How
can one merge oneself one's separative ego in the divine
Consciousness?
How
can one merge in the divine Consciousness?
How
must one merge oneself one's separative ego in the divine
Consciousness?
Eh? merge oneself?
... one's separative ego...
I don't understand what you mean. "Merge"?
...
in the divine Consciousness.
Yes,
that's just what I mean... How can one dissolve, you mean
dissolve in the Divine, and lose one's ego?
First of all, one must will it. And then one must aspire
with great perseverance, and each time the ego shows itself,
one must give it a little rap on the nose (Mother taps
her nose)... until it has received so many raps that
it is tired of them and gives up the game.
But usually, instead of rapping it on the nose, one justifies
its presence. Almost constantly, when it shows itself,
one says, "After all, it is right." And mostly
one doesn't even know that it is the ego, one thinks it
is oneself. But the first condition is to find it essential
not to have the ego any longer. One must really understand
that one doesn't want it. It is not so easy. It is not
so easy! For one can very well turn words over in the
head and say, "I don't want the ego any more, I no
longer want to be separated from the Divine." All
this goes on inside, like that. But it remains just there,
it hasn't much effect on your life. The next moment you
do something purely egoistic, you see, and find it quite
natural. It doesn't even shock you.
One must first begin to understand truly what this means.
The first method... you see, there are many stages...
first, one must try not to be selfish—which is something
quite different, isn't it?... If you take the English
words you understand the difference. In English, you see,
there is the word "selfish", and there is also
the word "egoism". The ego—"ego"—exists
in English, and "selfish". And these are two
very different things; in French there is not this distinction.
They say, "I don't want to be selfish", you
see. But this is a very small thing, very small! People,
when they stop being selfish, think they have made tremendous
progress! But it's a very small thing. It is simply, oh,
it is simply to have a sense of its ridiculousness. You
can't imagine how ridiculous these selfish people are!
When one sees them thinking all the time about themselves,
referring everything to themselves, governed simply by
their own little person, placing themselves in the centre
of the universe and trying to organise the whole universe
including God around themselves, as though that were the
most important thing in the universe. If one could only
see oneself objectively, you know, as one sees oneself
in a mirror, observe oneself living, it is so grotesque!
(Laughing)... That's enough for you to... One suddenly
feels that he is becoming—oh, so absolutely ridiculous!
I remember I read in French—it was a translation—a
sentence of Tagore's which amused me very much. He was
speaking of a little dog. He said... he compared it with
something... I don't remember the details now, but what
struck me was this: the little dog was sitting on its
mistress's lap and fancying itself the centre of the universe!
This struck me very strongly. It is true! I used to know
a little dog like this! But there are many like that,
almost all are like that. You see, they want everybody
to pay attention to them, and in fact they succeed very
well. Because when there is a little dog, as when there
is a little child—it's almost the same thing—everyone
attends to them.
Haven't you noticed that when a child of this height it
(Mother indicates the height)... comes along, everything
else stops? Before that, people could speak, say interesting
things, be busy with something higher; but as soon as
a child comes along, everybody begins to smile, to mimic
a baby, to try to make it speak, to attend to it. One
can't bring along a child without everybody fussing over
it, wanting to take it, to make it speak. So naturally
the child feels itself the centre of the universe! It
is quite natural!
For a puppy it is the same thing, for a kitten it is the
same. It is a kind of... it is a very poor deformation
of a kind of need to protect something that's smaller
than oneself. And this is one of the forms, one of the
earliest forms of unegoistic manifestation of the ego!
It feels so comfortable when it can protect something,
busy itself with something much smaller, much weaker than
itself, which is almost at its mercy, almost—even
entirely—at its mercy, which has no power to resist.
And so one feels good and generous because one doesn't
crush it!
This is the first manifestation of generosity in the world.
But all this, when one can see behind it and a little
above, it cures you from being selfish, for truly it is
ridiculous! It is truly ridiculous!
So there is a long, long, long way to go before merging
one's ego in the Divine.
Merge one's ego in the Divine! But first, one can't merge
one's ego in the Divine before becoming completely individualised.
Do you know what it means to be (completely) individualised?
Capable of resisting all outer influences?
Some days ago I received a letter from someone who told
me that he was very hesitant about reading books of ordinary
literature, for example, novels or dramas, because his
nature had an almost insuperable tendency to receive imprints
of the characters in these books and to begin living the
feelings and thoughts of these characters, the nature
of these persons. There are many more people than one
would think who are like that. They read a book and while
they are reading it they feel within themselves all kinds
of emotions, thoughts, desires, intentions, plans, even
ideals. They are simply just absorbed in the reading of
the book. They are not even aware of it, because at least
ninety-nine parts of an individual's character are made
of soft butter—inedible of course... but on which
if one presses one's thumb, an imprint is made.
Now, everything is a "thumb": an expressed thought,
a sentence read, an object looked at, an observation of
what someone else does, and of one's neighbour's will.
And all these wills... you know, when one sees them they
are all there, like this, intermingled (Mother intercrosses
her fingers)... , each one trying to get the uppermost
and causing a kind of perpetual conflict within, outside...
It goes in and out of people like that, you see, like
electric currents. One is not at all aware of all this,
and it is a perpetual conflict of all the wills which
are trying to express themselves; and the strongest one
will succeed. But as there are many of these and as one
has to fight alone against a great number, it is not easy.
So one is tossed like a cork on the waves of the sea...
One day one wants this, the next day one wants that, at
one moment one is pushed from this side, at another from
that, now one lifts one's face to the sky (Mother makes
the movement)... , now one is sunk deep in a hole.
And so this is the existence one has!
First one must become a conscious, well-knit, (individualised)
being, who exists in himself, by himself, independently
of all his surroundings, who can hear anything, read anything,
see anything without changing. He receives from outside
only what he wants to receive; he automatically refuses
all that is not in conformity with his plan and nothing
can leave an imprint on him unless he agrees to receive
the imprint. Then one begins to become an individuality!
When one is an individuality, one can make an offering
of it.
For, unless one possesses something, one cannot give it.
First, one must be, and then afterwards one can give oneself.
(So long as one does not exist, one can give nothing.)
And for the separative ego to disappear, as you say, one
must be able to give oneself entirely, totally without
reservation. And to be able to give oneself, one must
first exist. And to exist one must be individualised.
If your body were not made in the rigid form it is—for
it is terribly rigid, isn't it?— well, if all that
were not so fixed, if you had no skin, here, like this,
solid, if externally you were the reflection of what you
are in the vital and mental fields, it would be worse
than being a jelly-fish! Everything would fuse into everything
else, like this... Oh, what a mess it would be! That is
why it was at first necessary to give a very rigid form.
Afterwards we complain about it. We say, "The physical
is fixed, it is a nuisance; it lacks plasticity, it lacks
suppleness, it hasn't that fluidity which can enable us
to merge into the Divine." But this was absolutely
necessary, for without this... if you simply went out
of your body (most of you can't do it because the vital
being is hardly more individualised than the physical),
if you came out of your body and went into the vital world,
you would see that all things there intermingle, they
are mixed, they divide; all kinds of vibrations, currents
of forces come and go, struggle, try to destroy one another,
take possession of each other, absorb each other, throw
each other out... and so it goes on! But it is very difficult
to find a real personality in all this. These are forces,
movements, desires, vibrations.
There are individualities, there are personalities! But
these are powers. People who are individualised in that
world are either heroes or devils!
And now, in the mind... (Silence)... If only you
become conscious of your physical mind in itself... Some
people have called it a public square, because everything
comes there, goes across, passes, comes back... All ideas
go there, they enter at one place, leave by another, some
are here, some there, and it is a public square, not very
well organised, for usually ideas meet and knock into
one another, there are accidents of all kinds. But then
one becomes aware: "What can I call my mind?"
or "What is my mind?"
One
needs years of very attentive, very careful, very reasonable,
very coherent work, organisation, selection, construction,
in order to succeed simply in forming, oh, simply this
little thing, one's own way of thinking!
One believes he has his own way of thinking. Not at all.
It depends totally upon the people one speaks with or
the books he has read or on the mood he is in. It depends
also on whether you have a good or bad digestion, it depends
on whether you are shut up in a room without proper ventilation
or whether you are in the open air; it depends on whether
you have a beautiful landscape before you; it depends
on whether there is sunshine or rain! You are not aware
of it, but you think all kinds of things, completely different
according to a heap of things which have nothing to do
with you!
And for this to become a coordinated, coherent, logical
thought, a long thorough work is necessary. And then,
the best of the business is that when you have succeeded
in making a beautiful, well-formed, very strong, very
powerful mental construction, the first thing you will
be told is, "You must break this so that you can
unite with the Divine!" But so long as you haven't
made it, you cannot unite with the Divine because you
have nothing to give to the Divine except a mass of things
which are not yourself! One must first exist in order
to be able to give oneself. I am repeating what I
said a while ago.
Truly, in the present state of the world, the only thing
one can give the Divine is one's body. But that's what
one doesn't give Him. Yes, one can try to consecrate one's
work! But still, here there are so many elements which
are not true!
You want to merge your body in the Divine, eh? Just try!
How are you going to do this? You can merge your mind,
you can merge your vital, you can fuse all your emotions,
you can fuse all your aspirations, you can fuse all that,
but your body—how are you going to do that? You are
not going to melt it in a boiling-pot! (Laughter)...
And yet it is the only thing about which you can say with
certitude, "It is", and give a name to it; yet
even your name is a convention... but still, you are in
the habit of calling yourself by a certain name say,—"This,
this is I." You look at yourself in a mirror, and
although what you were twenty years ago is very different
from what you are now... it is unrecognisable... still
something makes you say all the same, "Yes, this
is I." Yes? "I am so-and-so''—Peter, Louis,
Jack, Andr'e, whoever it may be...
(After a silence)... And even this, if one were
to look at oneself, every seven years all the cells are
changed, and it is only by a kind of habit that it remains
the same. Does it remain the same? Do you have photographs
of the time you were very young? And the photographs when
you were ten, twenty, thirty years old—it is because
one very much wants to do so that one recognises oneself;
otherwise, truly, one is not at all the same... When you
were this height and now when you are this height, that
makes a considerable difference! So, there we are...
All this... it is not in order to swamp you that I tell
you all this. It is only in order to tell you that before
speaking of merging one's ego in the Divine, one must
first know a little what one is. The ego is there. Its
necessity is that you become conscious, independent beings,
individualised—I mean in the sense of independent—that
you may not be the public square where everything goes
criss-cross! That you may exist in yourselves. That is
why there is an ego. It is like that; that is why also
there is a skin, like that... though truly, even physical
forces pass through the skin. There is a vibration which
goes a certain distance. But still, it's the skin that
prevents us from blending into one another. But everything
else must be like that too.
(After a silence)... And then, later, one offers
all this to the Divine. Years of work are needed. You
must not only... (silence)... become conscious
of yourself, conscious in all details, but you must organise
what you call "yourself" around the psychic
centre, the divine centre of your being, so that it would
make a single, coherent, fully conscious being. And as
this divine centre is itself already consecrated (Mother
makes a gesture of offering)... entirely to the Divine,
if everything is organised harmoniously around it, everything
is consecrated to the Divine. And so, when the Divine
thinks it proper, when the time has come, when the work
of individualisation is complete, then the Divine gives
you permission to let your ego merge in Him, to live henceforward
only for the Divine.
But it is the Divine who takes this decision. You must
first have done all this work, become a conscious being,
solely and exclusively centred around the Divine and governed
by Him. And after all that, there is still an ego; because
it is the ego which serves to make you an individual.
But once this work is perfect, fully acomplished, then,
at that moment, you may tell the Divine, "Here I
am, I am ready. Do you want me?" And the Divine usually
says, "Yes." All is over, everything is acomplished.
And you become a real instrument for the Divine's work.
But first the instrument must be constructed.
You think that you are sent to school, that you are made
to do exercises, all this just for the pleasure of vexing
you? Oh, no! It is because it's indispensable for you
to have a frame in which you can learn how to form yourself.
If you did your work of individualisation, of total formation,
by yourself, all alone in a corner, nothing at all would
be asked of you. But you don't do it, you wouldn't do
it, there's not a single child who would do it, he wouldn't
even know how to do it, where to begin. If a child were
not taught how to live, he could not live, he wouldn't
know how to do anything, anything. I don't want to speak
about disgusting details, but even the most elementary
things he would not do properly if he were not taught
how to do them. Therefore, one must, step by step... That
is to say, if everyone had to go through the whole experience
needed for the formation of an individuality, he would
be long dead before having begun to live! This is the
advantage of those—accumulated through centuries—who
have had the experience and tell you, "Well, if you
want to go quickly, to know in a few years what has been
learnt through centuries, do this!" Read, learn,
study and then, in the material field, you will be taught
to do this in this way, that in that way, this again in
this way (gestures)... . Once you know a little,
you can find your own method, if you have the genius for
it! But first one must stand on one's own feet and know
how to walk. It is very difficult to learn it all alone.
It's like that for everyone. One must form oneself. Therefore,
one needs education. There we are!
(To a child)... Do you have something to ask? No?
Is there anyone who has something to ask?
