Works of Sri Aurobindo

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-59_August 31_1962.htm

August 31, 1962

What about your sleep – any better?

On the contrary, I feel a kind of drowsiness, but with no real rest or real sleep.

No rest? No total relaxation?

Try, mon petit, try again. Try again and again, it will come.

It’s not “sleep,” it’s a kind of peace that descends. It can begin as drowsiness, but it changes into a sort of inner immobility – immobility of the Spirit. The body too becomes quiet, quiet, quiet, very still; and from there, if nothing disturbs you, you flow into a sense of eternity. It’s a wonderful experience. The real sense of Eternity: everything stops, and then NOTHING. And if you have the gift of vision (it’s not necessary, but if you do), you see it all grow white and luminous – all white. But that may well not happen because it’s … it’s something you’re born with.

All the cells open up and become conscious of their eternity.

It may be that three, four, five times, nothing happens, and then the sixth time it comes. You have to be very stubborn about these things.

Try.

Anyway, even if you don’t sleep, it’s always restful to stretch out on your bed or a mat and go limp; it’s a good rest for the vital being, and it can’t do you any harm.

***

(A little later, concerning the last conversation: “On the surface, it’s a very humble work, nothing sensational. There are no illuminations filling you with joy: all that is fine for people seeking spiritual joys – it belongs to the past.”)

Yesterday I told Pavitra that all those realizations, all those … yes, these powers, gifts, constructions, manifestations, it all reminded me of the life of a traveling juggler.

He was shocked.

“Yes,” I told him, “it’s like a juggler’s life – you go from fairground to fairground, displaying your feats of skill! ” (Laughter.)

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But it’s true!

(silence)

The more I go on, the more sober it gets. It’s quiet, peaceful, with no fanfare, no make-believe, none of that.

And it’s not done with the idea that, well, if you keep on this way for some time, there’ll be something dazzling at the other end – not at all.

Because the other end is the new creation, so it’s clear that…. How MANY steps will it take, how many incomplete or imperfect things, approximations, attempts – how many MINUSCULE realizations – for you to simply acknowledge, “Yes, indeed, we’re on the way…”? For how many … oh, you could practically say centuries will it be like this before the glorious body of a supramental being appears?… Something came yesterday evening (it seemed like mere excitation to me); it was a power of creative imagination attempting to visualize supramental forms, beings that live in other worlds, and all sorts of things like that. I saw many things. But it seemed so … like champagne bubbles! “That’s all very nice,” I said, “for widening my power of imagination so I can present these forms to the Lord…. But it’s not necessary! ” (Mother laughs) It really seemed so…. There was a time when I considered it a great creative power (and many things that I saw in those moments of super-creativity, super-imagination, were actually realized years later on earth), and this time it came again (perhaps to give me a little fun, a little spectacle along the way), it came and I looked at it; I could see all its power, I could see it was something trying to materialize in the future, and I said, “What histrionics! Why go through all these theatrics?…” Jugglers.

And it was supramental light, it originated in supramental light. How beings from other worlds would relate with the future beings, and all sorts of similar things – bedtime stories.

But the vibration was there, you see, high above and all around the earth, very powerful (it was all around the earth) and very strong, it seemed to be coming from other parts of the universe and trying to enter the earth’s atmosphere to help it participate in those new combinations. And it all seemed like childishness to me – the whole universe seemed to be living in childishness. There was something so tranquil here – so tranquil, so calm and unhurried, not interested in showing anything off, but capable of living in an eternity of quiet effort and progress. It was here, immobile, watching all these things. Finally (the spectacle lasted all evening)

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when I lay down in bed for the night, I said to the Lord, “I don’t need diversions, I don’t need to see encouraging things – I only want to work calmly, quietly, IN You. You, You are the worker; You are here and You alone exist. You are the realizer.” Then all grew silent, still, motionless – and the excitement waned.

So you see, there’s excitement in the universe too, if you’re not careful! But my impression is that it simply complicates things – it clouds the issue, you know, it complicates things. Then you have to wait for the bubbles to subside before you can calmly set off again on your way towards the goal.

VoilĂ , petit.

Can’t we hope…. You know, sometimes there are abrupt mutations in evolution….

It can be, it’s possible. It’s possible, I don’t say it isn’t; it is possible, it can happen, but … more and more, the life allotted to this body is to do things without knowing it, to change the world without seeing it, and to … to ignore all that, to be absolutely unconcerned with the results. And (to be perfectly explicit) I have a feeling that to have access to the highest and purest Power, the very notion of “result” must disappear completely – the Supreme Power has no sense of result AT ALL. The sense of result is yet another rift between the essential, supreme Power, and the consciousness. In other words, it’s because the consciousness begins to separate slightly [from its identity with the Supreme Power], that the sense of result is created, but otherwise it doesn’t exist.

It’s as if everything had to be … to be the Action, the eternal Action at each second of the Manifestation – THE thing. At each pulsation – which corresponds to time in the Manifestation – THAT alone is THE thing. And the idea of something having a result is already a distortion.

Uninterrupted, with one link – the link of supreme Eternity. But the sense of consequences is false, it already implies a lowering of consciousness. So for me – even physically, in the midst of this whole hodgepodge of confusion, ignorance and stupidity – it all translates into: “I do things, and the results are none of my business.” That’s how it’s expressed here in the body.

It’s a kind of liberation – I don’t mean from worry or preoccupation, there’s no question of that – but from the very IDEA of a consequence: it’s this way because that’s the way it is; it has to be this way, so it is. That’s all. And at each second it’s this way

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 because it has to be, and so it is. And That repeats itself eternally, and it is this eternal Pulsation which is expressed in time by those gusts – I feel this very strongly, very strongly. It’s a constant, spontaneous and very natural experience for me. The idea of something behind or ahead in time and so on is … a Truth changing from immutable Eternity into Eternity of manifestation. And it changes like this (Mother makes a pulsating gesture), exactly like gusts – puff, puff, puff….

Irresponsible gusts, like a child’s soap bubbles, you might say. No sense of consequences – none, none whatsoever: puff, puff, puff … like that.

It’s an ever-present experience for me.

So when people come to tell me their stories, I feel like my head is being shoved into some black mush, and I can’t make out anything any more. They ask my advice about what to do … (Mother laughs). So now I almost invariably answer, “Do whatever you like, it doesn’t matter!” (Mother laughs.)

VoilĂ .

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