{"id":4004,"date":"2013-07-13T01:52:49","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=4004"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:52:49","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:52:49","slug":"08-26-may-1929-vol-03-questions-and-answers-volume-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/02-works-of-the-mother\/01-cwmce\/03-questions-and-answers-volume-03\/08-26-may-1929-vol-03-questions-and-answers-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-08_26 May 1929.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\n26 May 1929 <\/font> <\/i> <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

If
\nour will is only an expression or echo of the universal will, where is the
\nplace of individual initiative? Is the individual only an instrument to
\nregister universal movements? Has he no power of creation or origination? <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

All depends upon the plane of consciousness from which you are
\nlooking at things and speaking of them or on the part of the being from which
\nyou act. <\/span><\/p>\n

If you look from one plane of
\nconsciousness, the individual will appear to you as if he were not only an instrument
\nand recorder, but a creator. But look from another and higher plane of
\nconsciousness with a wider view of things and you will see that this is only an
\nappearance. In the workings of the universe whatever happens is the result of
\nall that has happened before. How do you propose to separate one being from the
\nintegral play of the manifestation or one movement from the whole mass of
\nmovements? Where are you going to put the origin of a thing or its beginning?
\nThe whole play is a rigidly connected chain; one link merges imperceptibly into
\nanother. Nothing can be taken out of the chain and explained by itself as if it
\nwere its own source and beginning. <\/span><\/p>\n

And what do you mean when you say that the
\nindividual creates or originates a movement? Does he do it all out of himself
\nor out of nothing as it were? If a being were able to create in that way a
\nthought or feeling or action or anything else, he would be the creator of the
\nworld. It is only if the individual goes back in his consciousness into the
\ngreater Consciousness which is the origin of things, that he can be an
\noriginator; he can initiate a movement only by identifying himself with the
\nconscious Power which is the ultimate source of all movements.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There are many planes of consciousness;
\nand the determinism <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 58<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

of one plane is not the same as the determinism of another. So,
\nwhen you speak of the creative individual, of what part of him are you
\nthinking? For he is a very composite entity. Is it his psychic being of which
\nyou speak, or the mental or the vital or the physical? Between the unseen
\nsource of a movement and its manifestation, its external expression through the
\nindividual, there are all these steps and many others; and on each many
\nmodifications of it take place, many distortions and deformations. It is these
\nchanges that give the illusion of a new creation, a new origin, or a new
\nstarting-point for a movement. It is like when you put a stick into water; you
\nsee the stick, not in its true line, but bent into an angle. But it is an
\nillusion, a distortion by the sight; it is not even a real angle. <\/span><\/p>\n

Each individual consciousness, you can
\nsay, brings into the universal movement something that you can call from a
\ncertain point of view its own deformation or from another its own quality of
\nthe movement. These individual motions are part of the play of the Divine
\nmovement; they are not themselves origins, they are a transformation of things
\nwhose origin you must seek in the universe as a whole. <\/span><\/p>\n

The sense of separation is spread everywhere,
\nbut it is an illusion; it is one of those false moods of which we must be cured
\nif we want to enter into the true consciousness. The mind cuts the world into
\nsmall bits: it says, here this stops, there that begins, and by this
\nfragmentation it succeeds in distorting the universal movement. There is one
\ngreat flow of a single, all-embracing, all-containing consciousness which
\nmanifests in an ever unrolling universe. This is the truth that stands behind
\neverything here; but there is too this illusion which masks the truth from you,
\nthe illusion of these many movements which imagine that they are separate from
\none another, that they stand by themselves, in themselves and for themselves
\nand that each is a thing in itself apart from the rest of the universe. They
\nhave the impression that their action and reaction upon one another is
\nsomething external, as if they were like different worlds standing <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 59<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

in each other’s presence but with no point of contact except some
\nexternal relations at a distance. Each sees himself as if he were a separate
\npersonality existing in its own right. This error of the separative sense has
\nbeen allowed as part of the universal play, because it was necessary that the
\none consciousness should objectify itself and fix its forms. But because it has
\nbeen allowed in the past, it does not follow that the illusion of separateness
\nmust always continue. <\/span><\/p>\n

In the universal play there are some, the
\nmajority, who are ignorant instruments; they are actors who are moved about
\nlike puppets, knowing nothing. There are others who are conscious, and these
\nact their part, knowing that it is a play. And there are some who have the full
\nknowledge of the universal movement and are identified with it and with the one
\nDivine Consciousness and yet consent to act as though they were something
\nseparate, a division of the whole. There are many intermediary stages between
\nthat ignorance and this full knowledge, many ways of participating in the play.
\nThere is a state of ignorance in which you do a thing and believe that it was
\nyou who decided it; there is a state of lesser ignorance in which you do it
\nknowing that you are made to do it but you do not know how or why; and there is
\ntoo a state of consciousness in which you are fully aware,\u00a0 <\/span>for you know what it is that acts through
\nyou, you know that you are an instrument, you know how and why your act is
\ndone, its process and its purpose. The state of ignorance in which you believe
\nthat you are the doer of your acts persists so long as it is necessary for your
\ndevelopment; but as soon as you are capable of passing into a higher condition,
\nyou begin to see that you are an instrument of the one consciousness; you take
\na step upward and you rise to a higher conscious level.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Do
\nhostile forces attack one on the mental plane as they do in the vital
\nworld?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

It is difficult to give a precise answer
\nwithout going into a
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 60<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

number of explanations into which we
\ncannot now enter. <\/span><\/p>\n

Mind is one movement, but there are many varieties
\nof the movement, many strata, that touch and even press into each other. At the
\nsame time the movement we call mind penetrates into other planes. In the mental
\nworld itself there are many levels. All these mind-planes and mind-forces are
\ninterdependent; but yet there is a difference in the quality of their movements
\nand for facility of expression we have to separate them from one another. Thus
\nwe can speak of a higher mind, an intermediary mind, a physical and even a
\nquite material mind; and there are many other distinctions that can be made. <\/span><\/p>\n

Now, there are mental planes that stand
\nhigh above the vital world and escape its influence; there are no hostile
\nforces or beings there. But there are others \u2013 and they are many \u2013 that can be
\ntouched or penetrated by the vital forces. The mind-plane that belongs to the
\nphysical world, the physical mind, as we usually call it, is more material in
\nits structure and movement than the true mind and it is very much under the
\nsway of the vital world and the hostile forces. This physical mind is usually
\nin a kind of alliance with the lower vital consciousness and its movements;
\nwhen the lower vital manifests certain desires and impulses, this more material
\nmind comes to its aid and justifies and supports them with specious
\nexplanations and reasonings and excuses. It is this layer of mind that is most
\nopen to suggestions from the vital world and most often invaded by its forces.
\nBut there is in us a higher mind which moves in the region of disinterested
\nideas and luminous speculations and is the originator of forms, and there is a
\nmind of pure ideas that have not yet been put into form; these greater
\nmind-levels are free from the vital movements and the adverse forces, because
\nthey stand far above them. There may be contradictory movements there; there
\nmay be movements and formations that come into clash with the Truth or are in
\nconflict with one another; but there is no vital disturbance, nothing that can
\nbe called hostile. The true philosopher mind, the mind that is the thinker, <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 61<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

discoverer, maker of forms, and the mind of pure ideas that are
\nnot yet put into form, are beyond this inferior invasion and influence. But
\nthis does not mean that their motions cannot be imitated or their creations
\nmisused by perverse or hostile beings of a greater make and higher origin than
\nthose of whom I have till now spoken. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

What
\nare the conditions in the psychic world? How is it situated with regard to the
\nhostile forces? <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

The psychic world or plane of consciousness is that part of the
\nworld, the psychic being is that part of the being which is directly under the
\ninfluence of the Divine Consciousness; the hostile forces cannot have even the
\nremotest action upon it. It is a world of harmony, and everything moves in it
\nfrom light to light and from progress to progress. It is the seat of the Divine
\nConsciousness, the Divine Self in the individual being. It is a centre of light
\nand truth and knowledge and beauty and harmony which the Divine Self in each of
\nyou creates by his presence, little by little; it is influenced, formed and
\nmoved by the Divine Consciousness of which it is a part and parcel. It is in
\neach of you the deep inner being which you have to find in order that you may
\ncome in contact with the Divine in you. It is the intermediary between the
\nDivine Consciousness and your external consciousness; it is the builder of the
\ninner life, it is that which manifests in the outer nature the order and rule
\nof the Divine Will. If you become aware in your outer consciousness of the
\npsychic being within you and unite with it, you can find the pure Eternal
\nConsciousness and live in it; instead of being moved by the Ignorance as the
\nhuman being constantly is, you grow aware of the presence of an eternal light
\nand knowledge within you, and to it you surrender and are integrally
\nconsecrated to it and moved by it in all things. <\/span><\/p>\n

For your psychic being is that part of you
\nwhich is already given to the Divine. It is its influence gradually spreading
\nfrom <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 62<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

within towards the most outward and material boundaries of your
\nconsciousness that will bring about the transformation of your entire nature.
\nThere can be no obscurity here; it is the luminous part in you. Most people are
\nunconscious of this psychic part within them; the effort of Yoga is to make you
\nconscious of it, so that the process of your transformation, instead of a slow
\nlabour extending through centuries, can be pressed into one life or even a few
\nyears. <\/span><\/p>\n

The psychic being is that which persists
\nafter death, because it is your eternal self; it is this that carries the
\nconsciousness forward from life to life. <\/span><\/p>\n

The psychic being is the real
\nindividuality of the true and divine individual within you. For your
\nindividuality means your special mode of expression and your psychic being is a
\nspecial aspect of the one Divine Consciousness that has taken shape in you. But
\nin the psychic consciousness there is not that sense of division between the
\nindividual and the universal consciousness which affects the other parts of
\nyour nature. You are conscious there that your individuality is your own line
\nof expression, but at the same time you know too that it is an expression
\nobjectifying the one universal consciousness. It is as though you had taken a
\nportion out of yourself and put it in front of you and there were a mutual look
\nand play of movement between the two. This duality was necessary in order to
\ncreate and establish the objectivised relation and to enjoy it; but in your
\npsychic being the separation that sharpens the duality is seen to be an
\nillusion, an appearance and nothing more. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Is
\nthere a difference between the \u201cspiritual\u201d and the \u201cpsychic\u201d? Are they
\ndifferent planes? <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Yes, the psychic plane
\nbelongs to the personal manifestation; the psychic is that which is divine in
\nyou put out to be dynamic in the play. But when we speak of the spiritual we
\nare thinking of something that is concentrated in the Divine rather than in the
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 63<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

external manifestation. The spiritual plane is something static behind
\nand above the outward play; it supports the instruments of the nature, but is
\nnot itself included or involved in the external manifestation here. <\/span><\/p>\n

But in speaking of these things one must
\nbe careful not to be imprisoned by the words we use. When I speak of the
\npsychic or the spiritual, I mean things that are very deep and real behind the
\nflat surface of the words and intimately connected even in their difference.
\nIntellectual definitions and distinctions are too external and rigid to seize
\nthe true truth of things. And yet, unless you are very much in the habit of
\nspeaking to one another, there is almost a necessity of defining the sense of
\nyour words, if you are to understand each other. The ideal condition for a
\nconversation is when the minds are so well attuned that the words are only a
\nsupport for a spontaneous mutual understanding and you need not explain at each
\nstep what you utter. This is the advantage when you talk always with the same
\npersons; an attuned harmony is established between their minds and the
\nsignificance of the things spoken penetrates them at once. <\/span><\/p>\n

There is a world of ideas without form and
\nit is there that you must enter if you want to seize what is behind the words.
\nSo long as you have to draw your understanding from the forms of words, you are
\nlikely to fall into much confusion about the true sense; but if in a silence of
\nyour mind you can rise into the world from which ideas descend to take form, at
\nonce the real understanding comes. If you are to be sure of understanding one
\nanother, you must be able to understand in silence. There is a condition in
\nwhich your minds are so well attuned and harmonised together that one perceives
\nthe thought of the other without any necessity of words. But if there is not
\nthis attunement, there will always be some deformation of your meaning, because
\nto what you speak the other mind supplies its own significance. I use a word in
\na certain sense or shade of its sense; you are accustomed to put into it
\nanother sense or shade. Then, evidently, you will understand, not my exact
\nmeaning in it, <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 64<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

but what the word means to you. This is true not of speech only,
\nbut of reading also. If you want to understand a book with a deep teaching in
\nit, you must be able to read it in the mind’s silence; you must wait and let
\nthe expression go deep inside you into the region where words are no more and
\nfrom there come slowly back to your exterior consciousness and its surface
\nunderstanding. But if you let the words jump at your external mind and try to
\nadapt and adjust the two, you will have entirely missed their real sense and
\npower. There can be no perfect understanding unless you are in union with the
\nunexpressed mind that is behind the centre of expression. <\/span><\/p>\n

We spoke once of individual minds as
\nworlds that are distinct and separate from one another; each is shut up in
\nitself and has almost no direct point of contact with any other. But that is in
\nthe region of the inferior mind; there your own formations close you in; you
\ncannot get out of them or out of yourself; you can understand only yourself and
\nyour own reflection in things. But here in this higher region of the
\nunexpressed mind and its purer altitudes you are free; when you enter there,
\nyou go out of yourself and penetrate into a universal mental plane in which
\neach individual mental world is dipping as if into a huge sea. There you can
\nunderstand entirely what is going on in another and read his mind as if it were
\nyour own, because there no separation divides mind from mind. It is only when
\nyou unite in that region with others that you can understand them; otherwise
\nyou are not attuned, you do not touch, you have no means of knowing precisely
\nwhat is happening in another mind than yours. Most often when you are in the
\npresence of another you are quite ignorant of what he thinks or feels; but if
\nyou are able to go beyond and above this external plane of expression, if you
\ncan enter into a plane where a silent communion is possible, then you can read
\nin that other as you would in yourself. Then the words you use for your
\nexpression are of very little importance, because the full comprehension lies
\nbeyond them in something else and a minimum of words is <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 65<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

sufficient for your purpose. Long explanations are not necessary
\nthere; you do not need that a thought should be brought out into full
\nexpression, for the direct vision of what is meant is with you. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Will
\na time come when the hostile forces will be there no longer? <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

When their presence in the world is no more of any use, they will
\ndisappear. Their action is used as a testing process, so that nothing may be
\nforgotten, nothing left out in the work of transformation. They will allow no
\nmistake. If you have overlooked in your own being even a single detail, they
\nwill come and put their touch upon that neglected spot and make it so painfully
\nevident that you will be forced to change. When they will no longer be required
\nfor this process, their existence will become useless and they will vanish. They
\nare suffered to exist here, because they are necessary in the Great Work; once
\nthey are no more indispensable, they will either change or go. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

Will
\nit be a long time before that happens? <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

All depends upon your point of view. For time is relative; you can
\nspeak of it from the ordinary external human standpoint or from the deeper
\nviewpoint of an inner consciousness or from the outlook of the Divine. <\/span><\/p>\n

Whether the thing to be done takes a
\nthousand years or only a year according to the human computation, does not
\nmatter at all, if you are one with the Divine Consciousness; for then you leave
\noutside you the things of the human nature and you enter into the infinity and
\neternity of the Divine Nature. Then you escape from this feeling of a great
\neagerness of hurry with which men are obsessed, because they want to see things
\ndone. Agitation, haste, restlessness lead nowhere. It is foam on the sea; it is
\na great fuss that stops with itself. Men have a feeling\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 66<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

that if they are not all the time running about and bursting into
\nfits of\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>67\u00a0 <\/span>feverish activity, they are doing nothing. It
\nis an illusion to think that all these so-called movements change things. It is
\nmerely taking a cup and beating the water in it; the water is moved about, but
\nit is not changed for all your beating. This illusion of action is one of the
\ngreatest illusions of human nature. It hurts progress because it brings on you
\nthe necessity of rushing always into some excited movement. If you could only
\nperceive the illusion and see how useless it all is, how it changes nothing!
\nNowhere can you achieve anything by it. Those who are thus rushing about are
\nthe tools of forces that make them dance for their own amusement. And they are
\nnot forces of the best quality either. <\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever has been done in the world has
\nbeen done by the very few who can stand outside the action in silence; for it
\nis they who are the instruments of the Divine Power. They are dynamic agents,
\nconscious instruments; they bring down the forces that change the world. Things
\ncan be done in that way, not by a restless activity. In peace, in silence and
\nin quietness the world was built; and each time that something is to be truly
\nbuilt, it is in peace and silence and quietness that it must be done. It is
\nignorance to believe that you must run from morning to night and labour at all
\nsorts of futile things in order to do something for the world. <\/span><\/p>\n

Once you step back from these whirling
\nforces into quiet regions, you see how great is the illusion! Humanity appears
\nto you like a mass of blind creatures rushing about without knowing what they
\ndo or why they do it and only knocking and stumbling against each other. And it
\nis this that they call action and life! It is empty agitation, not action, not
\ntrue life. <\/span><\/p>\n

I said once that, to speak usefully for
\nten minutes, you should remain silent for ten days. I could add that, to act
\nusefully for one day, you should keep quiet for a year! Of course, I am not
\nspeaking of the ordinary day-to-day acts that are needed for the common
\nexternal life, but of those who have or <\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 67<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

believe that they have something to do for the world. And the
\nsilence I speak of is the inner quietude that those alone have who can act
\nwithout being identified with their action, merged into it and blinded and
\ndeafened by the noise and form of their own movement. Stand back from your
\naction and rise into an outlook above these temporal motions; enter into the
\nconsciousness of Eternity. Then only you will know what true action is.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 68<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t<\/font>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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