WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust
Miracles
... If, instead of a slow evolution, something belonging to the supramental world appeared suddenly, man, the mental being, could call that a miracle, because it would be the intervention of something which he does not consciously carry within himself and which intervenes in his conscious life. And in fact, if you consider this taste for miracles, which is very strong--much stronger in children and in hearts that have remained childlike than in highly mentalised individuals--it is a faith in the realisation of the aspiration for the marvellous, of something higher than anything one can expect from normal life.
Indeed, in education, both tendencies should be encouraged side by side: the tendency to thirst for the marvellous, for what seems unrealisable, for something which fills you with the feeling of divinity; while at the same time encouraging exact, correct, sincere observation in the perception of the world as it is, the suppression of all imagination, a constant control, a highly practical and meticulous sense for exact details. Both should go side by side. Usually, you kill the one with the idea that this is necessary in order to foster the other--this is completely wrong. Both can be simultaneous and there comes a time when one has enough knowledge to know that they are the two aspects of the same thing: insight, a higher discernment. But instead of a narrow, limited insight and discernment, the [new p. 163]discernment becomes entirely sincere, correct, exact, but it is vast, it includes a whole [old p. 165]domain that does not yet belong to the concrete manifestation.
From the point of view of education, this would be very important: to see the world as it is, exactly, unadorned, in the most down-to-earth and concrete manner; and to see the world as it can be, with the freest, highest vision, the one most full of hope and aspiration and marvellous certitude--as the two poles of discernment.
The most splendid, most marvellous, most powerful, most expressive, most total things we can imagine are nothing compared to what they can be; and at the same time our meticulous exactitude in the tiniest detail is never exact enough. And both must go together. When one knows this (downward gesture) and when one knows that (upward gesture), one is able to put the two together.
And this is the best possible use of the need for miracles. The need for miracles is a gesture of ignorance: "Oh, I would like things to be like this!" It is a gesture of ignorance and impotence. And those who say, "You live in a miracle", know only the lower end--and even then they know it only imperfectly--and they have no contact with anything else.
This need for miracles must be changed into a conscious aspiration for something--which is already there, which exists--which will be manifested by the help of all these aspirations; all these aspirations are necessary or, if one looks at it in a truer way, they are an accompaniment--an agreeable accompaniment--in the eternal unfolding.
Of course, people with a very strict logic tell you, "Why pray? Why aspire? Why ask? The Lord does what He wants and He will do what He wants." It is quite obvious, there is no need to say it, but this impulse: "O Lord, manifest!" gives a more intense vibration to His manifestation.
Otherwise, He would never have made the world as it is. There is a special power, a special delight, a special vibration [new p. 164]in the intensity of the world's aspiration to become once more what it is. [old p. 166]
And that is why--partly, fragmentarily--there is an evolution.
An eternally perfect universe, eternally manifesting the eternal perfection, would lack the joy of progress.
6 March 1963
Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 10, pp. 164-66