Chapter 38Helpers on the Way · Their Help

to make constructions of the mind like that or believe in them; for it is always these wrong constructions that upset you.

5 June 1936

*

Unfortunately X seems to think that the Mother is harder than you: she is grim and does not love etc.

That is because Mother’s pressure for change is always strong — even when she does not put it as force it is there by the very

11 March 1937

You and the Mother know what is going on in us, how and what we are aspiring for, how our nature is reacting to your that to you?

It is necessary for you to be conscious, and to put your self-observation before us; it is on that that we can act. A mere action on our own observation without any corresponding consciousness on the part of the sadhak would lead to nothing.

7 January 1936

*

I thought that it is not possible for us to have spiritual experi-ences, especially major ones, without your previously knowing that so-and-so is having such-and-such an experience.

Previously? My God, we would have to spend all our time prevising the sadhaks’ experiences. Do you think Mother has nothing else to do? As for myself, I never previse anything, I only vise and revise. All that Mother prevised was that there was something not right in X, some part of him at odds with his aspiration. That might lead to trouble. That is why, entre nous, I want him to find out what part of him didn’t want the descent.

18 October 1936

Sometimes we feel that your answers (not so much the Mother’s) come from such a high plane that they seem to have no connection with our lives and do not consider the dualities, weaknesses, ignorance, etc. of human nature. Is it because it is a plane or planes of eternal and infinite Light, Power, Ananda, infallible Will-Force, which sees the human plane in the same way?

I think I know as much about the dualities, weaknesses, ignorance of human nature as you do and a great deal more. The idea that the Mother or I are spiritually great but ignorant of everything practical seems to be common in the Asram. It is an error to suppose that to be on a high spiritual plane makes one ignorant or unobservant of the world or of human nature. If I know nothing of human nature or do not consider it, I am obviously unfit to be anybody’s guide in the work of transformation, for nobody can transform human nature if he does not know what human nature is, does not see its workings or, even if he sees, does not take them into consideration at all. If I think that the human plane is like the plane or planes of infinite Light, Power, Ananda, infallible Will-Force, then I must be either a stark lunatic or a gibbering imbecile or a fool so abysmally idiotic as to be worth keeping in a museum as an exhibit. I am glad however to know that this is the opinion that you and all the other members of the Asram (I suppose this is what “we” means) have about me. I am glad however to know that you think the Mother is less of an exalted imbecile than myself.

30 April 1937

I am overwhelmed at the patience and compassion with which you put up with our insincerities, disobediences and loose-nesses.

Human nature is like that in its very grain; so if we are not patient, there would be little hope of its changing. But there is something else in the human being which is sincere and can be a force for the change. The difficulty in people like X is to get at that something (it is so covered up) and get it to act.

8 July 1934 Well, what an amazing mass of extraordinary mental construc-tions you have built up about the Mother and myself! The Mother is a great Yogi of a rather grave and impersonal type! I am Vedantic and vast and cosmic and impersonal and what not! What not indeed! Nothing is impossible after that!! However, I won’t protest — for mental constructions are to the mind like his favourite productions to an author, the more you criticise them the more the mind clings to them. Let me point out however by example how they come unnecessarily in your way and how very unnecessarily you let them do that, so that my insistence — simply that if you prayed to her (your prayers to Krishna having according to you no effect) you would have received quicker help. That was simply to help you — she is here close to you and the others and any number here have received help by calling to her simply and directly, of course without any questions or misgivings. Even now there are several who are emerging out of the same illness as yours, a habit of many years of long attacks of black despondency with the usual round of suggestions, “unfitness, this Yoga hopeless for me, no response, no experience, the Divine does not love me, Mother is distant and far, how long can I go on, how can anyone live like this, running away, suicide etc.,” and they are emerging because they have suddenly managed to turn simply and directly towards her. So what the Mother said was not something unfounded and a mere idea of hers. But it was simply a suggestion to help you. How did your mind come to the conclusion that it was a command to be followed on pain of displeasure, spiritual hanging or rejection and exile? The habit of mental constructions, that is all. Fear?

But the fear itself is a mental construction which could have no real foundation if you had remembered the constant indulgence and patience the Mother has always shown to you.

* The doubt about the possibility of help is hardly a rational one, since all the evidence of life and of spiritual experience in the past and of the special experience of those, numerous enough, who have received help from the Mother and myself, is against the idea that no internal or spiritual help from one to another or from a Guru to his disciples or from myself to my disciples is possible. It is therefore not really a doubt arising from the reason but one that comes from the vital and physical mind that is troubling you. The physical mind doubts all that it has not itself experienced and even it doubts what it has itself experienced if that experience is no longer there or immediately palpable to it — the vital brings in the suggestions of despondency and despair to reinforce the doubt and prevent clear seeing. It is therefore a difficulty that cannot be effectively combated by the logical reason alone, but best by the clear perception that it is a self-created difficulty — a self-formed sanskara or mental formation which has become habitual and has to be broken up so that you may have a free mind and vital, free for experience.

As for the help, you expect a divine intervention to destroy the doubt, and the divine intervention is possible, but it comes usually only when the being is ready. You have indulged to a great extreme this habit of the recurrence of doubt, this mental formation or sanskara, and so the adverse force finds it easy to throw it upon you, to bring back the suggestion. You must have a steady working will to repel it whenever it comes and to refuse the tyranny of the sanskara of doubt — to annul the force of its recurrence. I think you have hardly done that in the past, you have rather supported the doubts when they came. So for some time at least you must do some hard work in the opposite direction. The help (I am not speaking of a divine intervention from above but of my help and the Mother’s) will be there. It can be effective in spite of your physical mind, but it will be more