24 February 1951
The other day I
said that most of the time people do not have their psychic being within them.
I would like to explain this in greater detail...You must remember that the inner
beings are not in the third dimension. If you open up your body you will find
only the viscera of the body which are in the third dimension. The inner beings
are in another dimension, and when I say that some men do not have their
psychic being within them, I do not mean that it is not at the centre of their
being, but that their outer consciousness is so small, so limited, so obscure
that it is not able to keep a contact, not only conscious but intimate, with
the psychic being which extends beyond it in every way; it is so much higher
and deeper than the other outer consciousness that there is no relation either
of quality or of nature between them. Religions say that you have a divine
spark in you – it is well they call it a “spark”, for it is so small indeed
that it can be placed anywhere in the body without difficulty. But this does
not mean that it is in the body: it is within the consciousness in another
dimension, and there are beings who have a contact with it, others who haven't.
But if you come to the divine Presence in the atom, the image is easier to
understand, for there you touch so infinitesimal a domain that you are on the
border-line where you can no longer distinguish between two, three, four or
five dimensions. If you study modern physics you will understand what I mean.
The movements constituting an atom are, in the matter of size, so imperceptible
that they cannot be understood with our three-dimensional understanding, the
more so as they follow laws which elude completely this three-dimensional idea.
So if you take refuge there, you may say that the divine spark is at the centre
of each atom and you won't be far from the truth; but I was not speaking of the
divine spark, I was speaking of the being, the psychic consciousness, which is
another thing. The psychic being is an entity
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which has a form;
it is organised around a central consciousness and, having a form it has a
dimension, but a dimension of another kind than the third dimension of the
outer consciousness.
It is often said that children enter into
possession of their psychic being when they are about seven. What does this
mean exactly?
This is not
correct. There are people whose psychic being watches over their formation
before their birth, even before they are in the womb of their mother. There are
children whose psychic being comes into contact with them at the very moment
they utter their first cry. There are also people whose psychic being comes a
few hours after their birth, or some days after, or some weeks, some months,
some years after or...never!
You told me once that one must not ask a
child to make a mental effort before the age of seven.
That is quite
different. There it is a question only of the formation of the physical brain
which develops slowly, little by little. If you ask of a brain in formation an
effort beyond its capacity, you tire it, you overwork it or you make it ill.
You say that the
psychic being is the same thing as the divine spark...
No, I never said
that – it would be foolish! The psychic being is organised around the divine spark. The divine spark is one, universal, the
same everywhere and in everything, one and infinite, of the same kind in all.
You cannot say that it is a being – it is the
being, if you like, but not a being. Naturally, if you go back to the
origin, you may say that there is only one soul, for the origin of all souls is
the same, as the origin of the whole universe is the same, as the origin of the
entire creation is the
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same. But the
psychic being is an individual, personal being with its own experience, its own
development, its own growth, its own organisation; only, this organisation is
the product of the action of a central divine spark.
But the day an external being (physical,
mental, vital) enters into direct and constant contact with the psychic being,
one may say in the same way that the physical
being of this person is organised by the central divine consciousness. The
moment you put yourself in contact with it, submit yourself to it, you are
organised by it, by the central divine consciousness; one may say that the body
is organised by it, but it is a body,
not a soul. The fact of being organised by this divine spark does not make it a
soul.
Is there a psychic
being in the atom?
No, it is not yet
there. It can be said that there is a possibility of psychic consciousness in
Matter – the diffusion of the divine Consciousness had only one object: to make
possible an organisation which would be under the direct influence of the
Divine. That is why it passes over all the worlds of disorder.¹ It may hence be
said that the Origin of the soul is also in the atom, in all the elements
constituting the atom, but it is only the Origin...I must tell you that when it
is fully formed, the psychic being has a distinct form which corresponds to our
physical form. It is not altogether similar, but it has a definite form. Every
psychic being is different from another – they are not all cut out, modeled to
one pattern. They are different, each has an individuality, a personality.
¹At the time
of the publication of this talk, Mother added the following note for the sake
of precision: “Some parts of the vital are worlds of disorder and the beings
inhabiting the vital have no psychic being. The psychic being exists only upon
earth, in the physical world. That is why I said in brief that the divine
spark, which organises the psychic, passed over the worlds of disorder and
manifested itself directly in the physical world to create there this
possibility of organisation around the divine spark.”
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Mother reads a question asked during her talk
in 1929:
“Do many remember that they have passed
over [to the other side] and are back again?”
Questions and Answers 1929 (28 April)
I was seriously ill, unconscious for two
hours, and I had the impression that I had gone over to the other side, that I
was in a different world. When I came back to myself, I had the impression of
having made a long journey in a world quite different from the one where I
normally lived.
It was a partial exteriorisation; it was not a
total exteriorisation which indeed causes death. If one goes out entirely, that
is, if there is a complete separation from the body and one is really dead, and
then one comes back, that causes such an intense suffering that one cannot
forget it. It is said that babies cry when they come into the world because the
first contact with air makes them cry, but I think it is something else. The
re-entry into the body causes a kind of friction, for what goes out has to be
something very material if it is to bring about death, something even more
material than the subtle physical, and this friction is extremely painful.
Otherwise one may be externally unconscious, but one is not dead for all that.
It is only when something extremely material goes out of the body and all ties
are broken that there is truly “death”. And that is why (I believe we are
beginning to discover it) people do not die till six or seven days after their
death. That is, they are not “dead” as long as the body remains intact, but
only when a part of the body begins to decompose. Hence during this period,
someone who has the necessary knowledge, power and capacity may “raise” a
person in such a state. I believe this explains most of the cases of
“miraculous” resurrection.
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A person was dead. The doctors massaged
the heart and after some time the person revived.
Yes, in that
sphere they are beginning to work “miracles”!
“When you reach a certain state of
consciousness, you remember [passing over to the other side]. It is not so
difficult to touch this state partially for a short time; in deep meditation,
in a dream or a vision one may have the feeling or the impression that he has
lived this life before, had this realisation, known these truths. But this is
not a full realisation; to come to that, one must have attained to a permanent
consciousness within us which is everlasting and holds together all our
existences in past or present or future time.”
Questions and Answers 1929 (28 April)
You must always
distrust people who go rambling in some kind of mental or vital domain, and
then tell you stories imagining that they remember their past lives. You know
the classical example of that well-known lady who narrated her lives from the
time she had been a monkey! I may assure you that it is pure imagination, for
it is impossible to remember like that.
This is what
happens. Let us take a divine spark which, through attraction, through affinity
and selection, gathers around it a beginning of psychic consciousness (this
work is already very perceptible in animals – don't think you are exceptional
beings, that you alone have a psychic being and the rest of creation hasn't. It
begins in the mineral, it is a little more developed in the plant, and in the
animal there is a first glimmer of the psychic presence). Then there comes a
moment when this psychic being is sufficiently developed to have an independent
consciousness and a personal will. And then after innumerable lives more or
less individualised, it becomes conscious of itself, of its movements and of
the environment it has chosen for its
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growth. Arriving at a certain state of perception,
it decides – generally at the last minute of the life it has just finished upon
earth – the conditions in which its next life will be passed. Here I must tell
you a very important thing: the psychic being can progress and form itself only
in the physical life and upon earth. As soon as it leaves a body, it enters
into a rest which lasts for a more or less long time according to its own
choice and its degree of development – a rest for assimilation, for a passive
progress so to say, a rest for passive growth which will allow this same
psychic being to pass on to new experiences and make a more active progress.
But after having finished one life (which usually ends only when it has done
what it wanted to do), it will have chosen the environment where it will be
born, the approximate place where it will be born, the conditions and the kind
of life in which it will be born, and a very precise programme of the
experiences through which it will have to pass to be able to make the progress
it wants to make.
I am going to give you quite a concrete
example. Let us take a psychic being that has decided, for some reason or
other, to enter the body of a being destined to become king, because there is a
whole series of experiences it can have only under those conditions. After
having passed through these experiences of a king, it finds that there is a
whole domain in which it cannot make a progress due to these very conditions of
life where it is. So when it has finished its term upon earth and decides to go
away, it decides that in its next life it will take birth in an ordinary
environment and in ordinary conditions, neither high nor low, but such that the
body which it will take up will be free to do what it likes. For I do not tell
you anything new when I say that the life of a king is the life of a slave; a
king is obliged to submit to a whole protocol and to all kinds of ceremonies to
keep his prestige (it is perhaps very pleasant for vain people, but for a
psychic being it is not pleasant, for this deprives it of the possibility of a
large number of experiences). So having taken this decision, it carries in
itself all the memories
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which a royal life can give it and it takes
rest for the period it considers necessary. (Here, I must say that I am
speaking of a psychic being exclusively occupied with itself, not one
consecrated to a work, because in that case it is the work which decides the
future lives and their conditions; I am speaking of a psychic being at work
completing its development.) Hence it decides that at a certain moment it will
take a body. Having already had a number of experiences, it knows that in a
certain country, a certain part of the consciousness has developed; in another,
another part, and so on; so it chooses the place which offers it easy
possibilities of development: the country, the conditions of living, the
approximate nature of the parents, and also the condition of the body itself,
its physical structure and the qualities it needs for its experiences. It takes
rest, then at the required moment, wakes up and projects its consciousness upon
earth centralising it in the chosen domain and the chosen conditions – or
almost so; there is a small margin you know, for in the psychic consciousness
one is too far away from the material physical consciousness to be able to see
with a clear vision; it is an approximation. It does not make a mistake about
the country or the environment and it sees quite clearly the inner vibrations
of the people chosen, but there may happen to be a slight indecision. But if,
just at this moment, there is a couple upon earth or rather a woman who has a
psychic aspiration herself and, for some reason or other, without knowing why
or how, would like to have an exceptional child, answering certain exceptional
conditions; if at this moment there is this aspiration upon earth, it creates a
vibration, a psychic light which the psychic being sees immediately and,
without hesitation it rushes towards it. Then, from that moment (which is the
moment of conception), it watches over the formation of the child, so that this
formation may be as favourable as possible to the plan it has; consequently its
influence is there over the child even before it appears in the physical world.
If
all goes well, if there is no accident (accidents can al-
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ways happen), if
all goes well at the moment the child is about to be born, the psychic force
(perhaps not in its totality, but a part of the psychic consciousness) rushes
into the being and from its very first cry gives it a push towards the
experiences it wants the child to acquire. The result is that even if the
parents are not conscious, even if the child in its external consciousness is
not quite conscious (a little child does not have the necessary brain for that,
it forms slowly, little by little), in spite of that, it will be possible for
the psychic influence to direct all the events, all the circumstances of the
life of this child till the moment it becomes capable of coming into conscious
contact with its psychic being (physically it is generally between the age of
four and seven, sometimes sooner, sometimes almost immediately, but in such a
case we deal with children who are not “children”, who have “supernatural”
qualities, as they say – they are not “supernatural”, but simply the expression
of the presence of the psychic being). But there are people who have not had
the chance or rather the good fortune if one may call it that, of meeting
someone, physically, who could instruct them. And yet they have the feeling
that every step of their existence, every circumstance of their life is
arranged by someone conscious, so that they may make the maximum progress. When
they need a certain circumstance, it comes; when they need to meet certain
people, they come; when they need to read certain books, they find them within
their reach. Everything is arranged like that, as if someone was watching over
them so that their life may have the maximum possibilities of development.
These people may very well say: “But what is a psychic being?”, for no one has
ever used these words in speaking to them or they have not found anybody who
could explain to them all that; but for them often just one meeting is
sufficient, just one look, in order147to wake up; one word suffices to make
them remember: “But I knew all that!”
This is exactly what happens to a psychic
being which has reached the last stage of its development. After that, it will
no
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longer be bound by
the necessity of coming upon earth, it will have completed its development and
will be able to choose freely either to consecrate itself to the divine Work or
go elsewhere, that is, in the higher worlds. But generally, having come to this
stage, it remembers all that has happened to it and understands the great
necessity of coming to the help of those who are yet struggling in the midst of
difficulties. These psychic beings give their whole existence to the divine
Work – this is not absolute, inevitable, they choose freely, but ninety times
out of a hundred this is what they do.
But in
ordinary lives – and by that I mean the life of a certain élite of sufficiently
well-developed people – the contact between the external being and the psychic
is quite intermittent; it is the result of certain experiences or certain inner
needs. At that moment the psychic being is “in front”, as Sri Aurobindo says,
that is, it comes to the surface of the consciousness, it is in direct contact
with material circumstances, with forms and words and sounds, etc..., for a
very short time; so it records all that like a photograph or a cinema, but it
is just a minute, a few moments in a lifetime. These moments may repeat
themselves several times, but they do not last; and it is this the psychic
being remembers; and when you have real psychic memories, sincere, spontaneous,
not fabricated by the mind or the vital, that is, purely psychic, exact, your
memory is intermittent. And it is
often very difficult to locate your past lives, to say: “I was this or that.”
It is only when the psychic experience has taken place at a very important
moment of your life and a whole set of circumstances gives you, so to say, the
key to the story (dresses, spoken words, customs or an environment giving you
the key) that you can say: “Oh! That life, I have lived it.” But if someone
comes and narrates to you all his previous lives from the monkey148onwards,
with a mass of details, you may be sure that he is a humbug!
You spoke of the “chance” of a psychic
being
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meeting what will be its physical being.
No, I said
“accident”; an accident is not a chance.
In life there is always a
conflict between opposing forces, and the result of this conflict is not always
foreseen except when one is conscious in the highest consciousness. One cannot
foresee the result of a conflict with a consciousness which does not go beyond
the human consciousness, so one calls it an “accident”. It is not chance, it is
not even an accident without reason, but an accident caused by reasons which
one is not in a condition to foresee.
In a dream, I
thought I saw pictures of a former ascetic life.
There is such a
strong suggestion here [in India] that to live the
spiritual life, one must take up the life of a sannyasin, that this perhaps is
the cause of your pictures. In any case, if it was really a previous life, it
was not the last one. You have surely had intermediary lives, for rarely is a
being born in the same country several times consecutively – it would not be
very profitable. If it had been the ascetic life of the time of the first
Christians, for instance, you would have noticed certain details: the different
colour of your skin, a dress, etc..., whereas you probably saw the usual
pictures of Indian life... Everything is possible, of course. The universe is
constituted in such a way that all the possibilities can be realised there:
but, as I said, it is rare for one to be born several times in the same country
unless it be to accomplish a special work, with a special end in view; and then
it is very rare for one not to know it, for this means that the psychic being
is fully formed and has itself chosen to come back to the same country to do a
special work or to continue what it had already begun.
Many have had a previous ascetic life, for the
collective suggestion is very strong here. It is very rare for a person not to
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think that to
perfect oneself and to live a spiritual life one must leave the world.
There are also symbolic and premonitory
dreams, but very rarely do dreams consist of true memories of past lives,
because for that one must dream in one's psychic consciousness and there are
not many who are capable of this. One dreams in the mental or vital
consciousness but rarely does one dream in the psychic consciousness. That can
happen, but it is rare.
At times, there are dreams which one takes for
memories, but they are only symbols: what one sees comes from a mental
formation which is objectified on an inner screen and which enacts a scene, so
to say, in which you are an actor.
Here in India frequently children are born in a village
and they give, while very young, precise information about the village where
they have lived before, about their parents, etc... Is this true?
Yes, but generally
these are children who have died as children or very young and whose previous
life had not fully run out. This can happen.
In what does a
psychic being's progress consist?
Individualisation,
the capacity to take up all experiences and organise them around the divine
centre.
The aim of the psychic being is to form an
individual being, individualised, “personalised” around the divine centre.
Normally, all the experiences of the external life (unless one does yoga and
becomes conscious) pass without organising the inner being, while the psychic
being organises these experiences serially. It wants to realise a particular
attitude towards the Divine. Hence it looks for all favourable experiences in
order to have the complete series of opportunities, so to say, which will allow
it to realise this attitude towards the Divine. Take some-
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one, for example,
who wants to have the experience of nobility – a nobility which makes it
impossible for you to act like an ordinary person, which infuses into you a
bravery, a courage which may almost be taken for rashness because the attitude,
the experience demands that you face danger without showing the least fear. I
was telling you a while ago that I would explain to you what one could acquire
by entering into the body of a king. A king is an ordinary man, isn't he, like
all others; he does not have a special consciousness, but through the
necessities of his life, because he is a kind of symbol to his people, there
are things he is obliged to do which he could never do if he were an ordinary
man. I know this by experience, but I saw this also while looking at
photographs which represented a king in actual circumstances: something had
happened, which might have been an attempt on his life, but was averted. The
photographs showed the king inspecting a regiment; all of a sudden someone had
rushed forward, perhaps with a bad intention, perhaps not, for nothing had
happened; in any case, the king had remained completely impassive, absolutely
calm, the same smile on his lips, without moving the least from the place where
he was; and he was quite within sight, an easy target for one who wanted to
rush forward and hurt him. For all I know, this king was not a hero, but because
he was a king, he could not take to flight! That would have been ignoble. So he
remained calm, without stirring, without showing any outward fear. This is an
example of what one can learn in the life of a king.
There is also a true story about Queen
Elizabeth. She had come to the last days of her life and was extremely ill. But
there was trouble in the country and, about questions of taxation, a group of
people (merchants, I believe) had formed a delegation to present a petition to
her in the name of a party of the people. She lay very ill in her room, so ill
that she could hardly stand. But she got up and dressed to receive them. The
lady who was attending upon her cried out, “But it is impossible, you will die
of this!” The queen answered quietly, “We
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shall die afterwards”...This is an example
from a whole series of experiences one can have in the life of a king, and it
is this which justifies the choice of the psychic being when it takes up this
kind of life.
It is
memories of this kind which prove the authenticity of the experience; for what
generally happens when people tell you about their past lives is this: in these
lives there is always a progress, naturally; so they become more and more
splendid people in more and more marvellous circumstances! It is wrong, things
never happen like that. The psychic being follows a certain line of existence
which develops certain qualities, certain powers, etc..., but the psychic being
always sees what it lacks and it can choose the opposite line in a future life,
a negation, so to say, of this experience in order to have complementary
experiences.
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