WRITINGS BY THE MOTHER
© Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust

Cleansing the subconscient

25 October 1972

The disciple gives a flower to Mother, and Mother gives it back to the disciple.

It is "the power of Truth in the subconscient".

(Silence)

In the subconscient all the contradictions are accumulated.

Yes.

And it rises thus (gesture of gushing up), all the time, all the time. And then... you have the feeling that you are absolutely imbecile, inconscient, of bad will. And all this (same gesture of a rising up from below).

And the consciousness is there (gesture around the head), peaceful, extraordinarily peaceful... (Mother opens out her hands) "May Thy Will be done, O Lord." And then that puts a pressure upon what is coming from below.

It is as though the battle of the world was being fought within my consciousness.

It has come to such a point that to forget, to forget the Divine even for a minute spells a catastrophe.

And with you, how is it?

Well, it seems to be interminable, this cleansing of the subconscient.

Yes. It is not merely that of one person, it is the subconscient of the earth. It is interminable. And yet one must...

So, to stop that means to stop the work. To continue that means it would take time.... I do not know... it is interminable. [new p. 324][old p. 324]

Clearly, yes, clearly, to stop that means to stop the work. It is as though in the consciousness there (Mother makes a gesture around her head) lay the centre of junction and action.

So I have but one means, to keep quiet, quiet, quiet (Mother opens out her hands upward)... to have the feeling that individuality is nothing, nothing, nothing--it allows the divine rays to pass. This is the only solution. It is the Divine who... who must do the battling.

(Silence)

Last time you said: Oh! Hundreds of years will be needed, perhaps thousands, before men turn consciously towards the Divine. But...

Perhaps not.

... one feels that this time something decisive is bound to come.

Yes.... You know, I have the feeling that the person is like an image for fixing one's attention. Men have need of something--they have always had the need of something of their dimension so that they can fix their attention. And so the body does all it can in order not to be an obstruction to the Divine Force which passes through, it seeks to annul its interception, and at the same time it sees that it is... as though an image that men need to fix their attention. [new p. 325][old p. 325]

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 11, pp. 323-24

***

4 November 1972

The whole subconscient... (Mother makes a gesture of a rising up from below.)

(Silence)

It is not a sensation, it is not knowledge, it is a kind of... (Mother feels the air with her hand)... it cannot be called a conviction: it is a certitude--a certitude in the perception--that there is a Beatitude which... which is there, ready for us, and that there is a whole world of contradictions suppressed in the subconscient which comes up in this way to prevent us from feeling it. So... one might say it is a battlefield, but in a perfect calm. It is impossible to describe.

Impossible to describe.

So, if I do not move and if I enter into this Consciousness, time passes with a tremendous speed and in a kind of... luminous calm. And then, the slightest thing that pulls me out of it, it is as though I was dragged into a hell. That is it.

The unease is so great that you feel you cannot live one minute or a few minutes in that way. And then... and then you call the Divine... then you feel you nestle within the Divine.

Then it is all right.

Collected Works of The Mother, First Edition, Volume 11, p. 325