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Genetic mutation

    Dear S,

Physically my recovery is a bit slow – I’m still having coughing fits, but they are becoming less frequent and I feel really well in myself, as they have not put paid to the effect which I have been experiencing since the start of the year. I sobbed bitterly again for a moment an hour ago, when I realized that an unknown force had succeeded in depriving me of my “natural note”, the unconditional joy of being alive, without exuberance, from February 1998 to November 2006! I think that things will become clearer as I explain. The male menopause threw my whole physical body into unbelievable turmoil, because my body was already used to the supramental and when it crossed over into the decline towards death, I was sandwiched and squashed between physical entropy (degeneration) and supramental negative entropy (working towards physical immortality).

I now wonder which force will be able to deprive me again of what I have rediscovered and how to reinforce my natural vibration in order to cope with it. Admittedly, I am still “myself” without this note, of course, but my relationship with the non-self was affected nevertheless, to say nothing of the negative states which manage to make themselves felt, sometimes for a whole day, at fairly regular intervals on average once every three days...

I managed to pull through with mantras, rigour and discipline, because I had vital temptations which were strong enough to put an end to it all.

This time, I am convinced that a “genetic mind” does indeed exist. I’ll have to explain it more fully, but one thing is now certain – I recovered my father’s good genetic mind in Shanghai in November. I remember the feeling very well - I was holding my father’s mentality inside me and was immediately able to see why my father was more or less forced to reject me. The experience lasted several days and I was sometimes driven to weep at the wonder of it. This pretty ordinary human being, who always put spokes in my wheels (it would be superfluous to recount everything that my father tried to prevent me from achieving, but I will come back to it) left me the legacy of his genetic mind which, when purified by the power of the supramental and stripped of all dross, is a mind full of love for life. My father was addicted to life, but since he did not know how to balance this addiction with an inner life, he was terrified of death, which he never accepted, to the point of making himself look ridiculous by railing against the death of an older friend who died in his eighties... He made it seem as if life was taking the liberty of disturbing him and that it had no right to do so. It was really pitiful, as if something inside him had never wanted to grow up... Bedridden following a ruptured aneurism, he lived on for three years, including six months during which he was tube-fed via his stomach. He was morbid and a hypochondriac, doubtless in order to try to make himself immune... Curiously enough, he died just as I was taking a homeopathic dose of aconite CH in April 2001 which dragged me right down, in the hope, as ever, of putting an end to the “genetic artifices” which had been tormenting me for one night in every three for more than three months.

He spoke smugly about all his many illnesses, repeated himself endlessly, with accounts revolving around his health problems. All his female conquests ended up by leaving him very quickly (after his divorce from my mother) and he made such a fuss about the prostrate cancer which he was trying to prevent in the last ten years of his life.

It was only when recovering his genetic mind three months ago, that I understood the whole of his existence, because I felt how he experienced life himself. At the height of the experience I could see myself through his eyes and it was a moving, unprecedented and truly extraordinary experience. I could see things like him and like him alone and so I could appreciate that he could not see me as I was. For him, my casualness constituted laziness. He thought that I was not taking the necessary steps to equip myself to be worthy of the sources of satisfaction which life can offer. He deserved a lot of credit for rising above his origins. He had fought to become an engineer and boasted of having come top of his class of pilots, but then the war ended just as he was preparing to be let loose in a fighter plane. He took real pleasure in wealth, good food and fame. In short, he appreciated life as much as me, but at a lower level which I could not envisage, just as he could not understand my love of thought, my passion for things intellectual and my eclecticism. My father more or less took me for a useless, over-intelligent sort, but above all, for somebody who was too weak to lower himself to earn a living (I dropped out of my humanities masters degree, but I was already pretty worthless in his eyes and had no appetite for life...). He doubtless never forgave me for not having children, because his fairly undistinguished name with its rather obscure meaning would die out... His own adolescence had been marked by the bankruptcy of his father, who went broke after setting up a biscuit factory and being swindled by his business partner. This event had unsettled his mother and his father would apparently never recover, but there seems to be a family secret surrounding the story. My father established himself through hard work, by helping his ruined parents to take on an ordinary bakery in which he worked while continuing to pursue his studies. (Effort, willpower, merit, work, family, wealth...).

These periods of dialogue between the two of us in Shanghai lasted three or four days. I suspect that the Supramental put the best of this genetic memory at my disposal so that it did not conflict with my own prerogatives any more and this is perhaps extraordinary as it would mean that you can break hereditary curses which form part of the dynamic legacy which the supramental dissolves. One thing is certain – and fortunately it has been noted – is that the force tackled my mother’s genetic mind in 2003 in Amed, in Bali and it was a based purely and simply on lies. This was also an extraordinary experience, but I did not get the impression of recovering the positive dynamic of this mind for the time being. What is certain is that the force is still working on my paternal grandmother’s genetic mind which is incredibly nasty. She was a masochist, who suffered terribly and spoke while moaning, or moaned while speaking - nobody ever knew which. I know that she is still there in my right lung or in my right bronchial tube, which bothers me nearly all the time. But the work goes on and that’s the main thing.

I am confiding in you since you can understand this, because what counts is the progress of the supramental and I must set some of this down in writing for those who will come after me. I think that if you survive for several years after losing your “personal note” you have an opportunity to dig deeper, if the Divine should demand it. What I mean is that it is normal to get dispirited during this venture, even if you have a staunch faith, because it goes so deep. There is no shame in wanting to throw in the towel sometimes – this is the reaction of the rajas reaching a ceiling and asking for a break.

Wanting to follow this yoga through as a continuous process is a laudable intention, but I do not see who could be capable of it. Maybe Hallaj, if he comes back. There may be difficult times when you make progress, but in a joylessly fashion and that can end up by making you doubt the goal, because Sri Aurobindo keeps harping on about ananda! So you have to make your mind up... and especially to continue to accept the law of the Manifestation - everything exists only through its opposite and the most sublime ananda cannot be dissociated from drastic suffering which mars it with procrastination at regular or irregular intervals. That’s the way it is. Since I have rediscovered my “personal note”, I reckon that I am unbelievably fortunate. After nine years of front-line trench warfare, it’s a real pleasure, believe you me.

The supramental – or how the Best combines with the worst until it transforms mass into energy and the past into the future...

I think I may feature this letter on the site, because you are not the only person to free yourself from tempting or off-putting representations of the supramental who is sensitive to my experience, which nobody has been able to authenticate, but yet you feel to be authentic. I feel that this experience in Shanghai is quite important and that it is perhaps setting me on the path to physical regeneration...

You can, therefore, benefit from this information on the “genetic mind”, along with others who are brave and who have gone beyond the myth of self-realization (for a lot of people the “supramental” is something which enables them to look at themselves in the mirror in their most flattering light and they lust after it divinely, if I dare express myself in these terms – yes, I do dare, all hail Michaux!).

Obviously, for purists who cannot see the connection with the speeches of Sri Aurobindo, I will dot the i’s and cross the t’s by enabling them to identify the experiences in question here in the terminology of the avatar himself: cleaning out the ashvatta.

Besides, “cleaning out the ashvatta” consists of other activities apart from those mentioned here, but this is not the place to discuss them. I prefer to describe what is fresh, i.e. the return of my “personal note” and perhaps the integration of a pure genetic mind into my own perception of reality. That is already not bad for those who are interested in the subject and who have understood that the body is made up of atoms, whose combinations will one day be able to transform rapidly.

Cleaning out the ashvatta, is something I am doing in spite of myself, for the moment and, no kidding - as my father used to say - it really is worth it.

See you soon on the web...Nat

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    A few people write to me and have the courage to admit that they are suffering. The only thing that we really know about suffering is that we did not ask for it. Do you realize what a liberty suffering is taking? It is inviting itself in!

Let's go back to the beginning. Suffering is something which appears when you are not looking for it in the least. It's a nasty surprise. Have you every experienced things which you were not expecting and which were as wonderful as they were unexpected? Maybe a love affair which should never have happened, a book which you came across which led to a brilliant moment of awareness, or a TV programme which you caught while channel-hopping, which brought you the rich and varied entertainment you were missing. Or those blessed moments from who knows where, which you were not looking for, but which appear out of the blue.

Do you think it is reasonable to consider luck as our due and to rise up against all harmful and so-called harmful manifestations to which life subjects us? If we accept the wonderful elements of the unexpected, how can we refuse the unpleasant ones?

Isn't the unexpected by definition unexpected, just as a whole day includes both night and day?

So what if you try to throw suffering out? Even if you succeed, I don't rate your chances and I would even go so far as to take pleasure in imagining that the unforeseen will never again be wonderful, full of lessons and profoundly revealing for you. In any case, this is how I see things: people who are no longer suffering, have been demoted due to their Saturnian stubbornness to the level of the average rhinoceros and this raises questions about insights, enlightenment, and unifying expansion in the divine frequency. With invulnerability there comes as part of the same free package total insensitivity to the spirit of the age, to true receptivity (which is not merely content to reflect, but grows constantly by tuning into new vibratory channels). The benefits therefore strike me as being negligible. Admittedly, you do not suffer any more, but the general anaesthesia which you have inflicted on yourself has dulled your receptive faculties - or rather your aura - which exists in a closed circuit.

Should we necessarily cultivate suffering to obtain better results in terms of receptivity? No – this would be too straightforward. Firstly, it would be a form of calculation and, more empirically, I don't know that fakirs are necessarily spiritual teachers.

And then there is the serious issue of results. The press covered a story at one time of a man in India, of course, who kept his arm raised above his head for twelve years in order to achieve enlightenment and who did not achieve it... Now his arm no longer works and it is paralyzed – still pointing straight towards the sky. Is he going to try again with his remaining arm? Will God, in his infinite compassion, perhaps grant him enlightenment after just six years to the day, in order to reward his perseverance?

I know that it isn't funny at all and although I reject the method and form, I suspect that this man is somebody special.

The idea of laying the suffering on even thicker in order to protect oneself is nevertheless dangerous, and masochism throws a line to strong souls who want to use suffering as a stepping stone. When it leaves, they are rather surprised, it disturbs them and they lose their good habits. Fortunately, Saturn is on the lookout once more, and they get the notion of putting stones in their shoes to get the most out of the long walk.

We are straying from the subject and I know that the issue of suffering is a serious one and we should not forget that it invites itself in. What a nerve! Would you like me to say that I have never suffered personally and that I cannot "understand"? That would be a gratuitous assumption, since the main reason for not putting my diary online is precisely to spare you, or at least the tender souls among you, from seeing that supramental yoga is brimful of suffering, which is thankfully proportionate to the heavenly, luminous and divine states – but it can be present and very determined.

Therefore, I know suffering, of course, and the euphoria which takes its place when it disappears is strange and many people do not know how to appreciate or prolong this. I always celebrate its disappearance and I do this so well, that I am no longer bothered by the thought of it coming back... I know that I will celebrate even more lavishly after its next onslaught. I was born "addicted to existence", unlike Satprem, who was never satisfied with it. I have always thought that it was so extraordinary to live with this software of the self which perceives and asks questions and I thought that it was possible to abolish suffering not just for me, but for the whole of humanity. I set about this task at a very young age.

I couldn't bear to see the wonder of life – feeling, breathing, seeing, hearing, imagining, understanding and loving – on the one hand, and human baseness on the other. It tortured me frequently, but regularly, when I did not let myself go and perceive that there was such contradiction on the Earth.. One thing led to another and the path opened up... And suffering has become a sort of often very docile companion; it frequently "keeps its head down", but is nevertheless strong enough to knock me down when it wants to. These are what I call mouse holes.

Jesus called it the eye of the needle.

The only real question is whether by suffering intelligently it is it possible to progress along the path to non-suffering. Can we integrate suffering into evolutionary development leading towards ananda or bliss? I state categorically that this is the case.

Firstly, suffering tries to intimidate us, and this is what I call the fear of fear, which is far worse than fear itself. Genuine fear has the merit of being based on an object, like all identifications. Fear of fear bites its own tail and the notion of an "obstacle to be endured" not only ups the stakes when the thing appears, but sometimes goes looking for it. Fear of fear sets off in search of what will legitimize its impulse. This may be amusing for a psychologist, but less so for somebody actually experiencing it.

On a bad day, we mistake a piece of discarded rope for a snake at nightfall. Intelligent suffering gets rid of fear of suffering, for one thing, which prevents it from being put to transcendental use. When only true suffering remains, it is taken for what it is – a hindrance. Nothing more or less. Seeing what it prevents shows you what you want to obtain. Along with its opposite – pleasure – it is therefore the most effective evolutionary tool for establishing yourself in The Manifestation and their interplay and reciprocity enables you to constantly transform your motives, the things which bring you satisfaction and the means of achieving them.

"Beware of a man who has never suffered", says Sri Aurobindo in one of his aphorisms. He doesn't elaborate. Firstly, this certainly means that he has suffered himself and secondly that he has put it to good use. Of course, he has never boasted about it, and it is Mother who recalls it after his "departure" in the 1950s. He emphasizes ananda so strongly that it becomes a paradox for the mind. In fact, since the supramental gathers absolutely everything in its infinite intelligence, it is certain that Sri Aurobindo found a way to use it, or a use for it - for himself at least - as it was not a case of justifying it on principle. Guatama had already well and truly got down to work on it and I don't believe I am misrepresenting him by summarizing his views thus: suffering is present as part of our human condition, so we can accept it, look at and have the option of dealing with it. Alternatively, if we refuse it and live on the surface, it can catch us out whenever it likes, without ever being eradicated.

Buddha had the temerity to establish suffering as the natural product of ignorance. In other words – you did not choose suffering, but you can choose to free yourself from it.

I would say to those who complain about suffering: "How can you fight an enemy you do not know?".

We all fight against suffering as soon as we are sincerely established in The Way (I won't list all the different routes, especially since the Divine encourages us daily to find our own path) and we are doing it for the Earth, which is going to pieces. It is quite normal for suffering to hound the best of us. The best of us want to destroy it and the old devil is defending itself – so here comes suffering.

There isn't even any point in calling it – it will invite itself in.

Then one day, as surely as one thing leads to another, even if suffering is still there watching us and ready to pounce, it does not hurt any more. The Divine can do anything.

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   Dear C, I may feature this email on the site because I have some new highly-motivated visitors and intend to increase my contributions. Of course the notion that something has been skewed to deprive us of natural divine evolution has been expressed before and this would seem to be true. If consciousness comes from above, why is it so difficult to return to its origin? Sri Aurobindo answers this question throughout his Savitri, but remains imprecise nonetheless, although convincing. "Forces" seize hold of our need for light at different stages and we suffer. The aspirations are genuine, but they encounter opponents as soon as they express themselves.

Only in the "golden ages" would a return be less jeopardized and one thing is certain, we are not there yet, or at least not quite. It is true that the positive effect of the conscious on the subconscious already casts light on that dark part of the psyche which dramatizes non-gratifying events in order eventually to create a victim figure. At the end of an encounter I have often recommended reading Murphy myself, in line with the notion of using every means at ones disposal to evolve, gleaning positive ideas along the way to raise them up to an informal level, to relieve them of the obligation of fulfilling precise expectations, which lie in the realm of the ego and not of liberation. A "clean" subconscious does really exist and the idea is to fill it in the way we wish, whereas the subconscious fills up with filth which it retains in the form of trauma, suffering, accidents, disappointments and narcissistic wounds. Freud demonstrated this and in Healing Through Awakening I recall the incredible experiences produced by the supramental, particularly in 2002 and 2003, when I woke up feeling ill at ease for no particular reason and found myself having to wait for one or two days in a state of real unease trying to understand, until something suddenly went pop, like a champagne bottle which has been shaken so that its cork becomes a projectile. Two days of feeling nauseous in order to free a very negative emotion from early childhood, which gave rise to a small emotional regression, a few tears and then the file was erased just like throwing something away in the recycle bin on your PC. The subconscious is indeed a biological hard disk, which does not let anything escape and records everything. We therefore have to find processes to reduce the trauma caused by its workings and just as wise men have always said that if your house burns down then you have the opportunity to move, so too if you come a cropper spiritually, you have the opportunity to get back up again and to better assess the strength of your opponent.

However, the real issue is that programming the subconscious remains a pragmatic process which will one day come up against its own limitations. What I call unconditional faith is even stronger because it does not die, even in the depths of hell it remains, perhaps not intact or even a little battered, but it does persist. I cannot even tell you what it is based on and if it were based on something, this could give way. It must be based on nothing and then one cannot do anything about it. This may be something which is already beyond the mind, because when the mind has all the information it needs to give up, this faith persists and manifests itself. It may be essential for negotiating narrow passages, for getting back on one's feet after coming a cropper and after terrible disillusionments, because it is true that elevated spiritual states cannot be achieved any old how. I think that our efforts are virtually useless, or if they are essential, that they are just simple training exercises, but knowing how to encounter more and more difficult obstacles without giving up is another matter. It is true that the subconscious wants to deceive us and throw in the towel and that the mind gives up with good reason and that we are always on the lookout for a magic formula of the type marketed by the many forms of personal development to help us cope when things are going badly, or to go faster in the ordinary course of events. However, I always come back to the most important thing - and many other contemporary awakened ones say more or less the same thing - when we try to define the deficit and fail in our attempts to fill it, another intelligence takes its place and this one does not make any claims. It is revolutionary; it is the trace of the pure being which lives only to live, without object or aim, in the joy of existence. We say that this being is not mental because it does not need to think any more. Extremely delicate, absolutely disinterested formulations survive which connect the inside with the outside; these formulations do not lead anywhere unless we tinker with them to give them a didactic value, for example. Fundamentally however, we no longer strive for anything and, to come back to the conclusion of your letter, we find that philosophers take their difficulties in appropriating the meaning of things really seriously. They miss the meaning of things and so it is natural that they want to appropriate this meaning since the so-and-so is not there. However, the path which seems authentic to the awakened is not about appropriating meaning, but about liberation from the meaning of things. A being spontaneously sees the meanings of things by and large, but couldn't care less about them. They are hundreds of fine layers of intermingled meanings, countless combinations of assembled causes and finalities, infinite subdivisions of significations and it all leads nowhere: it is just the state of reality, or the state of samsara for the eastern world.

At the end of the day, really crafty philosophers are fed up with the notion of an object, whatever it might be, for two basic reasons. Firstly, one cannot look at it from every angle; it would take eight hundred pages just to address the main representations of the concept of freedom, for example, and five thousand pages on "God" would barely whet the appetite, so it is no longer a serious proposition to believe that one can define the object, especially since the advent of quantum mechanics. Above all, the object only refers back to the subject – it is its perfect mirror. We eventually come to the realization that the only real thing which falls to our lot is the "I", the subject and that this is the only place where the furnace is real. This comes as quite a blow and all of our cultural constructs have just one aim: to prevent the subject from being revealed to itself. It then becomes a cosmic being, scorn laws, denounces selfishness and hypocrisy and passes through all objects to be reunited finally with the eternal subject, the cosmic purusha, the self which is the same in each one of us, but is revealed in very few. This is what we are moving towards and it transcends history and is possible in every era and only has very little impact on the future. Like fish which escape from the net, awakened ones have found the way out. Some swim back into the net to show others the way, but nobody gives a damn and they are often even stopped from leaving again. I do not know what to think about the future or about the opportunities for cross-fertilization and cultivating intellectual growth which France offers today. The French mind is not realistic and is much more conservative than it thinks, as is demonstrated by François de Closets. On the other hand it is brimming with generosity and idealism and one could quite see it granting legal status to all illegal immigrants, welcoming all refugees and outcasts from all over the world to commemorate the fall of the Bastille. This mentality is beyond me and I cannot give an opinion on it; it contains a fair bit of toadying and charitable vanity nevertheless, but I keep on repeating in all my encounters that it is the most favourable location in the world for the "individuated" individual to come forth and if we are not taking advantage of it to liberate ourselves from beliefs and clans, from what is politically correct or what is correctly subversive, then this is because the dharma has not turned up yet. If we follow this direction, things will move one way or another, especially since Pluto will soon be entering Capricorn to bring back to the surface everything which had been swept under the carpet.

All the best,
Natarajan

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       It is pointless to cultivate the confusion between spiritual paths and although there are very interesting truths and realizations in Buddhism, they have absolutely nothing to do with the descent of the supramental, which is a cosmic and historic event far superior to any other path. In the path which I represent, trust in the Divine is absolute and we seek to receive its grace by true transparency in the present, rather than by achieving spiritual results on the basis of relentless commitment. Letting go is, therefore, the only really infallible practice, which allows us not to care about results achieved on the spiritual path, whatever our merits and the reward which we hope to achieve for them. It is preferable to open oneself up totally to the infinite intelligence and to be prepared to do anything for it, than to believe that we are discovering a path which is better than any other, which would be an incomplete path, sacrificing some aspects of reality to comfort ourselves with the notion that we have at last found the right direction. I would, therefore, recommend you to read closely the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, who have simply tried to save the earth from humans and who in order to accomplish this rescue mission have abandoned previous realizations to be the first to venture where the key to the future of the earth is truly revealed. You must no longer simply believe yourself to be a seeker after the truth, but understand that even if you were granted salvation, it would only be the instrument of a force which wants to redeem matter to give conscious human beings the opportunity to elevate nature and to make consciousness evolve in it. If you increase your levels of simplicity and humility, a significant amount of work can be carried out on you by the forces of evolution. The problem is that we tend to refer the evolution of the earth itself, the progress of consciousness itself through us, back to our own petty preoccupations. Buddhism will certainly have enabled you to understand that detachment could lead to a form of impersonal, free, serene consciousness, but that is no longer enough today and the conviction that one must become the instrument of the Divine must prevail over the aim of self-realization.