WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Organizing one's ideas

3 February 1954

Are bad habits, as for instance that of not keeping things in order, due to the vital?

That depends. For example, children who have no order, who can't keep their things carefully but lose or spoil them--there are three reasons for this. Most often it is a child who lacks vitality. When it is like that, when it can't keep its things care fully and all is in disorder around it, this is always a sign of a lack of vitality; it does not have sufficient vitality to take interest in these outer things. The second reason is that it lacks interest in material life, the life of things, and that it has no discipline, doesn't discipline itself. For instance, children when they undress throw their clothes all over the place; or else, when they have finished playing, they leave their toys lying about; when they have written out their homework, everything is littered all around: the fountain-pen on one side, the notebook on another, the reader on a third, and then all these get lost. Unfortunately that's how it is with the great majority of the children here at the school, they lose everything. I have found books reduced to pulp because they had spent the whole night on a flower-pot and it had rained the next morning! When they were found, they were like gruel. But that is rare. Pencils too--I have a collection of fountain-pens and pencils picked up thus, having been lost. These are absolutely undisciplined natures, those who have no method, and within themselves they don't have any method. And into the bargain they despise things--so, as Sri Aurobindo says, they are not worthy of having them. People who don't know how to deal with things carefully, don't deserve to have them. Sri Aurobindo has often written on this subject in his let ters. He has said that if you don't know how to take care of material things, you have no right to have them. Indeed this shows a kind of selfishness and confusion in the human being, and it is not a good sign. And then later when they grow up, some of them cannot keep a cupboard in order or a drawer in order. They may be in a room which looks very tidy and very neat outwardly, and then you open a drawer or a cupboard, it is like a battlefield! Everything is pell-mell. You find everything in a jumble; nothing is arranged. These are people with a poor little head in which ideas lie in the same state as their material objects. They have not organised their ideas. They haven't put them in order. They live in a cerebral confusion. And that is a sure sign, I have never met an exception to this rule: people who don't know how to keep their things in order--their ideas are in disorder in their heads, always. They exist together, the most contradictory ideas are put together, and not through a higher synthesis, don't you believe it: simply because of a dis order and an incapacity to organise their ideas. You don't need to speak even for ten minutes with people if you can manage to enter their room and open the drawers of their tables and look into their cupboard. You know in what state they are, don't you?

On the other hand, there was someone (I shall tell you who afterwards) who had in his room hundreds of books, countless sheets of paper, notebooks and all sorts of things, and so you entered the room and saw books and papers everywhere--a whole pile, it was quite full. But if you were unfortunate enough to shift a single little bit of paper from its place, he knew it immediately and asked you, "Who has touched my things?" You, when you come in, see so many things that you feel quite lost. And yet each thing had its place. And it was so consciously done, I tell you, that if one paper was displaced--for instance, a paper with notes on it or a letter or something else which was taken away from one place and placed in another with the idea of putting things in order--he used to say, "You have touched my things; you have displaced them and created a disorder in my things." That of course was Sri Aurobindo! That means you must not confuse order with poverty. Naturally if you have about a dozen books and a very limited number of things, it is easier to keep them in order, but what one must succeed in doing is to put into order--and a logical, conscious, intelligent order --a countless number of things. That asks for a capacity of organisation.

Of course, if someone is very ill, has no strength to spare, then that's different. And yet even here, there are limits. I knew ill people who could tell you, "Open this drawer and in the left corner at the back you will find such and such a thing under such another"; the man could not move and take it himself, but he knew very well where it was. But apart from that, the ideal is to have some organisation, as for instance of the kind found in libraries where there are hundreds of thousands of books and where everything is classified (naturally it is not done by just one man), but it is a work in which each thing is so well clas sified that, despite all, if you bring a card and say "I want this book", a quarter of an hour later you have it or sometimes in five minutes. That is organisation. And yet there are rooms full of books there. But all this is the result of work perfected by a large number of men, the result of a professional organisation. Well, for oneself, one must organise one's own things--and at the same time one's own ideas--in the same way, and must know exactly where things are and be able to go straight to them, because one's organisation is logical. It is your own logic--it may not be your neighbour's logic, not necessarily, it is your own logic--but your organisation being logical, you know exactly where a thing is and, as I told you, if that thing is dis placed, you know it immediately. And those who can do that are generally those who can put their ideas into order and can also organise their character and can finally control their move ments. And then, if you make progress, you succeed in govern ing your physical life; you begin to have a control over your physical movements. If you take life in that way, truly it be comes interesting. If one lives in a confusion, a disorder, an inner and outer chaos in which everything is mixed up and one is conscious of nothing and still less is master of things, this is not living. This is not living, it is being in a sea of inconscience, being tossed about by the waves, caught by the currents, thrown against rocks, seized again by another wave and thrown against another rock; and one goes on thus with bruises and blows and bumps. And then, should one ask you, "Why is it like this?"-- "I don't know."--"Why did you do that?"--"I don't know." --"Why do you think in this way?"--"I don't know."-- "Why did you make that movement?"--"I don't know." All the answers are "I don't know".

Essentially there is but one single true reason for living: it is to know oneself. We are here to learn--to learn what we are, why we are here, and what we have to do. And if we don't know that, our life is altogether empty--for ourselves and for others.

And so, generally, it is better to begin early, for there is much to learn. If one wants to learn about life as it is, the world as it is, and then really know the why and the how of life, one can begin when very young, from the time one is very, very tiny --before the age of five. And then, when one is a hundred, he will still be able to learn. So it is interesting. And all the time one can have surprises, always learn something one didn't know, meet with an experience one did not have before, find some thing one was ignorant of. It is surely very interesting. And the more one knows, the more aware does one become that one has everything to learn. Truly, I could say that only fools believe they know. That indeed is a sure sign, someone coming and telling you, "Oh! I know all that; oh! I know all that"; he is immediately sized up!