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9 July 1958
“Religion has opened itself to denial by its claim to determine the truth by divine authority, by inspiration, by a sacrosanct and infallible sovereignty given to it from on high; it has sought to impose itself on human thought, feeling, conduct without discussion or question. This is an excessive and premature claim, although imposed in a way on the religious idea by the imperative and absolute character of the inspirations and illuminations which are its warrant and justification and by the necessity of faith as an occult light and power from the soul amidst the mind’s ignorance, doubts, weakness, incertitudes. Faith is indispensable to man, for without it he could not proceed forward in his journey through the Unknown; but it ought not to be imposed, it should come as a free perception or an imperative direction from the inner spirit. A claim to unquestioned acceptance could only be warranted if the spiritual effort had already achieved man’s progression to the highest Truth-Consciousness total and integral, free from all ignorant mental and vital mixture. This is the ultimate object before us, but it has not yet been accomplished, and the premature claim has obscured the true work of the religious instinct in man, which is to lead him towards the Divine Reality, to formulate all that he has yet achieved in that direction and to give to each human being a mould of spiritual discipline, a way of seeking, touching, nearing the Divine Truth, a way which is proper to the potentialities of his nature.” The Life Divine, pp. 863-64 Sweet Mother, can faith be increased by personal effort? Page – 350 Faith is certainly a gift given to us by the Divine Grace. It is like a door suddenly opening upon an eternal truth, through which we can see it, almost touch it. As in everything else in the ascent of humanity, there is the necessity – especially at the beginning – of personal effort. It is possible that in some exceptional circumstances, for reasons which completely elude our intelligence, faith may come almost accidentally, quite unexpectedly, almost without ever having been solicited, but most frequently it is an answer to a yearning, a need, an aspiration, something in the being that is seeking and longing, even though not in a very conscious and systematic way. But in any case, when faith has been granted, when one has had this sudden inner illumination, in order to preserve it constantly in the active consciousness individual effort is altogether indispensable. One must hold on to one’s faith, will one’s faith; one must seek it, cultivate it, protect it. In the human mind there is a morbid and deplorable habit of doubt, argument, scepticism. This is where human effort must be put in: the refusal to admit them, the refusal to listen to them and still more the refusal to follow them. No game is more dangerous than playing mentally with doubt and scepticism. They are not only enemies, they are terrible pitfalls, and once one falls into them, it becomes tremendously difficult to pull oneself out. Some people think it is a very great mental elegance to play with ideas, to discuss them, to contradict their faith; they think that this gives them a very superior attitude, that in this way they are above “superstitions” and “ignorance”; but if you listen to suggestions of doubt and scepticism, then you fall into the grossest ignorance and stray away from the right path. You enter into confusion, error, a maze of contradictions.…You are not always sure you will be able to get out of it. You go so far away from the inner truth that you lose sight of it and sometimes lose too all possible contact with your soul. Certainly a personal effort is needed to preserve one’s faith, Page – 351 to let it grow within. Later – much later – one day, looking back, we may see that everything that happened, even what seemed to us the worst, was a Divine Grace to make us advance on the way; and then we become aware that the personal effort too was a grace. But before reaching that point, one has to advance much, to struggle much, sometimes even to suffer a great deal. To sit down in inert passivity and say, “If I am to have faith I shall have it, the Divine will give it to me”, is an attitude of laziness, of unconsciousness and almost of bad-will. For the inner flame to burn, one must feed it; one must watch over the fire, throw into it the fuel of all the errors one wants to get rid of, all that delays the progress, all that darkens the path. If one doesn’t feed the fire, it smoulders under the ashes of one’s unconsciousness and inertia, and then, not years but lives, centuries will pass before one reaches the goal. One must watch over one’s faith as one watches over the birth of something infinitely precious, and protect it very carefully from everything that can impair it. In the ignorance and darkness of the beginning, faith is the most direct expression of the Divine Power which comes to fight and conquer. Page – 352
“Religion’s real business is to prepare man’s mind, life and bodily existence for the spiritual consciousness to take it up; it has to lead him to that point where the inner spiritual light begins fully to emerge. It is at this point that religion must learn to subordinate itself, not to insist on its outer characters, but give full scope to the inner spirit itself to develop its own truth and reality. In the meanwhile it has to take up as much of man’s mentality, vitality, physicality as it can and give all his activities a turn towards the spiritual direction, the revelation of a spiritual meaning in them, the imprint of a spiritual refinement, the beginning of a spiritual character. It is in this attempt that the errors of religion come in, for they are caused by the very nature of the matter with which it is dealing, – that inferior stuff invades the very forms that are meant to serve as intermediaries between the spiritual and the mental, vital or physical consciousness, and often it diminishes, degrades and corrupts them: but it is in this attempt that lies religion’s greatest utility as an intercessor between spirit and nature. Truth and error live always together in the human evolution and the truth is not to be rejected because of its accompanying errors, though these have to be eliminated, – often a difficult business and, if crudely done, resulting in surgical harm inflicted on the body of religion; for what we see as error is very frequently the symbol or a disguise or a corruption or malformation of a truth which is lost in the brutal radicality of the operation, – the truth is cut out along with the error. Nature herself very commonly permits the good corn and the tares and weeds to grow together for a long Page – 353 time, because only so is her own growth, her free evolution possible.” The Life Divine, pp. 864-65 Sweet Mother, is religion a necessity in the life of the ordinary man?
In the life of societies it is a necessity, for it serves as a corrective to collective egoism which, without this control, could take on excessive proportions. The level of collective consciousness is always lower than the individual level. It is very noticeable, for example, that when men gather in a group or collect in great numbers, the level of consciousness falls a great deal. The consciousness of crowds is much lower than individual consciousness, and the collective consciousness of society is certainly lower than the consciousness of the individuals constituting it. There it is a necessity. In ordinary life, an individual, whether he knows it or not, always has a religion but the object of his religion is sometimes of a very inferior kind.…The god he worships may be the god of success or the god of money or the god of power, or simply a family god: the god of children, the god of the family, the god of the ancestors. There is always a religion. The quality of the religion is very different according to the individual, but it is difficult for a human being to live and to go on living, to survive in life without having something like a rudiment of an ideal which serves as the centre] for his existence. Most of the time he doesn’t know it and if he were asked what his ideal is, he would be unable to formulate it; but he has one, vaguely, something that seems to him the most precious thing in life. For most people, it is security, for instance: living in security, being in conditions where one is sure of being able to go on existing. That is one of the great “aims”, one might say, one of the great motives of human effort. There are people for Page – 354 whom comfort is the important thing; for others it is pleasure, amusement. All that is very low and one would not be inclined to give it the name of an ideal, but it is truly a form of religion, something which may seem to be worth consecrating one’s life to.…There are many influences which seek to impose themselves on human beings by using that as a basis. The feeling of insecurity, uncertainty, is a kind of tool, a means used by political or religious groups to influence individuals. They play on these ideas. Every political or social idea is a sort of lower expression of an ideal which is a rudimentary religion. As soon as there is a faculty of thought, there is necessarily an aspiration for something higher than the most brutal daily existence from minute to minute, and this is what gives the energy and possibility of living. Of course, one could say that it is the same thing for individuals as for collectivities, that their value is exactly proportionate to the value of their ideal, their religion, that is, of the thing they make the summit of their existence. Of course, when we speak of religion, if we mean the recognised religions, truly, everyone has his own religion, whether he knows it or not, even when he belongs to the great religions that have a name and a history. It is certain that even if one learns the dogmas by heart and complies with a prescribed ritual, everybody understands and acts in his own way, and only the name of the religion is the same, but this same religion is not the same for all the individuals who think they are practising it. We can say that without some expression of this aspiration for the Unknown and the highest, human existence would be very difficult. If there were not at the heart of every being the hope of something better – of whatever kind – he would have difficulty in finding the energy needed to go on living.
(Silence) Page – 355 But as very few individuals are capable of thinking freely, it is much easier to join a religion, accept it, adopt it and become a part of that religious collectivity than to formulate one’s own cult for oneself. So, apparently, one is this or that, but in fact it is only an appearance. Page – 356
Mother, how can the faculty of intuition be developed?
There are different kinds of intuition, and we carry these capacities within us. They are always active to some extent but we don’t notice them because we don’t pay enough attention to what is going on in us. Behind the emotions, deep within the being, in a consciousness seated somewhere near the level of the solar plexus, there is a sort of prescience, a kind of capacity for foresight, but not in the form of ideas: rather in the form of feelings, almost a perception of sensations. For instance, when one is going to decide to do something, there is sometimes a kind of uneasiness or inner refusal, and usually, if one listens to this deeper indication, one realises that it was justified. In other cases there is something that urges, indicates, insists – I am not speaking of impulses, you understand, of all the movements which come from the vital and much lower still – indications which are behind the feelings, which come from the affective part of the being; there too one can receive a fairly sure indication of the thing to be done. These are forms of intuition or of a higher instinct which can be cultivated by observation and also by studying the results. Naturally, it must be done very sincerely, objectively, without prejudice. If one wants to see things in a particular way and at the same time practise this observation, it is all useless. One must do it as if one were looking at what is happening from outside oneself, in someone else. It is one form of intuition and perhaps the first one that usually manifests. There is also another form but that one is much more difficult to observe because for those who are accustomed to think, to act by reason – not by impulse but by reason – to reflect Page – 357 before doing anything, there is an extremely swift process from cause to effect in the half-conscious thought which prevents you from seeing the line, the whole line of reasoning and so you don’t think that it is a chain of reasoning, and that is quite deceptive. You have the impression of an intuition but it is not an intuition, it is an extremely rapid subconscious reasoning, which takes up a problem and goes straight to the conclusions. This must not be mistaken for intuition. In the ordinary functioning of the brain, intuition is something which suddenly falls like a drop of light. If one has the faculty, the beginning of a faculty of mental vision, it gives the impression of something coming from outside or above, like a little impact of a drop of light in the brain, absolutely independent of all reasoning. This is perceived more easily when one is able to silence one’s mind, hold it still and attentive, arresting its usual functioning, as if the mind were changed into a kind of mirror turned towards a higher faculty in a sustained and silent attention. That too one can learn to do. One must learn to do it, it is a necessary discipline. When you have a question to solve, whatever it may be, usually you concentrate your attention here (pointing between the eyebrows), at the centre just above the eyes, the centre of the conscious will. But then if you do that, you cannot be in contact with intuition. You can be in contact with the source of the will, of effort, even of a certain kind of knowledge, but in the outer, almost material field; whereas, if you want to contact the intuition, you must keep this (Mother indicates the forehead) completely immobile. Active thought must be stopped as far as possible and the entire mental faculty must form – at the top of the head and a little further above if possible – a kind of mirror, very quiet, very still, turned upwards, in silent, very concentrated attention. If you succeed, you can – perhaps not immediately – but you can have the perception of the drops of light falling upon the mirror from a still unknown region and Page – 358 expressing themselves as a conscious thought which has no connection with all the rest of your thought since you have been able to keep it silent. That is the real beginning of the intellectual intuition. It is a discipline to be followed. For a long time one may try and not succeed, but as soon as one succeeds in making a “mirror”, still and attentive, one always obtains a result, not necessarily with a precise form of thought but always with the sensations of a light coming from above. And then, if one can receive this light coming from above without entering immediately into a whirl of activity, receive it in calm and silence and let it penetrate deep into the being, then after a while it expresses itself either as a luminous thought or as a very precise indication here (Mother indicates the heart), in this other centre. Naturally, first these two faculties must be developed; then, as soon as there is any result, one must observe the result, as I said, and see the connection with what is happening, the consequences: see, observe very attentively what has come in, what may have caused a distortion, what one has added by way of more or less conscious reasoning or the intervention of a lower will, also more or less conscious; and it is by a very deep study – indeed, almost of every moment, in any case daily and very frequent – that one succeeds in developing one’s intuition. It takes a long time. It takes a long time and there are ambushes: one can deceive oneself, take for intuitions subconscious wills which try to manifest, indications given by impulses one has refused to receive openly, indeed all sorts of difficulties. One must be prepared for that. But if one persists, one is sure to succeed. And there comes a time when one feels a kind of inner guidance, something which is leading one very perceptibly in all that one does. But then, for the guidance to have its maximum power, one must naturally add to it a conscious surrender: one must be sincerely determined to follow the indication given by Page – 359 the higher force. If one does that, then…one saves years of study, one can seize the result extremely rapidly. If one also does hat, the result comes very rapidly. But for that, it must be done with sincerity and…a kind of inner spontaneity. If one wants to try without this surrender, one may succeed – as one can also succeed in developing one’s personal will and making it into a very considerable power – but that takes a very long time and one meets many obstacles and the result is very precarious; one must be very persistent, obstinate, persevering, and one is sure to succeed, but only after a great labour. Make your surrender with a sincere, complete self-giving, and you will go ahead at full speed, you will go much faster – but you must not do this calculatingly, for that spoils everything! (Silence)
Moreover, whatever you may want to do in life, one thing is absolutely indispensable and at the basis of everything, the capacity of concentrating the attention. If you are able to gather together the rays of attention and consciousness on one point and can maintain this concentration with a persistent will, nothing can resist it – whatever it may be, from the most material physical development to the highest spiritual one. But this discipline must be followed in a constant and, it may be said, imperturbable way; not that you should always be concentrated on the same thing – that’s not what I mean, I mean learning to concentrate. And materially, for studies, sports, all physical or mental development, it is absolutely indispensable. And the value of an individual is proportionate to the value of his attention. And from the spiritual point of view it is still more important. There is no spiritual obstacle which can resist a penetrating power of concentration. For instance, the discovery of the psychic being, union with the inner Divine, opening to the higher Page – 360 spheres, all can be obtained by an intense and obstinate power of concentration — but one must learn how to do it. There is nothing in the human or even in the superhuman field, to which the power of concentration is not the key. You can be the best athlete, you can be the best student, you can be an artistic, literary or scientific genius, you can be the greatest saint with that faculty. And everyone has in himself a tiny little beginning of it is given to everybody, but people do not cultivate it. Page – 361
Sweet Mother, what kind of forces can be called up by using the planchette, and how is it done?
Oh! Oh!…Do you mean automatic writing?
Yes, Mother.
That depends on the people who do it. Sometimes there are no forces at all! It is the mental and vital vibrations of the people who use the planchette, and it is their own subconscious ideas which they bring up, ninety-eight times out of a hundred. ¹ If they are in contact with invisible entities, it may be all sorts of things but nothing very advisable! Almost with certainty it could be said that it is not what people think it is, in the sense that most often they try to evoke what they call the “spirit” of a dead person, a relative or a friend or someone they loved and with whom they wish to remain in touch; and besides, they ask them the most foolish questions. Fortunately they don’t succeed in disturbing them.… From this point of view one can say that if you had a relation of deep and sincere love with someone who has passed away, left his body, and if you are calm and strong enough yourself, this person may choose to take shelter vitally in your atmosphere – the atmosphere of the one he loves – for a more or less long period. In this case it means that the relation was very close, very intimate, and if you are not altogether materialistic to the point of not having any direct mental perception, you can remain in mental contact with this person, in communication with him. It is a rather exceptional case, for usually if your atmosphere is calm and strong enough to be able to truly serve
¹ Later Mother added the following remark: “I say ninety times out of a hundred, for there are exceptions – I know of some – but they are so rare that it is better not to speak about them.” Page – 362 as a protection, the person who has left his body enters into a deep rest there, and it is not at all good to disturb it; and the best thing you can do is to enfold this person with your love and leave him in peace. Therefore, even if it were possible to enter into communication with him by this means, which I would call very crude, it would be improper to do so. But usually, people who have the capacity, the faculties required to serve as a shelter for some time, a transitional shelter for those who have gone, do not have this ridiculous idea of disturbing the rest of the one they love by tapping on a planchette…fortunately! But those who indulge in this exercise, an exercise of unhealthy curiosity, get what they deserve; for the atmosphere we live in is filled with a great number of small vital entities which are born of unsatisfied desires, vital movements of a very low type, also the decomposition of larger beings of the vital world; indeed, it is swarming with them, you see. It is surely a protection that most people do not see what is going on in this vital atmosphere, for it is not especially pleasant; but if they have the presumption to want to come into contact with it and set about trying automatic writing or table-turning or…indeed, anything of this kind, out of an unhealthy curiosity, well, what happens is that one of these small entities or several of them have fun at their expense and collect all the necessary indications from their subconscious mind and then furnish these things to them as clear proofs that they are the person who has been called! I could write a book for you with all the examples I have known of these stories, for people are very proud of doing things like this and immediately write them down, giving “proofs” of the truth of the experience which are so ridiculous that they should be enough to show them that someone was making fun of them! I had another instance, very recently, of somebody who fancied that he had entered into contact with Sri Aurobindo and was receiving sensational revelations from him — that was comical in the extreme. Page – 363 But anyway, as a rule, it is – oh! most often – is your own forces, your subconscious mental and vital forces which you put into the planchette – and you make sensational revelations to yourself! One can do many things in this way.…Once I wanted to prove to people that what they were evoking was nothing but themselves; so I had a little fun, simply with a concentration of the will, tapping the furniture, making tables walk and, well!…As for automatic writing, you only have to withdraw your conscious will into yourself, to let your hand go – just like this (gesture) – and leave it free, and then the hand will begin to make movements; but there is a little part in you which is interested and would like these movements to make sense and this little part appeals to the subconscious mind which begins to make sensational revelations. Indeed, it is a booby-trap, all this business, unless one does it scientifically – but then, scientifically, one realises that it leads to nothing, nothing at all except just passing your time in what you consider an interesting way. In some cases vital entities really get hold of you, and there it is dangerous. But fortunately these cases are not very frequent. Then it becomes very dangerous. A very long time ago when I was in France, I knew the case of a man who, through practices of this kind, had put himself into contact with a vital entity. This man happened to be a gambler and he spent his time speculating and playing roulette. He spent part of the year at Monte Carlo playing roulette and the rest of the time he lived in the south of France and speculated on the Stock Exchange. And now, some being was really using him\was through automatic writing – using him, and for years it gave him absolutely precise, exact indications. When he played roulette it used to tell him, “Bid on this number or this place”, and he would win. Naturally he just worshipped this “spirit” which gave him such sensational revelations. And at the Exchange it also told him, “Speculate on this or on that” and gave him all the indications. This man became colossally rich. Page – 364 He used to boast to all his friends about the method by which he had grown rich. Someone put him on his guard, told him, “Be careful, this doesn’t look very honest, you should not trust this spirit.” He fell out with this person. A few days later he was in Monte Carlo and…He always played for high stakes, you see; since, naturally, he always won and would break the bank, he was much feared. Then the spirit told him, “Stake everything, everything you have on this....” He did, and at a single stroke lost everything! And yet, he still had some money left from his Stock Exchange speculations. He said to himself, “It is bad luck.” Again he received a very precise indication, “Do this”, as usual. And he did it – he was completely cleaned out! And to finish the job, the spirit told him, just for the fun of it, “Now, you are going to commit suicide. Put a bullet through your head”. And he was so much under its influence, he did so.…That’s the end of the story. And this is an authentic story. So, the least one can say is that it is dangerous, it is much better not to indulge in occupations of this kind. No! Either they are rather senseless amusements or else they are unwholesome occupations.
Mother, Sri Aurobindo wrote the book Yogic Sadhan in this way…
No, no! It is not that at all. You must not confuse things. That was something different. Sri Aurobindo knew] with whom he was in contact, he did it deliberately and chose the person he was in touch with, and that had nothing to do with the little entities I am speaking about, nothing at all, at all. It was something that took place in the mental world, directly; you must not confuse things. This has no connection, none at all.
(Silence) Page – 365 One can, if one has the knowledge, the control, the power, the ability to go into a certain state of passivity – one can very easily lend one’s hand to someone, deliberately, knowing who it is and acting on a higher plane, but that already demands a great consciousness and a great self-mastery, which is not within everybody’s reach. One must have quite a considerable inner development to be able to see whom one is dealing with on a particular plane and willingly lend oneself to the experiment with full knowledge of what one is doing and without losing one’s control. Not everybody can play with that. But to work the planchette, one only has to delude oneself enough for it to start working!
What you are telling us now, Mother – does it form part of the occult sciences?
It was simply to make an experiment, that’s all. (Silence)
It is not a good way of approach, as a general rule, for in the inner field, in the domain of inner development, this corresponds to the need to read novels. People whose minds are insufficiently developed, whose minds are still in a tamasic state and half inert, need to read novels in order to wake up. It is not the sign of a very commendable state or at any rate a very high one. Well, in the field of inner development this corresponds to the same thing. When one is in a very rudimentary state, when one has no intense inner life, one needs to read novels or to create novels for oneself, and then one indulges in experiments of this kind and believes one is doing very interesting things.…This has the same interest as novels – not even literary novels but cheap romances, those published on the back of newspapers. Sri Aurobindo told me that some people needed this because their minds were so inert that this shook them and woke them Page – 366 up a little! Well, that is the same thing. Some people may need to do exercises of this kind to awaken their vital a little, which is sleepy and inert and…this gives them a little interest in life. But still, one can’t say that these are very valuable occupations. They are pastimes, amusements. And this has never served to prove anything to anybody. One could say, “Oh! It is to make you understand that there is an inner life, an invisible life, and it puts you in touch with things you don’t see and proves to you that they exist”. That is not true. Unless you have a spiritual being] within you, capable of awakening and living its own life, all these things teach you nothing at all. I knew some people – one of them especially, who was a man of science, intelligent, a man of real ability; he had studied higher science, become an engineer and held an important position; this man was a member of a society known as “spiritualist”, which had found a medium who really had quite exceptional abilities. And he used to attend all the seances with the idea of learning, to convince himself and have tangible proofs of the existence of an invisible world, the concrete and real existence of an invisible world. He had seen all that could be seen, under the strictest control, in the most scientific way possible – all the tests were provided for, down to the least detail. He told me about the most extraordinary things he had seen; I held in my hand a piece of something resembling the plastic cloth they make nowadays, which is not woven, a piece of plastic – but in those days there was no plastic, it had not yet been discovered, it was a long time ago – I held it in my hand, a piece, like this, torn, with a small design which was very pretty. He told me how it had happened. When the medium had been put into trance, a person had appeared dressed in a robe of this substance\was a materialisation; this person had passed in front of him and, like the little brute he was, he had torn off a piece to have a proof, and he kept the piece. The medium screamed – and everything, everything immediately Page – 367 vanished.…But the piece remained in his hand and he gave it to me. I gave it back to him. He had simply shown it to me, I held it in my hand. So that was something quite concrete, you see, for he still had the piece; he could not tell himself it was a hallucination. Well, in spite of all this, in spite of the most extraordinary stories which could make a whole book, he did not believe anything! He could not explain anything. And he wondered who was mad, whether it was himself or the others or…This had not helped his knowledge progress even half a step forward. One cannot believe these things unless one carries them within oneself. No external proofs you can have will ever give you any knowledge. When you yourselves are inwardly developed, are capable of having a direct and inner contact with these things, then you know what they are, but no material proof – material and of this kind – can give you the knowledge if within you you do not have the being capable of having this knowledge. Therefore, the conclusion is that this kind of experiment is absolutely useless. For those who have an inner being, one day or another, life will see to it that they awaken and will bring them into contact with what they need in order to know. I consider these things to be an unhealthy curiosity, that’s all. Page – 368 |