Pieter Brueghel Le Jeune (1564-1636) – Le Paradis Terrestre (Musée des Beaux-Arts de Besançon).

« Truly, they have ruined the earth, they have ruined it – they have ruined the atmosphere, they have ruined everything; and for it to become something like the earthly paradise again, ohh! What a long way to go – psychologically, above all. Even the very structure of Matter (Mother fingers the air around her), with their bombs and their experiments and their … oh, they have made a mess of it all! They have truly made a mess of Matter. » — Mira Alfassa (The Mother)

The following excerpt, dated March 11 1961, is from Mother’s Agenda (L’Agenda de Mère). The Mother is Mira Alfassa, Srî Aurobindo’s eternal companion.  The original Agenda, 13 volumes, 6000 pages, is in French. Most of it was recorded on tape over years. It’s spontaneous, informal, as is, delightful, often moving, inspiring.

The Agenda was translated from the original French into English, but I don’t know who the translator is. I give a link to the source at the end of this post. Strangely enough, it’s very difficult to find who it is. I searched over the internet and I couldn’t find him – or her. Could be clumsiness on my part.

The person Mira Alfassa is chatting with in the following excerpt – and almost always throughout the Agenda – is Satprem, a very close, longtime, intimate friend of hers, to whom we owe – and to his compagne, Sujata (and to dedicated volunteers, no doubt), the transcription and publication of the gigantic Agenda. You’ll find sometimes text within [[double brackets]]. It’s been added obviously as comments. It’s not from me (except if indicated). It could be from the transcriptor, maybe Satprem, or from the English translator. There exists a Russian and a German translation.

But let’s get back to it: was there actually an earthly paradise?

Loup

Fatata te Miti – tableau de Paul Gauguin. Lien Wikipedia sur l’image.

Satprem  :  Was there actually an earthly paradise? Why was man banished from it?

Mira Alfassa (The Mother)   :   From an historical viewpoint (not psychological, but historical), based on my memories (only I can’t prove it, nothing can be proved, and I don’t believe any truly historical proof has come down to us – or in any case, it hasn’t been found yet), but according to my memories…. (Mother shuts her eyes as if she were going off in search of her memories; she will speak all the rest of the time with eyes closed.) Certainly at one period of the earth’s history there was a kind of ‘earthly paradise,’ in the sense that there was a perfectly harmonious and perfectly natural life: the manifestation of Mind was in accord – was STILL in complete accord – and in total harmony with the ascending march of Nature, without perversion or deformation. This was the first stage of Mind’s manifestation in material forms.

How long did it last? It’s hard to say. But for man it was a life like a sort of flowering of animal life. My memory is of a life where the body was perfectly adapted to its natural    surroundings. The climate was in harmony with the needs of the body, the body with the demands of the climate. Life was wholly spontaneous and natural, as a more luminous and conscious animal life would be, with absolutely none of the complications and deformations brought in later by the mind as it developed.

Quel est cet endroit magnifique?…

I have a recollection of this life, for I relived it when I first became conscious of the life of the entire earth; but I can’t say how long it lasted or what area it covered – I don’t know. I only remember the conditions at that time, the state of material Nature and the human form and human consciousness, and this state of harmony with all the other elements of the earth: harmony with animal life and a great harmony with plant life – there was a kind of spontaneous knowledge of how to use the things of Nature, the qualities of plants, fruits and all that vegetal nature could offer. There was no aggressiveness, no fear, no contradictions or frictions, and no perversion – the mind was pure, simple, luminous, uncomplicated.

It was certainly with the progress of evolution, the march of evolution, when the mind began to develop for and in itself, that ALL the complications, all the deformations began. Indeed, this story of Genesis that seems so childish does contain a truth. The old traditions like Genesis resembled the Vedas in that each letter [[In Genesis, Hebraic letters. ]] was the symbol of a knowledge; it was the pictorial résumé of a traditional knowledge, just as the Veda contains a pictoral résumé of the knowledge of its time.

Chaitya Purusha, the divine soul at rest in delight between lives :) Huacachina, oasis, southwestern Peru, Ica Province. Population: some 115 people. Hope it won’t be stupidly harassed, spoiled and destroyed through tourism… Link on illustration.

But what’s more, even the symbol had a reality in the sense that there was truly a period when life upon earth (the first manifestation of mentalized Matter in human forms) was still in complete harmony with all that preceded it. It was only later that….

The tree of knowledge symbolizes this kind of knowledge … a material knowledge, no longer divine because its origin was the sense of division – and this is what began to spoil everything. How long did this period last? I am unable to say. (Because my recollection is of an almost immortal life; it seems that it was through some sort of evolutionary accident that the destruction of forms became necessary for progress.) And where did it take place? … From certain impressions (but these are only impressions), it would seem that it was in the vicinity of either this side of Ceylon and India or the other, I don’t know exactly (Mother indicates the Indian Ocean either west of Ceylon and India or to the east between Ceylon and Java), although certainly the place no longer exists; it must have been swallowed up by the sea. I have a very clear vision of the place and a consciousness of that life and its forms, but I can’t give precise material details. Did it last for centuries, was it … ? I don’t know. To tell the truth, when I was reliving those moments I wasn’t curious about such details (for one is in another mental state where there is no curiosity about material details: all things turn into psychological facts). It was something so simple, luminous, harmonious, far removed from all our usual preoccupations – those very preoccupations with time and space. It was a spontaneous life, extremely beautiful, and so close to Nature – a natural flowering of animal life. There were no oppositions or contradictions, nothing of the kind – everything happened in the best way possible.

(silence)

A similar memory has recurred several times under different circumstances – not exactly the same scene and the same images, because it wasn’t something I was seeing but A LIFE I was living. During a certain period, at any time, night or day, I would experience a particular state of trance in which I was rediscovering a life I had lived. I was fully conscious that this life had to do with the first flowering of the human form upon earth, the first human forms able to incarnate the divine being from above. This was the first time I could manifest in a particular terrestrial form (not a general life but an individual form); that is, for the first time, through the mentalization of this material substance, the junction between the higher Being and the lower being was made. I have lived that several times, and always in a similar setting and with quite a similar feeling of such joyous simplicity, without complexity, without problems, without all these questions. It was the blossoming of a joy of life – nothing but that; love and harmony prevailed: flowers, minerals, animals all got along together perfectly.

Kakadu Escarpment in Kakadu National Parc, Australia.

Things began to go wrong only a LONG time afterwards, long after (but this is a personal impression), probably because certain mental crystallizations were necessary, inevitable, for the general evolution, so that the mind might prepare itself to move on to something else. That was when … oh, it seems like a fall into a pit – into ugliness, darkness! Everything became so dark, so ugly, so difficult, so painful. Really … really the sense of a fall.

(silence)

Theon used to say it wasn’t … (how to put it?) inevitable. In the total freedom of the manifestation, this voluntary separation from the Origin is the cause of all the disorder. How to explain it? … Words express these things so poorly. We can call it ‘inevitable’ because it happened! But outside of this creation, a creation can be imagined (or could have been) where this disorder would not have occurred. Sri Aurobindo saw it in approximately the same way: a sort of ‘accident,’ as it were – but an ‘accident’ allowing the manifestation a far greater and more total perfection than if it had never occurred. But this is all still in the realm of speculation, and useless speculation at that. In any case, the experience, the feeling, is that all at once … (Mother makes the gesture of a brutal fall) oh!

For the earth it probably happened like that, all at once: a sort of ascent, then the fall. But the earth is a tiny concentration – universally, it’s something else.

Leda et le Cygne Silésien (Leda and the Silesian Swan), tableau de (painting by) Waldemar Pieczko – 1986. Lien sur l’image (link on illustration).

(silence)

The recollection of those times is stored somewhere in the terrestrial memory, that region where all the earth’s memories are inscribed. Those who contact this memory can tell you that the earthly paradise still exists somewhere. [[ This is the origin of such legends as Shangri-la. But ‘psychics’ most often confuse two planes of reality, attributing to their SUBTLE vision a physical reality which it does not have or no longer has: they have merely entered into contact with the memory of a place – for places, like beings, have a memory. ]] But it doesn’t exist materially…. I don’t know, I don’t see it.

(silence)

Of course, these things can always be explained symbolically. Theon explained man’s ‘exile’ like this: when the Being – the hostile Being – assumed the position of the Lord Supreme in relation to the terrestrial realization, he didn’t want humanity to progress mentally and gain a knowledge permitting it to stop obeying him! … That is Theon’s occult explanation.

According to Theon, the serpent wasn’t the spirit of evil at all: it was the evolutionary Force. And Sri Aurobindo fully agreed; he used to tell me the same thing: the evolutionary power – the mental evolutionary power – is what drove man to gain knowledge, a knowledge of division. And it’s a fact that along with the sense of Good and Evil, man became conscious of himself. Naturally, this ruined everything and he couldn’t stay: it was his own consciousness that drove him out of Paradise – he could no longer stay.

François-Louis Français – Le miroir de Scey.

Satprem:  :   Then was man banished by Jehovah or by his own consciousness ?

Mira Alfassa (The Mother)  :  These are just two ways of seeing the same thing!

In my view, all these old Scriptures and ancient traditions have a graduated content (gesture showing different levels of understanding), and according to the needs of the epoch and the people, one symbol or another was drawn upon. But a time comes when one goes beyond these things and sees them from what Sri Aurobindo calls ‘the other hemisphere,’ where one realizes that they are only modes of expression to put one in contact – a kind of bridge or link between the lower way of seeing and the higher way of knowing.

A time comes when all these disputes – ‘Ah, no, this is like this, that is like that’ – seem so silly, so silly! And there is nothing more comical than this spontaneous reply so many people give: ‘Oh, that’s impossible!’ Because with even the most rudimentary intellectual development, you would know you couldn’t even think of something if it weren’t possible!

(silence)

Pierre Bonnard – Le Paradis Terrestre (litterally: “The Earthly Paradise” – usually called, in English, “The Garden of Eden”).

So, mon petit, we’ve had quite a little chat!

Is everything all right? … Yes?

Oh, you know, if that could be found again…. But how? [[At first, Mother had said, ‘But it’s impossible.’ Then, laughing, she had the word deleted. ]]

Truly, they have ruined the earth, they have ruined it – they have ruined the atmosphere, they have ruined everything; and for it to become something like the earthly paradise again, ohh! What a long way to go – psychologically, above all. Even the very structure of Matter (Mother fingers the air around her), with their bombs and their experiments and their … oh, they have made a mess of it all! They have truly made a mess of Matter.

Probably … no, not probably, it’s absolutely certain that this was necessary [[I don’t agree with that last concept; to me, it is far from being absolutely certain that all that happened, and especially the asuric way it developed through time until now, was necessary – maybe more on that an other time – Loup]] for kneading matter, churning it, to prepare it to receive THAT, the new thing yet to manifest.

Matter was very simple and very harmonious and very luminous, not complex enough. This complexity is what ruined everything, but … it will lead to an INFINITELY more conscious realization – infinitely more conscious. And when the earth again becomes as harmonious, simple, luminous, pure – simple, pure, purely divine – then, with this complexity added, something can be achieved.

(Mother gets up to leave)

It doesn’t matter. Fundamentally, it doesn’t matter. Yesterday, while I was walking … I was walking in a kind of universe that was EXCLUSIVELY the Divine – it could be touched, felt: it was within, without, everywhere. For three-quarters of an hour, NOTHING but that, everywhere. Well, I can assure you, at that moment there were certainly no more problems! And what simplicity – nothing to think about, nothing to want, nothing to decide: to BE, be, be! … (Mother seems to dance) To be in the infinite complexity of a perfect unity: all was there but nothing was separate; all was in movement yet nothing changed place. Truly an experience.

When we become like that, it will be very easy.

Good-bye, petit. You know, I enjoy myself, I enjoy myself every day !

(Mother notices a brilliant crimson canna in a vase)

Ah, there were many flowers just like that in the landscape of this earthly paradise – red, and so beautiful!

From:  Agenda – 11 mars 1961  —  To find the English translation of the whole Agenda (13 volumes) go here :  https://agendamother.wordpress.com/2013/02/01/mothers-agenda-1951-1960-volume-1-epub-mobi-pdf/

Or here :  http://mother-agenda.narod.ru/

Or search for it over the internet under “Mother’s Agenda” ; it’s over there.

Mother’s Agenda – Wikipedia

Do you remember Chernobyl? Nuclear disaster contamination: apparently worse than previously thought  –  Waging Total Nuclear War against Humanity and Human Genes: Nuclear Radiation and Uranium 238 (DU)

Invisible Person with Enormous Power: it starts with a “C”, as in “Corporation”, but it doesn’t end there…

Western leaders, western populations : awareness, massmedia control and censorship

Astounding 2009 Nobel Prize for Literature Joan de Blow never wrote a book!  She talks about Obama. (Satire.)

Safe-Haven US Currency – surfing on strangeness and naught – a bizarre, satori sort of poem

Arrêtez de raser les parterres et de massacrer les plantes sauvages. Plus de 500 espèces en danger au Québec.

Satprem, la Shakti. Elle a toujours été là. Point de contact: l’attention, l’occiput, la nuque, la tête…

Srî Aurobindo, la prison d’Alipore, et son poème «Invitation» : nouvelle traduction française

Sri Aurobindo  :   La Zone intermédiaire (1933)   –   The Intermediate Zone (l’original en anglais, 1933)  —   Sri Aurobindo et la réincarnation : La renaissance et les autres mondes; le karma, l’âme et l’immortalité.   —   Sri Aurobindo on reincarnation : Rebirth and Other Worlds; Karma, the Soul and Immortality.   –  The Secret of the Veda (pdf) –  The Future Poetry (with On quantitative meter) (pdf)   —   Letters on Poetry and Art (pdf) (it includes letters on Savitri, and more ; excerpt from the publisher’s note:  “The present volume is the first collection of Sri Aurobindo’s letters on poetry, literature, art and aesthetics to bear the title Letters on Poetry and Art. It incorporates material from three previous books: (1) Letters on Poetry, Literature and Art; (2) Letters on “Savitri”, and (3) On Himself (section entitled “The Poet and the Critic”). It also contains around five hundred letters that have not appeared in any previous collection published under his name. The arrangement is that of the editors. The texts of the letters have been checked against all available manuscripts and printed versions.”)    —   The Life Divine (pdf)  –   The Synthesis of Yoga (pdf)   —   Record of Yoga (pdf)   –   Autobiographical Notes and other writings of historical interest (pdf)  –   Letters on Himself and the Ashram (pdf)  –   The Human Cycle (pdf)  –   Essays on the Gita (pdf)  –   Isha Upanishad (pdf)  –   Kena and other Upanishads (pdf)  –   Essays in Philosophy and Yoga (pdf)  –   Essays Divine and Human (pdf)  –   Karmayogin (pdf)  –   Bande Mataram (pdf)  –   Letters On Yoga I (pdf)   –   The Mother – with Letters on the Mother (pdf)   –    Early Cultural Writings (pdf)     –

René Guénon  :  Le théosophisme, histoire d’une pseudo-religion (pdf)     —    La Crise du monde moderne, René Guénon, 1925 (pdf)    —     Le règne de la quantité et les signes des temps  –  L’erreur spirite (1923; édition 1977 – pdf)  –  L’Homme et son devenir selon le vedanta (pdf)  –  Les principes du calcul infinitésimal (pdf)  –  Symboles de la science sacrée (pdf)  –  Le Roi du Monde (pdf)   –   Orient et occident (1924 – pdf)   –   Les états multiples de l’être (1932 – pdf)   –   Le symbolisme de la croix (pdf)   –

Sir John Woodroffe (pseudonym : Arthur Avalon)  :  Mahânirvana Tantra, Tantra of the Great Liberation (pdf) (John Woodroffe  and Pramatha Nâtha Mukhyopâdhyâya)  —   Mahâmâyâ, The World as Power : Power as Consciousness (Chit-Shakti) (pdf)   —   Principles of Tantra – Tantra Tattva,  (pdf, 1172 pages, 90Mg) ; Title in extenso : «The Tantratattva of Shrîyukta Shiva Chandra Vidyârnava Bhattachâryya Mahodaya, with introductions by Arthur Avalon and Shrîyukta Baradâ Kânta Majumdâr»; edited by Arthur Avalon, Madras 1952.  –

Carlo Suarès :   Description des Lettres-Nombres selon Carlo Suarès (ce document pdf comprend aussi des tableaux simples des alphabets-nombres français, anglais, grec, hébreu), “suivi d’une courte esquisse d’une quaternité à explorer, ou :  J’aime les bardanes, ça parait, et c’est pas pour rien”.

Réception à la table des nombres  —  Edith Piaf censurée au Québec : l’origine védique du mot et du concept de «Dieu»

Le Règne de la quantité et les signes des temps de René Guénon  –   Rimbaud, le Bateau ivre, et un « lapsus-coquille » : Je est autre.

Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Jung : On comprend vraiment ce qu’on lit? Ce qu’on écrit? Ce qu’on dit?..  – Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Jung : Do we know how to read? Understand what we write? What we say?