The Mother on ‘Humanity Under the Supramental Influence’

You felt nothing special on Darshan Day?

 

No

 

Sri Aurobindo was there from the morning till the evening. For, yes, for more than a hour he made me live, as in a concrete and living vision of the condition of humanity and of the different strata of humanity in relation to the new or supramental creation. And it was wonderfully clear and concrete and living…. There was all the humanity which is no longer altogether animal, which has benefitted by mental development and created a kind of harmony in its life – a harmony vital and artistic, literary – in which the large majority are content to live. They have caught a kind of harmony, and within it they live life as it exists in a civilised surrounding, that is to say, somewhat cultured, with refined tastes and refined habits. And all this life has a certain beauty where they are at ease, and unless something catastrophic happens to them, they live happy and contented, satisfied with life. These people can be drawn (because they have taste, they are intellectually developed), they can be attracted by the new forces, the new things, the future life; for example, they can become disciples of Sri Aurobindo mentally, intellectually. But they do not feel at all the need to change materially; and if they were compelled to do so, it would be first of all premature, unjust, and would simply create a great disorder and disturb their life altogether uselessly.

This was very clear.

Then there were some – rare individuals – who were ready to make the necessary effort to prepare for the transformation and to draw the new forces, to try to adapt Matter, to seek means of expression, etc. These are ready for the yoga of Sri Aurobindo. They are very few in number. There are even those who have the sense of sacrifice and are ready for a hard, painful life, if that would lead or help towards this future transformation. But they should not, they should not in any way try to influence the others and make them share in their own effort; it would be altogether unfair – and not only unfair, but extremely maladroit, for it would change the universal rhythm and movement, or at least the terrestrial movement, and instead of helping, it would create conflicts and end in a chaos.

But it was so living, so real that my whole attitude (how to say it? – a passive attitude which is not the result of an active will), the whole position taken in the work has changed. And that has brought a peace – a peace and a calmness and a confidence altogether decisive. A decisive change. And even what seemed in the earlier position to be obstinacy, clumsiness, inconscience, all kinds of deplorable things, all that has disappeared. It was like the vision of a great universal Rhythm in which each thing takes its place…everything is all right. And the effort for transformation, reduced to a small number, becomes a thing much more precious and much more powerful for the realisation. It is as though a choice has been made for those who will be the pioneers of the new creation. And all those ideas of ‘spreading’, of ‘preparing’, or of ‘churning Matter’…are a childishness. It is human restlessness.

The vision was of a beauty so majestic, so calm, so smiling, oh! …it was full, truly full of the divine Love. And not a divine Love that ‘pardons’ – it is not at all like that, not at all! Each thing in its place, realising its inner rhythm as perfectly as it can.

It was a very beautiful gift.

Well, all these things people know in some part, intellectually, like that, an idea; they know all that, but it is quite useless. In the experience of each day, one lives in accordance with something else, a truer understanding. And there, it was as if one touched these things – one saw them, touched them – in their higher order.

It came after a vision of plants and the spontaneous beauty of plants (it is something so wonderful!), then of the animal with so harmonious a life (as long as men do not intervene), and all that was in its right place. Then of the true humanity as humanity, that is, the maximum of what a mental poise can create of beauty, harmony, charm, elegance of life, taste of living…a taste of living in beauty, and naturally suppressing all that is ugly and low and vulgar. It was a fine humanity – humanity at its maximum, but lovely. And which is perfectly satisfied with its humanity, because it lives harmoniously. It is perhaps also like a promise of what almost the whole of humanity will become under the influence of the new creation: it seemed to me that it was what the supramental consciousness could make of humanity. There was even a comparison with what humanity has made of the animal species. (It is extremely mixed, naturally, but some things have become perfected, some improvements, more complete utilisations.) Animality under mind’s influence has become another thing, which is naturally something mixed, because mind was incomplete. In the same way there are examples of a harmonious humanity among well-balanced people, and this seemed to be what humanity could become under the supramental influence.

Only it is very far ahead. One should not expect it to happen immediately – it is very far ahead.

It is clearly – even now – a transitional period, which may last a long time and which is rather painful. But the effort, sometimes painful (often painful) is compensated by a clear vision of the goal to be attained, the goal that will be attained: an assurance, yes, a certainty. But it [the supramental influence] would be something that would have the power to eliminate all error, all deformation, and the ugliness of mental life – and then a humanity very happy, very satisfied with being human, not at all feeling the need of being anything other than human, but with a human beauty, a human harmony.

It was very charming. It was as though I lived in it. The contradictions had disappeared. It was as though I lived in this perfection. And it was almost like the ideal conceived by the supramental consciousness, of a humanity that had become as perfect as it could be. And it was very fine.

This brings a great relaxation. The tension, the friction, all that had disappeared, and the impatience. All that had completely disappeared.

 

That is, you concentrate the work instead of diffusing it a little everywhere.

 

No, it may be difficult materially, because the individuals are not necessarily collected together. But they are few in number.

The idea of a pressing need to ‘prepare’ humanity for the new creation, this impatience has disappeared.

 

It must first of all be realised in some.

 

Quite so.

For example, take a book like yours [The Adventure of Consciousness] – but I knew this from the beginning – a book like that would completely fulfil its purpose even if it reaches a dozen people. It does not need to be sold by the millions. If it reaches a dozen people, it will have fulfilled its purpose. It is like that.

I was seeing. I saw that in such a concrete way. Apart from those who are fit to prepare the transformation and the supramental realisation, and whose number is necessarily very restricted, there must develop more and more, in the midst of the ordinary mass of humanity, a superior humanity which has toward the supramental being of the future or in the making the same attitude as animality, for example, has towards man. There must be, besides those who work for the transformation and who are ready for it, a superior humanity, intermediary, which has found in itself or in life this harmony with Life – this human harmony – and which has the same feeling of adoration, devotion, faithful consecration to ‘something’ which seems to it so high that  it does not even try to realise it, but worships it and feels the need of its influence, its protection, and the need to live under this influence, to have the delight of being under this protection. It was so clear. But not this anguish, these torments of wanting something that escapes you because – because it is not your destiny yet to have it, and because the amount of transformation needed is premature for your life and it is that then which creates a disorder and suffering.

For example, one of the very concrete things that illustrates the problem well: humanity has the sexual impulse in a way altogether natural, spontaneous and, I would say, legitimate. This impulse will naturally and spontaneously disappear with animality, as for example the need to eat and perhaps to sleep in the way we sleep now. But the most conscious impulse in a superior humanity, which has continued as a source of…bliss is a big word, but joy, delight – is certainly the sexual activity, and that will have absolutely no reason for existence in the functions of Nature when the need to create in that way will no longer exist. Therefore. the capacity of entering into relation with the joy of life will rise by one step or will be oriented differently. But what the spiritual aspirants of the past had sought on principle – sexual negation – is an absurd thing, because this must be only for those who have gone beyond that stage and who no longer have animality in them. And it must drop off naturally, without effort and without struggle. To make of it a centre of conflict, of struggle and of effort is ridiculous. My experience with the Ashram has fully proven this to me, because I have seen all the stages, and that all these ideas, these prohibitions are absolutely useless, and that it is only when the consciousness ceases to be human that it falls away naturally. In this there is a transition which can be a bit difficult, because the beings in transition are always in an unstable equilibrium; but there is inside a sort of flame and a need which makes it not painful – it is not a painful effort, it is something one can do ‘smiling’. But to wish to impose this on those who are not ready for such a transition is absurd. I was criticised for having encouraged certain people to get married; there are many children to whom I say, “Get married! Get married! People say. ‘What? You are encouraging them?’ – But it is common sense.

It is common sense. They are human, but they shouldn’t pretend not to be.

It is only when, spontaneously, the impulsion becomes impossible for you, when you feel it is something tiresome and contrary to your profound needs that it becomes easy. At that moment, well, externally you break the bonds, and then it is finished.

It is one of the most convincing examples.

It is the same thing with food – it will be the same thing. There will probably be a transition when there will be food less and less purely material. This is what they are seeking now: all their vitamins and pills, it is an instinctive search for a less down-to-earth food and which will surely serve as a transition.

There are many things like that. Since the 24th [the day of the Darshan] I live in that new consciousness and I saw the scenario of many things. There were even experiences which I had before and which I understood now. Like, for example, when I fasted for ten days (completely, without even a drop of water), without even a thought given to food (I didn’t have the time to eat), and it was not an effort: it was a decision. At that time there was a capacity which developed little by little, and, for example, when I smelled flowers it was nourishing. I saw that: one is nourished in a more subtle way.

However, the body is not ready. The body is not ready and it deteriorates; that is, it eats itself. So that proves that the time had not come and it was only an experience – an experience which teaches you something, which teaches you that it mustn’t be a brutal refusal to enter into relation with the corresponding matter or an isolation (one cannot isolate oneself, it is impossible), but a communion on a more elevated or more profound plane.

The message that was distributed for the 24th, it was Sri Aurobindo who told me to keep it for the 24th; it was very clear and categorical, and I didn’t know why. But now he showed me why clearly, and I have understood. Because this Power is becoming more and more evident – the Power of Truth. And naturally human thought, which is infantile (it has the same relation to the supramental which one could call animal thought or feeling has with human thought or feeling), has almost a need for superstition (…superstition is a bad word for something that is not bad: it is a faith, ignorant, candid and very confident). Well, that faith, as soon as you feel the influence of a Power, makes you believe in miracles, and makes you believe that now the Supermind is going to manifest and we are going to be supramental, and then…

It is as if we were to tell a dog: ‘Do not believe at all that I am the way you imagine me to be, that I am all-powerful, all-knowing.’ If one told it the truth, as one humanly is, the poor dog would be very disappointed! He believes you are the all-powerful being who knows all, can do anything. Well, it is the same thing. One cannot tell a dog, “You are superstitious.’

 

(silence)

 

Those who have reached higher regions of intelligence but who have not dominated the mental faculties in themselves, have a candid need for the whole world to think as they do and be able to understand as they understand; and when they see that others cannot, do not understand, their first reaction is to be horribly shocked. They say, ‘What an imbecile!’ But they are not imbeciles; they are different, they are in another region. One cannot say to an animal, ‘You are an imbecile’. One says, ‘It is an animal.’ Well, we say, ‘He is a man.’ He is a man’, except that there are those who are not men anymore and who are not yet gods, and these are the ones in a very…in English they say ‘awkward’…position.

But it is so comforting, so sweet, so marvellous, that vision – each thing expresses its species so naturally.

And then, the Flame… When the Flame is illumined everything becomes different. But that Flame is something entirely different; it is entirely different from the religious feeling, from the religious aspiration, religious adoration (all that is very good, it is the maximum man can do and it is very good, excellent for humanity); but that Flame, the Flame of Transformation is another thing.

I just remembered that Sri Aurobindo had made me recall something I wrote in Japan (which is included in the ‘Prayers and Meditations’) and I never understood what I had written. I always sought to know and I told myself, ‘What the devil could I have wanted to say? I don’t know at all.’ It came like that and I wrote it directly. There was the question of a ‘child’ and it was said, ‘Do not approach him too closely because it burns’, (I cannot remember the words anymore): and I always said to myself, ‘Who is that child whom I speak of? …And it is necessary not to approach too closely???’ Then suddenly just yesterday or the day before yesterday I understood. Suddenly Sri Aurobindo showed me; he said, ‘It is this: The ‘child’ is the beginning of the new creation, still in the infant stage, and do not touch it if you do not want to be burned – because it burns.’

 

(silence)

 

It is quite evident that with the wideness and the totality of the vision, something like a compassion that understands comes – not that pity of superior to inferior: the true divine Compassion which is the total understanding that each one is what he should be.

The only thing left is the deformations. There was also the explanation of the deformations. It is a decisive seeing which puts each thing in its place. A true revelation.

All these things…they have been said a thousand times, they have been written I don’t know how often, they have been thought and expressed – all that is fine, up there. But this, it came in the material plane itself, felt, lived, breathed, absorbed. It is another thing entirely. It is an understanding that has nothing to do with an intellectual understanding.

 

(after a long silence)

 

Sri Aurobindo continues telling me things… It is truly very interesting.

There is a sort of instinct to want everything to agree with our experience. But it is a tendency to uniformity, the uniform unity of the Supreme, which is the non-manifest Supreme, identical to Itself eternally, in contrast to the innumerable multiplicity of all the expressions of that Unity. And instinctively there is always a (gesture of retreating)

recoil into the Non-Manifest, instead of (the Mother opens her two hands) an acceptance of the manifestation in its totality. It is very interesting.

It is the first effect of the return to the Origin.

The first effect of the return to the Origin is simplification, identity, the Unique – the identical Unique. And there is the movement of the manifestation (gesture of expansion); the multiple Immensity.

It is instinctive.

 

L’Agenda de Mere, Vol. 6, 27 November 1965

 

 

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