you are sincere, you get the experience without thinking —you DON'T need to think. But you have to be sincere."

What exactly was this Cosmic Tradition?

"An initiation given under the guise of stories," said Mother.

One day Satprem read aloud to Mother a few

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lines from Sri Aurobindo's Savitri (Book X, Canto 2).

"Not only is there hope for godheads pure; The violent and darkened deities Leaped down from the one breast in rage to find What the white gods had missed: they too are safe; A Mother's eyes are on them and her arms Stretched out in love desire her rebel sons."

He was on the point of putting a question to her, when Mother forestalled him.

"What did you want to know?" she said with a big smile. "What the white gods have missed?"

Mother laced her fingers together. "But I also remember that when I read the Tradition—before I met Sri Aurobindo ..." Leaving her sentence unfinished she gazed into space. "It was like a romantic novel, a romance, in a word quite an episodical story of the creation of the world, but how very evocative! That is where I got the first hint of the universal Mother's first four emanations, when the Lord delegated his creative power to the Mother. And it was identical with the ancient Indian tradition, but told almost like a nursery tale, anyone could understand it —it was an image. Like a movie picture, and very vivid."

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Many times Mother recounted the story of the Tradition, but each time with a slight variation, which depended on the subject she wanted to deal with and on her audience of the moment.

Right in the early fifties, a youngster wanted to know, "Where do gods come from?"

"There is a very ancient lore which narrates that," Mother readily replied. Then she addressed her brood, "I am going to tell it to you as it is told to children. That way you will understand."

We listened with rapt attention to her narrative.

"One day, 'God' decided to put himself forth, to objectify himself, in order to have the joy of knowing himself in detail. So, at first he emanated his Consciousness, instructing it to bring into being a universe. This Consciousness began by emanating four Beings, four individualities who really were wholly superior beings, of the highest Reality. These were: the Being of Consciousness, the Being of Love (or rather of Ananda), the Being of Life, and the Being of Light and Knowledge. But consciousness and light are the same thing. We have: Consciousness, Love and Ananda, Life, and Truth —that's the right word, Truth. And, of course,

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The joy of knowing himself .

they were supremely powerful Beings —you can well imagine! In this lore they are called the First Emanations, in other words the first formations. But each one became very much aware of its quality, its power, its capacity and its possibility, and at once forgot in its own way that it was only an emanation and an incarnation of the Supreme."

We sat up straighter. Listening to Mother was always full of the pleasure of the unexpected.

"So, this is what happened.

"When Light or Consciousness separated itself from the Divine Consciousness — that is, when it began to think itself as the divine consciousness and that there was nothing else than itself—suddenly it became darkness and unconsciousness.

"And when Life thought that the whole life was in itself and that there was no other life than its own, and that it was not at all dependent on the Supreme, then Life became death.

"And when Truth thought it contained the whole truth and that there was no other truth than itself, this Truth became falsehood.

"And when Love or Ananda was convinced that it

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itself was the supreme Ananda and that there was nothing else than itself and its bliss, it became suffering.

"That is how the world that ought to have been so beautiful became so ugly."

Our eyes were riveted on Mother's face.

"Then, when the Supreme Consciousness you may call her the Divine Mother, if you like - saw that, she was very much bothered, you see. She told herself, 'Really, it is not a success!' Then turning to the Divine, to God, the Supreme, she asked Him to come to her succour.

"She said, 'Look at what has happened. Now, what is to be done?'

"He said, 'Begin again. But contrive not to make such independent Beings! They must remain in contact with you, and, through you, with me.'"

Mother now replied to the youngster's question.

"Thus she created the gods who were quite docile, were not so conceited, and who began the creation of the world. But as the others had come before them, the gods encountered them at each step. Thus it is that the world changed into a ground of battle, of war, of strife, of suffering, of darkness and

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all the rest of the caboodle. And to make each new creation the gods had to fight with the others who had set out before them. The others had preceded them and had rushed into matter; they made all this disorder, and the gods had to repair all the disorder.

"There, that's where the gods came from. They are the Second Emanations."

Actually speaking, those original four rushing into matter had lost no time in peopling the world exponentially with their progenies. All of them thrive on conflict and have occupied every layer of the material consciousness. "Those four personalities," said Mother, "made innumerable emanations, they in turn made innumerable emanations, which made formations. Thus there are millions upon millions upon millions of them. And between them they got into a certain habit and have the logic of persevering in it; and they keep on not wanting any other rule than their own to govern. In India, they are called 'Asuras,' the beings of darkness. It is logic that makes them so. They began by going wrong, they continue."

However, she added happily, "Now, I must say that there are some that are changing their minds."

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"Mother," another young fellow asked, "the first four who changed, was it by chance or willfully?"

"No. What is chance?" Mother retorted.

"It is also narrated —so the story goes on, or rather begins —that the Divine wanted his creation to be a free creation. He wanted that whatever came out of him should be absolutely independent and free in order to be able to join him again in freedom and not under constraint. He didn't want them compelled to be faithful, compelled to be conscious, compelled to be obedient. It was imperative that they do it spontaneously, through knowledge and through conviction that it was much the better way. So, this world was created as a world of total freedom, of freedom of choice. Thus, at every moment, each one has the freedom of choice —but along with all the consequences. If you choose well, good; but if you choose badly, well, what happens will happen —that's what happened!"

We gulped.

"The Divine emanated himself, as though he were looking at himself—instead of being in a static state of inward concentration where everything is unmanifest, he projected it out of himself 'to see,' as

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though he wanted to see everything that was in him — in other words, infinite possibilities. So everything was possible. It happened like this, it could have happened differently. Besides, there's nothing to show that alongside our universe as it is, there do not exist other universes so different that they bear no relation with one another." Isn't there a hint of science fiction there? "It can very well be that our universe is not the sole exteriorization of the Divine. Ours is as we know it; there may be others in a much less deplorable state than this one!"

In this way, through her simple stories, Mother tried to acquaint her youthful audience with profound philosophical theories.

The audience was youthful not particularly agewise —some were fully grown men —but rather childish in its comprehension. It was this precisely that differentiated Satprem from the rest of us. She could talk to him about any and every subject under the sun —and even about unknown suns —and always meet with a response of comprehension. "In order to speak, I must have a receptive atmosphere."

Let us then be in that congenial company. After

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telling Satprem substantially the same story with slight variations, into which we need not go, Mother specified about the first four, "Instead of receiving indications for action from Him, that is, doing things in proper order, each one took off independently to do as it pleased. They were conscious of their own power, they could act and they acted. They forgot their Origin." It is due to this initial oblivion that they changed. "And instantly they were thrown headlong into what became Matter. According to Theon, the world as we know it is the result of that. And that was the Supreme himself in his first manifestation."

Therein lies the power, the force of the first burns, the Asuras.

"And once the world has become like that, become the vital world in all its darkness, and they from this vital world have created Matter, the supreme Mother sees," sparks of merriment danced in those great eyes, "the result of her first four emanations and she turns to the Supreme in a great entreaty:

" 'Now that this world is in such a dreadful state, it has to be saved! We cannot just leave it, can we? It has to be saved, the divine consciousness must

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be given back to it. What to do?'

"And the Supreme says, 'Thrust yourself into a new emanation of the ESSENCE of Love, down into the most material Matter.'

"That meant plunging into the earth —the earth had become a symbol and a representation of the whole drama. 'Plunge into Matter.' She plunged into Matter. And that became the primordial source of the Divine within material substance. And from there —as is so well described in Savitri— she begins to act as a leaven in Matter, raising it up from within."

Sri Aurobindo and Mother termed this essence of Divine Presence in matter, the 'psychic flame.'

"And at the same time that she plunged into the earth, there was a second series of emanations, the gods, to inhabit the intermediary zones between Sachchidananda and the earth. But these gods," her suppressed merriment came rippling out, "well, great care was taken to make them perfect, so they wouldn't give any trouble! Only they are a little," she crinkled her nose, "a little too perfect, aren't they? Yes, a bit too perfect —they never make mistakes, they always do exactly as they are told. In short, rather lacking in

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initiative." She half corrected herself, "They do have some, but ... I don't know how to put it. These gods have always seemed to me — not those described in the Puranas here, they are different . . . well, not so very different! But the way Théon presented them, they were much like a bunch of marshmallows! It's not that they had no power —they had a lot of power — but they lacked that psychic flame."

The Indian scriptures say that even the gods, if they want to progress, must take human birth. Otherwise they remain unchanged in their typal worlds.

Incidentally, the Puranic gods, though not as meek as a nun's hen, do tend to be ninnies. The slightest setback at the hands of the Asuras, and they run to Grandfather Brahma to be pulled out of their predicament.

Mother's reference to the Puranas may be puzzling to those unfamiliar with Indian mythology. There are eighteen major Puranas and as many minor ones. They were written at different epochs. The earliest one is attributed to Vyasa, the author of the epic Mahabharata, which would take us back several thousand years; a few were composed during the first

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millenium A.D. Etymologically, the word purana means ancient or old. To the discerning mind a deal of 'lost' Indian history is woven into the fabric of these books that cover such a vast period of time.

The Puranas give mythical accounts of creation. They expound the theory of spiritual evolution. Stating that the material world is not an integral totality, but only a grade in a gradation, they describe through parables and fables how the powers belonging to the whole and involved within its matter, descend into it "from the higher gradations of the system to set free their kindred movements here from the strictness of material limitation," as Sri Aurobindo put it. And the higher powers —the gods —always fall foul of the Asuras.

As for the stories from the Tradition, "They are not to be taken as concrete truths, they are simply first-rate images," Mother told Satprem. "Through them I really got hold, very concretely, of the truth of what caused the world's distortion.... The essence isn't evil, but the functioning is faulty.

"The words are so childish that if you tell this story to intelligent people, they look pityingly at you;

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but it gives such a concrete grasp of the problem! It helped me a lot."

A slow smile spread across her face. "It was written in English and I am the one who translated it into French —into horrid French, perfectly horrid, because I put in all the words Theon had dreamed up. Then again, what words! He made a detailed description of all the faculties latent in man, and it was remarkable —but with such barbaric words! You can make up new words in English and get away with it, but in French it's utterly ridiculous. And there I was, very conscientiously putting them all in! Yet in terms of experience, it was splendid. It really was an experience — it was the account of Madame Théon's experiences in exteriorization. She had learned to do what Theon taught me also —to speak while you are in the seventh heaven: the body goes on speaking, rather slowly, in a low voice, but it works quite well. She would speak and a friend of hers, another English woman who was their secretary —I think she knew shorthand —would note it all down as she went along. And afterwards it was made into stories, told as stories. It was all shown to Sri Aurobindo and it

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greatly interested him. He even adopted some of the words into his own terminology.

"The divisions and subdivisions of the being were described down to the minutest detail and with such perfect precision! I know, because I did the experience again, I did it on my own, without any preconceived ideas, the very same: going out of one body after the other, one body after the other, and so on twelve times, and my experience — apart from certain quite negligible differences, doubtless due to differences in the receiving brain —was exactly the same."

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