WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust
The Divine as the essence of our being
8 June 1955
Mother, you said just now that we must do everything for the Divine.
Yes.
But why does the Divine want to manifest Himself on earth in this chaos?
Because this is why He has created the earth, not for any other motive; the earth is He Himself in a deformation and He wants to establish it back again in its truth. Earth is not something separated from Him and alien to Him. It is a deformation of Himself which must once again become what it was in its essence, that is, the Divine.
Then why is He a stranger to us?
But He is not a stranger, my child. You fancy that He is a stranger, but He is not, not in the least. He is the essence of your being--not at all alien. You may not know Him, but He is not a stranger; He is the very essence of your being. Without the Divine you would not exist. Without the Divine you could not exist even for the millionth part of a second. Only, because you live in a kind of false illusion and deformation, you [old p. 194]are not [new p. 192]conscious. You are not conscious of yourself, you are conscious of something which you think to be yourself, but which isn't you.
Then what is myself, Sweet Mother?
The Divine!
Sweet Mother, when you speak of the reactions when you are reading, personally I feel that all that I do is funny! From top to bottom everything has to be reorganised.
I didn't catch the end of the sentence.
(Pavitra) Everything has to be reorganised.
Yes. Why?
(Pavitra) Everything is funny. "All that I do is funny!"
Funny! Ah! That is why I didn't understand. Funny, yes; but from a certain point of view it is true; what everybody does, from a certain point of view, is funny.
There is an enormous wastage. All that I receive from you is lost all the time. Apparently everything is all right, and this continues, and it can so continue eternally. But if it has to change it will be a revolution, immediately, and that is why one doesn't want to risk it. There is hypocrisy: everything is all right, but it isn't true, there is an enormous loss of consciousness.
Is it possible to change this at once, change this consciousness? [old p. 195]
Change?...
(Pavitra) Change this, change this consciousness at once? [new p. 193]
Immediately?
(Pavitra) In a few minutes. One feels that it will be a revolution to change that.
Yes, but a revolution can occur in half a second; it can also take years, even centuries, and even many lives. It can be done in a second.
One can do it. Precisely, when one has this inner reversal of consciousness, in one second everything, everything changes... precisely this bewilderment of being able to think that what one is, what one considers as oneself is not true, and that what is the truth of one's being is something one doesn't know. You see, this should have been the normal reaction, the one she had, of saying, "But then what is myself? If what I feel as myself is an illusory formation and not the truth of my being, then what is myself?" For that she doesn't know. And so when one asks the question like that...
There is a moment--because it is a question which becomes more and more intense and more and more acute--when you have even the feeling, precisely, that things are strange, that is, they are not real; a moment comes when this sensation that you have of yourself, of being yourself, becomes strange, a kind of sense of unreality. And the question continues coming up: "But then, what is myself?" Well, there is a moment when it comes up with so much concentration and such intensity that with this intensity of concentration suddenly there occurs a reversal, and then, instead of being on this side you are on that side, and when you are on that side everything is very simple; you understand, you know, you are, you live, and then you see [old p. 196]clearly the unreality of the rest, and this is enough.
You see, one may have to wait for days, months, years, centuries, lives, before this moment comes. But if one intensifies his aspiration, there is a moment when the pressure is so great and the intensity of the question so strong that something turns [new p. 194]over in the consciousness, and then this is absolutely what one feels: instead of being here one is there, instead of seeing from outside and seeking to see within, one is inside; and the minute one is within, absolutely everything changes, completely, and all that seemed to him true, natural, normal, real, tangible, all that, immediately,--yes, it seems to him very grotesque, very queer, very unreal, quite absurd; but one has touched something which is supremely true and eternally beautiful, and this one never loses again.
Once the reversal has taken place, you can glide into an external consciousness, not lose the ordinary contact with the things of life, but that remains and it never moves. You may, in your dealings with others, fall back a little into their ignorance and blindness, but there is always something there, living, standing up within, which does not move any more, until it manages to penetrate everything, to the point where it is over, where the blindness disappears for ever. And this is an absolutely tangible experience, something more concrete than the most concrete object, more concrete than a blow on your head, something more real than anything whatever.
This is why I always say... when people ask me how one may know whether he is in contact with his psychic being or how one may know whether he has found the Divine, well, it makes me laugh; for when it happens to you it is over, you can no longer ask any questions, it is done; you do not ask how it happens, it is done.