Skip to Content

Mother's Agenda

  Karmayogi

11/89

To start with I will tell you what I have to tell you at the end. The purpose for which Mother has written the Agenda was to offer the knowledge again to Her sadhaks. Suppose everyone, the whole Ashram, all the devotees & sadhaks have responded as She had expected; the Agenda would not have been necessary.

Even if people have missed it then, She is again offering it in a greater detail, speaking out things which She was not free to speak when She was here. For us, it means only one thing. Mother and Sri Aurobindo coming on earth brought the Hour of God. It is a great opportunity, spiritual and evolutionary, an opportunity for the world and for those who came to Her. It brought an inconceivable opportunity for those who aspired to become members of the new species. She says in the early pages of Agenda that She wants Satpram to emerge into the supramental light, telling that Sri Ramakrishna's experiences were in the vital. We know Ramakrishna's experiences were of the highest order. She is offering every reader of the Agenda the opportunity of emerging into the supramental light just like that.

Our purpose here in looking at the Agenda again is just to see how best we can understand what She says, how best, how fully we can benefit from what She says. The sum and substance of the whole thing is that the whole secret lies in relationship between things. She says that the power increases while the persons and other things remain the same if the relationship between them changes. Greater power will issue by changing the attitude of Matter, of the particles of Matter. She says that they will obey the force of transformation. What we consider yoga, tapas, effort, all reduces to understanding of the attitude necessary and exhibiting that attitude at different levels, starting with the mind and ending with the body.

The Mother says that the cells of the body, when they take the right attitude, will be in a position to obey the force of the transformation. We are functioning from mind. We have our mind, we are constantly and always working only in the mind. Can we understand what attitude we have to take in the mind, so that mind will obey the forces of transformation? If our understanding helps us to transform our mind, if not completely, at least in one small event, it means we have understood what Mother says and we have benefited from what Mother says. If the reading of the Agenda can at the end of the day or end of the course give you the understanding and give you the practical strategy of what you have to do with your mental attitude and mental understanding, the new attitude will bring about the transformation in the mind. That is a greatest achievement.

In one sense She says that the mind is the easiest to transform and body is the most difficult. In another sense of being refractory, She says the mind is the most difficult member because it is perverse, whereas the lower members are not so perverse. They are very rigid, but not so perverse. Perversity is a there only in the mind. All the Mother's opinions about mind are what we know. If you don't know, then take a paper and pencil, sit down and go through the Agenda and Her other volumes, list out all the attitudes and all the comments Mother makes about mind. It may be a dozen or twenty.

We know our own mind. We know what attitudes Mother wants us to accept. You know generally mind's constitution or how the mind is constituted. You know how your own mind is constituted, and you know how Mother wants the mind to be conscious. Out of the several aspects, you choose one and try to change the mental attitude from your own attitude to what Mother wants, fully understanding the nature of the mind Mother speaks about. The success will make a beginning. If you don't succeed, the key lies in your understanding the constitution of mind better, not your own mind. If you understand how mind is constituted, that understanding can help you to change the attitude of your own mind.

I can take the smallest example, or most frequent example, that she speaks of. Mind has a rationality. At times the mind is capable of brushing aside understanding and allowing grace to work to bring about a positive result. Having accomplished that, the mind has the capacity to explain how things happened rationally. She says the moment you do it, the grace which has acted refuses to act again and you are closing the doors on grace. Suppose you take this one attitude according to Mother: every act that take place after that is grace, every act is grace, every act is by grace. If you exercise your mind during the day 10 times in 10 issues or 200 issues or practically in all issues and see how the work is done by grace, not by earthly forces, not by mental intelligence, not by vital enthusiasm or by our material organisation; the more and more you are able to appreciate, understand that things take place more by grace than by organisation and in the next step you understand that things take place only by grace and not by human organisation or human capacity, your knowledge becomes complete. Maybe it is difficult to do in all the activities of the day. Take some important activities -- 3, 4, 5, 10 -- and try to understand that it is grace that accomplishes, not man, particularly not me. I am eliminated and I feel grace is in evidence. If that understanding is real, the result will be as grace intended, not a human result. If such a thing could be seen by man in isolated events and the mind should accept the knowledge on the basis of that, it is the first step. The next step is, having seen it a few times, can we make it a permanent mental attitude. What is the difference between understanding it once and accepting it for yoga at a structure of the mind?

We learn anything new with a great effort and with concentration we accomplish a thing. That does not mean we do it forever. We have to do it many times to make it into a habit, to acquire the skill to make it into a permanent capacity. Here, if you try to make grace into a habit, grace will refuse to become a habit. If you can make it into a habit, maybe it is better than what you are now. So the problem reduces to how to make grace continuously act in the mind without making it into a habit. You have it as a fixed method or skill, if the mind, the physical mind, acquires and understands the knowledge and process of how grace acts. If enthusiasm in the mind is released on seeing the process and if the mind acts based on what it understands at that moment, not based on what it understood previously, it will be spontaneous and fresh. It will not become a habit.

Here we understand the process that is rational. That is the reason of the higher knowledge. My enthusiasm is not based on my experience of yesterday. If my today's enthusiasm issues because of what I knew yesterday, then that has become a habit, a vital habit. If my enthusiasm is released on what I understand at this moment, it won't become a habit. If I am seeing in an action based on the knowledge that I have in the moment, the enthusiasm released at this minute, the activity will be fresh and spontaneous and it will not become a habit. There must be a conscious and constant endeavor not to refer to the past. I have done it successfully today and I repeat it tomorrow --that makes for a habit. I have done it yesterday and, therefore, basing myself on yesterday's experience, we build up a habit. The yesterday is not brought into play. Today's experience is not attempted to be preserved for tomorrow. If chances of becoming a habit are less, it will become a fresh, spontaneous act and then grace will be able to act more. That is understood in the mind, which is the easiest point. Then you understand the process of what Mother's wants us to learn. Once it is learned at the point where we are, we can learn and practice it and try to keep it as a permanent possession. That can be extended to the vital and physical.

Agenda is a gift the Mother has given to devotees. For us to benefit by this gift, of course we say we have to understand what She says. That is not very easy. There is a truth to understand what She says. She uses the words about mind, vital and body in general and particular in different places. There is a great confusion. If we take the nine steps in mind, vital and body and shift this frame to fix on what She speaks, it is absolutely clear. By the same word She denotes mind in the mind, mind in the body, mind in the vital. That is the inability of the word. But if we take care to discover which She refers to, we have a frame of reference of nine steps. We can carefully fix what Mother says into our frame of reference and then all confusion will vanish.

There are things in us that function only when we understand. We must have a complete knowledge of evolution to understand what Mother says. We don't know how the evolution has brought us to this point. There is a confusion. The knowledge is available in the world, which anybody can understand by himself. Once the understanding is there and understanding alone is not enough to get the benefit. The only thing that we need to know is what benefit can we get from Mother. The advent of Mother & Sri Aurobindo is not an ordinary event. It is an extraordinary event of forces coming from a higher plane, higher than any avatar that so far has come and it stands there. We understand Mother and Sri Aurobindo with the same attitude as we understood Krishna, Shiva or Vishnu. A new technology comes to you and you try to understand what they are offering. You don't try to understand that according to what you already know. For that point, this knowledge is most important, we have to accept this. In our life, small things take a short time, great things take a long time. In the life of Supermind, i.e. Supramental consciousness, that is not the condition. The conditions are to be fulfilled. The time required to accomplish a small thing or big thing is not different.

Every one can say great things are open to people at a greater level, i.e. higher level, only and for people who are born at the lower level greater things are not open. That is the social attitude and traditional attitude. Mother very clearly says that at all levels the input is same and only the interrelation changes. Interrelationship means organisation. If you change the organisation, the same people work in a different fashion. The people in a democracy and people in a dictatorship are the same. But the relationship in democracy between the people and government is different. If we have a different relationship, then we generate different powers and rights. The effort man has to take is to change the relationship. Relationship means organisation. If you are willing to change the organisation of your consciousness and willing to take that effort, it is great. Then what Mother says is true. If you are not willing to change the organisation of your consciousness, then all the confusion comes, all your fears are true, all you meaningless opinions are correct. That is the truth.

In starting I am saying mind has a different organisation. I can give a simple example. You take a family where everybody has the feeling that family is important, everybody subordinates himself to family and trusts every other member of the family. What is the benefit? No man can do anything that hinders the other man and every man has faith in the other man. If 5, 10, or 20 people in a family are there, there is trust. The basic attitude is to work for the family. There is another family of the same 10 people. Each man distrusts the other man. Each man can do a work only when the profit will come to him. The accomplishments of this family are one tenth or one l00th of the first family. The numbers will be the same. The accomplishment varies according to the attitude of the family. Attitude means relationship. So in your mind there is memory, imagination, opinion, thoughts, ideas and so many powers. Mind is related with vital and body, and vital is related to physical. So if you take all the members of faculties of each being and are willing to rearrange the relationship, what Mother says will be clear to you and what Mother says you can accomplish.

The truth lies in the organisation of the consciousness. Mother says when you change the interrelationship, man will obey the force of transformation. If you want this to be understood and practically seen, take any one fixed attitude which you have. There is a man who thinks some members are his family are enemies. Examine whether your understanding is true. Half of them will be false. If he is an enemy in your personal life, he may not be a enemy in your official life. Examine your attitude and change your attitude when your original attitude is wrong. See what you can accomplish. Not only what you can accomplish, Mother can act better through your mind. If you see, just by taking an attitude of trust where there is no trust, the change between seeing is 200 fold. There are four partners in a company and each one distrusts the other. They can accomplish a minimum. There are 4 partners, all of them have faith in each other. What they can accomplish is the maximum. The distance between minimum and maximum will be one to one crore. So you make the effort to change the attitude in your mind and see the results in life. That is the principle of Agenda.



story | by Dr. Radut