Sachchidananda 'The Life Divine' Book I,Ch.9, 10, 11, 12 - Track 509

Maybe that in our own present life without all this integral perfection, we may be able to pull through this life, although, we may say that many problems will be certainly faced by you and very often we won’t be able to answer them. But may be that we may pull through, but when you have to tell your children to be equipped then you have to tell them, ‘look, my dear children you are now going on the wings, which are flying at a very great speed and if you want to be capable of withstanding the tremendous flow of winds all over then this kind of equipment is necessary. If you think that you are leading a life, which is what it is now and you will be able to carry through your life, do not have illusions.

One day, one person came to ask the Mother a question: ‘is it necessary to compel anybody to learn?’. Because it might be assumed that from what I am talking, I am talking of imposing upon children a big program of learning and teaching. So, when this question was put to the Mother, the Mother said: ‘you have no right to impose knowledge upon anybody; if somebody chooses to remain ignorant he has a right to remain ignorant but tell him. If a child says that I don’t want to learn this, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to do that, make it very clear to the child that look, you are free not to be get equipped with all that I would like to present to you, but if you do not get equipped have no illusions that being ignorant and yet to be able to face the world, which is going to come before you, is impossible. Make a choice after this, decide that you don’t want to face the world; you don’t want to be anything in this world, you don’t want to be able to confront the world. Make a choice, you don’t want, remain ignorant and I will not impose it on you, but if you want it then this is the consequence; now you choose between the two. There are two alternatives, either be equipped in such a way that you will be able to confront the world properly, rightly, majestically, royally, or you remain like a kind of a little thing, like a peg in the machine and you will be crushed all the time by machine and then you will all the time cry – cry against yourself, against the world, against everything, you have to make a choice.

It is in that context that the present generation of young people and the present youth is quite a long youth from the age of fifteen to the age of seventy; is youth in the modern times isn’t it, the modern youth is a quite a long definition. At one time, it was only between fifteen and thirty-five but now it is fifteen to seventy. If the longevity is getting longer and longer in any case after the age of seventy, you are required to work youthfully. It is even today, if you can’t work youthfully up to the age of seventy, you cannot really bear the burden of life, responsibilities are so great that you have to plan that at least up to the age of seventy, you will be able to work so vigorously as a young man of thirty five will do that is definition of today. At least to the people between the ages of fifteen to seventy, I would say that this kind of equipment is very necessary, so, now you make a decision. We can’t escape reading all this. Infact before starting it, I had asked you this question, do we really want to go through this? It is highly intellectual, it is very difficult and still somehow we were led into it, doesn’t matter, let us see how it is.

When you taste it, it is like tasting, what you are feeling that is it necessary at all, why to go through this at all? So, even now it is an open choice for all of us. If you say, well not necessary, we can close this line of thinking, line of development. We can start something else, or we can close down completely. We are completely free or else we go through this since we have come up to this point. Why not to take the further trouble, it may take one month, two months and only seven pages. It is not much at all, only seven pages and what a boon if you read these seven pages, you are absolutely sure of what is written here, what a tremendous equipment you have, so I am sure that you all will choose that we shall go through this.

Question: you mentioned today’s generation and when we talk about Mahabharata times, to say that we are moving at so much faster pace of living today as compared to then.

Answer: Yes, undoubtedly to bring all the chariots to Kurukshetra took many months. Today you start somewhere within five hours it can have a Kurukshetra. This is a speed today very fast.

“But is this a true record? May it not be that Time and Space so disappear merely because the existence we are regarding is a fiction of the intellect, a fantastic Nihil created by speech, which we strive to erect into a conceptual reality? We regard again that Existence-in-itself and we say, No. There is something behind the phenomenon not only infinite but indefinable. Of no phenomenon, of no totality of phenomena can we say that absolutely it is. Even if we reduce all phenomena to one fundamental, universal irreducible phenomenon of movement or energy, we get only an indefinable phenomenon. The very conception of movement carries with it the potentiality of repose and betrays itself as an activity of some existence; the very idea of energy in action carries with it the idea of energy abstaining from action; and an absolute energy not in action is simply and purely absolute existence. We have only these two alternatives, either an indefinable pure existence or an indefinable energy in action and, if the latter alone is true, without any stable base or cause, then the energy is a result and phenomenon generated by the action, the movement which alone is. We have then no Existence, or we have the Nihil of the Buddhists with existence as only an attribute of an eternal phenomenon, of Action, of Karma, of Movement. This, asserts the pure reason, leaves my perceptions unsatisfied, contradicts my fundamental seeing, and therefore cannot be. For it brings us to a last abruptly ceasing stair of an ascent which leaves the whole staircase without support, suspended in the Void.”