Maurice Magre

Public Figures

Author ~ 1

INTRODUCTION

Maurice Magre (2 March 1877 — 11 December 1941) was a French poet, writer and dramatist. He visited Pondicherry in 1935 to meet Sri Aurobindo.

Maurice Magre is the author of numerous works, in particular À la Poursuite de la Sagesse (Charpentier, 1936) where he devoted a chapter to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. We should also mention the Book of Admirable Certainties (Avignon, 1941).

Magre like many others got an immediate strong impression of the atmosphere of the Asram — most feel it as an atmosphere of calm and peace, something quite apart from that of the ordinary world. He thought it was the atmosphere of the people. Besides, of the few who saw him, he saw only the best. Also many here if not most have something in their appearance different from people outside, something a little luminous, which a man of sensitive perceptions like Magre could feel. The other side becomes apparent only if one stays long and mixes in the ordinary life of the Asram or hears the gossip of the Sadhaks. People from this country, Gujaratis or others, more easily see or feel this side and do not feel the rest because they enter at once into relation with the exterior life of the Asram.

Sri Aurobindo

Letter on Himself and the Ashram > The Ashram and its atmosphere > 4 February 1937

"The divine spirit, by incarnating itself in forms, has therefore foreseen and willed everything. But then, how does it seem to pursue a goal, consciousness, since it could achieve it at the first attempt? Why did it permit the pain and evil that are in its very essence? If human evil can be attributed to men, the injustice that strikes animals and plants can only be attributed to the divine order. Why has the divine order not organized everything in joy? Pain does not always perfect and more often it throws into irremediable despair."

(Question asked by Maurice Magre)

To Maurice Magre, very kindly.

Your letter was communicated to me and the questions you posed therein were for me, at a certain period of my development, of too intense an interest for me not to take great pleasure in answering them. However, a mentally expressed answer, however complete it may be, can never be the answer, the one that silences doubts and calms the mind. Certainty can only come with spiritual experience, and the most beautiful philosophical works can never be worth or replace a few minutes of lived Knowledge.

You say: "Must a man of average development, who is no longer tormented by earthly desires, who is united to the world only by his affections, give up the hope of not being reincarnated? Is there not, after the human state, a less material state into which one passes when one is no longer recalled by desire, in the human state? This seems to me rigorously logical. Man cannot be at the top of the ladder. The animals are very close to him, is he not very close to the next state?"

First of all, what maintains the relationship with the earth is not only the desires of the vital, but every specifically human movement, and certainly the affections are part of it. One is also linked to the necessity of reincarnation by one's affections, by one's feelings, as by one's desires. However, on the subject of reincarnation, as in all things, each case has its own solution, and it is certain that a constant aspiration towards liberation from rebirths, united with a sustained effort of elevation, of sublimation of consciousness, must have as its result the cutting of the chain of earthly existences, without thereby putting an end to the individual existence which is prolonged in another world. But why think that this existence in another world, more ethereal, is "the following state" which would be in relation to man what man is to the animal? It seems more logical to me to think (and deep knowledge confirms this certainty) that the next state will also be a physical state, although a physical one that can be conceived as magnified, transfigured by the descent, the infusion of Light and Truth. All the ages and millennia of human life that have passed on earth until now have prepared the advent of this new state, and now the time has come for concrete and tangible realizations. This is the very essence of Sri Aurobindo's teaching, the goal of the group that he allowed to form around him, the reason for his Ashram's existence.

For your second question,¹ I intended to send you the translation of some extracts from Sri Aurobindo's works. But when I told him that I wanted to translate passages from The Life Divine to send them to you, he replied that I would have no less than two chapters to translate if I wanted to send you a more or less complete answer. Faced with my perplexity, he decided of his own accord to write some new pages on the subject; he gave them to me very recently and I began the translation straight away.

I would not like to spoil the beautiful pages that I am going to have the privilege of translating, but while waiting to be able to send them to you, I will give you, if you will allow me, my very simplistic and succinct view of the problem.

It seems to me indisputable that the universe in which we find ourselves is not among the most successful, especially in its most external expression; but it is also indisputable that we are part of it, and consequently, the only thing that is logical and wise for us is to set to work to perfect it, to draw the best from the worst and make it the most wonderful universe there is. For, I would add, not only is this transfiguration possible, but it is certain.

May the peace and joy of Knowledge be with you.

The Mother

(English translation of original letter in French)

Lettres sur le Yoga - Part 1