India - the Mother

July 3, 1963

What seems ... bizarre to those who have gone beyond the petty, purely terrestrial limits—human terrestrial limits—is that belief in a SINGLE divine manifestation on the earth; all the religions are based on that, everyone says, "Christ was the only one," or "Buddha was the only one," or elsewhere "Mohammed was the only one," and so forth. Well, that "only one" is something IMPOSSIBLE as soon as you rise a little above the ordinary earth atmosphere—it appears childish. You can understand the thing and accept it only as a sort of recurrent movement of the divine Consciousness on the earth....

This much conviction they [the Roman Catholics] still have, you see, that their religion is superior to all others, their power is superior to all others, and therefore they have to be more powerful than the others. That's the main idea: "To be the most powerful." ...

In a certain state of consciousness, it becomes absolutely impossible to worry about what may happen; everything becomes visibly, obviously, the work of one and the same Force, one and the same Consciousness, one and the same Power. So that sense and will and ambition to be "more"—more powerful, greater—is again the SAME Force which pushes you to expand to the Limitless. As soon as you cross the limit, it's finished.

Those are old ideas—the old ideas of two powers opposing each other: the power of Good and the power of Evil, the battle between the two, which of the two will have the last word.... There was a time when children were entertained with such stories. They're just children's stories.

Some people (or if you like, some beings, or forces, or consciousnesses) in order to progress need to give themselves, to merge, and in total self-annihilation they attain Realization; for others the path is diametrically opposite: it's a growth, a domination, an expansion which assumes fantastic proportions ... until the separation disappears—it can no longer exist.

Some prefer this path, others prefer that one—but when we reach the end, it will all meet.

Ultimately, the one thing necessary is to abolish limits.... There are many ways to abolish limits.

And maybe they are all equally difficult.

(After a silence) That [Catholic] religion is perhaps the one I have fought the most. For a very simple reason: its power, its means of action (the power it uses as a means of action) is fear. And of all things, fear is the most degrading.

I saw two examples of this; one physically and the other intellectually (I am referring to things I was in contact with materially). Intellectually, it was a studio friend; for years we had done painting together, she was a very gentle girl, older than I, very serious, and a very good painter. During the last years of my life in Paris,³³ I saw her often and I spoke to her, first of occult matters and the "Cosmic philosophy," then of what I knew of Sri Aurobindo (I had a "group" there and I used to explain certain things), and she would listen with great understanding—she understood, she approved. Now, one day, I went to her house and she told me she was in a great torment. When she was awake, she had no doubts, she understood well, she felt the limitations and obscurities of religion (she came from a family with several archbishops and a cardinal—well, one of those "old French families"). "But at night," she told me, "I suddenly wake up with an anguish and something—from my subconscious, obviously—tells me, 'But after all this, what if you go to hell?" And she repeated, "When I am awake it doesn't have any force, but at night, when it comes up from the subconscious, it chokes me."

Then I looked, and I saw a kind of huge octopus over the earth : that formation of the Church—of hell—with which they hold people in their grip. The fear of hell.³⁴ Even when all your reason, all your intelligence, all your feeling is against it, there is, at night, that octopus of the fear of hell which comes and grips you.

That brought home to me ... the magnitude of the problem —it's terrestrial. There are Catholics everywhere: in China, in Africa among the Negroes; people who don't give a thought to these things yet are under the sway and caught by the octopus.

Another time, when I was younger, I was in Italy, in Venice, painting in a corner of St. Mark's cathedral (a marvellous place of great beauty), and I happened to be sitting right next to a confessional. One day, as I sat there painting, I saw the priest arrive and enter the confessional—that man ... completely black, tall, thin, the very face of wickedness and hardness : a pitiless wickedness. He closeted himself in there. After a short while there came a rather young woman, perhaps thirty years old, gentle, very sweet—not intelligent but very sweet—entirely dressed in black. She entered the box (he was already shut in and could no longer be seen), and they spoke through a grille. I should add that it's far more medieval than in France, it was really ... it was almost theatrical. She knelt down there, I saw her long gown flowing out, and she spoke. (I couldn't hear, she was whispering; besides, both of them spoke in Italian, although I understand Italian.) The voices were barely audible, there was no sound. Then all at once, I heard the woman sob (she sobbed in spasms), and it went on till suddenly —a collapse : she crumpled in a heap on the floor. Then that man opened the door, shoving aside her body with the door—and he strode away without a backward glance. I was young, you know,³⁵ and if I could have, I would have killed him. What he had just done was monstrous. And he was going away ... it was a chunk of steel that walked away.

Incidents of that sort have left me with a peculiar impression. The stories of the Inquisition had already given me a sufficient ... But there was a time when I might have said, "No religion has done more evil in the world than this one." But I am not so sure now. It's one ASPECT of that religion.

It's yet too human a vision of things. I prefer—I prefer the vision of the Lord telling the Asura, "Go ahead, keep on growing and growing and growing ... and there will be no more Asura!" (laughing) That's better.

(After a silence) Fear is not a negative thing: it's a very "positive" thing, it's a special form of power that has always been used by the Asuric forces—it's their greatest strength. Their greatest strength is fear.

I can see: whenever people are defeated, it's ALWAYS through fear, always.

... In France, all those who have an awakening, a spiritual need, rush back to the Catholic religion. Which means the octopus still has a great deal of power there—a very great deal.

(After Satprem remarks on the lack of response to his book on Sri Aurobindo in France:) With France's intellectual quality, the quality of her mind, the day she is truly touched spiritually (she never has been), the day she is touched spiritually, it will be something exceptional.

Sri Aurobindo had a great liking for France. I was born there—certainly for a reason. In my case, I know it very well: it was the need of culture, of a clear and precise mind, of refined thought, taste and clarity of mind—there is no other country in the world for that. None. And Sri Aurobindo had a liking for France for that same reason, a great liking. He used to say that throughout his life in England, he had a much greater liking for France than for England!

There is a reason.

Mother's Agenda: July 3, 1963