Works of Sri Aurobindo

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-08_February 19_1965.htm

February 19, 1965

(Regarding the mantra Satprem asked for when he was

in hospital but did not receive.)

The mantra … Did you get my note?… Several times while walking for my japa, I sent you the mantra insistently.

The truth is that I intend to give you a beautiful present. Only, for it to be truly a beautiful present, it is necessary that the mind shouldn’t interfere in any way; otherwise I won’t be able to pass the Power on to you along with the words.

It’s a Power that has been growing from year to year.

Up to now, I have kept it exclusively for myself, but when you asked me, I looked to see if there was something that suited you, and I so to say received the intimation to give you mine. But for that, you know … it must be received in perfect silence in order for that growth in force, in power, not to be stopped.

You must know the words because we had the opportunity to talk about them; but they’re not what matters. I told you … (Mother turns to Sujata:) Sujata, you will hear, but you will keep it in your silent heart, won’t you? Nothing must come out. [[Since Satprem's illness, Sujata has accompanied him to see Mother, for he has been unable to carry the tape recorder. From now on and till the end, Sujata will participate in all the conversations. ]]

(To Satprem:) Bring your chair nearer, stay very near, be quite at peace…. I explained the mantra to you several times, and finally, one day, I wrote the explanation, because it was coming back again and again, and so I thought it was to make me note it down (Mother looks for a paper). I wrote this:

The first word represents …

I put "represents" because the word is always a symbolic form of something infinitely greater than it. It’s one of the things one should feel: it is like a means of contact. A means of contact that you make more and more effective, first through the sincerity of the concentration, of the aspiration, then through habit, through use, while taking care when you use the mantra always to remain in contact with That which is beyond it. And it makes a kind of concentration, as if the word were being charged with force,

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 increasingly charged like a battery, but a battery that can take an indefinite charge. So I wrote (it seemed more exact to me), "The first word ‘represents’ …" It represents:

the supreme invocation …

In other words, the Highest you can attain in your aspiration and in your invocation – the purest, the highest. “The purest,” I mean, to be exclusively under the influence of the Supreme. So I wrote:

the supreme invocation

the invocation to the Supreme.

With the first word, you invoke the Supreme in all that you can attain and all that you will attain, indefinitely. The word has to be progressive.

The second word represents:

total self-giving …

You invoke, then give yourself totally …

perfect surrender.

Perfect surrender in all the states of being. That comes progressively, it comes through years of repetition, but that’s what the word must represent when it is said: total self-giving to … this Supreme, who naturally is beyond all conception. Perfect surrender, that is, spontaneous surrender, which requires neither effort nor anything – a surrender that must be perfectly spontaneous. This, too, is something that is attained little by little; that’s why I said that the mantra is progressive, in the sense that it grows more and more perfect.

The third word represents:

the aspiration …

It’s not exactly what one asks for, it is … The only word, really, is aspiration. It’s infinitely more than hope: there is the certainty that things will be that way, but one never forgets that THAT is what one wants. And I add:

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The first word represents:

 the supreme invocation the invocation

 to the Supreme.

The second word represents:

 total self-giving;

perfect surrender.

The third word represents:

the aspiration,

 what the manifestation must

become – Divine.

OM_Namo_bhagavate-

***

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It’s really the physical, terrestrial manifestation; that’s what we are concerned with for the moment, but it’s the beginning of something else. So, for the moment:

what the manifestation

must become …

This terrestrial manifestation must become:

Divine.

“Divine,” one puts into the word the reflection of all that one has put into the word “Supreme.”

But as I told you in the beginning, the slightest mental activity lessens the power; there must be a thrust of the whole being, with as little thought as possible.

I can give you this (Mother gives her note to Satprem). You can keep it.

You know the three words….

                                                                                  (long concentration)

OM…….

 

 

(A little later, the conversation turns to the events of February 11, when during Satprem’s absence the Ashram was attacked by rioters and several buildings were looted and set on fire.)

Do you have anything to ask or to say?

Many things have happened in the last month or two….

On the evening of the attack, on the 11th, a little after seven in the evening, I had for the first time, in a concrete, total way, the physical – physical – earth consciousness. It was a STATE of consciousness that was given to me, the state of consciousness of the earth. The physical, bodily consciousness no longer existed: it was the PHYSICAL earth consciousness. And that physical earth consciousness was concentrated, its attention was concentrated on this little point of Pondicherry. Tiny little point of Pondicherry. And then, it was all seen as if from … not exactly from very high

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up, but as if it were a tiny little thing (microscopic gesture), yet with an accuracy for details, for the smallest element. And that physical earth consciousness was the consciousness of the PHYSICAL TRUTH of the earth – the physical Truth-Consciousness of the earth; to be precise, the quality of the vibration of Truth in the physical earth consciousness.

And the vision, the perception (it was like a perception, you know) wasn’t exactly from very far because it had the accuracy of a microscope, but all was … an object of observation. At that moment, all the fires were starting, then hundreds of brickbats (not stones: brickbats) were bombarding all the windows and doors (all our windows, all the doors have been smashed in), which means infernal din: a pack of several hundred people, all drunk, bellowing, and shouts all over the place. So that bombardment of stones and those flames leaping up to the sky – the whole sky was red – it was all seen … I was simply seated at my table; when the attack started, I was having my dinner, and a little before it started, that experience came, that consciousness: I wasn’t this body anymore, I was the earth – the physical truth-consciousness of the earth, to be exact – with a PEACE, a STILLNESS unknown to the physical…. And it all seemed like an absolute Falsehood, without any element of truth behind it. Yet at the same time, I had a microscopic perception (but absolutely precise and exact) of all the points of falsehood IN THE ASHRAM’S ATMOSPHERE that established the contact.

So if that consciousness that was there had been collective, if it had been possible to receive it collectively, NOTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN TOUCHED: the stones would have been thrown, but wouldn’t have hit anyone. That’s how it would have been. For instance, a stone (a brickbat) was flung and hit my window; it fell on the roof there (even causing a water leak that had to be plugged), and I saw … that very minute, I saw in the consciousness of the people present the exact vibration of Falsehood that had allowed the stone to hit there. And AT THE SAME TIME, simultaneously (it can’t be said, but it was simultaneous), everywhere, all over the town and especially over the Ashram here, I saw all the points, the exact vibration of Falsehood in everyone or everything that made the contact possible.

The experience began a little after 7, 7:10, and it lasted till 1 in the morning.

At I in the morning, I had to do another work, because one of our boys, T. (that boy has the makings of a hero), almost single-handedly saved the clinic, but it cost him a fractured skull. At the time, they thought he was done for. They brought me the news,

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and when the news came I saw, I felt all of a sudden the other experience recede, and then that I was becoming the universal Mother with all the power of the universal Mother. And then, that T. became quite small, like this (gesture of something tiny in the hollow of the hand), and I held him in my hands – but he was all luminous, all luminous – I rocked him in my hands, telling him, “My child, my little child, my dear child …,” like this, and for several hours.

That’s what saved him, I think. Because his skull was fractured, it had caved in; it had stopped just short of damaging the brain – the caved-in piece was inside, they had to operate, cut open, and remove it. It had stopped just short of the brain. So he will pull through. And I know that that’s what saved him.

But the other experience had lasted from 7 to 1 in the morning, till this work had to be done. And NOT A SINGLE THOUGHT in the head, not a single thought – nothing, complete Silence. It went on like that till the morning.

Afterwards, my ordinary consciousness as you know it came back, but with a perception of movements that had become very clear – perception of movements in the atmosphere, of formations of thought, of vital possibilities…. All that has become very clear.

And with the consciousness absolutely certain, because there have been other details…. Three days earlier, Kali was in a fury because things weren’t as they ought to be on the earth, and especially among the people whose mission it is to prepare the new world. She was … she really was in a fury. She saw all the blunders everywhere, and it made such a powerful vibration in the atmosphere, as though she wanted to begin her Dance; as for me, I kept telling her, "Calm down, calm down…." On the morning of the 11th, she was here and she kept going on about this, that, about the blunders in the government, in the town, in the Ashram, in this and that – she saw everything. I tried to calm her down, but really without success. Finally, when I saw there was no way, I said to the Lord, "Look after her and do what needs to be done, I beg You" – I handed over the responsibility to Him. And then, the same evening the attack started, and I saw it was her dancing. So I thought, "We really had something to learn!" And I saw, I had that experience and I KNOW now (I know it in a certain, absolute and unforgettable way) which is the vibration of Truth in the Physical, in which state the Physical must be so as to respond to the Truth – so as to BE the Truth. Now I know. So that I, too, have

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 learned my lesson. But everyone has learned something, and I hope it won’t be forgotten.

And this morning (this is rather interesting), I received a letter from R. telling me, “That evening I had an extraordinary experience, but now it’s beginning to appear like an impossibility, like something unreal….” The exact moment when the experience came over me (of course, when he received the news of the attack, his first reaction was that of human fear, with the hands becoming cold and so on, but he sat down, he braced himself, he called me), and then he felt a Peace come down from above, something he had never felt before, which swept through his whole being, took hold of him entirely and lasted for … I don’t know, I think he said till eleven at night – it lasted a long time. He had experienced a little bit of it from time to time, but it had never been like that: it came down into him, it seized hold of him entirely. And he says, “I could move about: it was THERE, it didn’t budge, it was inside me.” So I thought, “At last someone who felt! There has been at least one who felt.”

But at the time, I saw so clearly in which people the vibration responded to the vibrations of Falsehood: that sort of movement which is like a tremor in Matter. So I know the people. But I must say there is around me someone, one person who had the true physical vibration (I had known it for a long time, but now I’ve had concrete proof: it’s P.), and no one can understand, no one can know it, but I knew it: physically, not a single response, like this (immutable gesture). So I told him to look after the defense and organize everything.

No one can know it, the mind cannot understand those things (while I had known it for so many years), because people see only outer things, the outer form, outer movements and reactions, but they don’t see the inner possibility. Well, anyway, I immediately told him to look after the defense (besides, he hadn’t asked me, he had started looking after it), and I told everybody, “Do what he tells you to do.” He organized everything. You know, it’s something which is like this (gesture with closed fists, unshakable), which PHYSICALLY DOES NOT BUDGE. Mentally, it’s nothing, it’s easy.

It is like a physical magnet for the true physical vibrations. It doesn’t go through the mind or through intelligence or even through the vital: it’s physically a sort of magnet that attracts physical Truth.

***

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As Satprem is about to leave, regarding his illness:

You know, the true Vibration would have cured everything. But as things are …

Well, the only way to react against all that is just to attract that Peace. Now I have caught hold of it. If you tune in …

Give me your hand….

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