WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Importance of attitudes

25 December 1971

It is the festival of the Light--Noel is the festival of the returning Light.... It is very much older than Christianity.

And next Saturday is the first of January.

I hope 1972 is going to be better!

(Mother shakes her head) I am more and more convinced that we receive things and react in a way that creates difficulties--I am more and more convinced of it. Because I have experiences hardly agreeable, physically, materially, and then everything changes according to whether one pays attention to it or not, according to an attitude like this (gesture turned to oneself) in which one looks at oneself living, or else an attitude in which one is (gesture of wideness) in all things, in movement, in life, and an attitude in which one gives importance only to the Divine; if one is able to be like this all the time, there is no difficulty--and things remain the same. This is the experience: the thing in itself is of a certain kind, and it is our reaction with respect to the thing which differs. The experience is more and more conclusive. There are three categories: our attitude towards things, the things in themselves (these two always bring difficulties), and there is a third category in which everything, everything exists in relation to the Divine, in the Consciousness of the Divine--everything goes on wonderfully! Easy! And I speak of material things, of the material physical life (morally speaking it has long been known to be like that), but things material, that is to say, the small inconveniences of the body, its reactions, having pain or not, circumstances going bad, not being able to swallow--things most trivial to which no attention is paid when one is young and strong and healthy; no attention is paid and for everybody it is so; but when one lives in the consciousness of [new p. 287]his body and of what happens to [old p. 287]it, the way it receives, what comes and all that--oh! it is misery. When one lives in the consciousness of others, of what they want, what they need, their relation with you--it is misery! But if you live in the Divine Presence and if the Divine does all, sees all, is all... it is Peace--it is Peace--time has no more duration, everything is easy and... it is not that one feels a joy nor that one feels... it is not that, it is the Divine who is there. And that is the only solution. And it is towards that that the world is moving: towards the Consciousness of the Divine--the Divine who does, the Divine who is, the Divine... And then identically the same circumstances (I do not speak of different circumstances), identically the same circumstances (this is my experience of these days, so concrete!)--the day before yesterday I was quite unwell, and yesterday the circumstances were the same, my body was in the same state, everything the same and... all was peaceful.

Of this I am absolutely convinced.

This explains everything. This explains everything, everything, everything.

The world is the same--it is seen and felt in an absolutely opposite way.

Everything is a phenomenon of consciousness--everything. Only, not this consciousness, neither this one nor that one; it is not that. It is our way, the human way of being conscious, or the divine way of being conscious. There you are. The whole matter is there. And I am absolutely convinced.

(Silence)

After all, the world is as it should be at every instant.

Yes.

It is we who see it wrongly or feel it wrongly or receive it wrongly. [new p. 288][old p. 288]

It is like death. Well, it is a transitional phenomenon and it appears to us that it has been always so--for us it has been always so because our consciousness is like that (Mother cuts a small square in the air)--but when you have this Divine Consciousness, oh!... things become almost instantaneous, you understand. I cannot explain.

There is a movement, there is a progression, there is what is translated for us by time; that exists, it is something... it is something in the consciousness.... It is difficult to say... it is like a picture and its projection. It is something like that. All things are, and for us it is as though we see them projected on the screen, they come one after another. It is somewhat like that.

Yes, Sri Aurobindo said that in the supramental consciousness the past, the present and the future existed side by side, as though on a single map of consciousness. [Note: "For while the reason proceeds from moment to moment of time and loses and acquires and again loses and again acquires, the gnosis dominates time in a one view and perpetual power and links past, present and future in their indivisible connections, in a single continuous map of knowledge, side by side. The gnosis starts from the totality which it immediately possesses; it sees parts, groups and details only in relation to the totality and in one vision with it...."
The Synthesis of Yoga, Cent. Vol. 20, p. 464]

Yes, it is so. It is so. But for me, it is an experience. It is not a thing that I "think" (I do not think), it is an experience. And it is difficult to explain.

And the effect the thing produces in us, the sensation it brings to us depends exclusively on the attitude of our consciousness. And then, the consciousness of being in oneself or in everything: to be in everything is already a little better than to be oneself egoistically, but it has advantages, it has inconveniences, and it is not the Truth; the Truth is... the Divine as the totality--the totality in time and in space. And that is a consciousness which the body can have, for this body had it [old p. 289](momentarily, for [new p. 289]moments), and so long as it has it, everything is so much... well, it is not delight, it is not pleasure, it is not happiness, it is nothing of the kind... a kind of blissful peace... and luminous... and creative.... It is magnificent. Only, it comes, it goes, it comes, it goes.... And when you come out of it, you have the feeling of dropping into a horrible hole--our ordinary consciousness (I mean the ordinary human consciousness) is a horrible hole. But you know also why it was momentarily so; that is to say, it is necessary in order to pass from the one to the other--all that happens is necessary for the full unfoldment of the goal of the creation. One might say: the goal of the creation is that the creature must become conscious like the Creator. There! It is a phrase, but it is in that direction. The goal of this creation is this Consciousness of the Infinite, the Eternal who is Omnipotent--Infinite, Eternal, Omnipotent (called God by our religions: for us, in relation to life, it is the Divine)--Infinite and Eternal, Omnipotent... beyond time; each individual particle possessing this Consciousness, each individual particle containing this same Consciousness.

It is division that has created the world and it is in division that the Eternal manifests itself.

Our language is... (or our consciousness) inadequate. Later on I shall be able to say.

Something is happening--there you are (Mother laughs).

Bon Noel, my child--the festival of the Light.

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 11, pp. 286-89