Patterns of isllnes
To cure a disorder*
Is it an error to make a clean sweep of everything, to make it all empty?
O no! O no!
I have often asked myself whether I was wrong in my way of proceeding. My spontaneous way of proceeding is to sweep away everything, to make it all completely empty and then to turn towards something up above and to keep absolutely silent and immobile.
Yes, that is the best means, nothing can be better.
That is what I am doing all the time.
If one could only do that!... From all sides it comes like that (gesture as of waves attacking).
(A little later. About the world situation)
Finally, I am fully convinced that the confusion is there to teach us how to live from day to day, that is to say, not to be preoccupied with what may happen, what will happen, just to occupy oneself day by day with doing what one has to do. All thinkings, pre-plannings, arrangements and all that, are very favourable to much disorder.
To live almost minute by minute, to be like that (gesture upward), attentive only to the thing that is to be done at the moment, and then to let the All-Consciousness decide.... We can never know things even with the widest vision: we can know things only very partially — very partially. So our attention is drawn this way and that, and still other things are there. By giving great importance to things dangerous and harmful, you only add strength to them.
(Mother goes into contemplation.)
When you are assailed by the vision of such disorder and confusion, you have to do only one thing, to enter into the consciousness where you see only one Being, one Consciousness, one Power — there is only a single Unity — and all this is taking place within this Unity. And all our insignificant visions and knowings and judgments and... all that is mere nothing, it is microscopic in comparison with the Consciousness presiding over All. Therefore, if one had the least sense of the reason why separate individualities existed, one would see that it was only for allowing aspiration, the existence of aspiration, of this movement of self-giving and surrender, trust and faith. And it is this that is the very reason why individuals were built up; and then, for you to become that in all sincerity and intensity... it is all that is needed.
It is all that is needed, it is the only thing, the only thing that stays; all the rest... phantasmagoria.
And it is the only thing valid in every case: when you want to do a thing, when you cannot do a thing, when you move, when the body is no more able to move...in every, every case, that only, only that: to come in conscious contact with the Supreme Consciousness, to be united with it; and... to wait. There!
It is then that you receive the exact indication of what you ought to do at each minute — to do or not to do, to act or to be stone still. That is all. And even to be or not to be. That is the only solution. More and more, more and more, the certitude is there: this is the only solution. All the rest is mere childishness.
And all activities, all possibilities can be made use of in a natural way — it eliminates all arbitrary personal choice. All possibilities are there, all, all, all are there. All perceptions are there and all knowledge — only the personal arbitrariness has been eliminated. And this personal arbitrariness is so childish, so childish... a stupidity, a stupidity full of ignorance.
And I feel, I feel like that (Mother feels the air) this agitation, oh! this whirl in the atmosphere! Poor humanity.
(Long silence)
All that is for teaching the world to turn back to the Lord in its consciousness....Why? It is for this that there has been a creation?
(Silence)
But I have a practical problem. Each time I form this emptiness, in order precisely to join myself up there... with this something, I feel that I have never had an accurate answer. It is such a massive Power that is there, so solid and then...
Ah! You never had an answer?
It is always the same thing, this Power which is there, impassive.
Well!
Yesterday, for example, during the meditation, it was the same thing – it is always the same thing – this Thing, massive, powerful, which is there but which does not want to say anything.
But don’t you have the sense of a... I do not know how to explain, because it is not ease nor...I do not know how to explain, it is something which... no words can tell it, but it leaves you absolutely satisfied.
One is well.
Ah!
Yes, one is well, that is certain.
Ah! So it’s all right, it is that. Everything, everything else is useless.
Yes, but how to get the true, the correct impulse?
But it lies underneath that state.
It is underneath?
It is underneath.
That state... I know, by experience, that it is the state in which one can change the world. One becomes a sort of instrument — that is even unconscious of being an instrument — but which serves (gesture showing the flow of forces through the instrument) to project the forces (gesture in all directions radiating from the instrument as the centre). The brain is altogether, altogether too small, is it not? Even when it is very big, it is too small to be capable of understanding; that is why there is this blank in the mind and the thing happens.
And then you perceive that with regard to the needs of the little life you represent, it automatically comes to pass and you automatically do at every minute just what you have to do without... without calculating, without speculating, without deciding, nothing; it is like this (same gesture of flow through the instrument).
I had the personal experience then, that if something is upset in the body (a pain, a discomfort or something that does not function properly), when you have gone through that state, it leaves you — it goes away, disappears. Acute pains even disappeared completely, one does not know how! Ah! gone — like that.
And then, in the contact with people and in the contact with the things of life, a childlike simplicity. That is to say, one does things without... particularly without speculating.
Well, it is like that. I try to be always in the state which you are describing, like that, whatever happens; and always — always, without exception — if there is anything to be done, I am made to do it.
I cannot say anything else. It is so.
I noticed that I am made to act differently at different moments with different people, and even the experience is very different — all that, the same thing, the same way, like that (gesture turned upward, without movement).
Only, one must arrive at a state where there is naturally no more preference nor desire nor repulsion nor attraction, nothing — all that is gone.
And above all, above all, no fear — particularly. That is the most essential of all things.
— The Mother*
*Heading is given by the editor
*The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother, Volume 11. Pondicherry; Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 1980, pp. 184-8.
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