66.

66 – Sin is that which was once in its place, persisting now it is out of place; there is no other sinfulness.

Has cruelty, for example, ever been in its place?

This very question of yours came to my vision, since I receive in my consciousness all the questions people ask.

To kill out of cruelty? To make others suffer out of cruelty? And yet it is an expression of the Divine — we always come back to the same thing — but an expression which is distorted in its appearance. Can you tell me what lies behind it?

Cruelty was one of the things that was most repugnant to Sri Aurobindo, but he always said that it was the distortion of an intensity, one could almost say the distortion of an intensity of love, something which is not satisfied with a middle course, which wants extremes — and that is justifiable.

I had always known that cruelty, like sadism, is a need for violent, extremely strong sensation, to penetrate a thick layer of tamas that feels nothing — tamas ¹ needs something extreme in order to be able to feel. The explanation may lie in this direction.

But at the origin there is still the problem that has never been solved: “Why has it become like this? Why this distortion? Why has it all been perverted?” Behind, there are beautiful things, very intense, infinitely more powerful than what we can even bear, wonderful things, but why has all that become so frightful here? This is what came to me immediately when I read this aphorism.

The concept of sin is something that I do not understand and have never understood; original sin seems to me one of the most monstrous ideas that man could ever have — sin and I don’t go together! So naturally, I fully agree with Sri Aurobindo that there is no sin, this is understood, but...

Certain things, like cruelty, could be called “sin”, but I can only see this explanation, that it is a distortion of the taste or need for an extremely strong sensation. I have observed in cruel people that they feel Ananda at that moment; they find an intense joy in it. So that is its justification, only it is in such a state of distortion that it is repugnant.

As for the idea that things are not in their place, I understood it even when I was a child. It was only later that I was given the explanation by the person who taught me occultism, for, in his cosmogonic system, he explained the successive pralayas ² of the various universes by saying that with each universe an aspect of the Supreme would manifest itself, that each universe was built on one aspect of the Supreme and that one after another they had all returned into the Supreme. He enumerated all the aspects that were manifested successively and with what logic! It was extraordinary—I have kept it somewhere, I forget where. And he said that this time, it was—I do not remember exactly what number in the series—but it would be the universe which would not be withdrawn again, which would follow a progressive course of becoming that would be, so to say, indefinite. And this universe represented equilibrium, not static but progressive equilibrium, ³ that is to say, each thing in its place, exactly, each vibration, each movement in its place. The further down one goes, the more each form, each activity, each thing is exactly in its place in relation to the whole.

I was extremely interested, because later Sri Aurobindo said the same thing, that nothing is bad, it is just that things are not in their place—their place not only in space but also in time; their place in the universe, beginning with the worlds, the stars, etc., each thing exactly in its place. And so, when each thing is exactly in its place, from the most stupendous to the most microscopic, the whole will express the Supreme progressively, without any need of being withdrawn to be emanated again. On this Sri Aurobindo based the fact that in this creation, in this universe, the perfection of a divine world—what Sri Aurobindo calls the Supermind—will be able to manifest. Equilibrium is the essential law of this creation and this is why perfection can be realised in the manifestation.

In this connection what are the very first things that the Supramental Force intends to drive out, or is trying to drive out, so that everything may be in its place, individually and cosmically?

Drive out? But will it “drive out” anything? If we accept Sri Aurobindo’s idea, it will put each thing in its place, that’s all.

One thing must necessarily cease, and that is the distortion, that is to say, the veil of falsehood upon Truth, because that is what is responsible for everything we see here. If this is removed, things will be completely different, completely. They will be what we feel them to be when we come out of this consciousness. When one comes out of this consciousness and enters into the Truth-consciousness; the difference is such that one wonders how there can be anything like suffering and misery and death and all that. There is a kind of astonishment in the sense that one does not understand how it can happen—when one has really tipped over to the other side. But this experience is usually associated with the experience of the unreality of the world aswe know it, whereas Sri Aurobindo says that this perception of the unreality of the world is not necessary to live in the supramental consciousness—it is only the unreality of Falsehood, not the unreality of the world. That is to say, the world has a reality of its own, independent of Falsehood.

I suppose that is the first effect of the Supermind—the first effect in the individual, because it will begin with the individual.

18 July 1961

¹ Tamas: the principle of inertia and obscurity. _(vissza)

² Pralaya: The destruction of a universe at the end of a cycle. According to Hindu cosmology, the formation of each universe begins with an “age of truth” (satya-yuga) which slowly degenerates, like the stars, till there is no truth left at all; it becomes a “dark age”(kali-yuga) like ours, and ends with a cataclysm. Then a new universe is reborn out of this cataclysm and the cycle begins again. There is a correspondence here with a modern cosmological theory according to which a phase of contraction, of galaxies collapsing upon themselves, follows a phase of expansion and precedes a new explosion (“Big Bang”) of the “primal egg” – and so on, in a recurring and apparently endless and aimless series of cosmic births which, like our own human births, develop, attain some sort of “summit,” then collapse, always to begin again. According to Théon, our present universe is the seventh – but where is the “beginning”? _(vissza)

³ Note that modern astronomy is divided between the theory of endless phases of contraction-explosion-expansion, and the theory of a universe in infinite expansion starting with a “Big Bang,” which seems quite as catastrophic, since the universe is then plunging at vertiginous speed into an increasingly cold, empty, and fatal infinity, like a bullet released from all restraints of gravity, until... until what? According to astronomers, an exact measurement of the quantity of matter in a cubic meter of the present universe (one atom for every 400 liters of space) should enable us to decide between these two theories and learn which way it will be best for us to die. If there is more than one atom per 400 liters of space, this quantity of matter will create sufficient gravitation to halt the present expansion of galaxies and induce a contraction, ending with an explosion within an infinitesimal space. If there is less than one atom per 400 liters of space, the quantity of matter and thus the gravitational effect will be insufficient to retain the galaxies within their invisible net, and everything will spin off endlessly – unless we discover, with Mother, a third position, that of a “progressive equilibrium,” in which the quantity of matter in the universe proves in fact to be a quantity of consciousness, whose contraction or expansion will be regulated by the laws of consciousness. _(vissza)