March 13, 1968
(Regarding an old Playground Talk of May 27, 1953.)
You say this: "Yes, science can find. If it moves in a very definite
direction, if it progresses sufficiently and doesn’t stop on the way,
they will find the same thing that mystics have found, that reli
gious people have found, that everyone has found, because there
is only one thing to be found and not two. There is only one. So
you may go a long way, you may wind and turn and wind again,
if you go long enough without stopping, you are sure to reach
the same point. Once you have reached there, you feel there’s
nothing at all to be found! There’s nothing to be found. And
that’s the power. That’s it, and that’s all. It’s like that."
What do you mean by "That’s the power"?
Strangely, when you read it, it was SIMPLE, obvious, but now …
Yes, when I read it, it seemed obvious to me…. Maybe it doesn’t require any comment, that’s all!
Yes, they will find the same thing that mystics and monks and everyone have found – that’s the power. The power is what you find. And to That, essentially, you cannot give any name or definition.
It’s the big quarrel now about Auroville: in the Charter I put “Divine Consciousness” ["To live in Auroville one must be a willing servitor of the Divine Consciousness"], but they say, “It brings God to mind.” I said (laughing), “Not to my mind!” So then, some change it to “the highest consciousness,” others put something else. With the Russians I agreed to put “perfect Consciousness,” but that’s an approximation…. And That – which we can’t name or define – is what is the supreme Power. What you find is the supreme Power. And the supreme Power is only one aspect: the aspect concerned with the creation.
* * *
(Soon afterwards, regarding another passage from the same
Talk, in which someone asked Mother if the Divine could
"withdraw from us.")
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You answer, "It’s an impossibility. Because if the Divine with
drew from something, it would immediately collapse, because it
wouldn’t exist. To put it more clearly, He is the sole existence."
Now I would have answered, “It’s like asking if the Divine could withdraw from Himself!” (Mother laughs) That’s the hitch, you say “Divine” and they understand “God”! … There is ONLY That: That alone exists. That, what? – That alone exists!
(silence)
This morning again, I spent some time looking, seeing, and I seemed to ask the Divine, “Why do You enjoy denying Yourself?…” You understand, for our logic to be satisfied, we say, all that is dark, all that is ugly, all that isn’t living, all that isn’t harmonious – none of that is divine. But how could it be so?… It’s only an attitude for action. So putting myself in the consciousness of action, I said, “But why do You enjoy being like that!” (Mother laughs)
It was a very concrete experience of the cells, with the feeling (not “feeling” – neither feeling nor sensation), a sort of perception of being on the very edge of the great secret…. All of a sudden, a group of cells or a bodily function finds it amusing to go wrong – why? What meaning does that hold? And the answer was, it’s as if all that helped break limits.
But why, how?
Mentally, we can explain everything, but that doesn’t mean anything at all: for the body, the material consciousness, it’s abstract. When the material consciousness catches hold of something, it knows it A HUNDRED TIMES BETTER than we can know it mentally. When it knows, it has the power: knowing gives it the power. That’s what is being slowly, slowly worked out. For an ignorant consciousness it’s slow and painful – but for the true consciousness, it’s not that! Pain, joy, all that is … such an absurd way of seeing things – of feeling and seeing things.
There is an increasingly concrete perception that everything – that there is nothing that doesn’t hold its own joy of being, because that’s THE way of being: without joy of being, there is no being. But it’s not what we mentally understand by “joy of being.” It’s … something which is hard to express. And this perception of suffering and joy (almost of evil and good), all of that is necessities of the work to enable it to be done in a certain field of unconsciousness. Because true consciousness is something entirely, totally different.
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That’s what the consciousness of the cells is now learning, and learning through a concrete experience; and all those appreciations of what is good and what is evil, of what is suffering and what is joy, all that seems misty. But the “thing” – the Truth – the concrete thing still hasn’t been caught. It’s on the way, one feels it’s on the way, but it’s not there yet. If one had it … one would be the all-powerful master. And possibly one cannot have it until the world in its totality, or to a sufficient extent, is ready for the transformation.
That’s speculation, what we might call an inspiration. But it still belongs to the upper realm.
Now and then, one feels as if within an hair’s breadth of all-powerfulness: one is just on the verge … ah! (Mother makes the gesture of catching the thing) … But then it fades away.
When one has got hold of that, the world will be able to change. And when I say “one,” I don’t mean a person…. There may be something equivalent to THE Person, but that … That too, I am not sure it’s not a projection of our consciousness onto something eluding us.
Sri Aurobindo always said that if you go far enough beyond the Impersonal, once you go beyond, you find something we may call “the Person,” but which has nothing at all to do with what we imagine the “Person” to be.
And there, all that remains … all that remains is That! And That is what has the power. But even when we say, “All that remains is That” (laughing), we situate it WITHIN something else! … Words and language are unsuited to express something that exceeds the consciousness. As soon as you formulate it, you bring it down.
(silence)
A little farther [in this Talk], you say, "Many people who realized
the Divine never spoke about it and never knew it." How can
that be? Can one realize the Divine without knowing it?
It’s the same thing again. We could add, “and MENTALLY never knew it.” They didn’t say, “I have realized the Divine,” because it didn’t correspond to any mental conception.
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