Mother's Agenda, Volume 2. 1961
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Mother’s Agenda II 1961 Translated from French Institut de Recherches Evolutives This book was first published in France under the title L'Agenda de Mère —1961 © 1978 Institut de Recherches Évolutives, Paris Rendered into English under the direction of Satprem This Agenda... is my gift to those who love me MOTHER Table of Contents January January 7, 1961 January 10, 1961 January 12, 1961 Undated January 17, 1961 January 19, 1961 January 22, 1961 January 24, 1961 January 27, 1961 January 29, 1961 January 31, 1961 February February 4, 1961 February 5, 1961 February 7, 1961 February 11, 1961 February 14, 1961 February 18, 1961 February 25, 1961 February 28, 1961 March March 4, 1961 March 7, 1961 March 11, 1961 March 14, 1961 March 17, 1961 March 21, 1961 March 25, 1961 March 27, 1961 April April 7, 1961 April 8, 1961 April 12, 1961 April 15, 1961 April 18, 1961 April 22, 1961 April 25, 1961 April 29, 1961 May May 2, 1961 May 12, 1961 May 19, 1961 May 23, 1961 May 30, 1961 June June 2, 1961 June 6, 1961 June 17, 1961 June 20, 1961 June 24, 1961 June 27, 1961 July July 4, 1961 July 7, 1961 July 12, 1961 July 15, 1961 July 18, 1961 July 26, 1961 July 28, 1961 August August 2, 1961 August 5, 1961 August 8, 1961 August 11, 1961 August 18, 1961 August 25, 1961 September September 3, 1961 September 10, 1961 September 16, 1961 September 23, 1961 September 28, 1961 September 30, 1961 October October 2, 1961 October 15, 1961 October 30, 1961 November November 5, 1961 November 6, 1961 November 7, 1961 November 12, 1961 November 16, 1961 November 16, 1961 November 23, 1961 December December 16, 1961 December 18, 1961 December 20, 1961 December 23, 1961 January January 7, 1961 I came down at 9:30 sharp, thinking half an hour would be enough to cross the corridor and get here. Apparently not! (Mother gives Satprem a rose.) This is the Tenderness of the Divine for... for himself! The tenderness He has for his creation. ‘Creation’... I don’t like that word, as if it all were created from nothing! It is He himself, creating with all his tenderness. Some of these roses get quite big; they’re so lovely! And I am... how to put it? Nothing we say is ever absolutely true, but, to stretch it a bit, while I am... not worried, not perturbed, not discouraged, I feel I can’t get anything done; I spend all my time, all my time, seeing people, receiving and answering letters – doing nothing. I haven’t touched my translation1 for over a week. T. sent me her notebook with questions and I had it for two weeks before I found time to answer.2 Nothing is ready for the Bulletin except what you have done. It’s a pity you have no time to do your work. Even the translation.... You know, when I am tired and work on the translation I feel rested. But, oh, all these letters! Even the best of them are stupid. Anyway.... When I came here just now there was someone waiting to see me – I told him to come at 11: 00, and by then there will be 700 people waiting for me to come out. They are already gathered around the Samadhi.3 Well, enough grumbling. Let’s get to work. * * * (Later, during the course of the conversation, Mother remarked:) Understanding The Synthesis of Yoga is quite simple: I have only to be silent for a moment, and Sri Aurobindo is here. It’s not this body’s understanding: HE is here! 1Mother generally worked a little every day on the French translation of The Synthesis of Yoga. 2The notebook in which a young woman disciple asked questions on Sri Aurobindo’s Thoughts and Aphorisms. Later, Mother preferred answering verbally Satprem’s questions on the aphorisms. This allowed her to speak of her experiences freely without the restrictions imposed by a written reply. These ‘Commentaries on the Aphorisms’ were later partially published in the Bulletin under the title A Propos. Here they are republished chronologically in their unabridged form. 3Where Sri Aurobindo’s body lies, in the Ashram courtyard. January 10, 1961 I have a stack of unread letters this high and an even bigger stack I’ve read but haven’t answered. How can I work on the Aphorisms when I am constantly hounded by people ‘pulling’ on me simply because they have written! If I don’t answer immediately, they say (not in words, but...): ‘So you’re not answering my letter!’ These are not very favorable conditions! Everything is in an awful confusion. (silence) What is the next aphorism? 49 – To feel and love the God of beauty and good in the ugly and the evil, and still yearn in utter love to heal it of its ugliness and its evil, this is real virtue and morality.4 Do you have a question? How can one collaborate in curing the evil and ugliness seen everywhere? By loving? What is the power of love? What effect can an individual consciousness, acting alone, have on the rest of mankind? How to collaborate in curing evil and ugliness?... We can say that there’s a kind of hierarchic scale of collaboration or action; a negative cooperation and a positive cooperation. To begin with, there’s what could be called a negative way, the way expounded by Buddhism and similar religions: the refusal to see. To be in a state of such purity and beauty that there is no perception of evil and ugliness. It’s like something that doesn’t touch you because it doesn’t exist in you. This is the perfection of the negative method. It is quite elementary: never take notice of evil, never speak of the evil present in others, never perpetuate the vibrations of evil by observation, criticism or giving undue attention to the evil deed. This is what Buddha taught: each time you mention an evil you help spread it. This skirts the issue. Nevertheless, it ought to be a very general rule; yet its critics have a reply: ‘If you don’t see evil you can never cure it. If you leave someone to his squalor he will never emerge from it.’ (It’s not exactly true, but it’s how they legitimize their actions.) In this aphorism, Sri Aurobindo has anticipated these objections: it is not through ignorance or unconsciousness or indifference that you fail to see evil – you can see and even feel it, but you refuse to collaborate in spreading it by giving it the force of your attention or the support of your consciousness. And for that, you must yourself be above the perception and sensation – able to see evil or ugliness without suffering, without feeling shocked or troubled. You see them from a height where such things do not exist, yet you have the conscious perception of them – they don’t affect you, you are free. This is the first step. 4Sri Aurobindo’s aphorisms appear in the Cent. Ed. Vol. XVII, pp. 79-159. The second step is to be POSITIVELY conscious of the supreme Goodness and Beauty behind all things and supporting all things, permitting them to exist. Once you have seen Him, you can perceive Him behind the mask and the distortion – even ugliness, even cruelty, even evil are a disguise for that Something which is essentially good or beautiful, luminous, pure. With this comes TRUE collaboration. For when you have this vision, this awareness, when you live in this consciousness, you also get the power to PULL That into the manifestation on earth and put it into contact with what, for the time being, distorts and disguises; thus the deformation and disguise are gradually transformed by the influence of the Truth behind. Here we are at the top rung on the scale of collaboration. Put this way, there is no need to bring the principle of love into our explanation. But if we want to know or understand the nature of the Force or Power that permits and accomplishes this transformation (specially in the case of evil, but for ugliness to some extent as well), we see that of all powers, Love is obviously the mightiest, the most integral – integral in that it applies to all cases. It’s even mightier than the power of purification which dissolves bad wills and is, in a way, master over the adverse forces, but which doesn’t have the direct transforming power; because the power of purification Must FIRST dissolve in order to form again later. It destroys one form to make a better one from it, while Love doesn’t need to dissolve in order to transform: it has the direct transforming power. Love is like a flame changing the hard into the malleable, then sublimating even the malleable into a kind of purified vapor. It doesn’t destroy: it transforms. Love, in its essence and in its origin, is like a white flame obliterating ALL resistances. You can have the experience yourself: whatever the difficulty in your being, whatever the weight of accumulated mistakes, the ignorance, incapacity, bad will, a single SECOND of this Love – pure, essential, supreme – melts everything in its almighty flame. One single moment and an entire past can vanish. One single TOUCH of That in its essence and the whole burden is consumed. It’s easy to understand how someone who has this experience can spread it and act upon others, since to have it you must touch the unique, supreme Essence of the whole manifestation – the Origin and the Essence, the Source and the Reality of all that is; then you immediately enter the realm of Unity where there is no more separation among individuals: it’s a single vibration that can repeat itself endlessly in outer forms.5 If you go high enough, you come to the Heart of everything.