Works of Sri Aurobindo

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-67_September 26_1964.htm

September 26, 1964

I’d rather not talk, because …

It is a terribly dark labor and without clearly visible effects. There are people who proclaim they perform miracles with my name or my force – bringing dying people back to life, wonderful things, anyway. To me, it immediately smacks of the ego a mile off; and the ego means vital entities taking advantage of it. I don’t like that.

It’s a labor of every minute, without a break, night and day.

Last night again … I went through strange places with people I know very well and whom I am seeing in that way for the first time. As if I went into all sorts of places I’d never been to before, in which fantastic things occur: in which people, whom I know very well physically, appear there in a light and with activities that are truly unexpected – it’s dumbfounding.

Last night, it lasted hours.

Unbelievable.

So you wonder, “When will it come to an end?” There’s always more and more and more of it…. It is an actual demonstration of new disorders, new ways of seeing things. It’s like new aspects of the world.

I go there with full consciousness, I am entirely conscious, conscious with the totality of my consciousness, and I am an outwardly powerless witness of a lot of unbelievable things.

It results materially in all sorts of truly unexpected and rather chaotic circumstances, as if Disorder were going on increasing.

It’s undeniably a preparation, but how long will it last?… It’s

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 as if there was a will to give me a demonstration – a demonstration in detail – of how absolutely closed the world is to the higher Influence: all that comes down to the world, the minute it touches it, is twisted. Twisted, distorted beyond recognition. Almost as if I were made to touch the rock bottom of insanity, in the root sense of the word. Well … so might you have anything a little more comforting? (Mother laughs)

I don’t know if this will interest you, but someone has presented me with a problem.

Oh, who?

A problem of a “spiritual” order.

Oh! … Who put it to you?

My brother.

Oh, very well, then.

Would it interest you?

Yes, it interests me. Your brother, I’ve been thinking of him quite a lot lately, quite a lot; that is, to say things correctly, he has certainly been thinking of me (“me,” I don’t mean me here in this body – you know what I mean). Tell me.

He’s a doctor, you know.

Yes, that doesn’t surprise me!

So here’s what he writes: “… There is also something exhausting in this profession, it is the Falsehood …”

(Mother nods her head approvingly.)

“… when, day after day, you have to accompany up to death a being who is afraid of death and who comes to drink out of your hand an ever-polished lie. Doctors say that the greatness

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of the profession lies there – that’s not my opinion. Yet I am a damn good liar – that’s why people love me – but I can no longer stand this so-called charitable imposture, which is self-contempt and contempt of others. And who gave me the right to decide that this one or that one is not entitled to know the Truth, his or her last truth?… Let’s leave it at that – neither religions nor science have given me an answer to this question.”

Obviously, there could be only one solution: to lose the mental consciousness that gives you the perception or sensation that you are telling a “lie” or a “truth”; and you can obtain that only when you get to the higher state in which our notion of falsehood and truth disappears. Because when we speak from the ordinary mental consciousness, even when we are convinced that we are telling the whole truth, we are not doing so; and even when we think we are telling a lie, sometimes it isn’t one. We do not have the capacity to discern what’s true and what isn’t – because we live in a false consciousness.

But there is a state in which, first, you no longer make “personal” decisions, and then you are like a mirror reflecting the exact NEED, the true (spiritual, that is) need of the patient, for instance, and exactly what he needs to know so that the rest of his life (whatever time he has left to live) brings him the maximum possibilities of progress.

And when you perceive this, you also see that the human way (the human doctor’s way) of seeing the illness isn’t in accord with the higher vision of the SAME condition of the body; and that in each and every case (not in a general way for all cases), in each case there is ONE thing to be told, which is the True Thing, even if it is, for example, giving the patient the sense of a duration of life. You can shift your consciousness and place it inside that part of the patient’s being that lasts…. It is difficult to explain, but I am saying this from experience because it’s a problem I have encountered very often. Just now, there is a person here who has had several cancers, who was operated on and was made to last for years with operations and treatments; only, she is told the usual lies; but she asks me, she asks me what I see and what I know. So I had the opportunity to see the answer that should be given….

It is, so to speak, the practical means to compel the doctor to enter a higher consciousness. That must be the crisis that has come to your brother; he has come to a point when he is imperatively obliged – professionally obliged – to enter a higher consciousness.

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Because, in his present state, he must be lying very badly – he says he is a very good liar, but with the perception he has now, the result must be that, along with his lie, doubt enters the patient’s consciousness. So he isn’t doing what’s considered to be the useful thing.

In my opinion, from a practical and external standpoint, I have more often seen cases in which the lie had a bad effect than cases in which the truth had a bad effect. But everything depends on the doctor’s consciousness.

I know, and with certainty, that if you can be in that clear consciousness, you see that the state of illness was certainly a necessity, often a WILLED necessity (not only accepted and undergone, but willed) by the soul in order to go faster on the path – to save time, to gain lives. And if you can, if you have the power to bring that soul into contact with the force that governs its existence and leads it towards progress, towards the Realization, you do a work of quite a superior quality.

You know this: the SAME words, the SAME sentences, spoken by someone who sees and knows and spoken by the ordinary ignorant person, change entirely in nature and power – and in action. There is a way of saying things which is the true way, whatever words you speak. And that is the solution: it’s inside himself, in the depths of his being, that he must find that light – the light that knows what should be said and how it should be said. And then that feeling of responsibility and of complicity with falsehood is finished, it disappears completely. And necessarily, inevitably, absolutely, he will say the thing that should be said and as it should be said, in the way it should be said.

Oh, what a beautiful realization to achieve! A beautiful work can be done in that way…. To be able to feel and SEE the thing to be said, and THAT’S what should be said – not with the thought, “This man is going to die, I shouldn’t make him too unhappy, I should …,” all that is perfectly useless. Perfectly useless, and you put yourself in a kind of mental muddle; besides, it doesn’t really help, it doesn’t have the expected effect. While this inner vision … to see why that being is ill and what that physical disorder expresses in the destiny of the soul of that man or this woman – it’s magnificent, magnificent!

And ultimately, saying, “You will be cured,” is just as useless as saying, “You won’t be cured,” both are equally incorrect from the point of view of the true Truth, and unsatisfactory for someone who has had a first contact with a life other than physical life.

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Even when the patient asks you, “I’ll be cured, won’t I?” or when he asks how long he is going to last, there is a way of answering, even materially, which is neither yes nor no, but is TRUE and has a power of inner opening.

For a long time, would you believe it, I have been in search of a doctor, a man with full medical knowledge, knowing all that they now know about the human body and the way to cure it, AND capable of having the contact with the higher consciousness. Because through such an instrument, one could do very, very interesting things – very interesting. [[Mother often said that she was in search throughout the world of people with a perfect basis of material knowledge (industrialists, financiers, writers ...), but who would agree to do their work in another way, opening themselves up to another force - this is the field of experiment of tomorrow's world. Through their consent and call, if they tune in, Mother could bring into play another operating process. ]]

(silence)

There is a domain in which “disease” and “cure” no longer exist, but only disorder, confusion, and harmony, organization. A domain in which everything, but everything that takes place in the body works in that way, and necessarily, first of all, everything that involves the functioning of the organs themselves (disorder in the organs themselves). And there, there is a whole way of seeing things that leads you very close to the Truth…. There remain only the diseases that come from outside, like diseases that are contagious through germs, microbes, bacilli, all that business, viruses – that’s still under the aspect of “attacks from adverse forces,” it’s another plane of action. But there is a point where it all meets…. I would like, oh, I would very much like to discuss certain things or certain details of the body’s functioning and organization with a man who thoroughly knows anatomy, biology, physical and bodily chemistry – all those things thoroughly – and who UNDERSTANDS, who is ready to understand that all those things are a projection of other forces, subtler forces; who is able to feel things as I feel them in my own body. That would be very interesting. [[Mother is led to carry out all kinds of experiments in her body for the work of Transformation. One of them consists in receiving or taking upon oneself every possible disorder for several hours, several days or several minutes, in one's body, in order to act on them, and, consequently, to act on disorders of the same nature in the world - or on THE Disorder. Mother is thus constantly led to work on the meeting point between the subtle forces behind and the bodily or material mechanisms. In her body it is an uncommon chemistry that takes place, the subtle elements of which she knows better than the gross ones. ]]

(silence)

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That’s the first step. You see, he puts the problem from a purely mental standpoint: to tell what’s conventionally called the “truth” (which isn’t true), or to tell what’s conventionally called a “lie” (which may not at all be what you think it is: it isn’t a lie, but simply the contradiction or opposite of what you consider to be the “truth” – same thing). But in order to find the solution, you have to climb up there – where you SEE, where you can see in a totally concrete way that that “truth” isn’t absolute and that “lie” isn’t absolute, that there is something else – another way of seeing – in which things are no longer like that.

And then … then if you could speak the True Thing, the right word (word or sentence), have the thought which is the TRUE thought in every case – what marvelous power you would have over your patient! It would be magnificent.

You understand, to know all the material, cellular questions with the full knowledge of all the details, and at the same time to have that vision – if you could put both together, you would be … a divine doctor. That would be marvelous.

Emerge from the moral problem in order to make it a spiritual problem. And then it’s no longer a “problem.”

There, mon petit.

(long silence)

But I often think of your brother.

When did you receive that letter?

Some time ago actually, almost a month ago.

No, not long ago. Just these last few days, I was again thinking of him. Maybe he has written once again?…

(silence)

Ask your brother whether he has seen the different cases: for example, the case in which he had foreseen the end, but the patient was cured, or else the opposite case, in which he was counting on the patient being cured and he left his body; but especially the case (the more interesting one) in which medical science declares that you are incurable, and you get cured – whether he has observed cases of this sort and whether he can give examples. Of course,

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 without jargon, simply describing what he has seen; I mean, what happened to the patient and how he came to be cured (that he can’t know, but OUTWARDLY he can say what happened).

Does he believe in the possibility of an intervention of another order?

Oh, yes, certainly. On the contrary, he’s trying to get hold of…

To get hold of that…. Yes, that’s my impression.

(silence)

There are two things…. One, for instance, which I have often observed: an illness is triggered, or a disorder is triggered, and there is a kind of … it isn’t a contagion (how can I explain it?), it would almost be like an “imitation,” but that’s not quite it. Let’s say that a certain number of cells give way; for some reason or other (there are countless reasons), they submit to the disorder – obey the disorder – and a particular point becomes “ill” according to the ordinary view of illness. But that intrusion of Disorder makes itself felt everywhere, it has repercussions everywhere: wherever there is a weaker point which doesn’t resist the attack so well, it manifests. Take someone who is in the habit of getting headaches, or toothaches, or a cough, or neuralgic pains, whatever, a host of little things of that sort that come and go, increase and decrease. But if there is an attack of Disorder somewhere, a serious attack, all those little troubles reappear instantly, here, there, there…. It’s a fact I have observed. And the opposite movement follows the same pattern: if you are able to bring to the attacked spot the true Vibration – the Vibration of Order and Harmony – and you stop the Disorder … all the other things are put back in order, as if automatically.

And that doesn’t happen through contagion, you see; it isn’t that, for instance, the blood carries the illness here or there, that’s not it: it is … almost like a spirit of imitation.

But the truth is that the Harmony that keeps everything together has been attacked, it has given way, and so everything is disrupted (each thing in its own way and according to its own habit).

I am speaking here of the body’s cells, but it’s the same thing with external events, even with world events. It’s even remarkable with regard to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.: it would seem that the entire earth is like the body; that is to say, if one

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point gives way and manifests Disorder, all the sensitive points suffer the same effect.

From the human standpoint, in a crowd, it’s extraordinarily precise: the contagion of a vibration – especially vibrations of disorder (but the others, too).

It is an absolutely concrete demonstration of Oneness. It’s very interesting.

It is something I have observed on the level of the body’s cells hundreds and hundreds of times. And then, you no longer have at all that mental impression of one “disorder added to another, which makes the problem more difficult” – that’s not it at all, it’s … if you get to the center, all the rest will be naturally restored to order. And that’s a fact: if order is restored at the center of disorder, everything follows naturally, without your paying it any special attention.

From the human standpoint, from the standpoint of revolutions, from the standpoint of fights, from the standpoint of wars, it’s extraordinarily accurate and precise.

An absolutely concrete demonstration of Oneness.

And it is this knowledge of Oneness that gives you the key.

People wonder how, for instance, the action of one man or of one thought can restore order – this is how. Not that you have to think of all the troubled spots, no: you have to get to the center. And everything will be restored to order, automatically.

(silence)

There, you must get cured, mon petit.

* * *

(Towards the end of the conversation, an “urgent” letter from a disciple is brought to Mother. Mother laughs and, without reading the letter, scribbles her answer:)

She already wrote to me the other day, she’s upset because I can’t read anymore! (I used to read Savitri aloud and she wanted to record me.) I told her, “I can’t read anymore, it’s not possible.” So she wrote to me that I must “make use of my Grace” in order to cure my eyes!

I didn’t answer her. But just now, as I finished speaking to you, it came – my answer. It came, that is, He told me, “Write this to her.” So I wrote this:

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               There is no I to take a decision,

         there is only the Lord’s Will

 that decides everything.

           And if He decides that my eyes

              will recover the reading capacity,

                                                                                                          I will recover

 

That’s that, finished, no more problem!

Now she must be upside-down because I haven’t yet answered!

They can’t get it into their heads! You know, for them, when they say that “there is a Grace,” the purpose of the Grace is to do what they like, of course, and if it doesn’t do what they like, there’s no Grace! It’s the same thing with those who accept the idea of God only if God does exactly what they like, and if He doesn’t do what they like, there’s no God: “It’s not true, he’s an impostor!”

It’s comical.

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