Integral Yoga & Human Defects (II) -“Don’t Try to Be Virtuous…”

(Translation of the original French previous post)

To realize that everybody has got some defects, and so to admit that one has some too, to accept to see them, whatever they may be, is only the very first step for becoming able one day to truly correct them.

But Mother goes much further than that in the conversation with Satprem down below.

A moment in ‘Mother’s Agenda’ which seems to me a particularly important one and which I try then to myself live as much as I can, at all levels of my being, and even the cells sometimes start to experience it too, which means that this new inner attitude is spreading…

January 21, 1962

(The point of departure for this conversation was one of Sri Aurobindo’s aphorisms:)

70 – Examine thyself without pity, then thou wilt be more charitable and pitiful to others.

Very good! (Mother laughs) That’s very good.

It’s very good for everyone, isn’t it?

Especially for those who think they’re so superior.

But it really does correspond to something very deep.

This is exactly the experience I have been going through these past few days; since the day before yesterday it seems to have reached its peak, and this morning it developed into a comprehensive vision, an earth-encompassing vision.

It’s almost like a reversal of attitude.

Actually, people have always taken themselves for victims hounded by adverse forces – the courageous fight back, the rest lament. But increasingly there has been a very concrete vision of the role the adverse forces play in the creation, of their almost absolute necessity as goads to make the creation progress and become its Origin again. And there was such a clear vision that one should accomplish one’s own transformation – that’s what we must pray for, what we must work out – rather than demand the conversion or abolition of the adverse forces.

And this is all from the terrestrial, not the individual standpoint (for the individual standpoint, it’s quite clear): I am speaking from the terrestrial standpoint.

And there was the sudden vision of all the error, all the incomprehension, all the ignorance, all the darkness and – even worse – all the ill will in the earth’s consciousness, which felt responsible for the prolongation of those adverse forces and beings and offered them up in a great… it was more than an aspiration, it was a sort of holocaust, so that the adverse forces might disappear, might no longer have any reason to exist, no longer need to be there to point out all that has to change.

The adverse forces were necessitated by all these negations of the divine life. And this movement of earth consciousness towards the Supreme, the offering of all these things with such extraordinary intensity, was a kind of reparation so that those adverse forces might disappear.

The experience was very intense. It crystallized around a small nucleus of experiences too personal to mention (because I wasn’t the only one involved), which translated into this: “Take all my wrongdoings, take them all, accept them, obliterate them, and may those forces disappear.”

That’s essentially what this aphorism says, seen from the other end. So long as a single human consciousness carries the possibility of feeling, acting, thinking or being in opposition to the great divine Becoming, it is impossible to blame anyone else for it; it is impossible to blame the adverse forces, which are kept in the creation as a means of making you see and feel how far you still have to go.

(silence)

It was like a memory,¹ an eternally present memory of that consciousness of supreme Love emanated by the Lord onto earth – INTO earth – to draw it back again to Him. And truly it was the descent of the very essence of the divine nature into the most total divine negation, and thus the abandonment of the divine condition to take on terrestrial darkness, so as to bring Earth back to the divine state. And unless That, that supreme Love, becomes all-powerfully conscious here on Earth, the return can never be definitive.

It came after the vision of the great divine Becoming.² “Since this world is progressive,” I was wondering, “since it is increasingly becoming the Divine, won’t there always be this deeply painful sense of the nondivine, of the state that, compared with the one to come, is not divine? Won’t there always be what we call ‘adverse forces,’ in other words, things that don’t harmoniously follow the movement?” Then came the answer, the vision of That: “No, the moment of this very Possibility is drawing near, the moment for the manifestation of the essence of perfect Love, which can transform this unconsciousness, this ignorance and this ill will that goes with it into a luminous and joyous progression, wholly progressive, wholly comprehensive, thirsting for perfection.”

It was very concrete.

And it corresponds to a state where you are so PERFECTLY identified with all that is, that you concretely become all that is antidivine – and so you can offer it up. It can be offered up and really transformed through this offering.

This sort of will in people for purity, for Good (which in ordinary mentality is expressed by a need to be virtuous) is actually the GREAT OBSTACLE to true self-giving. It’s the root of Falsehood, the very source of hypocrisy: the refusal to take up one’s share of the burden of difficulties. And that’s what Sri Aurobindo has touched on in this aphorism, directly and very simply.

Do not try to be virtuous. See to what extent you are united, ONE with all that is antidivine. Take up your share of the burden; accept to be impure and false yourself, and in so doing you will be able to take up the Shadow and offer it. And insofar as you are able to take it and offer it, things will change.³

Don’t try to be among the pure. Accept to be with those who are in darkness and, in total love, offer it all.

(silence)

From the moment this was seen and DONE, the full power came back – the great creative Power.

(silence)

Most likely the experience could take place only because the time had come for all this to be offered up.

The point is not to perpetuate those things, but to offer them up.

Because the time has come to manifest this Power, which is a power of Love – of LOVE, not merely of identity – of Love, of perfect Love; for perfect Love alone can offer.

It happened this morning, with great simplicity, but at the same time it had something so vast and almighty in it, as if the Universal Mother were turning towards the Lord and saying, “At last! We are ready.”

That was my experience this morning.

Do you mean to say there’s been a progress on Earth?

Yes, on Earth; it’s the Earth’s history that’s in question.

Now?

In those realms, you know, “now” sometimes stretches over many years. I won’t say it’s going to be instantaneous; that, I don’t know – I don’t know. I will probably know in a few days.

It’s like opening a door just a crack and catching a glimpse of what’s beyond….

It was the same kind of experience when I told Sri Aurobindo that India was free; it was the Universal Mother speaking from what could be called Her origin – it was from that level – and the thing took thirty-five years to come down on Earth.

When I had the experience that the time had come for the supramental Force to descend on Earth, I followed the effects of that descent, I followed the effects and the consequences in my consciousness. But to ordinary eyes it was something like what happened with India’s liberation – it’s possible, of course, that the Supermind did come down, but for the moment its effects are more than veiled.

The first rather tangible manifestation was this vision of the boat; with that, things became more concrete, it radically changed something in the attitude.

We’re at another stage now.

(silence)

This recent period has been very difficult. I see clearly that it was a preparation – to prepare the way for that experience. It came to reverse the attitude, the attitude of struggling to surmount, subdue and abolish everything antidivine in creation.

Up till now, this attitude was probably (not probably – certainly) necessary to prepare things. But now there’s a sort of sudden reversal, as if the moment had come for the creative principle, the force, the universal creative Force to say, “This too is Me. For it is time for it to disappear. This too is Me: I no longer treat it as an enemy to get rid of; I accept it as Myself, so that it truly does become Me.”

And it was preceded by a kind of anguish: “Will there always be something that, compared with the state to come, seems antidivine?” No: after a long preparation, it becomes capable of feeling divine – and thus of being divine.

Looking at things externally, in terms of present material reality, there is still a lot of ground to be covered before the new manifestation becomes an actual fact. What we have now is probably the seed of the thing – like the seed of India’s freedom, which later blossomed.