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Magic
- Science - Hypnotism
Page No 1
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There is a misguided, perverted occultism which is called
black magic, it is a thing one must never touch. But unfortunately,
there are people who touch it through pure wickedness. You
must not believe it is an illusion, a superstition: it is
real. There are people who know how to do magic and do it,
and with their magic they obtain altogether detestable results...
It is understood of course that when you have no fear and
remain under protection, you are sheltered. But there is
a "when", there is a condition, and then if the
condition is not always fulfilled, very unpleasant things
may happen. So long as you are in a state full of strength,
full of purity—that is, in a state of invincibility,
if anybody does anything against you, that falls back upon
him automatically, as when you throw a tennis-ball against
wall, it comes back to you; the thing comes back to them
exactly in the same way, sometimes with a greater force,
and they are punished by the very thing through which they
sinned. But naturally it all depends on the person against
whom the magic is done, on his inner force and purity...
These things I have known, many cases like this. And in
such cases, in order to resist, one must be, as I said,
a warrior in the vital, that is, a spiritual fighter in
the vital. All who do yoga sincerely must become that ,
and when they do become that, they are altogether sheltered.
But one of the conditions for becoming it is never to have
bad will or a bad thought towards others. For if you have
a bad feeling or bad will or a bad thought, you come down
to their level and when you are on the same level with them,
well you may receive blows from them.
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22
July 1953
- The Mother
Sweet
Mother, what is white magic?
What
we call “white magic” is a beneficial magic and
“black magic” is a harmful magic. But in fact
these are mere words, they have no meaning.
Magic?…
It is a knowledge that has been reduced to purely material
formulas. They are some kind of words or numbers or combinations
of words and numbers, which, if they are simply pronounced
or written, even by someone who has no inner power, must
act. In occultism, this is what corresponds to chemical
formulas in science. You see, in science you have chemical
formulas for combining certain elements and producing others
from them; even if you do not have any mental or vital or
even physical power, if you just follow to the letter the
formula you have, you obtain the required result—it
is enough simply to have a memory. Well, the same thing
has been tried in occultism, making combinations of sounds,
letters, numbers, words, which, by their inherent qualities,
have the power to obtain a certain result. In this way,
any fool, if he learns this and does exactly what he is
told, obtains—or believes he will obtain—the result
he wants. While… let us take the mantra, for instance,
which is a form of occultism; unless the mantra is given
by a guru and the guru transmits his occult or spiritual
power to you with the mantra, you may repeat your mantra
thousands of times, it will have no effect.
That
is to say, in true occultism, one must have the quality,
the ability, the inner gift in order to use it, and that
is the safeguard. True occultism cannot be practised by
any fool. And this is no longer magic—neither white
magic nor black nor golden—it is not magic at all,
it is a spiritual power which must be acquired by long discipline;
and finally, it is given to you only by a divine grace.
This
means that as soon as one draws near the Truth, one is safe
from all charlatanism, all pretension and falsehood. Of
this I have had numerous and extremely conclusive proofs.
And so someone who has the true occult power possesses at
the same time, by the strength of this inner truth, the
power to undo any magic, white or black or whatever colour
it may be, simply by applying a drop of that truth, one
might say. There is nothing that can resist that power.
And this is very well known to those who practise magic,
for they always take very great care, in all countries but
especially in India, never to try out any of their formulas
against yogis and saints, because they know that these formulas
which they send out with their little mechanical, very superficial
power, will go and strike, like a ball on a wall, the true
power that protects one who leads a spiritual life, and
quite naturally their formula will rebound and fall back
on them.
The
yogi or saint doesn’t need to do anything, he doesn’t
even have to want to protect himself: it is something automatic.
He is in a state of consciousness and inner power which
automatically protects him from everything that is inferior.
Naturally, he can also use his power deliberately to protect
others. This rebounding of the bad formation from his atmosphere
automatically protects him, but if this bad formation is
made against someone he is protecting or simply someone
who asks for his help, then he can, by a movement of his
own atmosphere, his own aura, surround the person who is
exposed to the evil magic spells, and the rebounding process
acts in the same way and causes the bad formation to fall
back quite naturally on the one who made it. But in this
case the conscious will of the yogi or saint or sage is
needed. He has to be informed about what has happened and
he must decide to intervene.
That
is the difference between true knowledge and magic.
Anything else?… Is that all?
Mother,
can physical science by its progress open to occultism?
It
does not call it “occultism”, that’s all.
It is only a question of words.… They are making sensational
discoveries which people with occult knowledge already knew
thousands of years ago! They have made a long circuit and
come to the same thing.
With
the most recent discoveries in medicine, in the applied
sciences, for instance, they are contacting in this way,
with a wonder-struck interest, things which were known to
certain sages a very, very long time ago. And then they
present all this before you as new marvels—but indeed
they are rather old, their marvels!
They
will end up by practising occultism without knowing that
they are doing so! For, in fact, as soon as one draws close,
however slightly, to the truth of things and when one is
sincere in one’s search, not satisfied by mere appearances,
when one really wants to find something and goes deep, penetrates
behind appearances, then one begins to advance towards the
truth of things; and as one comes closer to it, well, one
finds again the same knowledge that others who began by
going within have brought back from their inner discoveries.
Only
the method and the path are different but the thing discovered
will be the same, because there are not two things to be
found, there is only one. It will necessarily be the same.
It all depends on the path one follows; some go fast, others
slowly, some go straight, others, as I said, go a long way
round—and what labour! How they have laboured!…
Besides, it is very respectable.
(Silence)
Now
they are finding out that they can replace anaesthetics
by hypnotism with infinitely better results. Well, hypnotism
is a form—a form modernised in its expression —
of occultism; a very limited, very small form of a very
tiny power compared with occult power, but still it is a
form of occultism which has been put in modern terms to
make the thing modern. And I don’t know if you have
heard about these things, but they are very interesting
from a certain point of view: for instance, this process
of hypnotism has been tried on someone who had to have a
skin-graft on a wound. I don’t remember all the details
now, but the arm had to remain attached to the leg for a
fortnight.… If the person were immobilised by plaster
and bandages and all sorts of things, at the end of the
fortnight he wouldn’t be able to move—everything
would become stiff and he would need weeks of treatment
to recover the free use of his arm. In this case, nothing
was tied up, nothing was physically immobilised—no
plaster, no bandages, nothing—the person was just hypnotised
and told to keep his arm in that position. He kept it for
a fortnight, without any effort, any difficulty, without
any intervention from his will: it was the will of the hypnotiser
which intervened. It was perfectly successful, the arm remained
in the required position, and when the fortnight was over
and the hypnotism removed, and the person was told, “Now
you may move”, he began to move! Well, that’s
a step forward.
They
are soon going to meet will—it will be nothing more
than a question of words—then, if they are not too
rigid, they can agree on the value given to the words!
Sweet
Mother, they say hypnotism has a bad after-effect on the
hypnotised person?
No,
no! If somebody practises hypnotism to impose his will on
another, it can obviously do much harm to the other person,
but we are speaking of a hypnotism which is practised in
a humanitarian way, it might be said, and for precise reasons.
All
the bad effects can be avoided if the one who does it has
no bad intentions.
If
you use chemical formulas in an ignorant way, you can cause
an explosion (laughter), and that is very dangerous!
Well, if you use occult formulas ignorantly—or egoistically,
which is even worse than ignorantly—you can also have
harmful results. But that doesn’t mean that occultism
is bad or hypnotism is bad or chemistry is bad. You are
not going to ban chemistry because there are people who
cause explosions! (Laughter)
To
learn occultism one must have special qualities, whereas
for learning science…
But
for everything one must have special qualities!
Scientific
knowledge is accessible to all.
Listen,
if you are not an artist, you may work for years with paint-brushes,
colours, canvases, and spend much money and much effort,
and yet produce horrible things. If you are not a musician,
you may labour hard for hours at playing the piano and you
will never do anything worthwhile. Special qualities are
always needed.…Why, even for an athlete—if you
are not born an athlete, you may try as hard as you like,
you will only succeed in doing something quite mediocre
and ordinary. It will be better than someone who does not
try at all, but that does not mean that you are automatically
going to succeed. Besides, if we go a step further, everyone
has countless possibilities within him of which he is unaware
and which develop only if he does what is to be done in
the way it should be done.… But there are two types
of progress, not only one; there is the progress that consists
in perfecting more and more the capacities, possibilities,
faculties and qualities you have—this is what is normally
obtained by education; but if you go in for a little more
thorough development by approaching a deeper truth, you
can add, to the qualities you already have, other new ones
which seem to be asleep in your being.
You
can multiply your possibilities, enlarge and increase them;
you can suddenly bring up something you did not think you
had. I have already explained this to you several times.
When one discovers one’s psychic being within, at the
same time there develop and manifest, quite unexpectedly,
things one could not do at all before and which one didn’t
think were in one’s nature. Of this too I have had
numerous examples. I have given you this one, but I am repeating
it to you once more to make myself understood.
I
used to know a young girl who was born in a very ordinary
environment, who had not received much education and wrote
rather clumsy French, who had not developed her imagination
and had absolutely no literary sense: that seemed to be
among the possibilities she did not have. Well, when she
had the inner experience of contact with her psychic being,
and as long as the contact was living and very present,
she wrote admirable things. When she fell back from that
state into an ordinary one, she could not even put two sentences
together correctly! And I saw examples of both kinds of
her writing.
There
is a genius within everyone of us—we don’t know
it. We must find the way to make it come out—but it is
there sleeping, it asks for nothing better than to manifest;
we must open the door to it.
Contd.
Page 2
10
september 1958
- The Mother
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