The Mother: Do I have the divine consciousness? Am I completely disinterested in this matter? Am I free of all desire and all ego?”  And since the answer to all these questions will be the same, namely, “”, the honest and sincere conclusion must be: “I cannot judge, I do not have the elements needed for a true judgment; therefore I will not judge, I will keep quiet.”


The Mother: An individuality is a conscious being organised around a divine centre. All the divine centres are essentially One in their origin, but they act as separate beings in the manifestation.  The individual must make decisions in order to live, but it is not indispensable that he should have opinions, and still less that he should air them.  It is ignorance that has opinions.  Knowledge.


The Mother:   The descent of the forerunners of the supramental forces is a  (not a prediction). The incapacity of the vast majority of human beings to become conscious of it is a which can in no way affect the fact of the advent of these forces and powers in the physical world.  The “supreme and radical” change of the whole nature can only come about after a long and slow preparation, and men will perceive it only when their consciousness has become enlightened.


The Mother: B.    One can say whatever one likes, provided one knows what one is talking about.  The words are of little importance; it is the experience and the sincerity of the experience that count.    Conversations


The Mother: Everything is possible. All paths lead to the goal provided they are followed with persistence and sincerity.   It is best for each person to ﬁnd his own path, but for this the aspiration must be ardent, the will unshakable, the patience unfailing.


The Mother: It has nothing to do with; it is the natural and normal consequence of an error, shortcoming or fault which necessarily has consequences. Actually, everything in the world is a question of equilibrium or disequilibrium, of harmony or disorder. Vibrations of harmony attract and encourage harmonious events; vibrations of disequilibrium create, as it were, a disequilibrium in circumstances (illnesses, accidents, etc.). This may be collective or individual, but the principle is the same — and so is the remedy: to cultivate in oneself order and harmony, peace and equilibrium by surrendering unreservedly to the Divine Will.    What he means is that when one will have the power to withdraw the physical body from the inﬂuence of death, the power of transformation will be such that one will also be able to change the form of that body at will.


The Mother:   Those who have a supramentalised body will not be subject to the law of aging; consequently the question of age will not arise for them.    I did not say “cut the nerve” — that would be a surgical operation!


The Mother: I said, cut the conscious connection with the brain.  It is an occult operation, certainly more difﬁcult than the other for those who don’t know how to do it, but less dangerous.     Y.


The Mother: Sometimes it is like that, as a matter of fact, and sometimes it is the opposite: at ﬁrst a total incomprehension, but later, little by little, one comes to understand and appreciate.  Both are equally true and equally incomplete.  In the world as it is now, everything is mixed and each one sees and feels that which corresponds to his own nature.  To tell the truth,.    Here is the best answer to your questions, written by Sri Aurobindo: Each one carries in himself the seeds of this disharmony, and his most urgent work is to purify himself of it by a constant aspiration.


The Mother:   Essays on the Gita: Here is the whole quotation which I had prepared in advance for those who want to know the reason for the present situation. I am sending it to you so that your question becomes unnecessary.  “No real peace can be till the heart of man deserves peace; the law of Vishnu cannot prevail till the debt to Rudra is paid.  To turn aside then and preach to a still unevolved mankind the law of love and oneness? Teachers of the law of love and oneness there must be, for by that way must come the ultimate salvation.


The Mother: But not till the Time-Spirit in man is ready, can the inner and ultimate prevail over the outer and immediate reality.  Christ and Buddha have come and gone but it is Rudra who still holds the world in the hollow of his hand. And meanwhile the ﬁerce forward labour of mankind tormented and oppressed by the powers that are proﬁteers of egoistic force and their servants  cries for the sword of the Hero of the struggle and the word of its prophet.”


The Mother: They could not do otherwise.    Because it is not a question of merit but of Grace.    It is both at the same time — a chaotic means of preparation.  India ought to be the spiritual guide who explains what is happening and helps to hasten the movement.


The Mother: But unfortunately, in her blind ambition to imitate the West, she has become materialistic and neglectful of her soul.     That’s how it is when one is lacking in will and in force of consciousness.  Both of these can be acquired if one is sincere in one’s aspiration.


The Mother:    A hierarchicised group means a group in which the activities and functions are organised according to individual ability, with a leader at the centre. A military organisation, for example, is a hierarchy.  Here is a diagram of the ancient traditional hierarchies.  [diagram] 1 — 4 — 8 — 16 and so on.


The Mother: Every group, if it is a real one — that is, one made up according to the ability of the individuals who compose it — must necessarily be hierarchical.  But there are considerable obstacles to the realisation of this hierarchy:  (1) First, when the group is incomplete — that is, when it does not have all the members necessary to constitute the hierarchy and certain functions or intermediaries are missing.  (2) The indiscipline of certain members refusing wholly or in part to occupy the place assigned to them.  When order and harmony are established, the hierarchy is organised quite naturally and spontaneously.


The Mother:   Fear is an invention of the hostile forces who have created it as the best means of dominating living beings, animals and men.  Those who are — that is to say, exclusively under the Divine inﬂuence — have no fear.     Conversations: Not necessarily.


The Mother: What expresses itself as a war or a revolution is the resistance in the human consciousness to the New Force.  When the resistance is less, everything takes place harmoniously.     Not necessarily.


The Mother: Human folly takes advantage of the slightest cause to manifest itself.    It is an ironic way of saying that the most difﬁcult cases, from the standpoint of transformation, are gathered here to concretise and synthesise the work of transforming the earth in order to prepare the new creation.    This happens because you are trying to enter with a superﬁcial consciousness which does not have contact with the inner states of being. You have to go out of this external consciousness and penetrate into a subtler consciousness; then the fortress will no longer be impenetrable.


The Mother:  To serve It, you must live it.  To live it, you must necessarily serve it.   And for both, you must want it with sincerity and persistence.   If most people here think and feel like that, it is an obvious proof that most are not at all ready for the new life, nor even ready to  for the new life. And to tell the truth, they would do far better to return to the ordinary life and experience it, instead of taking advantage of the exceptional conditions of existence they have here, without being worthy of enjoying them.


The Mother:   So long as the Ashram was reserved for those who wanted to practise the yoga, it was natural to be strict.  As soon as the children were admitted here, it was no longer possible to be strict and the nature of the life changed.  Now the Ashram has become a symbolic representation of life on earth and everything can ﬁnd a place in it, provided it has the will to progress towards a diviner life.


The Mother:   By the very fact that you are living on earth, you are doing a yoga, even if you do not know it; and by the very fact that you are living here, you are helped in your yoga to the utmost of your possibilities. The only thing you lack is being conscious.     Poor boy!


The Mother: Now you are perplexed...  Well, all three are true, but on different planes, and to understand something of the problem one has to reach the domain where the three complement one another and unite.    Y.


The Mother: Receptivity is proportionate to self-giving.      The best way of seeing us in your dreams is to concentrate on us before going to sleep.


The Mother: Do you do this now as you used to before?  This is also the way to avoid going to undesirable places during your sleep, for in those places you are sure not to meet us. Try, and you will see the result.


The Mother: You are still in the old rut that separates spirituality from life.  Whereas Sri Aurobindo has declared, “All life is Yoga” and  afﬁrmed that it is life that one must do Yoga. You seem to have forgotten this.


The Mother: Danger and risk are part of every forward movement. Without them nothing would ever stir; and also they are indispensable for moulding the character of those who want to progress.   Look attentively into yourself to ﬁnd out what for you is the most important thing, the thing you feel that you couldn’t do without.  It is an interesting discovery.


The Mother:   I suppose you are asking where anger comes from.  Anger is a violent reaction of the vital to some shock that is unpleasant to it; and when it involves words or thoughts,  the mind responds to the inﬂuence of the vital and also reacts violently. Any expression of anger is the sign of a lack of self-control.


The Mother:   That you saw and heard me is a sign of progress, and with this I am pleased. But it is true that I ﬁnd you mentally a bit lazy and indifferent to the opportunity I give you each week to ask me a question. Your questions are rather commonplace and don’t give the impression that you are really searching for the secrets of life and the world.


The Mother:   Usually they are due to mental inertia, unless one has obtained this calm and indifference through a very intense sadhana resulting in a perfect equality for which good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant no longer exist. But in that case, mental activity is replaced by an intuitive activity of a much higher kind.     By wanting to do so, with persistence and obstinacy.


The Mother: By doing every day a mental exercise of reading, organisation and development.  This should alternate in the course of the day with exercises of mental silence in concentration.     From what point of view are you asking this question?


The Mother: If it is from the political point of view, politics is steeped in falsehood, and I am not interested in it.  If it is from the moral point of view, morality is a shield which ordinary men ﬂourish to protect themselves from the Truth.   If it is from the spiritual point of view, the Divine Will alone is justiﬁable, and it is That which men travesty and deform in all their actions.


The Mother: The opinion you express is the opinion of the Americans and of a large number of human beings who think like them.  But the Communists and all those who have faith in the Communist ideal have the opposite opinion, not to mention all the many and varied opinions on social and political subjects. All these are only and have no value at all from the Divine point of view — the Divine who does not have an opinion but a total vision of everything as a whole and of the goal to be achieved, which is the only thing that matters.  Everything is necessarily an opinion and expresses only an inﬁnitesimal fraction of the Truth.


The Mother:   I may have said something of the kind. But the exactness of the numbers is certainly fanciful.  It is true that the number of those who take the yoga seriously is not considerable...  But the Divine Grace is inﬁnite!


The Mother:   It is quite simply, incoercible.      ( )


The Mother: Those who to learn have all the possibilities to do so here. The only thing that one has outside, but does not have here, is the moral constraint of an external discipline.  Here one is free and the only constraint is the one that one puts when one is.  Now it is for you to decide.


The Mother:   From your letter I can see that you really have a great desire to accept the invitation... I do not want, then, to deprive you of this experience and I say to you: “You may go.”  This decision is ﬁnal.    Do you really want to go?


The Mother:     Very good. And everything I did was precisely to bring you to this decision!


The Mother:   Without any doubt — and just now, there is much to be done!     It is the pressure of the force of Truth on the whole earth which is causing disorder, confusion and falsehood to spring up everywhere in a refusal to be transformed.


The Mother: The victory of the Truth is certain, but it is difﬁcult to say when and how it will come about.     Why? It is very easy.


The Mother: Because these are only words. When one practises without believing in God or the Divine, one practises  in order to attain some perfection, to make progress, for all sorts of reasons.  Are there many people — I am not speaking of those who have a religion: they learn a catechism when they are young and that doesn’t mean much; but out of people taken as they are — are there many who believe in the Divine? Not in Europe anyway. But even here, there are quite a number who by tradition have a “family deity”, yet it doesn’t bother them at all to take their deity and throw it into the Ganges when they get displeased!


The Mother: It does happen — I know some people who did it.  They had a family Kali in their house, they actually did take her and throw her into the Ganges because they were displeased with her. If one believes in the Divine, one cannot do things like that.  I don’t know — believe in the Divine? One thirsts for a certain perfection, perhaps even to transcend oneself, to arrive at something higher than what one is; if one is a philanthropist, one has an aspiration that mankind should become better, or less unhappy, less miserable; all sorts of things like that.


The Mother: One can practise yoga for that, but that is not believing. To believe is to have the faith that there cannot be a world without the Divine, that the very existence of the world proves the existence of the Divine. And not just a “belief”, not something one has thought out or been taught, nothing like that: faith. A faith that is a living knowledge, not an acquired one, that the existence of the world is enough to prove the Divine. Without the Divine, no world.


The Mother: And this is so obvious, you see, that one has the impression that in order to think otherwise, one has to be a bit dense. And the “Divine” not in the sense of “purpose” or “goal” or “end”, not that sort of thing: the world as it is proves the Divine. Because it is the Divine under a certain aspect — a rather distorted one, but still...  For me it is even stronger than that. I look at a rose, a thing that contains such a concentration of spontaneous beauty — not man-made: spontaneous, a blossoming; one has only to  see it to be sure that there is a Divine.


The Mother: It is a certainty. One cannot... it is impossible not to believe. It is like those people (this is fantastic!), those people who study Nature, really study it thoroughly, how everything functions and is brought about and exists — how can one study sincerely, with attention and care, without being absolutely convinced that the Divine is there? We call it the Divine — the Divine is tiny!


The Mother: (.) For me existence is an incontestable proof that there is... that there is nothing but That — something we cannot name, cannot deﬁne, cannot describe, but something we can feel and can more and more become. A Something that is more perfect than all the perfections, more beautiful than all the beauties, more marvellous than all the marvels, so that even the totality of all that exists cannot express it. And there is nothing but That. And it is not a Something ﬂoating in nothingness: there is nothing but That.


The Mother:   It is a question of. Common sense is not a judge because it is a mental function of a rather inferior order.  Moreover, there is a very simple way of knowing.


The Mother: One has only to imagine that the thing one wants to do will not be done, and if this imagination creates the least uneasiness, then one can be sure of the presence of desire.     Work does not go on twenty-four hours a day.  There is room for many other activities which have their purpose in an Yoga.


The Mother:    S.    But perhaps it is just certain individuals and certain departments are spending extravagantly that there is a ﬁnancial crisis!...


The Mother: Otherwise all is well.     Not always.  Sometimes.


The Mother:   One can have a quiet mind without being in a complete state of silence; one can carry on an activity without being disturbed.  The ideal is to be able to act without coming out of the mental quietude.  One can do everything while keeping the mind quiet, and what one does is better done.


The Mother:  Widening the consciousness is necessary for all who want to live a free and intelligent life, even without there being any question of Yoga or aspiration for the Divine Life.    The protection is over the group — and if the action of the group is coordinated and disciplined, the protection acts. But when an individual acts independently, the protection acts only in the measure of his faith.    The compassion seeks to relieve the suffering of all, whether they deserve it or not.


The Mother: The Grace does not recognise the right of suffering to exist and abolishes it.    Sincerity, courage, discipline, endurance, absolute faith in the Divine work and unshakable trust in the Divine Grace. All this must be accompanied by a sustained, ardent, persevering aspiration and a boundless patience.  Happy New Year   In order to understand these apparent contradictions, one has to rise to the intellectual level on which all opposite ideas can be set face to face and assembled in a comprehensive synthesis.


The Mother:  The things that shock you most in others are those that you are struggling against in yourself or trying to suppress in yourself.  Knowing this teaches you to be patient.     On the condition of the one to whom I write the card and on his state of consciousness, which varies according to the moment and the year.


The Mother:  What is usually called “conscience” is a mental formation based on the idea of good and evil, a moral entity or rather an element of goodwill which tries to keep the individual on what is commonly known as the straight path.  This element acts as a defence against the hostile forces which can quite easily take possession of one who has disregarded the advice of his conscience.  But all this is a mental approximation of the Truth. It is not the Truth itself.


The Mother: (1) When one is more conscious in the physical than in the vital and mental, the physical relation seems more real and tangible.  (2) For those who have seriously begun the yoga in the body, the physical relation is of course a powerful aid.   I ask the ﬁrst to make an effort to establish not only a psychic relation (which is always there even when they are not conscious of it) but also a mental and vital relation, which makes the outer relation less indispensable.  I try to teach the others to widen their physical consciousness so as to be able to beneﬁt from my physical presence even at a distance.


The Mother:   Perhaps it is because you have a soul.     Not everyone is conscious of his soul and very few are those who are guided by their soul.


The Mother:    The character can change and must change, but it is a long and minute work which requires sustained effort and a great sincerity.     Is it necessary that it should have a signiﬁcance?


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo announced that from that date onwards something would happen. And it did happen.  That is all that is needed.    But why does he say “weighed down”?


The Mother: No, the psychic — that is exactly what happens.  The psychic does not retain things in their totality — it decants, it gradually decants the vibrations.  The psychic memory is a decanted memory of events. For example, in past lives there have been moments when, for some reason or other, the psychic was present and participated; in that case it retains the memory of the circumstance. But the memory it retains is that of the life of that moment; so even if it retains the memory of the image, it is a simpliﬁed image such as it is translated in the psychic consciousness and according to the psychic vibration of all the people present.


The Mother: He would not ask such a question if he had ever had a psychic memory, because when one has one, it is quite evident.  Before knowing these things, I had had psychic memories and always they struck me by their special character. It was as if one had, one cannot exactly say an emotion, but a certain emotional vibration of a circumstance; and that is what is solid, what remains, what lasts. And so with that, one has a perception — a little vague, a little blurred — of the people who were there, of the circumstances, of the events, and that makes a psychic memory; it is rarely the events that mentally are considered as the most memorable or most important in a lifetime, but the moments when the psychic has participated — consciously participated — in the event. And that is what remains.


The Mother:   I was very strongly and consciously with you because X had written to me that the tyres of the car were in poor condition.  You did not feel the danger because .


The Mother: It is because men still imagine that to do something useful, they have to form groups.  It is the caricature of organisation.   16 October 1967–25 July 1970 After all these years I have found the forgotten notebook, and I  reply: The Divine does not see things as men do and has no need to punish or reward.  All actions carry in themselves their fruits with their consequences.


The Mother: According to its nature, an action brings one nearer to the Divine or takes one farther from Him — and that is the supreme consequence.    Certainly, the most important occupation is to develop and perfect oneself, but that can be done very well, and even better, while working. It is for you to know what work it is that most interests you, the one that opens for you a path towards perfection. It may be something apparently very modest; it is not the apparent importance of a work which gives it its real value for the yoga.


The Mother:   Knowledge of past lives is interesting for an understanding of one’s nature and a mastery of one’s imperfections. But to tell the truth, it is not of capital importance, and it is far more important to concentrate on the future, on the consciousness to be acquired and on the development of the nature, which is almost unlimited for those who know how to do it.  We are at an especially favourable moment in the universal existence, a moment when, upon earth, everything is being prepared for a new creation, or rather, for a new manifestation in the eternal creation.    The best for each one is to progress as sincerely as he can.


The Mother: The material difﬁculties are part of the work of transformation and they should be accepted calmly.    It is always that way for everyone. The difference lies in each one’s state of consciousness. Some are entirely conscious of what is done for them. Those who make an effort become conscious of the answer they receive, and there are those whose aspiration is sufﬁciently strong and sincere for them to be constantly conscious of the help they are given.


The Mother: By wanting Him more and more in every part of your being — integrally.   Yes.     The soul is the eternal essence at the centre of the psychic being.  The soul is in fact like a divine spark which puts on many states of being of increasing density, down to the most material; it is inside the body, within the solar plexus, so to say. These states of being take form and develop, progress, become individualised and perfected in the course of many earthly lives and form the psychic being.


The Mother: When the psychic being is fully formed, it is aware of the consciousness of the soul and manifests it perfectly.     The radical method is to cut off all mental and vital connection with these people; but until you know how to do this, you  must persistently eliminate from your consciousness the effect produced by their inﬂuence.


The Mother:  Unless one practises yoga in the physical being (outer being), it remains ignorant — even its aspiration is ignorant and so is its goodwill; all its movements are ignorant and so they distort and disﬁgure the Divine Presence.  That is why the yoga of the body-cells is indispensable.     Perpetual renewal.


The Mother:   This is one way of putting it. Mental deﬁnitions are never more than approximations, ways of speaking.


The Mother: At the centre of each cell lies the Divine Consciousness. By aspiration and repeated self-giving, the cells must be made transparent.


The Mother: To become aware of the consciousness of the soul is the surest and easiest way of uniting with the Divine.    This difﬁculty usually comes from a lack of uniﬁcation of the being. Certain parts are recalcitrant and refuse to receive. They have to be educated little by little, just as one educates a child — and little by little too the situation will improve.


The Mother:   It may very well be that this is what is happening now — but it is not on the human scale.  One moment of the Lord probably means many years for us!


The Mother: The Ashram was born a few years after my return from Japan, in 1926.    The head is the original conceiving Consciousness.   The Grace is there to solve it.    By being yourself, quite simply, very simply.


The Mother:   We are made up of many different parts which have to be uniﬁed around the psychic being, if we are conscious of it or at least around the central aspiration. If this uniﬁcation is not done, we carry this division within us.   To do this, each thought, each feeling, each sensation, each impulse, each reaction, as it manifests, must be presented in the consciousness to the central being or its aspiration.


The Mother: What is in accord is accepted; what is not in accord is refused, rejected or transformed.  It is a long endeavour which may take many years — but once it is done, the uniﬁcation is achieved and the path becomes easy and swift.     If you belong entirely and totally to the Divine, then all that belongs to you, all that forms part of your material being, belongs to the Divine.


The Mother:  Each time that you discover in yourself something that denies or resists, throw it into the ﬂame of Agni, which is the ﬁre of aspiration.      It is quite possible, by concentrating on the hands when they are doing something.


The Mother: The hands of painters, sculptors, musicians (especially pianists) are usually very conscious and always are skilful. It is a question of training.    This “something” is the insincerity of an ignorant self-esteem which has not yet understood that it is nobler and loftier to recognise one’s faults in order to correct them, than to conceal them in the hope that they will not be noticed.  As for all psychological problems, here too sincerity, a total and uncompromising sincerity, is the true remedy.


The Mother:  To get rid of the past is something so difﬁcult that it seems almost impossible.  But if you yourself entirely and without reserve to the future, and if this giving is constantly renewed, the past will  and no longer encumber you.     Prayers and Meditations


The Mother: Yes, the two states are complementary, but that does not necessarily mean that they are simultaneous. Most often, “to live for Thee” comes ﬁrst and if the being is uniﬁed and sincere, “to live in Thee” soon follows.  But of course, for the ﬁrst to be perfect, the second must be present.    This is the exact image of the state of the world which suffers because it is not receptive, when it could live in beatitude if it would open to the Divine Love.


The Mother: But there is a remedy: Sincere and constant aspiration.    About this, one could say humorously that we are all divine, but we are hardly even aware of it, and what we call “ourselves” is that in us which is unaware that it is divine.     To man the Divine seems slow.


The Mother: In the eyes of the Divine man is slow indeed!  But perhaps in these two cases, the slowness is not the same.   First the dead man must have a daughter in order to be reborn in her child.  It is not an absolute rule — far from it — but the case is quite frequent in India where the belief in frequent reincarnations is still quite common.


The Mother:  That is correct.      The body is able to bear the pressure of time because it knows and feels quite concretely that it does not itself live and act, but that only the Supreme Lord exists and that He alone lives and acts.


The Mother: This, moreover, is the secret of all endurance.    The phrase would be even more amusing if he had written: “Thank God for making me an atheist.”     If I did say this (probably not quite in these words), it could only refer to a universal family open to all differences and even all divergences.


The Mother: But in any case, mutual misunderstanding and lack of collaboration can only come from the outer physical and vital being which is formed in this life and is not yet under the rule and inﬂuence of the psychic. As soon as one is united with one’s psychic, all the conﬂicts due to clashing bad wills can no longer exist.     Painters use shadow to bring out the light.


The Mother: Shadow is the symbol of the inconscient. This is where men rest at night from the effort of the day to become conscious.  When consciousness becomes all-powerful, shadow will no longer be necessary and will disappear.     In Sri Aurobindo’s integral yoga, there are no such rigid rules and distinctions.


The Mother: Each one follows his own path and has his own experiences. Nevertheless, Sri Aurobindo has often said and written that his yoga begins where the others leave off.  This is to say that yoga ordinarily consists in awakening the physical consciousness and making it rise gradually towards the Divine. Whereas Sri Aurobindo has said that to do his yoga, one must already have found the Divine and united with Him — then the consciousness descends through all the states of being down to the most material, bringing the Divine Force with it so that the Force can transform the whole being and ﬁnally divinise the physical body.


The Mother: Because most people, when they hear the word “unity”, understand and nothing can be further from the truth.    Spontaneity in feelings and action comes from a permanent contact with the psychic, which brings order into the thoughts and automatically controls the vital impulses.    The cells of the body thirst for the Divine Consciousness and when they are brought into contact with It their aspiration becomes very intense.    simply That is the best state for advancing swiftly on the path.


The Mother:   It is said that Christ healed the sick and even raised the dead.  One day an idiot was brought to him to be cured. But Christ  slipped away, saying that to make a stupid man intelligent is an impossibility.  To make a dishonest man honest is an even more impossible miracle.


The Mother:   Kali’s force is necessary only for those who are not yet open to Divine Love. For one who is open to Divine Love, nothing more is needed.


The Mother:   When the body is converted, it knows how to collaborate.    The oldest tradition says that the ﬁrst four emanations of the Mahashakti — Consciousness, Love, Truth and Life — cut themselves off (separated themselves) from their Supreme Origin and became Unconsciousness, Suffering, Falsehood and Death.  Then a second emanation was made to repair the damage.


The Mother: They are the Gods.  Naturally, this is a way of speaking which corresponds to a Reality that is difﬁcult to put into words.    Transformation demands a total and integral consecration. But isn’t that the aspiration of every sincere sadhak?   means vertically in all the states of being, from the most material to the most subtle.


The Mother: means horizontally in all the different and often contradictory parts which make up the outer being (physical, vital and mental).     Flowers are very receptive and they are happy when they are loved.


The Mother:    Whatever the past may have been, it is not time that is needed to establish contact with the Divine, but sincerity of aspiration.


The Mother:   Tears and anguish indicate the presence of a weak and paltry nature which is still unable to receive the Divine in all his power  and glory. Not only are they unnecessary, they are useless and an obstacle to realisation.   Consciousness.


The Mother:   Day and night hundreds of calls are coming — but the Consciousness is always alert and it answers.  One is limited only materially by time and space.   It is because material wealth is controlled by the adverse forces — and because they have not yet been converted to the Divine Inﬂuence, though the work has begun.


The Mother: That victory will form part of the triumph of Truth.  Wealth should not be a personal property and should be at the disposal of the Divine for the welfare of all.     Undoubtedly.  Only the psychological change can be a solution.


The Mother:  I am sure that if someone is advanced enough on the path to receive the knowledge that money is an impersonal power and should be used for the progress of the earth, this person will be developed enough inwardly to receive the knowledge of how best to make use of the money.    That is very interesting indeed. Was it a rose or a hibiscus?    Yes, it is a very conscious ﬂower — I have had many proofs of it.


The Mother:    A beginning of union comes even before constant remembrance.  When the remembrance is constant, one often feels a Presence that imposes itself on the remembrance.


The Mother:   Beyond the creation lies the perfect Oneness, but potentially it contains duality since the Mahashakti will manifest for the needs of the creation.    They are correct.


The Mother: These words do not apply to the physical world as it is at present.  The explanation is only an approximation. Still, one can say that the emanation is made up of the very substance of the emanator, whereas the formation is made up of a substance external to the formator.  To make a comparison, one could say that the emanation is like a child made from the substance of its mother and that the formation is like a living statue made out of a material external to the sculptor.  But naturally this is only a very approximate explanation.


The Mother:   It is true that the path is very long, but for one who follows it with, it is, and at every step one is rewarded for one’s trouble.     Yes, the land itself has a consciousness, even though this consciousness is not intellectualised and cannot express itself.


The Mother:  Politics and so-called justice are still, in humanity, what is most closed to the Truth. But their turn for conversion will also come, perhaps sooner than we think.     Waste of any kind is the result of unconsciousness.


The Mother: Consciousness in its purity is perfect and infallible.    In theory, it applies to everyone. But the vast majority of human beings fall into unconsciousness, and if there is a contact with pure Being it is quite unconscious. Very few persons are conscious of this relation.


The Mother: It is usually the result of Yoga.       (


The Mother: )  During sleep the inner beings become consciously active. When one wakes up, it is the waking being that of the activities of the night.    It is not a paradox.


The Mother: It is the same phenomenon as for the Divine who is at the centre of our being, etc. and at the same time is beyond the creation, the Divine towards whom the whole creation is moving, but whom it could never reach if it did not carry him in itself.  One must go beyond notions of space and Matter to be able to understand.      According to my experience, one should not try to destroy or to eliminate.


The Mother: One should concentrate all one’s effort on building up and strengthening the, which will automatically do the work of unifying the being.  In this way, everything that has to be transformed will be transformed quite naturally, without clash or damage.     There are two actions which in practice merge into one.


The Mother: (1) the goal that one wants to attain.  (2) Never allow any part of the being or any of its movements to contradict one’s aspiration.  This also makes it necessary to become conscious of one’s nights, because the activities of the night often contradict the aspiration of the day and undo its work.  Vigilance, sincerity, continuity of effort, and the Grace will do the rest.


The Mother: The very notion of good and bad is completely changed.  One can say very simply that all that leads to the Divine is good, and all that leads away from the Divine is bad.  Many virtues lead away from the Divine by making men satisﬁed with what they are.     Savitri: When one is living among men with all their miseries, it is only the Grace that can bestow this state — even in those who by Tapasya have abolished their ego.  It is beyond all personal effort.


The Mother:  The simplest and most effective way is; the more sincere and radical this offering is, the more quickly the result will come.     Are they not two ways of saying the same thing? — certainly two ways of doing the same thing.


The Mother:  It is what is usually called conscience, but in fact it is the psychic being. And one can hear it only if one is very attentive, because it does not make any clamour.    Without sincerity nothing can be done. With total sincerity everything is possible.


The Mother:   It is inconscience.  Inconscience is the negation of all effort. Ignorance (that is, the acknowledgement that there is something to be known which we do not know) is the ﬁrst effect of the divine inﬂuence on the inconscient.


The Mother:   This is the great mystery of creation: immutable and yet eternally renewed.    The conversion of the Asuras.   The vibrations of evil are in truth less powerful than the vibrations of good.


The Mother:    Only the Supreme Lord is perfectly sincere.  And when the ego is abolished, only the Supreme Lord exists.


The Mother:   This is so true that one could rightly say: even while sleeping one must move forward.  But there comes a time when the ascent becomes a perfect repose.    Sincerity is compared to an atmosphere or a sheet of glass.


The Mother: If the one or the other is completely transparent, it lets light through without distorting it.  Similarly, a sincere consciousness lets divine vibrations through without distorting them.    In the evolution, the individual is far ahead of the earth, but as long as he lives on earth there is a certain interdependence.  But the condition of the earth is sure to become such that a supramental being will soon be able to live on it.


The Mother:  Naturally, each time that one makes a rule one makes a mistake.  Besides, although he has not taken up another physical body, the Buddha himself has returned to work in the earthatmosphere.     Oneness means identity in origin; but in the manifestation each entity follows its own path of conscious return to the Oneness.


The Mother:   Now the conditions are such that every sincere effort must necessarily tend towards this goal.


The Mother: Things are now arranged in such a way that as soon as one collaborates for the Divine Dawn in any form, one necessarily collaborates in the transformation.     All are the Divine, but very few are those who know it and fewer still are those who want to realise it consciously. This explains  the long duration and difﬁculty of the creation if its goal is that all and everything should once more become divine.


The Mother:   For that one must identify oneself with the Supreme Divine.  Once one is identiﬁed, when one turns towards the creation, one sees and knows that the Divine alone exists both in the Essence and in the manifestation.


The Mother: Immunity does not come automatically from transformation.  One has to cut off all connection with the manifested world in order to be immune.  But in any case, transformation gives the power of victory.


The Mother: Yes, equal and immutable.  But the capacity to perceive and receive it and the habit of distorting it differ with each one.    Yes, it means that the entire being is absorbed in its consecration.


The Mother: For most people, in their sleep, it is precisely what has been recorded in the subconscient during the day or previously which becomes active again and constitutes their dreams.     This possibility is open to all whose aspiration is fervent.   It does not go away, but enters the subconscient and continues to act.


The Mother: To remain conscious of it, one must reduce the range of the subconscient in oneself and thus increase the consciousness.    To grow in consciousness is the very aim of life on earth. It is through the experience of successive lives that the range of the subconscient is gradually reduced.  By yoga and the effort to ﬁnd the Divine in oneself and in life, one hastens the work considerably and it can be done in a few years.


The Mother:   Yes, it is a very exact description.


The Mother: The cords symbolise the limitations of the mind; and there are three of them because there is a physical mind, a vital mind and a mental mind.     Yes, there comes a time when nothing, absolutely nothing is outside the yoga and the Divine’s Presence is felt and found in all things and all circumstances.


The Mother: Yes.     Speed is not necessarily a sign of superiority.  These “instantaneous” conversions are most often the result of many lives of preparation.


The Mother:  It is a poetic way of expressing the transformation which is going to take place and which is more complicated than that.    It is undoubtedly out of ignorance and fear of what he doesn’t know.  It is only the Asuras and a few great hostile beings who refuse and oppose the Divine even though they know who He is.    Essentially they are the same; but the plenitude of the response far exceeds the intensity of the call.


The Mother: The response always exceeds our receptivity by far.     If we call “perfect receptivity” the receptivity that receives only the Divine Inﬂuence and no other, it is certain — and at the same time it is perfect purity.  This is what we should strive for.


The Mother:   The quotation means that in order to reach the divine regions one must, while on earth, pass through the vital, which in some of its parts is a veritable hell. But those who have surrendered to the Divine and been adopted by Him are surrounded by the divine protection and for them the passage is not difﬁcult.    It is the human mind that has the conception of success and failure. It is the human mind that wants one thing and does not want another.


The Mother: In the divine plan each thing has its place and its importance. So it is not success that matters. What matters is to be a docile and if possible a instrument of the Divine Will.  To be and to do what the Divine wants, this is the truly important thing.


The Mother:   Beyond all question.  They are ONE in essence and manifestation.    The ego was created for the work of individualisation; when the work is achieved, it is not unusual for the ego to accept its own dissolution .


The Mother: All pleasure is a perversion, by egoistic limitation, of the Ananda which is the purpose of the universal manifestation.   The Presence is always there whatever we do, and it is because of ignorance, negligence or absent-mindedness that we do not feel it. But each time that we are attentive and concentrated, we become aware of a wonderful transformation in all things.    Memory is a mental faculty and helps the mental consciousness.


The Mother: But feeling and sensation must also participate.    To have the perception of the Presence, the participation of feeling is indispensable, and when sensation collaborates, then the perception becomes concrete and tangible.     Neither the one nor the other in their apparent contradiction created by the separative consciousness, but something else that our words cannot express.


The Mother: In the present state of human consciousness, it is good for it to think that aspiration and human effort can hasten the advent of the divine transformation, because effort and aspiration are needed for the transformation to take place.     In its essential truth, but one usually keeps the perception of the illusory appearance at the same time.    Yes, one can put it that way.


The Mother: But above all, it is the attitude towards the outward appearance that changes completely.   The usefulness of seeing clearly instead of being blind.  The usefulness of no longer being deceived by outward appearances.  The usefulness of knowing the true purpose of life instead of living in ignorance and falsehood.


The Mother:   That probably depends on the yogi and his condition.  But when one is united with the Supreme Consciousness and when the body is undergoing transformation, the body keeps its automatic perception of the outer world; but this perception is more complete than the ordinary one, as if it revealed something of its content.


The Mother: Certainly.   In Sri Aurobindo’s yoga, the transformation of the body is indispensable so far as it can be done. Because the aim of this yoga is not an escape from the physical consciousness but a divinisation of that consciousness.       Savitri


The Mother: One reads to develop one’s intelligence and to understand deeper things.  One concentrates at the Samadhi to grow in devotion and to put oneself in contact with Sri Aurobindo in order to receive his help.  If these things have any value for you, you must do them regularly, because it is the laziness of unconsciousness that keeps you from doing them.  You are born for a spiritual and conscious life — but perhaps you are still too young to have the will to realise it.  Blessings.


The Mother:    It is the same for everybody as long as one has not consciously uniﬁed the whole of one’s being around the psychic centre.  This uniﬁcation is indispensable if one wants to be the master of one’s being and of all its actions.  It is a long and meticulous work that requires much perseverance, but the result is worth the trouble, for it brings not only mastery but also the possibility of the transformation and illumination of the consciousness.  Do you want to do it?


The Mother: If so, I will help you.  Blessings.    To achieve that, one must have an and a . But once one has taken the resolution to do it, the divine help will be there to support and to help.


The Mother: This help is felt inwardly in the heart.  Blessings.     From the viewpoint of the inner nature, the individual is more receptive on his birthday from year to year, and thus it is an opportune moment to help him to make some new progress each year.  Blessings.


The Mother:   I said “not easy” because the contact is not spontaneous — it is voluntary. The psychic being always has an inﬂuence on the thoughts and actions, but one is rarely conscious of it. To become conscious of the psychic being, one must want to do so, make one’s mind as silent as possible, and enter deep into the heart of one’s being, beyond sensations and thoughts. One must form the habit of silent concentration and descent into the depths of one’s being.


The Mother: The discovery of the psychic being is a deﬁnite and very concrete fact, as all who have had the experience know.  Blessings.    No.  The body is capable of progressing and it can gradually learn to do what it could not do before.


The Mother: But its capacity for progress  is much slower than the vital desire for progress and the mental will for progress. And if the vital and the mind are left in charge of action, they simply harass the body, destroy its balance and upset its health.  Therefore, one must be patient and follow the rhythm of one’s body, which is more reasonable and knows what it can and cannot do.  Naturally, some bodies are tamasic and need a little encouragement in order to progress.  But in all things and in all cases, one has to keep a balance.


The Mother: Blessings.    Those who have had the memory of past lives have declared the reality of rebirth.  There have been — and there still are — beings whose inner consciousness is sufﬁciently developed for them to know for certain that this consciousness has manifested in bodies other than their present one and that it will survive the disappearance of this body.  It is not a theory to be discussed — it is an indisputable experience for one who has had it.


The Mother: Blessings.      It is not by thinking that one can be in contact with Nature, for Nature does not think.  But if one deeply feels the beauty of Nature and communes with her, that can help in widening the consciousness.


The Mother: Blessings.     Love of Nature is usually the sign of a pure and healthy being uncorrupted by modern civilisation. It is in the silence of a peaceful mind that one can best commune with Nature.


The Mother: Blessings.     It is selﬁshness that makes one jealous; it is weakness that makes one lazy.  In either case the only truly effective remedy is conscious union with the Divine.


The Mother: Indeed, as soon as one becomes conscious of the Divine and is united with Him, one learns to love with the true love: the love that and has no need to be loved in return; one also learns to draw Force from the inexhaustible source and one knows by experience that by using this Force in the service of the Divine one receives from Him all that one has spent and much more.  All the remedies suggested by the mind, even the most enlightened mind, are only palliatives and not a true cure.  Blessings.     Generally when the body is asleep at night, the mind goes out because it is difﬁcult for it to remain quiet for a long time; and that is why most people do not talk.


The Mother: But your mind seems to remain in your body, so you must ask it to remain perfectly quiet and silent so that your body can rest properly. A little concentration for that, before going to sleep, will surely be effective.  Blessings.


The Mother: The possibilities are different for each person: there are as many cases as there are persons. But each one can learn which conditions are best for his rest.  You can become conscious of your nights and your sleep just as you are conscious of your days. It is a matter of inner development and discipline of the consciousness.


The Mother: Blessings.     You may be sure that becoming conscious of the Divine Presence in oneself considerably changes one’s whole way of being and gives an exceptional control over all activities, mental, vital and physical.  And this control is inﬁnitely more powerful and luminous than anything one can obtain through external means.  Blessings.


The Mother:   Energy, strength, enthusiasm, artistic taste, boldness, forcefulness are there too, if we know how to use them in the true way.  A vital converted and consecrated to the Divine Will becomes a bold and forceful instrument that can overcome all obstacles. But it ﬁrst has to be disciplined, and this it consents to only when the Divine is its master.


The Mother: Blessings.     Passing from the general ignorant human consciousness to the yogic consciousness founded on the knowledge of the Divine Presence.  Blessings.


The Mother:     When the sun sets, a kind of peace descends on earth and this peace is helpful for sleep.  When the sun rises, a vigorous energy descends on earth and this energy is helpful for work.  When you go to bed late and get up late, you contradict the forces of Nature, and that is not very wise.


The Mother: Blessings.    Human incapacity is necessarily behind all that men do. Only he who has become conscious of the Divine and become His faithful instrument can avoid error, if he is careful to act only at the divine command and to add nothing personal to it.  It must be said that this is not easy.


The Mother: Only he who no longer has any ego can do it correctly.  Blessings.     Knowledge and intelligence are precisely the higher mental qualities in man, those that differentiate him from the animal.


The Mother: Without knowledge and intelligence, one is not a man but an animal in human form.  Blessings.    Between the body of the supramental being and the body of man, there will surely be a difference comparable to that which exists between man and the most advanced ape; but what this difference will be we can hardly know until the new species appears on earth.


The Mother: Blessings.    Sports are all the games, competitions, tournaments, etc. that are based on competition and lead to placings and prizes.  Physical education means principally all the various exercises for the development and maintenance of the body.  Naturally, here we have combined the two.


The Mother: But this is mainly because human beings, especially in their childhood, still need a certain excitement in order to make effort.   Blessings.    An obedient, willing and affectionate attitude. They are your elder brothers and sisters who take a lot of trouble to help you.


The Mother: Blessings.     This world is Himself. He wants everything — ourselves and the world and the whole universe — to become conscious once more of being Him.


The Mother: Blessings.     In a well-organized society, there should not be any beggars.  But as long as there are, do as you feel.  There are good reasons both for doing it and for not doing it.  Blessings


The Mother: There is no one for whom it is impossible to realise the Divine.  Only, for some it will take many, many lives, whereas there are others who will do it in this very lifetime. It is a question of will.  It is for you to choose.  But I must say that at the present moment conditions are particularly favourable.


The Mother: Blessings.    It means to become conscious of the Divine Presence in oneself or on the spiritual heights, and, once one is conscious of His Presence, to surrender to Him completely so that one no  longer has any other will than His, and ﬁnally to unite one’s consciousness with His. That is “to realise the Divine”.  Blessings.


The Mother:   Most often, it is the vital consciousness that goes out of the body and has the form, the appearance of the person’s body. If one person dreams of another, it means that both have met at night, most often in the vital region, but it can also happen elsewhere, in the subtle physical or the mental. There are any number of different possibilities in dreams.  Blessings.


The Mother:   Because the darkness tries to prevent the light from coming.  Blessings.     Because, symbolically, during the hours before midnight the sun is setting, while from the ﬁrst hour after midnight it begins to rise.


The Mother: Blessings.     There is only one love, the Divine Love, eternal, universal, equal for everyone and everything.  It is man (the human being) who calls all kinds of feelings “love”: all the desires, attractions, vital exchanges, sexual relations, attachments, even friendships, and many other things besides.


The Mother: But all that is not even the shadow of love nor even its deformation.  These are all mental and vital, sentimental or sexual activities, and nothing more.  Blessings.


The Mother: Desire is a vital movement, aspiration is a psychic movement.  When one has had a true aspiration, unselﬁsh and sincere, one cannot even ask the question anymore; for the vibration of aspiration, luminous and calm, has nothing to do with the vibration of desire, which is passionate, dark and often violent.  Selﬁshness means wanting everything for oneself, understanding nothing but oneself, caring for others only insofar as they are necessary or important to oneself. In French, selfrealisation () means discovering the divine centre in one’s being. In English, self-fulﬁlment is generally taken  in the sense “to be successful”.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo in his writings uses the word “self-realisation” to mean realisation of the Self, that is to say, becoming conscious of the Divine in oneself and identifying with Him.  Blessings.    The ﬁrst step is to ﬁnd, deep within oneself, behind the desires and impulses, a luminous consciousness which is always present and manifests the physical being.  Ordinarily, one becomes aware of the presence of this consciousness only when one has to face some danger or an unexpected event or a great sorrow.


The Mother: One has, then, to come into conscious contact with that and learn to do so at will. The rest will follow.  Generally it is in the heart, behind the solar plexus, that one ﬁnds this luminous presence.  Blessings.


The Mother: The vital is the receptacle of all the bad impulses, all wickedness, cowardice, weakness and avarice.  When the vital is converted, the impulses are good instead of being bad; wickedness is replaced by kindness, avarice by generosity; weakness disappears and strength and endurance take its place; cowardice is replaced by courage and energy.   The seat of power in action is in the puriﬁed vital.  Blessings.


The Mother: It is a question that all thinking people have asked.  Some have considered the problem more deeply and asked themselves whether human beings, who are so small and limited, could see things as they really are; and in the hope of understanding better, they have sought for a diviner vision, a global and true vision — with the result of Yoga. And those who have succeeded in their endeavour have found that when one is united with the Divine, one’s vision of things changes totally, and they have all come to the same conclusion: unite with the Divine and you will understand.  Blessings.


The Mother: To visit one’s parents is to return to an inﬂuence which is generally stronger than any other; and there are not many cases where the parents help you in your spiritual progress, because they are usually more interested in a worldly realisation.  Parents who are primarily interested in spiritual realisation usually do not ask their children to come back to them.  Blessings.


The Mother:   Because it is a chance to put in greater effort and thus make faster progress.  Blessings.    The work of unifying the being consists of: (1) becoming aware of one’s psychic being.


The Mother: (2) putting before the psychic being, as one becomes aware of them, all one’s movements, impulses, thoughts and acts of will, so that the psychic being may accept or reject each of these movements, impulses, thoughts or acts of will. Those that are accepted will be kept and carried out; those that are rejected will be driven out of the consciousness so that they may never come back again.  It is a long and meticulous work that may take years to be done properly.  Blessings.


The Mother: In search of a knowledge truer than ordinary knowledge.  The ﬁfth and ninth in understanding what death is.  The birthday in ﬁnding out the purpose of life.  Blessings.


The Mother: ()  I do not think that there are more accidents here than elsewhere.  Certainly there ought to be less. But for that, the children who study here must make an effort to grow in consciousness (a thing they could do more easily here than elsewhere). Unfortunately, however, few of them take the trouble to do it, so they lose the ﬁne opportunity that has been given to them.


The Mother:   Those who have done it and become conscious; the others remain half conscious like the vast majority of human beings.  Consciousness, the consciousness, gives control over one’s own character and, to a large extent, over events.    Why go to church?


The Mother: Are you Christians or do you want to become Christians?   Sri Aurobindo spent his whole life working to free men from the bondage of religions. Do you want to contradict his work for the sake of a childish idle curiosity?  Up to now, all those who have gone have done so without asking for permission, because they sensed that it would not be given.


The Mother:   The Hour of God  It so happens that we are not in an age when men have been left to their own means. The Divine has sent down His Consciousness to give them light. All who are able to do so should proﬁt by it.  Blessings.


The Mother:    Yes.  Primitive men were still too close to the animal to be able to enter into relation with the Inner Divine; it is only gradually, through thousands of years of ascending evolution, that men have learned to be conscious. Now they are ready to manifest a far higher consciousness, the consciousness that will act fully in the superman; and that is why this consciousness has come down on earth to work in all who are ready to receive it.  Blessings.


The Mother:   This great change is the appearance on earth of a new race that will be to man what man is to the animal. The consciousness of this new race is already at work on earth to give light to all who are capable of receiving it and heeding it.  Blessings.


The Mother: Say to the Supreme Lord: “Let Thy Will be done”, and remain as peaceful as possible.  If the departed one is a person one loves, one should concentrate one’s love on him in peace and calm, for that is what can most help the one who has departed.  Blessings.   It is the vital that gets touched and moved.


The Mother: If you watch mentally, the interest is no longer the same; instead of being moved or troubled, you can calmly judge the value of a ﬁlm, whether it is well made or well acted, or whether the scenes have any artistic value.   In the ﬁrst case you are a “good audience”, in the second case you are more peaceful.  Blessings.    I did not say that you must not read newspapers.


The Mother: I said that you must not blindly believe everything you read; you should know that the truth is altogether different.  Blessings.    The best way is to ﬁnd the truth in ourselves — then we shall be able to see the Truth wherever it is.  Blessings.


The Mother: We are at a moment of transition in the history of the earth.  It is merely a moment in eternal time, but this moment is long compared to human life. Matter is changing in order to prepare itself for the new manifestation, but the human body is not plastic enough and offers resistance; this is why the number of incomprehensible disorders and even diseases is increasing and becoming a problem for medical science.  The remedy lies in union with the divine forces that are at work and a receptivity full of trust and peace which makes the task easier.


The Mother:   Those who want to progress now have an exceptional chance, because the transformation begins with the opening of the consciousness to the action of the new forces; thus individuals have a unique and wonderful opportunity to open themselves to the divine inﬂuence.     The purpose of individual existence is the joy of discovering the Divine and uniting with Him.


The Mother: When one has understood this, then one is ready to gain the strength to surmount all difﬁculties.    A victory won over the lower nature gives a deeper and more lasting joy than any external success.    Sri Aurobindo has revealed to us a few of the marvels that the future will bring to the earth and has encouraged us to prepare ourselves for it.


The Mother:   Each one has his ego and all the egos are at odds with one another. It is only when one gets rid of the ego that one becomes a free being.  To be free, one must belong only to the Divine.


The Mother: In the difﬁcult hours of life, the imperative duty of each one is to overcome his ego in a total and unconditional self-giving to the Divine. Then the Divine will make you do what you have to do.   Supreme Lord, Inﬁnite Wisdom, At this perilous hour when egoisms are at odds and asserting themselves, the only safety lies in taking refuge in Thee!  Grant that nothing in us may be an obstacle to the fulﬁlment of Thy Will.  Grant that we may become conscious and effective collaborators in the fulﬁlment of Thy Will.


The Mother:   Difﬁcult hours come to the earth to compel men to overcome their small personal egoism and turn exclusively to the Divine for help and light. The wisdom of men is ignorant. Only the Divine knows.    Our human consciousness has windows that open upon the Inﬁnite.


The Mother: But generally men keep these windows carefully closed.  We have to open them wide and allow the Inﬁnite to enter us freely in order to transform us.  Two conditions are necessary to open the windows: (1) ardent aspiration; (2) progressive abolition of the ego.  The divine help is assured to those who set to work sincerely.


The Mother: The ego was necessary to form the individual being. Its destruction is therefore difﬁcult. There is a much better, though more difﬁcult solution: to transform it and make it an instrument of the Divine.  Egos that are converted and wholly consecrated to the Divine become especially powerful and effective instruments.  The endeavour is difﬁcult and demands an absolute and steadfast sincerity, but for those who have a strong will, an ardent aspiration and an unshakable sincerity, it is well worth undertaking.


The Mother: The method for each individual is worked out as the activity proceeds, for each ego has its own character and needs a particular method. The only qualities indispensable for all are absolute perseverance and sincerity. The least tendency to deceive oneself makes success impossible.     For you, the best way to begin is to ﬁnd your psychic being, to concentrate on it by making it the witness of all your inner movements and the judge of all that you should or should not do, and to strive to submit your external nature to its decisions.


The Mother:  The psychic being is the individual sheath of the Divine Presence.  It is found deep within oneself, beyond all thoughts.   Communications from the psychic do not come in a mental form. They are not ideas or reasonings. They have their own character quite distinct from the mind, something like a feeling that comprehends itself and acts.


The Mother: By its very nature, the psychic is calm, quiet and luminous, understanding and generous, wide and progressive. Its constant effort is to understand and progress.  The mind describes and explains.  The psychic sees and understands.   The psychic is conscious of its progressive formation during successive lives upon earth, so it has the memory of the important moments in its previous lives.


The Mother: The more the psychic has taken part in these physical lives on earth, the more numerous and precise its memories are.   Feeling alone in the midst of human beings is the sign that you are beginning to feel the need to ﬁnd in your own being contact with the Divine Presence. So you must concentrate in silence and  try to enter deep within to discover the Divine Presence in the depths of your consciousness, beyond all mental activity.    There comes a moment when life becomes intolerable without the Divine Presence.


The Mother: Therefore, give yourself entirely to the Divine and you will emerge into the Light.     One moment of conscious communion with the Divine can shatter all resistance, however powerful it may be.


The Mother:   In silence lies the greatest receptivity. And in an immobile silence the vastest action is done.  Let us learn to be silent so that the Lord may make use of us .


The Mother:  We shall have made a great leap towards realisation when we have driven all defeatism out of our consciousness.  It is by perfecting our faith in the Divine Grace that we shall be able to conquer the defeatism of the subconscient.


The Mother: Total union and the perfect manifestation of the Divine are the sole means of putting an end to the suffering and misery of the physical world which are the cause of subconscient pessimism.  It is only in perfect union with the Divine that the consciousness can emerge into the eternal delight. And this conscious union is the true goal of earthly existence.     To know why we live: discovery of the Divine and conscious union with Him.


The Mother: The aspiration to concentrate solely on this realisation.  To know how to transform all circumstances into a means of reaching this goal.   Prayer O Lord, awaken in me the ardent desire to know You.  I aspire to consecrate my life to Your service.


The Mother:   The best thing we can do to express our gratitude is to overcome all egoism in ourselves and make a constant effort towards this transformation. Human egoism refuses to abdicate on the grounds that others are not transformed. But that is the stronghold of bad will, for each one’s duty is to transform himself regardless of what others may do.  If men knew that this transformation, the abolition of egoism, is the only way to gain constant peace and delight, they would consent to make the necessary effort.


The Mother: This, then, is the conviction that must awaken in them.  Everyone should repeatedly be told: abol


The Mother: ish your ego and peace will reign in you.  The Divine help always responds to a sincere aspiration.     Human beings could be classiﬁed under four principal categories according to the attitude they take in life:


The Mother: ( 1 ) Those who live for themselves. They consider everything in relation to themselves and act accordingly. The vast majority of men are like this.   (2) Those who give their love to another human being and live for him. As for the result, everything naturally depends on the person one chooses to love.


The Mother: (3) Those who consecrate their life to the service of humanity through some activity done not for personal satisfaction but truly to be useful to others without calculation and without expecting any personal gain from their work.  (4) Those who give themselves entirely to the Divine and live only for Him and through Him. This implies making the effort required to ﬁnd the Divine, to be conscious of His Will and to work exclusively to serve Him.  In the ﬁrst three categories, one is naturally subject to the ordinary law of suffering, disappointment and sorrow.  It is only in the last category — if one has chosen it in all sincerity and pursued it with an unfailing patience — that one ﬁnds the certitude of total fulﬁlment and a constant luminous peace.


The Mother:    Do not live to be happy, live to serve the Divine, and the happiness you enjoy will exceed all expectation.   We are at a decisive hour in the history of the earth.


The Mother: It is preparing for the coming of the superman and because of this the old way of life is losing its value. We must strike out boldly on the path of the future despite its new demands. The pettinesses once tolerable, are tolerable no longer. We must widen ourselves to receive what is going to come.   The result of the creation is a detailed multiplication of consciousness.


The Mother: When the vision of the whole and the vision of all the details are united in a single active consciousness, the creation will have attained its progressive perfection.     In time and space no two human beings have the same consciousness, and the sum of all these consciousnesses is but a partial and diminished manifestation of the Divine Consciousness.  That is why I said “progressive perfection”, because the manifestation of the consciousness of detail is inﬁnite and unending.


The Mother:   The ﬁrst condition is not to have one’s own personal interest as a goal.   The ﬁrst qualities needed are boldness, courage and perseverance.  And then to be conscious that one knows nothing compared to what one ought to know, that one can do nothing compared to what one ought to do, that one is nothing compared to what one ought to be.


The Mother: One must have an invariable will to acquire what is lacking in one’s nature, to know what one does not yet know, to be able to do what one is not yet able to do.  One must constantly progress in the light and peace that come from the absence of personal desires.  One could take as a programme: “Always better. Forward!”  And to have only one goal: to know the Divine in order to be able to manifest Him.


The Mother: Persevere, and what you cannot do today you will be able to do tomorrow.    In principle, everything is possible by uniting consciously with the Divine Force.  But a method has to be found, and this depends on the case and the individual.  The ﬁrst condition is to have a physical nature that gives energy rather than draws energy from others.  The second indispensable condition is to know how to draw energy from above, from the inexhaustible impersonal source.


The Mother:   In this way the more one spends the more one receives, and one becomes an inexhaustible channel rather than a vessel that empties itself by giving.  It is through steadfast aspiration that one learns.


The Mother:  Sincerity, humility, perseverance and an insatiable thirst for progress are essential for a happy and fruitful life. Above all, one must be convinced that the possibility of progress is unlimited.  Progress is youth; one can be young at a hundred.   When the body has learned the art of constantly progressing towards an increasing perfection, we shall be well on the way to overcoming the inevitability of death.


The Mother: If the growth of consciousness were considered as the principal goal of life, many difﬁculties would ﬁnd their solution.  The best way to avoid growing old is to make progress the goal of our life.     To learn constantly, not just intellectually but psychologically, to progress in regard to character, to cultivate our qualities and correct our defects, so that everything may be an opportunity to cure ourselves of ignorance and incapacity — then life becomes tremendously interesting and worth living.


The Mother:   Sri Aurobindo came upon earth to announce the manifestation of the supramental world. And not only did he announce this manifestation but he also embodied in part the supramental force and gave us the example of what we must do to prepare ourselves for this manifestation. The best thing we can do is to study all he has told us, strive to follow his example and prepare ourselves for the new manifestation.  This gives life its true meaning and will help us to overcome all obstacles.


The Mother: Let us live for the new creation and we shall grow stronger and stronger while remaining young and progressive.   The energies that human beings use for reproduction and that occupy such a predominant place in their lives, should on the contrary be sublimated and used for progress and higher development so as to prepare the coming of the new race. But ﬁrst, the vital and the physical have to be free of all desire — otherwise one is courting disaster.


The Mother: The ﬁrst thing the physical consciousness must understand is that all the difﬁculties we meet with in life come from the fact that we do not rely exclusively on the Divine for the help we need.  The Divine alone can liberate us from the mechanism of universal Nature. And this liberation is indispensable for the birth and development of the new race.  It is only by giving ourselves entirely to the Divine in perfect trust and gratitude that the difﬁculties will be overcome.


The Mother:   To want what the Divine wants, in all sincerity, is the essential condition for peace and joy in life. Almost all human miseries come from the fact that men are nearly always convinced that they know better than the Divine what they need and what life ought to give them. Most human beings want other human beings to conform to their expectations and circumstances to conform to their desires — therefore they suffer and are unhappy.  It is only when one gives oneself in all sincerity to the Divine Will that one has the peace and calm joy which come from the abolition of desires.


The Mother: The psychic being knows this with certainty; so, by uniting with one’s psychic, one can know it. But the ﬁrst condition is not to be subject to one’s desires and mistake them for the truth of one’s being.     The ﬁrst necessity for each one is his own transformation, and the best way to help the world is to realise the Divine oneself.


The Mother:    In the depths of our being, in the silence of contemplation, a luminous force ﬂoods our consciousness with a vast and luminous peace which prevails over all petty reactions and prepares us for union with the Divine — the very purpose of individual existence.     Thus, the purpose and goal of life is not suffering and struggle but an all-powerful and happy realisation.


The Mother: All the rest is painful illusion.     When humanity was ﬁrst created, the ego was the unifying element. It was around the ego that the different states of being were grouped; but now that the birth of superhumanity is being prepared, the ego has to disappear and give way to the psychic being, which has slowly been formed by divine intervention in order to manifest the Divine in the human being.


The Mother: It is under the psychic inﬂuence that the Divine manifests in man and thus prepares the coming of superhumanity.  The psychic is immortal and it is through the psychic that immortality can be manifested on earth.  So the important thing now is to ﬁnd one’s psychic, unite with it and allow it to replace the ego, which will be compelled either to get converted or disappear.


The Mother: The ﬁrst thing one learns on the way is that the joy of giving is far greater than the joy of taking.  Then gradually one learns that to forget oneself is the source of immutable peace. Later on, in this self-forgetfulness, one ﬁnds the Divine, and that is the source of an ever-increasing bliss.   Sri Aurobindo told me one day that if men knew this and were convinced of it, they would all want to do yoga.


The Mother:   Human consciousness is so corrupted that men prefer the miseries of the ego and its ignorance to the luminous joy that comes from a sincere surrender to the Divine. So great is their blindness that they refuse even to try the experiment and would rather be subject to the miseries of their ego than make the effort needed to get rid of them.  So completely blind are they that they would not hesitate to make the Divine a slave of their ego, if such a thing were possible, in order to avoid giving themselves to the Divine.


The Mother:   Supreme Lord, teach us to be silent, that in the silence we may receive Your force and understand Your will.   We want to be true servitors of the Divine.  “Supreme Lord, Perfect Consciousness, You alone know truly what we are, what we can do, what progress we must make to be capable and worthy of serving You as we would. Make us conscious of our possibilities, but also of our difﬁculties so that we may overcome them in order to serve You faithfully.”


The Mother: The supreme happiness is to be true servitors of the Divine.     For those who want always to progress, there are three major ways of progressing: (1) To widen the ﬁeld of one’s consciousness.


The Mother: ( 2) To understand ever better and more completely what one knows.  (3) To ﬁnd the Divine and surrender more and more to his Will.   In other words, this means: (1) To constantly enrich the possibilities of the instrument.


The Mother: (2) To ceaselessly perfect the functioning of this instrument.  (3) To make this instrument increasingly receptive and obedient to the Divine.  To learn to understand and do more and more things. To purify oneself of all that prevents one from being totally surrendered to the Divine. To make one’s consciousness more and more receptive to the Divine Inﬂuence.


The Mother: One could say: to widen oneself more and more, to deepen oneself more and more, to surrender oneself more and more completely.     What is commonly called faithfulness is a scrupulous compliance with the promises one has made. But the only true and binding faithfulness is faithfulness to the Divine — and that is the faithfulness we all ought to acquire through sincere and sustained effort.


The Mother: When the whole being, in all its parts and all its activities, can say to the Divine in all sincerity: “Whatever You will, whatever You will”, then one is well on the way to the true faithfulness.    Life on earth is essentially a ﬁeld for progress. But how brief life is for all the progress that has to be made!   To waste one’s time seeking the satisfaction of one’s petty desires is sheer folly.


The Mother: True happiness is possible only when one has found the Divine.     Supreme Lord, Perfection that we must become, Perfection that we must manifest.  This body lives by You alone and goes on repeating to You: “Whatever You will, whatever You will” until the day when it shall automatically know what You will because its consciousness will be totally united with Yours.


The Mother:  Grant that I may become conscious of Your Presence.   Lord, we implore You, grant that nothing in us may reject Your Presence and that we may become what You want us to be; grant that all in us may conform to Your Will.    Lord, give us the silence of Your contemplation, the silence rich with Your effective Presence.


The Mother:   Grant that our silence may be ﬁlled with Your Presence and that we may be fully conscious of it.  Grant that we may know that You are our life, our consciousness and our being, and that without You everything is merely illusion.    Grant that we may identify ourselves with Your Eternal Consciousness so that we may know truly what Immortality is.


The Mother:  To prepare for immortality, the consciousness of the body must ﬁrst identify itself with the Eternal Consciousness.     A ﬁfteen-year-old girl asked: “What is Truth?”


The Mother: I answered: “The Will of the Supreme Lord.”  It is a subject for contemplative meditation.     This truth that man has vainly sought to know will be the birthright of the new race, the race of tomorrow, the superman.


The Mother: To live according to Truth will be his birthright.  Let us do our best to prepare the coming of the New Being. The mind must fall silent and be replaced by the TruthConsciousness — the consciousness of details harmonised with the consciousness of the whole.


The Mother: 3   No, it is not all right not to sleep. It is necessary to sleep very quietly and well. Besides, this does not prevent you, when you dream, from being conscious of your dreams. What is it that prevents you from sleeping?


The Mother: You must tell me everything very sincerely and without fear.  Telling me everything very frankly brings you closer to me.  Power.   Swiftness of movement.  The soul.


The Mother: Some birds have a meaning, but it is not one and the same for all birds.  The parrot signiﬁes “ﬂuency of speech” and the elephant “strength”.   The dog on the envelope means: obedience.  It is a seal — a very clever animal that can be taught all sorts of tricks, even juggling.


The Mother: Victory.   It is not a rabbit, it is a and the hare means “prudence”.  That is good, my child; I trust you and I know that you will never deliberately do anything I do not like. So you must not be sad nor dwell on the past, but think only of the joy of not making any more mistakes on this point in the future.


The Mother: And you may be sure that my affection will always be with you to help you to do the right thing.  You must not regret. It is always better to be frank and open; that is the best way to correct one’s mistakes.   You were quite wrong to quarrel. I completely disapprove of this behaviour.


The Mother: You are still a child and ought to respect your elders. Besides, it is the worst possible way to get something from someone.  You say, “I shirts”; that is not the way to speak. By what right does a desire or preference dare to impose itself in this way?  After enquiring I shall tell you what can be done.


The Mother: If you didn’t quarrel, it is all right. means to say unpleasant things to each other with violence.   The reindeer on the envelope is the symbol of endurance.


The Mother: ( )  I am sending you the bird of your name: Peace.   The cat means receptivity.


The Mother: The pelican on the envelope is the symbol of devotedness.   Yes, you should not fear, you should keep an entire faith in the Divine Grace. The second point is to keep your body wellbalanced by getting enough sleep — seven hours out of twentyfour — and enough food.  Not necessarily.


The Mother: One part of the subconscient is always alert, and having the will to wake up at a certain time is enough for that part to wake you.   By the surrender of the vital, its opening to the light, and the growth of consciousness.  Not laughing or thinking, that is going a bit too far!   That is a bit too much.


The Mother: Control over one’s speech is more important than complete silence. The best thing is to learn to say only what is useful in the most accurate and truthful way possible.  It is an excellent condition which can be maintained without any harm, but it must be sincere. That is, it must not be an appearance of calm, but a true and deep calm which spontaneously keeps you silent.  It is an antelope, with the signiﬁcance “swiftness of movement”.


The Mother: The goat is “agility”.  ( )  The envelope I am sending you represents the obscure movements of the vital in the nature.   After Truth comes Truth and again Truth!


The Mother: It is not good to lie in bed when you are awake; it is more tiring than restful and it also increases tamas. It is better to jump out of bed as soon as you wake up; then in the evening you will feel sleepy and can get to sleep earlier. The hours of sleep  are the best and most restful.  Yes, it is morally true and one day it will also be physically true.   Do not waste time reading frivolous and unwholesome things.


The Mother: Do not waste your energy in idle small talk.  Compassion is the equivalent of. It is a pity full of strength and kindness, a pity that pardons and makes amends, forgets all offences and wants always what is best for everyone.  One needs to have reached a pinnacle of wisdom before one can hope never to be mistaken. All of you have much to do before that.


The Mother: He is very young — he will grow out of it. Have you no vanity at all in you that you can reproach others with it?  I advise you to be very attentive and scrupulous about saying  only what is perfectly accurate. It is very easy to make things up when one is telling a dream and then it no longer has any value.  The lion is the symbol of power.


The Mother: It would be better to say that under the control of the Divine Will, power is beneﬁcent, while without that control it harms everyone and becomes terrible.   ( )  What an ugly picture you have sent me! The men are sinister brutes, the cruellest of all living creatures.


The Mother: These are things one cannot speak about; they have to be discovered through personal experience.  It is not in own strength that you should have faith. It is in   divine force, which works in all who are consecrated to the Divine and sustains them in their action.  I repeat: having faith in cannot take you very far and it is certain that sooner or later you will feel a reaction and be obliged to stop.  First establish the true attitude, which is to ﬁnd your base, your support and your help in — then all possibility of fatigue will disappear.


The Mother: Until then it is better to let the servant do at least part of the work, which you can supervise if you like.  The faith is in your active consciousness and your will, but it  is not yet in your body; that is why your body feels tired and suffers; you must give it some rest. Until you know how to organise your work and eliminate all the useless coming and going, it would be better to give up the sweeping work and leave it to a servant; or if you insist on doing the sweeping, you should ﬁnd someone to take care of your garden.  If you are tired, you must organise your work to avoid so much coming and going.  Since you feel that you are weak in regard to women, never touch a woman.


The Mother: Never allow a woman to touch you.  Joy comes from surrender to the divine command.   Why do you always want things to be easy?  Yes, it is better to rest for a little while during the day. At your age you are still growing and you need a lot of rest alternated with strenuous activity.


The Mother: “If you wish” obviously implies that there is a risk that the consequences of what you want to do may not be very good for your Sadhana, but also that perhaps you are not yet ready to make the progress necessary for you not to do what you would like to do.  Fix your mind on the aspiration and dismiss everything else.   Dismiss them.


The Mother: Listen in a total silence of your whole being — mental, vital and physical.  Yes, it is good, if they are given. What is not good is to ask.  It is taught in advanced grammar courses, and there are also special books.


The Mother: One of the principal rules of style is that in a prose passage one should not use “I” except when it is absolutely impossible to avoid it, and in any case  with “I”. This gives you an idea of what you must do to give some style to your daily report!  You should eat in moderation, that is to say, without taking too much, because gluttony is always bad.   What is done in a hurry is never done well.  It is a contact established with the psychic, the true soul.


The Mother: Vital movements (desire, anger, fright, etc.) produce vibrations which spread through the atmosphere like waves of electricity and strike those who are open, sensitive or weak.   If your day were organised more logically, avoiding a lot of useless coming and going, you would certainly have time to rest.  I don’t see how feeling uneasy or sad can help to ﬁnd what has been lost or repair what has been broken!   Plants too can open to the Divine.


The Mother: Yes, but kerosene is dangerous to plants — be careful not to kill them along with the insects.   Shake it off, as you shake off the dust from your feet.   During sleep one often comes in contact with undesirable forces and things, which drain your vital forces so that when you wake up you feel weak and depressed.


The Mother: When one no longer feels any attraction for the other, false happiness.   Real happiness is of divine origin; it is pure and . Ordinary happiness is of vital origin; it is impure and depends on circumstances.  It is the energy that creates and sustains life in the physical organism; it is this energy which is used, when it is consecrated to the Divine, to transform the body and its activities.  No, it is not true.


The Mother: Mockery is not at all a sign of intellectual superiority, but of ignorant mental arrogance. The psychic never mocks.  It is certainly very bad to speak about the faults of others.  Each one has his faults and to emphasise them in your thoughts certainly does not help to cure them.  I am not a sannyasi and I never read a newspaper! I don’t have time for it.


The Mother: It is difﬁcult to read newspapers without having the consciousness descend to a very ordinary level. Only when the consciousness is ﬁrmly established in union with the Divine is it possible to read newspapers without any risk of falling into a lower consciousness.  If you want to progress in yoga, you should receive things only from the Divine.  It is a very common movement of the consciousness, which ﬁnds it somewhat difﬁcult to remain in a state higher than its ordinary condition .


The Mother: The cyclone was the result of a violent attack of hostile forces.   Yes.  Silence cannot cure all the impurities, but it alleviates a great many of them.  It isn’t, but it is very difﬁcult to do otherwise.


The Mother: When the vital is converted — that is, when it the Divine.   We should not get upset about the mistakes we make; we need only maintain a — then all will be well in the end.  An is not enough to change the course of events. Only aspiration or faith can do that — for it is aspiration and faith that allow the Divine Grace to act.  Yes, if it is sincere in its aspiration, it will soon be converted.


The Mother: An aspiration that is not mixed with any egoistic or selfinterested calculation.   Only the love that is based on the Divine Presence can remain unmixed and present no obstacle to the sadhana.  Repulsion is always a bad thing and just the other side of attachment.  It is never good to tell someone that he is weak. That is not the way to make him strong — on the contrary!


The Mother: That is because when people meet outside their work they usually indulge in idle chit-chat and it is not good for them.   In her case you should apply the same rule that applies to other Sadhaks. See her only when it is necessary and speak to her only when it is indispensable.  You can always tell her that you don’t like to chat idly.  Our aim is quite different.


The Mother: It is most unlikely that for a long time to come any new centres will be established, at least with our full approval. What we want to realise requires concentration rather than expansion.  Not necessarily. It all depends on the development of the consciousness.   Thinking too much about one’s impurities does not help.


The Mother: It is better to keep your thought ﬁxed on the purity, light and peace that you want to acquire.  Why disturb the rest with useless questions? The mind also should be at rest.  I see no reason why meditation, properly done, should be a hindrance to study — quite the opposite. Only if what you call “meditation” is not meditation at all, but a state of and drowsiness, can it harm your studies; and as that state is thoroughly undesirable from every point of view, of course it is better not to indulge in it.


The Mother: It is an active and deliberate concentration on the Divine Presence and a sustained, alert contemplation of that Sublime Reality.   If you mean the pressure of inert passivity, it comes from the resistance of the lower vital and the obscurity of the material nature. It can be overcome by an untiring will and aspiration.   The depression was in the general atmosphere and it attacked everyone who was open to it.


The Mother: Pay no attention to it and behave as if it were not there.  This is not correct. You can see and feel things at a distance, things that are outside of you. In the same way you can feel depression in the atmosphere before it touches you.


The Mother: Yes, that is all there is to do. When you no longer have any weakness for women, they will stop pursuing you.    Think of other things.  If you could just understand that what I do is  and never for the good of a few at the expense of others, you would very soon overcome your jealousy and be delivered from this painful sore spot.


The Mother: Be convinced that what I do for you is always exactly what you need in order to advance on the way; then all jealousy and envy will disappear.   It was the inﬂuence of her external will acting on your mind and vital.  That proves that her will is as strong as yours — and that is very good. By what right do you want your will to act on others?


The Mother: Each one must be free. Only the Guru has the right to impose his will upon the will of the disciple who has chosen him.   Certainly; but in return the vital being often inﬂuences the mind and creates doubts in it.


The Mother: The psychic is depressed.  It is the part of the mind that is converted; it detaches itself from the rest, observes. judges and regrets the behaviour of the ordinary mind and the unregenerate vital.  I tell you that because it is divine by nature, and  No, no, no. Do you understand?


The Mother: The psychic may see and regret the stupidity of the other parts of the being, but by its very nature it is impossible for it to be depressed.  It is always very good when someone has a strong will.  This simply shows that you are more open to Y’s inﬂuence than your sister is to yours. It is always regrettable when one is open to the inﬂuence of another person. One should receive no other inﬂuence than that of the Divine.


The Mother: Let the mind receive the light from above and refuse to be inﬂuenced.   Pay no attention to her, in thought and deed.   Because you feel an attraction for her, and her will seems to be stronger than yours.


The Mother: That is a desire or an instinct rather than a will.  I am not saying it is good that she wants to talk with you; I am saying that in general it is good to have a strong will. When you have a strong will you have only to direct it properly; when you do not have a will you ﬁrst have to develop one, which always takes time and is sometimes difﬁcult.  Before asking random questions you would do well to think a bit and try to understand by yourself.  I had a notice put up when there were a lot of outside visitors who all used to stay, and also because more and more people were getting into the habit of sitting down after pranam and watching the others, as if it were some kind of show.


The Mother: But if only a few people stay, I do not mind.   You must that it may be true and lasting .  Educate it, exercise it, as you exercise your muscles — through use.  You should write only when the prayer comes spontaneously.


The Mother: It is better not to look at it too much and to turn your attention to more interesting things. One becomes what one thinks: you should think of the strength, the uprightness, the sincerity you wish to become.   You seem to be very conscious already of what ought and ought not to be done, but with you the difﬁculty begins with putting it into practice. You should ask, not for more knowledge, but for the strength and courage to apply sincerely and scrupulously the little you already know.  Who told you that your nature is inferior to X’s?


The Mother: Each one has his own nature and follows his own path, and comparisons with others are always useless and most often dangerous.  You should not attach too much importance to these little things.  The important thing is never to lose sight of the ideal you wish to realise and always do your best to realise it.   Consecration of love.  You could smile at her if you smile at others.


The Mother: In a way smiling at your sister would be less dangerous than smiling at Y or Z.  This resolution is perhaps a bit severe. That was not the object of my remark, but rather that you should not treat your sister too badly — for she can make nothing of it. The truth is this: your consecration to the Divine should be so complete that you no longer attach any importance to these relations with others.  You should concern yourself more with strengthening your consecration to the Divine than with working out the details of your relations with people.