WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Division in the being

8 June 1955

I want to ask about this point: falling back into the ordinary consciousness, which is becoming more and more obstinate in me, personally; I feel it. [old p. 197]

That's a purely personal question.

But why is it like that, when I know that it is absurd? [new p. 195]

It is because, I think, you have kept the division in your being, that is, there is one part of your being which has refused to go along with the rest. It is usually like this that it happens. There is one part which has progressed, one part which holds on and doesn't want to move; so you feel it more and more as something which persists in being what it is. That's because you have dropped some of your baggage on the way and left it on the roadside instead of carrying it along with you. That will always pull you backward. Sometimes, unfortunately, one has to turn back, go and pick it up and bring it along; so one loses much time. This is how, indeed, one loses time. It's because one shuts one's eyes to so many things in the being. One doesn't want to see them, because they are not so pretty to see. So one prefers not to know them. But because one is ignorant of the thing it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist any longer. One does this: one puts it down on the way and then tries to go forward, but it is bound by threads, it pulls one back like a millstone drag, and so one must courageously take it up and hold it up like this (gesture) and tell it: "Now you will walk along with me!" It's no use playing the ostrich. You see, one shuts the eyes and doesn't want to see that one has this fault or that difficulty or that ignorance and stupidity; one doesn't want to see, doesn't want, one looks away to the other side, but it remains there all the same.

One day you have to face the thing, you have to. Otherwise you can never reach the end, it will always pull you backward. You may feel ahead, may see the goal there, drawing near, all this more and more, you may have something which goes before and has almost the feeling that it is going to touch, but you will never touch it if you have these millstones pulling you back. One day you must make a clean sweep of everything. It sometimes [old p. 198]takes very long but one must burn one's bridges; otherwise you go in a round, progress bit by bit until the end of your life, and then, when the time to leave has come you suddenly feel: "Ah! But... well, it will be perhaps for another time." This is not pleasant; why, it must be something frightful; for if one has known [new p. 196]nothing, understood nothing, if one has never tried... People are born, live, die and are reborn and live and die again, and it goes on, continues indefinitely, they don't even put the problem before themselves. But when one has had the taste, the foretaste of what life is, and why one is here, and what one has to do here, and then in addition one has made some effort and tries to realise, if one doesn't get rid of all the baggage of what does not follow, then it will be necessary to begin again yet another time. Better not. It is better to do one's work while one can do it consciously, and indeed this is what is meant by "Never put off for tomorrow what you can do today." This "today" means in this present life, because the occasion is here, the opportunity here; and perhaps one will have to wait many thousands of years to find it once again. It is better to do one's work, at any cost. There!... Losing as little time as possible.

Every time you are afraid to face yourself and hide carefully from yourself what prevents you from advancing, well, it is as though you were building a wall on the way; later you must demolish it to pass on. It is better to do your task immediately, look yourself straight in the face, straight in the face, not try to sugar-coat the bitter pill. It is very bitter: all the weaknesses, uglinesses, all kinds of nasty little things which one has inside--there are, there are, there are, oh! lots of them. And so you are on the point of attaining a realisation, on the point of touching a light, having an illumination, and then suddenly you feel something pulling you back like this (gesture), and you suffocate, you cannot advance further. Well, in these moments some people weep, some lament, some say, "Oh, poor me, here it is yet once again!" All this is a ridiculous weakness. You have only to look at yourself like this and say, "What [old p. 199]petty meanness, small stupidity, little vanity, ignorance, bad will is still there, hidden in the corner, preventing me from crossing the threshold, the threshold of this new discovery? Who is there in me, who is so small, so mean and obstinate, hiding there like a worm in a fruit so that I may not be able to see it?" If you are sincere you find [new p. 197]it; but above all it is this, absolutely this: you always sugar-coat the pill. The sugar-coating is a kind of what is called mental understanding of oneself. So one coats as thickly with sugar as possible in order to hide well from oneself what is there, the worm in the fruit; and one does it always, always gives oneself an excuse, always, always.