Chapter 4414 March

Mother began this conversation by referring to some of Sri Aurobindo’s Thoughts and Aphorisms. The aphorisms, with Mother’s written comments upon them, are printed below.

383 — Machinery is necessary to modern humanity because of our incurable barbarism. If we must encase ourselves in a bewildering multitude of comforts and trappings, we must needs do without Art and its meth-ods; for to dispense with simplicity and freedom is to dispense with beauty. The luxury of our ancestors was rich and even gorgeous, but never encumbered. 384 — I cannot give to the barbarous comfort and encumbered ostentation of European life the name of civilisation. Men who are not free in their souls and nobly rhythmical in their appointments are not civilised. 385 — Art in modern times and under European influence has become an excrescence upon life or an unnecessary menial; it should have been its chief steward and indispensable arranger.

So long as the mind governs life with the presumptuous certitude that it knows, how can the reign of the Divine be established?

12 March 1970 386 — Disease is needlessly prolonged and ends in death oftener than is inevitable, because the mind of the patient supports and dwells upon the disease of his body.

How absolutely true!

387 — Medical Science has been more a curse to mankind than a blessing. It has broken the force of epi-demics and unveiled a marvellous surgery; but, also, it has weakened the natural health of man and multiplied individual diseases; it has implanted fear and dependence in the mind and body; it has taught our health to repose not on natural soundness but a rickety and distasteful crutch compact from the mineral and vegetable king-doms. 388 — The doctor aims a drug at a disease; sometimes it hits, sometimes misses. The misses are left out of account, the hits treasured up, reckoned and systematised into a science.

It is wonderful. Wonderful!

389 — We laugh at the savage for his faith in the medicine man; but how are the civilised less superstitious who have faith in the doctors? The savage finds that when a certain incantation is repeated, he often recovers from a certain disease; he believes. The civilised patient finds that when he doses himself according to a certain prescription, he often recov-ers from a certain disease; he believes. Where is the difference?

One could say in conclusion that it is the faith of the patient which gives the remedy its power to heal. If men had an absolute faith in the healing power of Grace, they would perhaps avoid many illnesses.1

13 March 1970 You have seen the last aphorisms?

Yes, on diseases, doctors.... But there, in an aphorism, Sri Aurobindo gives just a small sentence which I find wonderful, where he says: “Machinery is necessary to modern humanity because of our incurable barbarism.”

(Mother shakes her head and remains silent for a long time.) Today I received the news that X has passed away. She had gone through a serious operation, she recovered, came back home, she wrote to me saying, “I am getting better and better” ... and then, passed away. I got the news today itself. It is like that. It was the same with Z, the same thing, a relapse. And it looks so much like... it is the effort against, yes, what Sri Aurobindo calls barbarism (Mother makes a gesture which takes in the whole earth atmosphere). This seems to be... I do not know if it is refusal or an incapacity to come out of the mental construction. And the action of this Consciousness... (how to say it?) is almost pitiless in order to show to what extent the whole mental construction is false — everything, everything, even those reactions that seem spontaneous, all that is the result of an extremely complex mental construction. Yes, it is pitiless. You are born within it and it seems so natural to feel in accordance with it, to react in accordance with it, to organise everything in accordance with it, so much so that... it makes you bypass the Truth. It is even in the organisation of the body itself. So the Action seems to impose itself with an extraordinary force and that seems (seems to us) pitiless (Mother strikes her fist into Matter), so that the lesson might be learnt. I remembered the time when Sri Aurobindo was there.... Well, the inner part of the being was in a consciousness that felt, that saw things according to the higher consciousness: altogether different; and then, just when Sri Aurobindo fell ill and when there were all those things, first of all the accident (he broke