October 30, 1962
My translation [of The Synthesis of Yoga] will be finished soon – I’ll miss it.
But aren’t you going to start on Savitri?
It suddenly seemed terribly ambitious to me…. (Laughing) My stock of words isn’t so great!
(silence)
H.S.[[A Chinese disciple who translates Sri Aurobindo into Chinese. ]] has written to me, and there was a sentence in his letter that brought a certain problem to my attention. He said, “I have done so many hours of translation – it’s a mechanical task.” I wondered what he meant by “mechanical task” because, as far as I am concerned, you can’t translate unless you have the experience – if you start translating word for word, it no longer means anything at all. Unless you have the experience of what you translate, you can’t translate it. Then I suddenly realized that the Chinese can’t translate the way we do! In Chinese, each character represents an idea rather than a separate word; the basis is ideas, not words and their meanings, so translation must be a completely different kind of work for them. So I started identifying with H.S.,
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to understand how he is translating Sri Aurobindo’s Synthesis of Yoga into Chinese characters – he’s had to find new characters! It was very interesting. He must have invented characters. Chinese characters are made up of root-signs, and the meaning changes according to the positions of the root-signs. Each root-sign can be simplified, depending on where it’s placed in combination with other root-signs – at the top of the character, at the bottom, or to one side or the other. And so, finding the right combination for new ideas must be a fascinating task! (I don’t know how many root-signs can be put in one character, but some characters are quite large and must contain a lot of them; as a matter of fact, I have been shown characters expressing new scientific discoveries, and they were very big.) But how interesting it must be to work with new ideas that way! And H.S. calls it a “mechanical task.”
The man’s a genius!
And he has experiences, too. We’ve hardly ever spoken together, but I have seen some letters he wrote. To one person he said, “If you want the Taoist experience, all you have to do is come here and live at the Ashram – you will have the REALIZATION of Lao-Tse’s philosophy.”
He’s a sage!
***
A little later:
… I have come to understand that the Chinese are a lunar race – their origin is the moon. They came to earth when the moon got too cold and they could no longer exist there. This is something I saw at the beginning of the century and my impression was further intensified when I went to China. [[Probably in March 1920, at the time Mao Tse-tung was writing The Great Union of the Popular Masses. ]] They are a lunar race. And they gave me the feeling of people who lack a psychic being: they are cold, ice-cold. But wonderfully intellectual!
I met another Chinese a few years ago, a man with a spiritual life. He came to meet me and talked for an hour about China. It made me understand China externally as if I had been born and lived my whole life there. I saw they were people who have attained the summit of the intellect, and who have a creative power – inventors. He told me, “No people in the world could understand
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Sri Aurobindo intellectually as well as the Chinese.” And it was luminously true. The highest intellectual comprehension, really at its peak.
It’s another story when it comes to doing yoga…. Although that must depend entirely on the individual. The Chinese don’t have the same spiritual intensity you find rooted in the Indian character – it’s something completely different. Here, spiritual life is real, concrete, tangible – totally real. For the Chinese it all happens at the top of the head.
They’re not going to come here, are they?
I hope not!
They are people with no feelings. I don’t know if they’ve picked up a psychic being since they’ve been on earth (there are all kinds of mixtures, you see; there’s no such thing as a pure race any more), but they are still ice-cold. Difficult.
They could come into contact with Sri Aurobindo’s thought – but not their troops! I don’t know whether the new Chinese are much interested in philosophy…. It’s better they don’t come!
***
(A little later, Satprem goes back to music, a subject from the previous conversation:)
Do those zones of music and painting and so forth form part of the overmind or not?
Hmm, yes … I don’t know. You see, all classifications, of any kind, always seem too rigid to me; they lack the suppleness that exists in the universe. We always feel the need to put one box inside another, one box inside another (Mother laughs), but that’s not how it is! It’s more a correspondence that being a part of something. Or all right, one is part of the other – but which one is part of which other? In fact, they are part of something that is neither this, that, nor the other!
There are different LINES of approach. It all ultimately depends on one’s aspiration or dominant preoccupation, or on what one needs for one’s work. It’s as if one went STRAIGHT where one wants to go, ignoring everything else, taking no notice of it – passing through it if necessary, but without paying attention to it. And
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the need to classify, well … it comes afterwards, if one feels like describing things, but it isn’t necessary.
It’s like that famous Nirvana – you can find it behind everything. There’s a psychic nirvana, a mental nirvana, even a vital nirvana. I think I already told you about the experience I had with Tagore in Japan. Tagore always used to say that as soon as he started meditating he entered Nirvana, and he asked me to meditate with him. We sat together in meditation. I was expecting to make a very steep ascent, but he simply went into his MIND, and there … (what I do, you see, is tune in to the person I am meditating with, identify with him – that’s how I know what happens). Well, he started meditating, and everything quite rapidly came to a halt, became absolutely immobile (this he did very well), and from there he sort of fell backwards, and it was Nothingness. And he could remain in that state indefinitely! We did in fact stay like that for a rather long time; I don’t remember how long, three quarters of an hour or an hour, but anyway it was long enough. I was keeping alert the whole time to see if, by chance, he would go on into something else, but there he stayed – he stayed there nice and calm, without stirring. Then he came back, his mind started up again, and that was that.
I said nothing to him.
But it was a true nirvana: Nothingness. Not a single sensation, not a movement – no thoughts, of course – nothing, not a vibration: just like that, Nirvana. So I quite naturally concluded that there is a nirvana behind the mind, since he went there directly. And through my own experiments in the different zones of the being I became aware that, indeed, there is a nirvana behind everything (there must be a nirvana behind the physical cell too – maybe that’s what death is! Who knows, it’s possible). A nothingness, nothing stirs any more. And nothing’s there any more – nothing’s there, there’s nothing to stir (Mother laughs). It’s the Nothing.
But what’s the use of it?
No idea! It must be good for something.
I mean, do things necessarily have to be useful?
But still, can it help one’s progress?
These are experiences.
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Yes, but do they help us progress?
At any rate, they must help to make people steady.
(silence)
I don’t know if you can look at things from that angle, because it’s only one angle. Certainly if we asked the Lord, “What’s the use of it?” He would either say “It’s all the same to Me,” or “It’s none of your business,” or “I get some fun out of it” – that would be enough for Him!
But…
(silence)
The Buddha, you know, was deeply shocked by the impermanence of things – the impermanence of the whole creation, that there was nothing permanent anywhere. That was the starting point of his quest, when he saw that nothing was permanent – constant and permanent – hence there was nothing one could call “forever.” That’s what shocked him, and he felt he had to find something permanent, and in his quest for the Permanent he came upon Nothingness. So his conclusion ran something like this: “Only one thing is permanent – Nothingness. As soon as there’s creation, it’s impermanent.”
Why did he object to impermanence? That, I don’t know – a question of temperament, I suppose. But as far as he was concerned, that’s what Nothingness is good for: it’s permanent.
It’s permanent, the one thing that’s permanent.
Still, to me it seems….
What Sri Aurobindo says is, “Yes, true, it’s the only permanent thing – a certain permanent Nonbeing behind everything. But why shouldn’t He sometimes – not ‘sometimes,’ but at the SAME time, the same moment – have the fun of being both permanent and impermanent? There’s no objection to that.” In any case, He has none!
Our minds may not like it, but He….
But I don’t understand what’s so great about Nirvana. I don’t know whether I go into Nirvana, but when I sit in meditation and everything becomes still, well – so what? Nothing’s there any more! If that’s what they call Nirvana, I don’t see what’s so great about it.
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Do you remain conscious of yourself?
Oh, yes! I remain conscious. But nothing’s there any more. It’s clear, it’s luminous, and there’s absolutely nothing.
It is the state of mental tranquillity.
Nothing exists for you any more?
I hear noises.
Ah!
I can still physically hear what’s going on around me.
Then you’re not in Nirvana.
But isn’t it a sort of annihilation?
No. It’s a total tranquilization, but not an annihilation.
(long silence
Mother tunes in to Satprem)
You probably enter into the state of pure Existence. First mental silence, then pure Existence, Existence outside of the Manifestation: the state of Sat.
It is pure Existence, outside of the Manifestation.
Whenever we’ve meditated together, I’ve always had the impression that you entered into that sort of rather blissful silence; it’s something permanent, yes, but not an annihilation. It’s Sat – the Sat that comes before Chit-Tapas. [[Sat: existence or being; Chit-Tapas: consciousness-energy; the third member of the trinity is Ananda: bliss. ]] In other words it can last an eternity with no sense of time, and be an infinity with no sense of space.
But I tell you, it also has an EXTRAORDINARY utility: it automatically renews all the energies. Actually, that’s the true reason for sleep: to be able to enter that state. And that’s why those who can enter it consciously in meditation need much less sleep. Much less. It’s what enables the body to last: Sat. And whenever I have meditated with you, I’ve always had a feeling of entering that state.
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Pure existence, outside of the Manifestation. It is wonderfully luminous, immobile, tranquil, and … a sort of bliss devoid of any vibration, beyond vibration.
It is very useful.
Actually, one should always keep this in the background of the consciousness and refer to it automatically to correct or avoid or annul … all disturbances.
It’s what I use, for example, when the body has some trouble (I use it for the most ordinary and minor things: coughing when something goes down the wrong way, hiccups, things like that). All these minor problems of the body can be stopped almost instantly by entering that state. It takes a few seconds. It should be kept in the background all the time, all the time, all the time, as if supporting everything from behind. By nature it is absolutely silent, immobile, luminous…. Yes, it gives the sense of Eternity and Infinity. It is eternal, infinite, outside of time, outside of space, it’s … it’s Sat.
If one can keep that constantly in the background of one’s consciousness, there’s no further need to take off anywhere (ethereal gesture towards the heights): all you have to do is this (gesture of stepping back), and there it is.
And it is the root cure of disorder. It is anti-disorder.
That’s how you can cure somebody, if he’s able to receive it. It’s the antidote to disorder, the perfect antidote to disorder.
Yes, one leaves that state refreshed, rested.
Yes, exactly.
(silence)
Well, mon petit, let me wish you a good and very progressive year, a year with experiences. [[Satprem has just turned thirty-nine. ]] I am beginning to understand what kind of experience you want, although really, a lot of people – oh, how delighted they’d be with the ones you have!
(Satprem seems surprised)
You don’t call them “experiences” – it’s always what we don’t have that we call “experiences.”
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Me too: for years I used to say, “I don’t have any experiences, I don’t have any experiences….”
The only experience of my life was that world of music – it was overwhelming. It was so…. It was the Divine!
Yes, indeed – that’s how it is.
Now that’s what I call an experience.
Yes, I understand.
How did it happen?
Simply while I was sleeping one night. In Ceylon.
At what time?
Towards the end of the night, I suppose, because I woke up and I was … I don’t know, for a good two hours I was like someone in a state of shock. “It’s not possible,” I was saying, “it’s not possible.” I really couldn’t get over it.
Yes, that’s an experience! (Mother laughs.)
But you know, when you come into contact with the God within, that’s really an experience too. It has the same kind of reality and intensity of your experience, ALONG WITH the sense of the eternal Divine. And it’s simply the inner Divine: there’s no need to fly off to the heights, it’s right here (Mother touches her heart).
It’s the experience I had in 1912. The first contact, when you go within and then THAT’S IT … that concrete reality, that intensity beyond any possible physical intensity. And then the sense of: that’s IT – the Divine. This is the Divine. This is the divine Reality; this is it, the Divine. You ARE the Divine.
That’s the experience. It’s the base, the basic experience. Once you have it, you may progress more or less rapidly; although if you truly give yourself, you progress very rapidly. Externally you are in a position where, having that experience, you could cover the whole path in a matter of years and straight-away begin the work of transformation (Mother touches her body).
To have it (just to give you an idea) took me a year of exclusive concentration on finding that within myself – that is, to enter into contact with the immanent God. I did nothing but that, thought of
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nothing but that, wanted nothing but that. There was even a rather funny instance, because I had resolved to do it (I had already been working for a very long time, of course; Madame Théon had told me about my mission on earth and all that, so you can imagine – I am talking about the psychic being belonging to this present creation, this formation – Mother touches her body) … anyway, it was New Year’s Eve and I decided: “Within the coming year.” I had a large, almost square studio, a bit bigger than this room, with a door leading onto a patio. I opened the little door and looked at the sky and there, just as I looked, was a shooting star. You know the tradition: if you formulate an aspiration just as you see a shooting star, before the star disappears, it will be realized within the year. And there, just as I opened the door, was a shooting star – I was totally in my aspiration: “Union with the inner Divine.” And before the end of December of the following year, I had the experience.
But I was entirely concentrated on that. I was in Paris, and I did nothing else but that; when I walked down the street, I was thinking only of that. One day, as I was crossing the Boulevard Saint Michel, I was almost run over (I’ve told you this), because I was thinking of nothing but that – concentrating, concentrating … like sitting in front of a closed door, and it was painful! (intense gesture to the chest) Physically painful, from the pressure. And then suddenly, for no apparent reason – I was neither more concentrated nor anything else – poof! It opened. And with that…. It didn’t just last for hours, it lasted for months, mon petit! It didn’t leave me, that light, that dazzling light, that light and immensity. And the sense of THAT willing, THAT knowing, THAT ruling the whole life, THAT guiding everything – since then, this sense has never left me for a minute. And always, whenever I had a decision to make, I would simply stop for a second and receive the indication from there.
But that was ages ago. I have done a lot of things since then. It was long ago, in 1912. And now … oh, this old carcass!
It does its best.
I believe the most complete expression is: “Whatever You want, Lord, whatever You want, Lord, whatever You want, Lord – with joy, no matter what it is.” In every cell.
It should go relatively quickly, but … I don’t know. How long will it take?… It’s new. New, I mean you can’t even tell if you’re progressing! You don’t know where you’re going, you have no idea what path you’re on. You just don’t know! All kinds of things
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are happening, but are they part of the path or aren’t they? I really don’t know. Only at the end will we know.
All right.
Well, au revoir, mon petit, have a good year. I hope you’ll have a decisive experience within the year, before you reach forty.
Voilà.
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