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The
Mother Answers on Supermind and the Life Divine - II
Sri
Aurobindo has written: "The descent of the Supermind
will bring to one who receives it and is fulfilled in the
truth-consciousness all the possibilities of the divine
life. It will take up not only the whole characteristic
experience which we recognise already as constituting the
spiritual life but also all which we now exclude from that
category..."
So,
what are you asking? What is excluded?
What do we exclude!\dots It depends on the person.
But what are you asking, really?
I
don't see what we are excluding.
Ah!
that's sensible. Here we profess we are excluding nothing.
That's precisely the reason. We have taken up all human activities,
whatever they may be, including those that are considered
the least spiritual. But I must say it is very difficult to
change their nature! But still, we are trying, we put all
possible goodwill into it.
It
is also said that the descent will make the change easier.
There
are two points which resist strongly—all that has to
do with politics and all that has to do with money. These
are the two points on which it is most difficult to change
the human attitude.
In
principle we have said that we have nothing to do with politics,
and it is true that we have nothing to do with politics as
it is practised at present. But it is quite obvious that if
politics is taken in its true spirit, that is, as the organisation
of human masses and all the details of government and regulation
of the collective life, and relations with other collectivities—that
is, with other nations, other countries—it must necessarily
enter into the supramental transformation, for so long as
national life and the relations between nations remain what
they are, it is quite impossible to live a supramental life
on earth. So it will just have to change; we shall have to
deal with that too.
As
for financial matters, that is, finding a means of exchange
and production which is simple—"simple", well,
which should be simple, simpler than the primitive system
of exchange in which people had to give one thing to get another—something
which could in principle be world-wide, universal; this is
also altogether indispensable for the simplification of life.
Now, with human nature, just the very opposite is happening!
The situation is such that it has become almost—intolerable.
It has become almost impossible to have the least relation
with other countries, and that much-vaunted means of exchange
which should have been a simplification has become such a
complication that we shall soon reach a deadlock—we are
very, very close to being unable to do anything, to being
tied up in everything. If one wants the smallest thing from
another country, one has to follow such complicated and laborious
procedures that in the end one will stay in one's own little
corner and be satisfied with the potatoes one can grow in
one's garden, without hoping to know anything at all about
what is going on and happening elsewhere.
Well,
these two points are the most resistant. In the human consciousness
this is most subject to the forces of ignorance, inconscience
and, I must say, quite generally, ill-will. This is what most
refuses all progress and all advance towards the truth; and
unfortunately, in every human individual this is also the
point of resistance, the point that remains narrowly stupid
and refuses to understand anything it is not used to. There
it is truly a heroic act to want to take up these things and
transform them. Well, we are trying this also, and unless
it is done, it will be impossible to change the conditions
of the earth.
It
is relatively—very relatively—easier to change economic
and social conditions than political and financial ones. There
are certain general, global ideas from the economic and social
point of view which are accessible to human thought: certain
liberations, a certain widening, a certain collective organisation,
which do not seem absolutely senseless and unrealisable; but
as soon as you touch on the other two questions, which are
however of capital importance, especially the political question,
it is quite otherwise... For, one might imagine a life which
would get rid of all financial complications—although,
without playing on words, it would be a veritable impoverishment.
In what financial possibilities and processes bring, there
is a very considerable wealth of possibilities, for if they
were used in the right way and in the true spirit, that would
simplify all human relations and undertakings to a very great
extent and make possible a complexity of life which would
be very difficult under other conditions. But I don't know
why—except that the worst usually precedes the best—instead
of taking the way of simplification, men have followed the
way of complication to such a point that, in spite of the
aeroplanes which carry you from one end of the world to the
other in two days, in spite of all the modern inventions which
try to make life so "small", so "close"
that we could go round the world not in eighty days now but
in a very few days, in spite of all that, the complications
of exchange, for instance, are so great that many people can't
get away from home—I mean from the country they live
in—because they have no means of going to another one
and if they ask for the money they need to live in another
country they are told, "Is it very important for you
to go? You could perhaps wait a little, because it is very
difficult for us at the moment..." I am not joking, it
is quite serious, this does happen. That means we are becoming
more and more the prisoners of the place where we are born,
while all the scientific trends are towards such a great proximity
between countries that we could very easily belong to the
universe or, at any rate, to the whole world.
There.
This is the situation. It has grown considerably worse since
the last war; it grows worse year by year, and one finds oneself
in such a ridiculous situation that, unfortunately, as one
is at the end of one's resources, to simplify what has been
made so complicated, there is an idea in the earth-atmosphere—an
idea which might be called preposterous, but unhappily it
is much worse than preposterous, it is catastrophic—the
idea that if there were a great upheaval, perhaps it would
be better afterwards... One is so jammed between prohibitions,
impossibilities, interdictions, rules, the complications of
every second, that one feels stifled and really gets the admirable
idea that if everything were demolished perhaps it would be
better afterwards!... It is in the air. And all the governments
have put themselves in such impossible conditions; they have
become so tied up that it seems to them they will have to
break everything to be able to move forward... (Silence)
This is unfortunately a little more than a possibility, it
is a very serious threat. And it is not quite certain
that life will not be made still more impossible because one
feels incapable of emerging from the chaos—the chaos
of complications—in which humanity has put itself. It
is like the shadow—but unfortunately a very active shadow—of
the new hope which has sprung up in the human consciousness,
a hope and a need for something more harmonious; and the need
becomes so much more acute as life, as it is at present organised,
becomes more and more contrary to it. The two opposites are
facing each other with such intensity that one can expect
something like an explosion...
(Silence)
This
is the condition of the earth, and it is not very bright.
But for us one possibility remains—I have spoken about
it to you several times already—even if, outside, things
are deteriorating completely and the catastrophe cannot possibly
be avoided, there remains for us, I mean those for whom the
supramental life is not a vain dream, those who have faith
in its reality and the aspiration to realise it—I don't
necessarily mean those who have gathered here in Pondicherry,
in the Ashram, but those who have as a link between them the
knowledge Sri Aurobindo has given and the will to live according
to that knowledge—there remains for them the possibility
of intensifying their aspiration, their will, their effort,
to gather their energies together and shorten the time for
the realisation. There remains for them the possibility of
working this miracle—individually and to a small extent
collectively—of conquering space, duration, the time
needed for this realisation; of replacing time by intensity
of effort and going fast enough and far enough in the realisation
to liberate themselves from the consequences of the present
condition of the world; of making such a concentration of
force, strength, light, truth, that by this very realisation
they can be above these consequences and secure against them,
enjoy the protection bestowed by the Light and Truth, by Purity—the
divine Purity through the inner transformation—and that
the storm may pass over the world without being able to destroy
this great hope of the near future; that the tempest may not
sweep away this beginning of realisation.
Instead
of falling asleep in an easy quietude and letting things happen
according to their own rhythm, if one strains to the utmost
one's will, ardour, aspiration and springs up into the light,
then one can hold one's head higher; one can have, in a higher
region of consciousness, enough room to live, to breathe,
to grow and develop above the passing cyclone.
This
is possible. In a very small way, this was already done during
the last war, when Sri Aurobindo was here. It can be done
again. But one must want it and each one must do his own work
as sincerely and completely as he can.
7 August
1957
- The Mother
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