Works of Sri Aurobindo

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January 27, 1961

(On the moralistic reactions of someone who thought that certain acts ‘angered’ God:)

They are only too eager to believe that God can get angry with them! I try to dispel this notion as much as I can, because it’s not true – it isn’t true.

(long silence)

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This time, something has really been achieved.

Since the last experience [January 24] I see it daily. The following day, probably for reasons connected with the body’s development and adaptation, I was rather seriously ill – what is usually called ‘painfully ill’: the body was suffering a lot, or WOULD HAVE suffered a lot had it been in its former normal consciousness. That’s where I saw the difference – a fantastic difference!

I was perfectly conscious (now when I say ‘I’, it refers to my body, I am not speaking of the whole higher consciousness), the body was perfectly conscious of its suffering, the reason for its suffering, the cause of its suffering, everything – and it did not suffer. You understand, the two perceptions were there together: the body saw the disorder, saw the suffering just as it would have felt it a few weeks earlier, it saw all that (‘saw,’ ‘knew’… I don’t know how to express it – it was conscious, it was aware) and it did not suffer. The two awarenesses were absolutely simultaneous.

There is now a kind of VERY PRECISE knowledge of the whole inner mechanism for all things – and what has to be done materially. This is developing, as a flower blossoms: you see one petal open and then another and then another; it is proceeding like that, slowly, taking its time. It’s the same process for the Power.

To illustrate this, an interesting thing came up – yesterday, I think. (All these experiences come to show me the difference, as if to give proof of the change.) Someone had had a dream about me whispered to him by the adverse forces for specific reasons (I won’t go into the details). He was much affected by it, so he wrote down the dream and gave it to me. I was carrying his letter along with all the others, as I usually do, but suddenly I knew I had to read it right away: I read it. Then I saw the whole thing with such clarity, precision, accuracy: how it had come about, how the dream had been produced, its effect – the whole functioning of all the forces. As I read along and it went on unfolding, I did what was necessary for him (he was present at the time) in order to undo what the adverse forces had done. Then at the end, when I had finished, said everything, explained what it was all about and what had to be done, something SO CATEGORICAL came into me (I cannot verbalize this kind of experience, it is what I call the ‘difference’ in power: something categorical). I took the letter, uttered a few words (which I won’t repeat) and said, ‘You see, it’s like this: so much for that,’ and I ripped the letter a first time. ‘Then, that’s for that,’ I tore it a second time … and so on. I ripped it up five times and the fifth time I saw that their power was destroyed.

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I have done these things before – it’s a knowledge I already had – and it always had its effect when I did them; it’s not that I am passing from powerlessness to power, not at all. But it’s this kind of … yes, something definite, absolute – a kind of absolute in vision, in knowledge, in action and ABOVE ALL in power – a kind of absolute that doesn’t need to conquer obstacles and resistances, but ANNULS the resistance automatically. Then I saw that something had truly changed.

(After a digression, Mother gives another example of the change:)

I told you something concerning the power of the will, didn’t I?…

Well, yesterday I saw R. He was asking me questions about his work and particularly about the knowledge of languages (he’s a scholar, you know, and very familiar with the old traditions). This put me in contact with that whole world and I began speaking to him a little about what I had already said to you concerning my experience with the Vedas. And all at once, in the same [absolute] way as I told you, when I entered into contact with that world a whole domain seemed to open up, a whole field of knowledge from the standpoint of languages, of the Word, of the essential Vibration, that vibration which would be able to reproduce the supramental consciousness. It all came, so clear, so clear, luminous, indisputable – but unfortunately there was no tape recorder!

It was about the Word, the primal sound. Sri Aurobindo speaks of it in Savitri: the essence of the Word and how it will express itself, how it will bring in the possibility of a supramental expression that will take the place of languages…. I began by speaking to him about the different languages, their limitations and possibilities; and I warned him against the deformations imposed on languages with the idea of making them a more flexible means of expressing something else. I told him how completely ridiculous it all was, and that it didn’t correspond at all to the truth. Then little by little I began ascending to the Origin. So yesterday again, I had this same experience: a whole world of knowledge, of consciousness and of CERTAINTY – precluding the least possibility of contradiction, discussion, or opposition; the possibility DOES NOT EXIST, it doesn’t exist. And the mind was absolutely silent and immobile, listening with obvious pleasure because these things had never before come into my consciousness; I had never been concerned with them in that way. It was completely new – not new in principle but completely new in action.

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The experiences are multiplying.

A sound that can bring in the supramental Force?

Yes. While speaking, you see, I went back to the origin of sound (Sri Aurobindo describes it very clearly in Savitri: the origin of sound, the moment when what we called ‘the Word’ becomes a sound). So I had a kind of perception of the essential sound before it becomes a material sound. And I said, ‘When this essential sound becomes a material sound, it will give birth to the new expression which will express the supramental world.’ I had the experience itself at that moment, it came directly. I spoke in English and Sri Aurobindo was concretely, almost palpably, present.

Now it has gone away.

(silence)

Oh, another little example. You know those photos I distributed on the 21st for the Saraswati Puja) Amrita told me he was going to send them to X, [[The tantric guru. ]] I but I told him, ‘No, don’t bother.’ (The 21st was a terrible day for me. All the dasyus of the world were in league against me, trying to stop me – I understood this afterwards, when I saw those things. [[The Vedic or pre-Vedic experience of the artificial hurricane and the pink marble bathtub. ]] ‘So that’s what it is!’ I said to myself, ‘That’s what has been going on!’) Then after the night of the 24 h, I went down for balcony-darshan [[Balcony-darshan: up to 1962, Mother appeared every morning on the first-floor balcony to be seen by the disciples assembled on the street below. ]] with such a foursquare certainty – you know, cubic: such a cubic certainty – and I said to Amrita, ‘You can send him those photos today,’ without an explanation, without a word, with nothing but a feeling of certainty, a kind of definite and absolute THAT’S HOW IT IS.

And that is a change, truly a change.

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