Published: February 2019 (7 years ago) in issue Nº 355
Keywords: Reflection, Science, Consciousness, Evolution and New world
The tyranny of the familiar
In 1962, a slim monograph was published in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Later in the same year, it was published as a book. Today, that book has sold over one million copies, been translated into many different languages, and proven to be one of the most influential works about the process of scientific discovery.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was written by Thomas Kuhn. Kuhn challenged the accepted view that science is based upon the objective observation of facts, and that progress in the sciences is evolutionary, based upon the slow accretion of new information and insights. His thesis was that researchers who share a common intellectual framework – called a ‘paradigm’ – work within the limits of that paradigm until so many anomalies accumulate that a completely new paradigm is necessary to account for them. Researchers then work within the new paradigm until that, in turn, is replaced by a new revolutionary theory.
Larger influence
The classic case here is the Ptolemaic theory that the earth is the stationary centre of the universe, which was the dominant astronomical paradigm for more than a thousand years. When more and more observations challenged this, the ancient astronomers made many complex adjustments in their attempts to allow the theory to stand, partly because, until Copernicus and others posited that we live in a heliocentric solar system, no rival paradigm existed that would more fully account for the astronomical observations.
But Kuhn’s book was also very influential outside the realm of science. For Kuhn’s thesis seemed to apply not just to scientific knowledge but also to how we acquire knowledge and the process by which certain ideas acquire dominance and are eventually supplanted by new ones.
Kuhn points out that people do not give up existing paradigms easily, even when their usefulness is past. Partly this is because people have grown accustomed to looking at the world in a certain way, and partly because, as Leon Festinger put it in A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance, human beings strive for internal psychological consistency in order to mentally function in the real world. So that when a person experiences an inconsistency that makes them uncomfortable, they may try to deal with it by avoiding information that contradicts their established beliefs or paradigm.
The relevance to Auroville
What is the relevance of this to Auroville and the yoga?
At first sight, not very much. Kuhn describes paradigms as the products of relative knowledge and assumptions about the world. Sri Aurobindo and The Mother were exploring and experiencing reality at a far more fundamental level.
For example when, on 29th February, 1956, the Mother announced that a new world is born, born, born. It is not the old one transforming itself, it is a new world that is born she was not announcing the birth of a new relativistic Kuhnian paradigm but of an entirely new order of reality. A new order in which many new powers for progress and understanding would become available and things which hitherto had been considered impossible to change would be able to be transformed.
Auroville was created to hasten the materialization of that new world. However, Mother realized that the dominance of the old ways, of the old worldview, would persist in the Aurovilians for some time because We are right in the midst of this period of transition where the two are entangled – where the old still persists all–powerful, entirely dominating the ordinary consciousness, but where the new one is quietly slipping in, still very modest, unnoticed – unnoticed to the extent that outwardly it doesn’t disturb anything very much for the time being, and in the consciousness of most people it is even quite imperceptible.
The ‘old world’ beliefs include the belief in individualism and self-interest as the driving forces of progress and wellbeing; the widespread belief that some form of democracy is necessary for just governance; and the belief that the main purpose of education is to inculcate knowledge useful to the material progress of one’s society.
Mother attempted to ‘inoculate’ the Aurovilians against the dominance of these beliefs. Against the ‘virus’ of individualism and self-interest she asked us to be ‘servitors of the Divine consciousness’. Against the virus of the tyranny of the majority she said that the governance of Auroville should be in the hands of those with the highest spiritual realization. Against the idea that education is only about the inculcation of socially-sanctioned values, she echoed Sri Aurobindo’s words that The chief aim of education should be to help the growing soul to draw out that in itself which is best and make it perfect for a noble use.
Above all, in the quest to blaze a path into this new world she called for bold adventurers, not supporters of the status quo.
It is not a question of repeating spiritually what others have done before us, for our adventure begins beyond that. It is a question of a new creation, entirely new, with all the unforeseen events, the risks, the hazards it entails – a real adventure whose goal is certain victory, but whose road is unknown and must be traced out step by step in the unexplored. Something that has never been in this present universe and that will never again be in the same way. If that interests you . . . well, let us embark. What will happen to you tomorrow, I don’t know.
Old world?
How effective has the inoculation been? Well, this is where Kuhn’s thesis that we tend to hold on to old knowledge as long as possible seems particularly relevant. Because while we can identify elements of new forms of governance, economy and education in the present Auroville, we are still very much driven by old-world values. Democratic processes still underpin our community decision-making; individual accounts remain fundamental to our economy; and while different educational experiments can be found here, most of our students, when they get older, still elect for Auroville schooling systems based upon the traditional inculcation of knowledge.
In other words, we are in danger of reproducing the old world under the mask of something new.
But I think we can extend the point about our inbuilt resistance to the new even further.
A new consciousness
On January 1st, 1969, there was the descent into her body of what Mother later identified as the ‘surhomme’ consciousness: a consciousness so concrete, and NEW. It led to an extraordinary new period of inner discovery for Mother, so revolutionary that she described it as akin to another reversal of consciousness.
I could say that my vision and understanding of the world, of life, of everything, have completely changed .... from the point of view of consciousness it has been the greatest change in my whole existence, she said on 2nd April, 1969.
Her new discoveries included the realisation that the physical mind could be transformed (something Sri Aurobindo had thought impossible); the experience of her consciousness being diffused in the bodies of others; the discovery of a realm where the living and the ‘dead’ intermingle; and a vision of a new sexless body.
Above all, she felt she was entering ANOTHER world, another way of being where the relationship with the Divine is itself on a different footing. It was a way of being that at moments brought intense bliss (Never before has the body in these 91 years felt such happiness) and a sense of awesome power and knowledge, to the extent that, on 19th November, 1969, she reports her first experience of the supramental consciousness and, on 27th November, 1971, she says that for a few moments she had seen the world as the Divine sees it. There are no words, it’s inexpressible. Then I understood. Everything became clear, clear, clear...
Along with the new discoveries guided by this new consciousness, came the realization that all that I thought it (her body) had learned for 90 years has been demonstrated most clearly to be worthless. You know, it’s day after day after day that there’s something new; and always the same conclusion: I know nothing, understand nothing, am nothing.
Looking back on what she had said or written in the past, she says, When I am put in contact with all the things I said in the past (yet I did my best)…I so much feel it’s like words of ignorance.
In fact, already, on March 9th, 1968, after listening to Satprem reading her the text of a playground talk she had given to the children in May, 1953, she had commented, I would no longer be able to deliver speeches like that! I find it presumptuous…these things (indicating the playground talk) are still too cut-and-dried.
And on December 11, 1968, after listening to another old playground talk, she says, These are things I would certainly no longer write now!...But anyway, they are true on their level (gesture at ground level)
On yet another occasion, after Mother seems to dismiss a playground talk with, Oh, how I chattered! Satprem is driven to protest. “But in fact it wasn’t chatter: you were raining Force on those children. That was it.” Mother confirms, It’s intended for children.
Mother’s final years
And yet…the vast majority of books, websites and journals on The Mother and the Integral Yoga continue to quote extensively from the playground talks, as well as her other earlier writings, while little attention seems to be paid to the extraordinary discoveries of her final years. Why is this?
One reason, of course, is that in spite of Mother’s somewhat dismissive comments, the Conversations are a very useful introduction to the Integral Yoga. In fact, many people find them more immediately accessible than the writings of Sri Aurobindo.
It should also be noted that Mother herself prohibited the publishing in the Bulletin of the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education of some of the discoveries of her final years, primarily because she felt many people would find them incomprehensible (and people would think “I am mad!”). People were not ready, she felt: I go too fast.
There was also the fact that the final years were also a period of intense suffering for the Mother, interspersed with moments of extraordinary bliss. Three minutes of spendour for twelve hours of misery. That’s the ratio, she said. And, later, It’s like being suspended between the most marvellous and the most vile. When Satprem wanted to print in the Bulletin something that touched upon these struggles, she often demurred: I like something comforting for the Bulletin, she said.
But there is one other possibility why we continue to focus upon Mother’s earlier period rather than her final extraordinary discoveries. And this is where, I think, Kuhn’s analysis kicks in. For many of us entered the yoga through the doorway of her earlier writings and conversations, so this became The Mother we became familiar with and identified with: a Mother who seemed to know everything, and who could express the deepest truths in the simplest language. A Mother we could rely upon to show us the way.
But the Mother of the final years is very different. Now she is feeling her way in an unknown world and in a body which is undergoing a ‘change of government’ as the new consciousness successively takes up the old functions. It’s an extremely radical and dangerous process (more than once she warns Satprem not to try it) which frequently leads her to the very edge of death. Granted, there are wonderful moments of discovery, of bliss, but there also times when she seems extremely vulnerable, even doubting her own capacity to carry on, at one time even asking Satprem to pray for her.
Many people, I suspect, find it much harder to relate to this later Mother – the one who sometimes cannot understand what is happening to her (I don’t even know where I am going – whether I am going towards transformation or towards the end), who cannot or can only partially communicate what she is experiencing (because the language does not exist) and who suffers terribly – than the Mother of the earlier years.
Above all, this later Mother is challenging us to jettison all that we have come to rely upon, all that we think we know or believe in because All our old ways of understanding are WORTHLESS, worthless. All, all our values are WORTHLESS. This is something extremely difficult to do. Most of us would rather tinker with the edges of our existing beliefs than uproot them completely.
However, Mother gives us an assurance. That while the new world is still very modest, unnoticed, it is working, it is growing – until the time comes when it will be strong enough to assert itself visibly.
Perhaps then, at last, the shock of the new will explode all our old certainties.