The Mother's Thoughts on Evolutionary Goads and Adverse Forces

In January 2017 a colleague (Robert E. Wilkinson) reminded me that Donald Trump is what the Mother called a 'goad' in the course of our collective evolutionary journey. Below is the Mother's discussion of how to deal with goads and adverse forces in our world and in our consciousness, which seem particularly apropos at this challenging point of our collective learning curve. This post is meant to be read in conjunction with 'A View of the USA's Trump Crisis In Terms of the Gnostic Circle'.

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21 January 1962 

Examine thyself without pity, then thou wilt be more charitable and pitiful to others. – Sri Aurobindo, Aphorism 70

Very good! (the Mother laughs) That's very good.
It's very good for everyone, isn't it?
Especially for those who think they're so superior.
But it really does correspond to something very deep.

This is exactly the experience I have been going through these past few days; since the day before yesterday it seems to have reached its peak, and this morning it developed into a comprehensive vision, an earth-encompassing vision.

It's almost like a reversal of attitude.

[P]eople have always taken themselves for victims hounded by adverse forces – the courageous fight back, the rest lament. But increasingly there has been a very concrete vision of the role the adverse forces play in the creation, of their almost absolute necessity as goads to make the creation progress and become its Origin again. And there was such a clear vision that one should accomplish one's own transformation – that's what we must pray for, what we must work out – rather than demand the conversion or abolition of the adverse forces. …

So long as a single human consciousness carries the possibility of feeling, acting, thinking or being in opposition to the great divine Becoming, it is impossible to blame anyone else for it; it is impossible to blame the adverse forces, which are kept in the creation as a means of making you see and feel how far you still have to go.

It was like a memory, an eternally present memory of that consciousness of supreme Love emanated by the Lord onto earth – INTO earth – to draw it back again to Him. And truly it was the descent of the very essence of the divine nature into the most total divine negation, and thus the abandonment of the divine condition to take on terrestrial darkness, so as to bring Earth back to the divine state. And unless That, that supreme Love, becomes all-powerfully conscious here on Earth, the return can never be definitive.

It came after the vision of the great divine Becoming. “Since this world is progressive,” I was wondering, “since it is increasingly becoming the Divine, won’t there always be this deeply painful sense of the nondivine, of the state that, compared with the one to come, is not divine? Won’t there always be what we call ‘adverse forces,’ in other words, things that don’t harmoniously follow the movement?” Then came the answer, the vision of That: “No, the moment of this very Possibility is drawing near, the moment for the manifestation of the essence of perfect Love, which can transform this unconsciousness, this ignorance and this ill will that goes with it into a luminous and joyous progression, wholly progressive, wholly comprehensive, thirsting for perfection.”

It was very concrete.

And it corresponds to a state where you are so perfectly identified with all that is, that you concretely become all that is antidivine – and so you can offer it up. It can be offered up and really transformed through this offering.

This sort of will in people for purity, for Good (which in ordinary mentality is expressed by a need to be virtuous) is actually the GREAT OBSTACLE to true self-giving. It’s the root of Falsehood, the very source of hypocrisy: the refusal to take up one’s share of the burden of difficulties. And that’s what Sri Aurobindo has touched on in [his] aphorism, directly and very simply.

Do not try to be virtuous.  See to what extent you are united, ONE with all that is antidivine. Take up your share of the burden; accept to be impure and false yourself, and in so doing you will be able to take up the Shadow and offer it. And insofar as you are able to take it and offer it, things will change.

Don’t try to be among the pure. Accept to be with those who are in darkness and, in total love, offer it all.

From the moment this was seen and DONE, the full power came back – the great creative Power.

(silence)

Most likely the experience could take place only because the time had come for all this to be offered up.

The point is not to perpetuate those things, but to offer them up.

Because the time has come to manifest this Power, which is a power of Love – of LOVE, not merely of identity – of Love, of perfect Love; for perfect Love alone can offer.

It happened this morning, with great simplicity, but at the same time it had something so vast and almighty in it, as if the Universal Mother were turning towards the Lord and saying, “At last! We are ready.”….

In those realms, you know, “now” sometimes stretches over many years. I won’t say it’s going to be instantaneous…..

It’s like opening a door just a crack and catching a glimpse of what’s beyond….

And it was preceded by a kind of anguish: “Will there always be something that, compared with the state to come, seems antidivine?” No: after a long preparation, it becomes capable of feeling divine – and thus of being divine.

Looking at things externally, in terms of present material reality, there is still a lot of ground to be covered before the new manifestation becomes an actual fact. What we have now is probably the seed of the thing ….

–The Mother, The Mother's Agenda, Volume 3, bold emphasis added

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A Note from the Publisher of The Mother's Agenda: (When [Satpem] published extracts from this conversation in the Ashram Bulletin of April 1962, [the] Mother had this passage modified (over his protests). Instead of “Do not try to be virtuous,” She put “Do not try to seem virtuous”; and she added: “There’s a drawback here. People never understand anything, or rather they understand everything in their own way. They would take this sentence as an encouragement to get into mischief, to misbehave, to entertain wrong feelings, and then proclaim, ‘We are the Lord’s favorites!’ … There was something like it in one of Sri Aurobindo’s letters, you remember – a letter to people who wanted to bring all the impurities in themselves out to the surface; he told them that was definitely not the way!)