The Mother: But if one is attached to forms, one can never go any farther.  It is difﬁcult to go so far unless the mind is free and dwells in the light. It is one of the fairly indispensable conditions (although not absolutely indispensable). However, there are people who have no mental power and accept any dogma whatever without discussion; they feel that nothing can prevent them from having this inner urge which will put them in contact with the Divine.  But generally they do not have a mental life: it is very much restricted.


The Mother: Castes? What has that got to do with spiritual life? Absolutely nothing. It is merely a social organisation, that is all.  They say many things.


The Mother: Spiritual life does not depend upon these considerations, not at all. Certain social virtues depend upon them and solely because there exist in some environments special traditions of education and that some traditions are better than others. But that is all.  As for the question of not mixing blood, it is a subject for discussion. Because, for example, if you take the various kinds of dogs (excuse me, I do not mean to make an unfair comparison), still, the dog belonging to its kind of breed, when great care is taken to keep the type pure, to prevent any mixture, becomes more and more stupid, whilst the street-dog, product of mixed breed and sometimes a horror from the physical point of view — it is hideous, made of one kind crossed with another — is generally much superior from the point of view of intelligence.


The Mother: So even in these cases one cannot say.... Marriages in small communities, made within the caste, where no mixture is allowed, end usually in a gradual, progressive decline of intelligence in the group. It is not a selection, rather the contrary. New admixtures are always necessary to bring forth new types capable of manifesting progress.... From the social point of view, this is quite justiﬁable, and it is very convenient and simple: it gives frames allowing precisely an easier organisation but that is all the worth it has.


The Mother: But I believe it is the same for the caste as for the country. Each caste is convinced that it alone holds the maximum progress possible! And when you hear people speaking, even those who are outcastes are full of contempt for the others and believe themselves superior.   It is difﬁcult to say. Logically the whole creation must advance more and more towards the Divine, because it is its ultimate goal.


The Mother: But in fact it is a peculiar movement, for one takes three steps forward and two backward; one takes two steps forward and one sideways! So, it will take very long to arrive at the goal.  It looks like that.  There is a great difference between the general principle, the theory seen in its totality over the millenniums, without taking any account of the number of years (not years, I say millenniums, thousands of centuries), a great difference between that and the practical facts. It can be said that the whole creation is moving towards union with its Creator, but there is the fact, ﬁrst of all, that the whole evolutionary movement is a spiral movement.


The Mother: And in this spiral there are innumerable points, and at each point a progress in the vertical line is achieved. But one has to make a whole round in order to come back once more to the same point, but at a slightly higher level.... And so, all the time you spend doing other things, reaching other points, the ﬁrst one is as it were forgotten. In human history that is translated in this way: There is a wonderful civilisation with all kinds of extraordinary productions, from the scientiﬁc point of view, the artistic point of view, even the political, organisational and social point of view. There were ﬁne civilisations like those which have left a kind of occult memory of a continent that might have linked India with Africa, for example, of which no trace remains (unless some human races be the remnants of that civilisation).


The Mother: There are civilisations like that which disappear suddenly and then follows a whole period full of darkness, unconsciousness, ignorance, of  altogether primitive races which seem so close to animals that one asks whether there is really any difference. And so there is a big hole in the darkness, passing through all kinds of disorders.  Then all of a sudden it emerges above, at an even higher level, with greater virtues, a greater realisation... as though all those hours in the night, of labour in the night had prepared Matter so that it might express something higher. Then again another darkness, an oblivion: the earth becomes again barbarous, obscure, ignorant, painful. And suddenly some thousands of years later, a new civilisation comes....


The Mother: So if you look at that from below, you ask yourself: “Where is the progress?” Because always it disappears, collapses or it rots, is ruined completely — and is forgotten. And mankind becomes once again something very ordinary, amorphous, grovelling in a half-obscurity. And then yet once more suddenly there is an illumination. And while one is in the midst of the illumination one says, “Now, we have it, it is the right thing, now we must not fall again....”


The Mother: So far there has always been a relapse.  We shall see.  That, my child, I have not said. I have said nothing, I said: “We shall see.”  In reality, I believe it depends somewhat upon each one of us and on our aspiration.


The Mother: If everyone does all that is needed and the maximum he can do, there is a chance of arriving at a stabilised stage where the upward movement will go on without the need to destroy anything in order to begin again.  It is not indispensable, but it has always been so till now, and indeed, I don’t know if Nature does not take great pleasure in it....  It happens we are obliged to take our support on what Nature has done, because it is she who has been at work till  now. But at the same time we do not approve of her ways of working. So, that produces a small inner conﬂict (in the family, if I may say so!); but it makes things somewhat difﬁcult, because she does not like her way of being to be disturbed.


The Mother: And yet, if one goes on doing as she wants, then it will always be the same story, always there will have to be this disappearing and beginning again, for it is her play. Hence one must be able to prevent her from destroying. But if by chance a good way is found to get her interested and make her collaborate, then with her collaboration it would be possible to succeed.   In reality, all that is needed is to make her understand that things can be done in another way than hers.


The Mother: And then since she possesses (as you see) a wonderful ingenuity and a truly fantastic imagination.... You have only to look at animals or to photograph them. If you look at that and compare the little mouse with the giraffe or the elephant with the cat, all those animals that were once there and all the animals that still have extraordinary and queer forms — what an imagination, what a tremendous imagination! If you had to create all the animals that are on earth, you would have found it rather difﬁcult!


The Mother: Now that you see them, it appears to you quite natural.... I saw the other day a picture representing simply a giraffe picking fruits from far up a tree. I said: “One must have some imagination to ﬁnd that, an animal having a neck long enough to reach the top of a tree so that it may eat the fruit!” It is wonderful. And everything is like that.


The Mother: It appears to us quite natural because we have always lived with it, but one must truly have a genius....  So, the person who has the genius as well as the power to realise whatever she imagines, does not like very much people meddling in her affairs! She says: “Are you capable of doing what I do?”  You must convince her that you don’t want to upset anything she is doing, but that you wish simply to bring in something more. There is only one way to convince her: to do it.


The Mother: So long  as it is an aspiration, she smiles, she looks on, she says: “Let us see, let us see, what are you going to do?”  But when it will have been done, I believe, she will say: “It is all right.”  So there is only one way, it is to do it.   Through afﬁnity. For the quality, the nature of the consciousness is visible in the divine domain.


The Mother: It has a special vibration, a special light and this can be perceived. And so, when there is  an afﬁnity (sometimes merely an afﬁnity, sometimes an identity, depending on the being’s degree of perfection), the Force goes there. Those who are still in the course of formation but whose psychic being is sufﬁciently developed are seen, their vibrations are seen, the being that is there is seen and accordingly the degree of manifestation is determined, the exact line of manifestation, the importance and conditions of the manifestation. All that is included in the inner vision.  That may happen, everything is possible.


The Mother: But generally... I told you this the other day, when I spoke of the rebirth of psychic beings, I told you that from their domain they see a certain vibration, a certain light and they know that it is there that they must go. But when they drop down, most of the time they drop into unconsciousness and lose their faculties, at least for the moment. In the end they will come to themselves. But it takes time to recover, it comes as one progresses, through successive illuminations.


The Mother: That depends on people. It is the vital in those who have a stronger vital and the mental in those who have a stronger mental being. You mean in the same person? That depends absolutely on which one is more active and more strong.


The Mother: In what way? In each person the combination is different, so one cannot make a general rule and say how it must be. One can say that in certain types of cases, it is like this, and in certain others it is like that.  But to tell the truth, I do not believe that much progress  can be made if the two do not agree, if one pulls one way and the other another. It will always be difﬁcult.


The Mother: And generally it is better if the mind is converted ﬁrst, for it is the mind that must have the power to organise the other parts of the being.  ( ) Someone here has just sent a mental formation that... has taken, if you like, the shape of a blue paper on which something was written.  It dropped down whirling, and dropped upon one of you.


The Mother: So I would like to know if anyone has all of a sudden received some sensational answer?... Nobody?... I could not spot who it was among you, for it fell twirling.... Too bad. But it dropped upon one of you.


The Mother: It was some blue paper, it took the form of a blue paper and there was a very interesting answer upon it. Nobody received anything? Didn’t some idea all of a sudden enter your head? No? (


The Mother: )  Well, you pass your life in quarrelling with yourself! One draws you to one side and the other tries to be your good mentor but you don’t listen to it. So you feel as though pulled from all sides.  You know what you ought to do and you do not do it.


The Mother: You know what ought not to be done and you do it. And because you do stupid things, you feel sorry. So there are two things, you are unhappy for two reasons: ﬁrst of all, because of the stupid things you have done, and then due to the regret they bring. It is a somewhat painful situation....


The Mother: Convert the vital? Surely one can. It is a difﬁcult task, but it can be done. If it could not be done, then there would be no hope. But generally the mind is not sufﬁcient.


The Mother: For, I have known very many people who could see very clearly, understand very well, were mentally thoroughly convinced, could even describe to you and  tell you extraordinary things, could easily give excellent lessons to others, but their vital was up to all sorts of tricks and would not listen at all to all that. It said, “It is all the same to me, say what you may; as for myself, I go my own way!”  It is only when contact with the psychic has been established that this can convert anything at all — even the worst criminal — in a moment. These are those “illuminations” which seize you and turn you inside out completely. After that, all goes well.


The Mother: There may be slight difﬁculties of adjustment, but still things go well.  But the mind is a big preacher, that is its nature: it gives speeches, sermons, as it is done in the churches. So the vital usually gets impatient and answers the mind, not very politely: “You are a nuisance! what you say is very good for you, but for me it won’t do.” Or, at the best, when the mind is gifted with especially remarkable capacities and the vital is of a little higher kind, it may say: “Oh! how beautiful it is, what you tell me (sometimes this happens), but you see, I, I am unable to do it; it is very beautiful, but it is beyond my capacity.”


The Mother: But this vital is a strange creature. It is a being of passion, enthusiasm and naturally of desire; but, for example, it is quite capable of getting enthusiastic over something beautiful, of admiring, sensing anything greater and nobler than itself. And if really anything very beautiful occurs in the being, if there is a movement having an exceptional value, well, it may get enthusiastic and it is capable of giving itself with complete devotion — with a generosity that is not found, for example, in the mental domain nor in the physical. It has that fullness in action that comes precisely from its capacity to get enthused and throw itself wholly without reserve into what it does. Heroes are always people who have a strong vital, and when the vital becomes passionate about something, it is no longer a reasonable being but a warrior; it is wholly involved in its action and can perform exceptional things because it does not calculate, does not reason, does not say “One must take precautions, one must not do this,  must not do that.”


The Mother: It becomes reckless, it gets carried away, as people say, it gives itself totally. Therefore, it can do magniﬁcent things if it is guided in the right way.  A converted vital is an all-powerful instrument. And sometimes it gets converted by something exceptionally beautiful, morally or materially. When it witnesses, for example, a scene of total self-abnegation, of uncalculating self-giving — one of those things so exceedingly rare but splendidly beautiful — it can be carried away by it, it can be seized by an ambition to do the same thing.


The Mother: It begins by an ambition, it ends with a consecration.  There is only one thing the vital abhors; it is a dull life, monotonous, grey, tasteless, worthless. Faced with that, it goes to sleep, falls into inertia. It likes extremely violent things, it is true; it can be extremely wicked, extremely cruel, extremely generous, extremely good and extremely heroic. It always goes to extremes and can be on one side or the other, yes, as the current ﬂows.


The Mother: And this vital, if you place it in a bad environment, it will imitate the bad environment and do bad things with violence and to an extreme degree. If you place it in the presence of something wonderfully beautiful, generous, great, noble, divine, it can be carried away with that also, forget everything else and give itself wholly. It will give itself more completely than any other part of the being, for it does not calculate. It follows its passion and enthusiasm. When it has desires, its desires are violent, arbitrary, and it does not at all take into account the good or bad of others; it doesn’t care the least bit.


The Mother: But when it gives itself to something beautiful, it does not calculate either, it will give itself entirely without knowing whether it will do good or harm to it. It is a very precious instrument.  It is like a horse of pure breed: if it lets itself be directed, then it will win all the races, everywhere it will come ﬁrst. If it is untamed, it will trample people and cause havoc and break its own legs or back! It is like that.


The Mother: The one thing to know is  to which side it will turn. It loves exceptional things — exceptionally bad or exceptionally good, it loves the exceptional. It does not like ordinary life. It becomes dull, it becomes half inert.  And if it is shut up in a corner and told: “Keep quiet there”, it will remain there and become more and more like something crumbling away, and ﬁnally just like a mummy: there is no more life in it, it is dried up.


The Mother: And one will no longer have the strength to do what one wants to do. One will have ﬁne ideas, excellent intentions, but one won’t have the energy to execute them.  So do not wail if you have a powerful vital, but you must have strong reins and hold them quite ﬁrmly. Then things go well.


The Mother: Oh, yes. All your troubles, depression, discouragement, disgust, fury, all, all come from the vital. It is that which turns love into hate, it is that which induces the spirit of vengeance, rancour, bad will, the urge to destroy and to harm. It is that which discourages you when things are difﬁcult and not to its liking. And it has an extraordinary capacity for going on strike!


The Mother: When it is not satisﬁed, it hides in a corner and does not budge. And then you have no more energy, no more strength, you have no courage left. Your will is like... like a withering plant. All resentment, disgust, fury, all despair, grief, anger — all that comes from this gentleman. For it is energy in action.


The Mother: Therefore, it depends on which side it turns. And I tell you, it has a very strong habit of going on strike. That is its most powerful weapon: “Ah! you are not doing what I want, well, I am not going to move, I shall sham dead.” And it does that for the least reason.


The Mother: It has a very bad character; it is very touchy and it is very spiteful — yes, it is very ill-natured. For I believe it is very conscious of its power and it feels clearly that if it gives itself wholly, there is nothing that will resist the momentum of its force. And like all people who have a weight in the balance,  the vital also bargains: “I shall give you my energy, but you must do what I want. If you do not give me what I ask for, well, I withdraw my energy.” And you will be ﬂat as a pancake.


The Mother: And it is true, it happens like that.  It is difﬁcult to regulate it. Yet naturally, when you have succeeded in taming it, you have something powerful in hand for realisation. It is that which can carry by storm the biggest obstacles. It is that which is capable of turning an idiot into an intelligent person — it alone can do so; for if one yearns passionately for progress, if the vital takes it into its head that one must progress, even the greatest idiot can become intelligent!


The Mother: I have seen this, I am not speaking from hearsay; I have seen it, I have seen people who were dull, stupid, incapable of understanding, who understood nothing — you could go on explaining something to them for months, it would not enter, as though one were speaking to a block of wood — and then all of a sudden their vital was caught in a passion; they wanted simply to please someone or get something, and for that one had to understand, one had to know, it was necessary. Well, they set everything moving, they shook up the sleeping mind, they poured energy into all the corners where there was none; and they understood, they became intelligent. I knew someone who knew nothing practically, understood nothing, and who, when the mind started moving and the passion for progress took possession of him, began to write wonderful things. I have them with me. And when the movement withdrew, when the vital went on strike (for sometimes it went on strike, and withdrew), the person became once again absolutely dull.


The Mother: Naturally it is very difﬁcult to establish a constant contact between the most external physical consciousness and the psychic consciousness, and oh! the physical consciousness has plenty of goodwill; it is very regular, it tries a great deal, but it is slow and heavy, it takes long, it is difﬁcult to move it. It does not get tired, but it makes no effort; it goes its way, quietly. It can take centuries to put the external consciousness in contact  with the psychic. But for some reason or other the vital takes a hand in it.


The Mother: A passion seizes it. It wants this contact (for some reason or other, which is not always a spiritual reason), but it wants this contact. It wants it with all its energy, all its strength, all its passion, all its fervour: in three months the thing is done.  So then, take great care of it. Treat it with great consideration but never submit to it.


The Mother: For it will drag you into all kinds of troublesome and untoward experiments; and if you succeed in convincing it in some way or other, then you will advance with giant strides on the path.   Because in the physical world, in order that things do not get mixed up, it was necessary that it should be somewhat ﬁxed. If, for example, your body were so subtle and plastic that suddenly it began to melt just like that, in the presence of another person, it would be quite annoying! Or when you come nearer, if both were to get mixed up, it would be rather unpleasant! So, because of this, there was a greater concentration, a kind of ﬁxity in the  force to separate (it is indeed for the sake of separating) one individuality from another.


The Mother: And this ﬁxity is just what prevents the body from progressing as rapidly as it could and should.  And as one grows up and reaches one’s normal height and constitution, one becomes still more rigid. For children have this plasticity of growth, they are changing all the time, they are visibly changing. Therefore so long as they are young and are growing and developing, they have a certain plasticity in them, but when you are over forty and as generally in life you then sit down and think that you have reached your goal and are about to gather the fruit of your labour, you become dry and hard like wood and even like stone in the end. And as the body is no longer able to adapt itself to the movement of inner transformation, it drags, it ages and cannot keep pace any more, it dries up.


The Mother: That depends altogether upon the person. For everyone it is different. There are people — for example, writers, musicians, artists — people who have lived on intellectual heights, who feel that they still have something further to do, that they have not ﬁnished what they had undertaken to do, have not reached the goal they had ﬁxed for themselves, so they are ready to remain in the earth atmosphere as long as they can, with as much cohesiveness as possible and they try to manifest themselves and continue their progress in other human bodies. I have seen many such cases, I have seen the very interesting case of a musician who was a pianist (a pianist of great worth), who had hands which were a marvel of skill, accuracy, precision, force, rapidity of movement, indeed, it was absolutely remarkable.


The Mother: This man died relatively young with the feeling that if he had continued to live he would have continued to progress in his musical expression. And such was the intensity of his aspiration that his subtle hands maintained their form without being dissolved, and each time he met anyone a little receptive and passive and a good  musician, his hands would enter the hands of those who were playing — the person who was playing at the time could play well but in an ordinary way; but at that moment he became not merely a virtuoso but a wonderful artist during the time he played. It was the hands of the other that were making use of his. This is a phenomenon I know. I have seen the same thing in the case of a painter: it was also a matter of hands.


The Mother: The same thing with regard to some writers, and here it was the brain that kept quite a precise form and entered the brain of someone who was sufﬁciently receptive and suddenly made him write extraordinary things, inﬁnitely more beautiful than anything he had written before. I saw that taking hold of someone. It was in the case of a composer of music — not one of those who execute, but who compose, like Beethoven, like Bach, like C´esar Franck (but C´esar Franck executed also). The composition of music is an extremely cerebral activity. Well, here also the brain of a great musician came in contact with one who was engaged in writing an opera and made him compose wonderful things and arranged on paper all the parts.


The Mother: He was busy writing an opera and it is extremely complex for the performers who have to bring out in the music the thought of the person who has composed; and that man (I knew him) when he received this formation had a blank paper before him and then he started writing; I saw him writing, putting lines, then some ﬁgures, on a big, very big page and when he reached the bottom, the orchestration of the Overture (for example, of a certain act) was completed (orchestration means the distribution of certain lines of music to each one of the instruments). And he was doing it simply on a paper, merely by this wonderful mental power. And it was not only his own: it was coming to him from a musical mind that incarnated in him.... Whilst I was there I saw him writing in front of me a page like that: it took him about half an hour or three-quarters of an hour. And he got such a reputation that even big wellknown musicians brought him their works for orchestration.


The Mother: He did it better than anyone, and just in that way on his paper.   He had no need to hear the music or anything. Afterwards, it was tried out and it was always very good. There were so many violins, so many cellos, so many altos, all the instruments: some were playing this, others playing that, yet others playing other things, sometimes all together, at other times one after another (it is very complicated, not a simple thing), well, there, while playing, hearing or even reading (sometimes he took the score and read it) he knew which notes had to be distributed to which instrument, which notes had to be played by another, and so on.  And he had very clearly the feeling of something entering into him and helping him.


The Mother: No, it is not the same thing. It is not the whole being, it is the special faculty which remains in the earth atmosphere, does not leave it and go away, which remains in the earth atmosphere in order to continue manifesting itself. But the psychic being can very well return to the psychic world and it is the psychic being which takes a body again. I explained to you the other day that before leaving the physical body, the psychic being decides most often what its next rebirth will be, the environment in which it will take birth and what its occupation will be, because it needs a certain ﬁeld for its experience. So it may happen that very big writers and very big musicians take birth another time in somebody quite imbecile.


The Mother: And you say: “What! it is not possible!” Naturally it does not always happen like that, but it may. There was a case in which the contrary happened: it was a violin player, the most wonderful of the century.... ( ) Just wait, I knew his name and it is gone — it came back and is gone again.


The Mother: What was his name?... Ysay¨e!  he was a Belgian and a violinist, truly the most wonderful violinist of the epoch. Well, that man had most certainly in him a reincarnation of Beethoven. Not perhaps a reincarnation of  his entire psychic being, but in any case, that of his musical capacity.


The Mother: He had the appearance, the head of Beethoven, I saw him, I heard him (I did not know him, I knew nothing, I was at a concert in Paris and they were giving the concerto in D major), I saw him coming on the stage to play and I said: “Strange! How much this man looks like Beethoven, he is the very portrait of Beethoven!” Then it just started with a stroke of the bow, three, four notes.... Everything changed, the atmosphere was changed.  All became absolutely wonderful.


The Mother: Three notes started off with such power, such grandeur, so wonderful it was, nothing stirred, all waited. And he played that from beginning to end in an absolutely unique manner with an understanding I have not met with in any other executant. And then I saw that the musical genius of Beethoven was in him.... But perhaps Beethoven’s psychic being had taken body in a shoemaker or anybody else, one does not know! It wanted to have another kind of experience.


The Mother: For what I saw in this man was a formation belonging to an earthly plane, it was mental-vital; and as Beethoven had disciplined his whole mental, vital and physical being around his musical capacity, that had remained in form, it was a living thing, and had incarnated in that man, just as it was, but not necessarily Beethoven’s psychic being. In his former life it was the psychic being of Beethoven that had shaped all those other beings, the psychic being that had disciplined them around musical creation; but after his death, it cannot at all be said whether the psychic being remained there; it must have returned to the psychic world as is the usual rule. That however had been formed, had its own life, independent and existing in itself. It was formed for a certain manifestation and it remained to manifest itself. And as soon as it found a ﬁt instrument, it entered there to manifest itself.


The Mother: It is not quite so simple as that.... The psychic being is the result of evolution, that is to say, evolution of the divine Consciousness  which spread into Matter and slowly lifted up Matter, made it develop to return to the Divine. The psychic being was formed by this divine centre progressively through all the births. There comes a time when it reaches a kind of perfection, perfection in its growth and formation. Then, most often, as it has an aspiration for realisation, for a greater perfection to manifest yet better the Divine, it generally draws towards itself a being from the involution, that is to say, one of those entities belonging to what Sri Aurobindo calls Overmind, who comes then to incarnate in this psychic being.


The Mother: It can be one of those entities men generally call gods, some kind of deities. And when this fusion occurs the psychic being naturally is magniﬁed and shares in the nature of the being incarnated in it. And then it has the power to produce emanations. These beings have the power to produce emanations, that is to say, they project out of themselves a part of themselves which becomes independent and goes into others to incarnate itself. So there can be not only two, but three, four or ﬁve emanations.


The Mother: That depends upon cases, it can happen thus. That is to say, one can have the same origin, psychodivine, we might say. And generally when there are a number of emanations, the different persons feel themselves to be that being, and rightly so, for they carry in themselves something of that godhead: it is as though a part of the godhead has cast itself out of itself and become independent in another being. It is not a self-duplication but a kind of self-projection. ( :)


The Mother: Duplication gives the idea that what has been duplicated has lost a part of its capability: if you cut your body in two, only half of it will remain for you; but if you have the power to emanate something out of you, you remain quite whole, as you are, and at the same time, there is another Tara who is there in another person.... You understand? It is like that.   I do not understand! The “hands” were what remained in the earth atmosphere of the dead pianist.


The Mother: So these hands which had been absolutely formed, had become like conscious, living and independent entities, entered the material hands, for they wanted to play actually on a piano. But when they played, they played through the hands of the other person, who might have been a good pianist but became a genius whilst those hands were there.  The other was alive? Which other? The ﬁrst one...


The Mother: Ah! No!  ( )  It is perhaps their way of progressing!


The Mother: ( ) You do not progress always in an apparently harmonious way. All who do Yoga know that it is not a thing that always goes on in peace and harmony, that sometimes there are inner battles, you have to give battle to enemies within you who want to prevent you from progressing.


The Mother: That means war. Well, when it is the whole earth that’s progressing and there are things that resist and do not want to move, sometimes you have to give battle and that means war. You must not believe that progress consists in sitting down and meditating! ... There are difﬁculties to be conquered.


The Mother: To conquer, what does it mean? — To ﬁght  against something. When you ﬁght, it means war. There are small wars, there are big wars; but what is this war of men upon earth, if seen, for example, by Titans to whom men are no bigger than ants?... When you look at a war of ants, you ﬁnd it quite natural!


The Mother: You can even look at it with interest and smile and say: “Look, the ants are having a ﬁght.” Well, to the titanic forces of the universe, men ﬁghting on earth are like ants ﬁghting, it is nothing at all. You must not judge things according to the measure of human consciousness.... For man Nature is a monstrous thing. It is so formidable, all the forces at her disposal, all the movements she creates.


The Mother: And what we know is only what is happening on earth! You know, directly or indirectly, by a kind of speculative knowledge, what is happening in the rest of the universe; but these are conﬂicts and plays of forces that are formidable in proportion to human consciousness. These are things that in comparison with human duration last almost eternally. So, in time it is immensity, in space it is immensity, and for the human consciousness it is something almost incomprehensible. But to these forces, human dimensions and movements have truly almost the same proportions as (perhaps are even less than) the consciousness of the swarming ant-world for us; it is the same thing.


The Mother: There are Nordic legends — Swedish and Norwegian — about these mighty universal Titans who are like that. And so stories are told naturally so that children may understand. It is said that there were two Titans sitting on some summit in the universe, not on earth, and then one Titan breathed a sigh. Then a thousand years pass, and the other asks, “Why do you sigh?” Another thousand years pass and the ﬁrst one replies: “I am bored!”


The Mother: Yet another thousand years pass.... They try to give an idea. Probably the Titans took some hundreds of years to say, “I am bored.” It is a question of proportions!   It is possible.


The Mother: When you do gymnastics, is it not to make your body less rigid? And you go on progressing: what you cannot do the ﬁrst year, you are able to do after a few years. There are people who obtain an almost total suppleness, those, for example, who do Asanas. Yes, one can obtain almost complete suppleness. But an ordinary man, if he tried to do these exercises, would break something in him.


The Mother: Well, it happens like that. With the mind, it is the same thing. It is through gymnastic exercises that you make yourself supple. It is a question of discipline, of development.  No, I spoke a little brieﬂy, but it is not that.


The Mother: His psychic being is not stupid! Granting, for example, that the psychic being has had the experience of a man who was a writer and could translate his experience through books and speeches; thus he covered a particular ﬁeld of experience due to the associations and circumstances in which this being lived. But there is a ﬁeld of experience he misses. For example, he says: “I have lived with my brain, with the reactions of an intellectual to life, now I want to live with my feeling.” For usually this over-activity of the intellect in ordinary life diminishes very much the capacity of feeling.


The Mother: Therefore in order to have another ﬁeld of experience, of development, he renounces his intellectual height; he is no longer a genius, a writer of genius, he becomes an ordinary man, but with a remarkable heart, very kind, very generous. I said “idiot”, but it is a question of comparison. It is not rare, for example, that a psychic being which has reached its maximum growth, after having enjoyed the experiences of a ruling authority (of all that the life of an emperor or king may bring) may want to be able to work in an obscure life, without being fettered all the time by governmental pomps, and may very well choose to be  born in quite an ordinary environment, an ordinary bourgeois family, in the most mediocre conditions, so as to have that kind of incognito which will allow it to work without being hampered by all the necessities of governmental display that are binding on one who is at the head of a country. So if you look at the thing from one point of view, you say: “How is it? what is this downfall?”


The Mother: It is not a downfall. It is meeting the problem from another angle, from another point of view. For the consciousness (I mean the true consciousness, the divine consciousness) success or failure are the same, glory or mediocrity are the same. What is important is the growth of the consciousness. And certain conditions that appear very favourable to human beings can be very unfavourable for the growth of the consciousness....


The Mother: You may look at yourself. Naturally, if you are careful to be always at the height of your being, you do not fall into this error. But with ordinary thought, with ordinary reaction, you judge everything by success or failure, but that is the last way of judging, for it is the most artiﬁcial, the most external, that which is the very contrary of truth. In human life as it is at present organised, not once in a million can one ﬁnd the true value in the forefront, recognised.  Usually a little is always necessary.


The Mother: When a man gets success, great success, whatever it is, in whatever domain it may be, you can be sure that somewhere there is some “cabotinage”.   cabotinage  This is said of actors who show off in a comedy, but the word is  used also in speaking of someone who over-estimates his value, who shows more than he has, displays more than he really has and who thinks above all of getting appreciated. That is the most important thing for him, to be appreciated.


The Mother: Widen your consciousness and your memory will increase.   Consciousness is a much higher memory than the mechanical brain memory. I explained this to you one day, not so very long ago. I told you that the mechanical brain memory can forget — can mix up and deform things — but if you are able to establish in you once again the state of consciousness in which you were at a given moment, you have exactly the same experience.


The Mother: And that is the only true memory. And this depends entirely on the development of your consciousness.  You have resistances in your body, haven’t you? When you want to do an exercise, can you do with your body whatever you want? And when you try to be in good health, does your body always obey?


The Mother: And when you want to learn your lesson, does your brain follow it without difﬁculty?... That is the resistance, it is all that refuses to progress. And I believe that unfortunately the amount of resistance is much greater than the amount of receptivity. One must work very hard to become receptive.  One does not know — it is perhaps something you will know one day, perhaps you will be told one day, perhaps one will be able to make you understand it — you cannot imagine the immense ﬂood of force that is at your disposal!


The Mother: And generally you do not feel it even. When you feel it, something in you shrinks because it is too much and produces a kind of instinctive fear in your cells; and when you receive it, more than three-quarters of it is thrown away like an overﬁlled vessel! It gushes out, spills over, because you are not able to hold it. I have met a very large number of people who complained that they were receiving nothing, that is to say, they said they did not have the forces they needed. It was because they were absolutely incapable of  receiving them, and there was a hundred thousand times more force than what they could receive.


The Mother: It is like that. You are all in a sea of tremendous vibrations, and you are not at all aware of it because you are not receptive. And there is such a resistance in you that if something succeeds in entering, three quarters of what enters is thrown out violently because you are not able to contain it.... I do not speak of this usually, but since we are talking about the subject, I am telling you. And perhaps one day I shall give you examples of it.


The Mother: It is something unbelievable. For example, just take the consciousness of the Forces, like the force of love, the force of understanding or the force of creation (for everything, it is the same: the force of protection, the force of growth, all that, and the power for progress, for everything); take Consciousness, simply this Consciousness which surrounds everything, enters into everything, which is everywhere, which is in everything.... Well, it is almost felt as a violence which seeks to impose itself upon the being that is unable to receive or bear it. And I am speaking of the very best; but in everyone there is a part more or less big, more or less important which does not yet have the goodwill, which is just on the border-line of bad will and does not want at any cost and rejects what is there.  But if one were open and simply breathed in — nothing more, if one did that only — one would breathe in the Consciousness, the Light, the Understanding, the Force, the Love and all the rest.


The Mother: And all that is wasted upon Earth because the Earth is not ready to take it..   Because the whole physical world is the symbol of universal movements. So our body is the symbol of our inner movements. The whole world, the whole physical world is like a crystallisation — it is a materialisation, a crystallisation — of the movements in other planes of the universe. It is like the end of a process, it is as though a projection on something that retains the image, ﬁxes the image.


The Mother: Therefore, at every point it is the same thing as in the whole material universe.  Yes, it is a ﬁnal result. There is an increasing materiality and a  decreasing materiality, and the physical plane is at the centre: it is like a screen on which all the intervening vibrations are projected and held, as upon a screen — it is an image, an image of all that is happening. We notice it because it is a thing done, something concrete. It is as though you viewed the whole universe as a movement of force and this movement of force were projected till it met a screen and on the screen it made an image, and this image on the screen is the physical world.


The Mother: And it is a mere image.   The physical world which everyone takes as the only reality is simply an image. It is the image of all that happens in what we call the invisible. It becomes visible to us because there is a screen which intervenes and stops the vibrations and that produces an image.


The Mother: If there were no such screen the vibrations would move on and nothing would be seen. And yet all the movements would exist. But for us they would be invisible, if there were no screen to stop the vibrations.  For the ordinary consciousness it is the image alone that is true, and what happens behind it is more or less problematical, but in the true consciousness, all that happens behind or before is the true thing and what one sees externally is only an image, that is to say, a projection on a screen, of something which exists altogether independently. So, our body represents a small fragment in this set of images that is projected and it is a fragment which expresses exactly all the vibrations of the inner state corresponding to this little point that is the body.


The Mother: I think, as in men, so in animals, there are as many causes as there are illnesses. These are perhaps psychological movements, for animals have psychological movements. They are perhaps accidents, for there is a whole domain of accidents. In fact, scientists say that all diseases, even death, are always accidental.  It is not a normal condition.


The Mother: So, for animals, it may be that, and it is perhaps also a psychological condition.   For animals who live with man, it is a sure fact. What they have gained from this, these poor creatures, is to become as sensitive and unbalanced as men, without getting their intelligence!  For example, animals possess a very sure instinct; you put a cow in a ﬁeld where there are all kinds of grasses — good and bad, and some which are even poisonous; but never will a cow touch a bad and poisonous herb. Never.


The Mother: With the tip of its tongue it chooses quite surely what is good and leaves the rest aside. But if you cut the grass and mix up the good and bad together and you put that in the manger before the cow, it will eat up everything and poison itself, for it has a kind of trust — an ignorant trust — that what is placed there before it is for eating, and so it loses its instinct. Animals in their natural state do not ever overeat, they eat according to their hunger and if some food is left over and they do not want it to be eaten by others, they hide it, bury it; they hide it with great care so that they may ﬁnd it again when they are hungry. But an animal living with man loses this instinct and eats not only all that is given but all that’s left within its reach. I lived for some time in a small town in the south of France.


The Mother: There was a grocer there who kept goats and one of them had become quite greedy. He had just received a barrel of molasses — you know what molasses is?... How do you call it here? It is crude sugar, “jaggery”. He had received a barrel of jaggery and he opened it — he opened the lid and forgot to put it back.


The Mother: And there it was and the goat was roaming around. The goat thought that it must be quite good since it was left there within its reach! It began to eat it and found it truly excellent.  And it went on — as it had lost all its instinct — until literally it fell dead, having eaten too much. Well, a wild animal would never do that.


The Mother: These are the advantages of man’s company!  No question?  Then we shall drop the subject. It seems this lady was quite preoccupied with maladies.   That indeed is a serious question!...


The Mother: You know the image sometimes given to the universe: a serpent biting its tail? And it is taken as the symbol of the inﬁnite, of the universe. Well, it is a fact. In the creation there is a progressive, a greater and greater materialisation. But we could take another image (I am taking an approximate image): the universe is a circle or rather a sphere (but for the convenience of explanation, let us take a circle).


The Mother: There is a progressive descent from the most subtle to the most material. But the most material happens to touch the point of origin of the most subtle. Then, if you understand the image, instead of going all the way round to change matter, it is much more easy to do the thing directly, for the two extremities meet — the extremely subtle and the extremely material touch, since it is a sphere. Hence, instead of doing all that ( ), it is much better to do this ( ). In fact, psychologically it is that.


The Mother: The rest will follow quite naturally. If that is done ( ), all the rest will get settled as a matter of course. And it is not even like this! It is precisely for the convenience of work that all has been concentrated or concretised at one point so that instead of having to spread oneself out in the inﬁnite to change things, one can work just on the point that serves as the symbol of the whole universe. And from the occult standpoint, earth (which is nothing from the astronomical standpoint; in the immensity of the astronomical skies, earth is a thing absolutely without interest and without importance), but from the occult and spiritual point of view, earth is the concentrated symbol of the universe.


The Mother: For it is much more easy to work on one point than in a diluted vastness. All  those who do the work know this. Well, for the convenience and necessity of work, the whole universe has been concentrated and condensed symbolically in a grain of sand which is called Earth.  And therefore it is the symbol of everything; all that is to be changed, all that is to be transformed, all that is to be converted is there. This means that if one concentrates on this work and does it there, all the rest will follow automatically, otherwise there will be no end — and no hope.


The Mother: But that is also why this point appears as particularly bad!  Because everything is concentrated. And that can be particularly good also. For always there are the two, the two opposites are together. And always the best borders on the worst, or the worst borders on the best (it depends on the side you look from).


The Mother: But it is because of the worst that you can ﬁnd the best and it is because of the best that you can transform the worst — the two act and react upon each other.... That was published in the: the “Evil Persona”. It is always said that there is a dark double of all the stars and a luminous double of all the planets. In the occult way, it is said that there is a luminous earth. All that is the experience of the luminous earth.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo has described the experience.   It is an experience that I had and I wrote about it to Sri Aurobindo. He answered me saying that it was an experience of Vedic times, an experience that happened in the luminous double of the earth.... That will come out somewhere one day.


The Mother: No, just for that moment. Not permanently.   No, you don’t understand. To go to that place, at the time of going you must be able to completely silence the mind (and all the other things I have mentioned), but just for going there.  For example, you decide: “Now, I am going to read such and such a chapter of earth’s history”, then you lounge comfortably in an easy-chair, you tell people not to disturb you, you go within yourself and completely stop your mind, and you send your mental messenger to that place....


The Mother: It is preferable to have someone who can guide you there, because otherwise you can lose your way and go elsewhere! And then you go. It is like a very big library with many many small compartments. So you ﬁnd the compartment corresponding to the information you wish to have. You press a button and it opens.


The Mother: And inside it you ﬁnd a scroll as it were, a mental formation which unrolls before you like a parchment, and you read. And then you make a note of what you have read and afterwards return quietly into your body with the new knowledge, and you may transcribe physically, if you can, what you have found, and then you get up and start your life as before.... This may take you ten minutes, it may take one hour, it may take half an hour, it depends upon your capacity, but it is important to know the way, as I said, in order not to make a mistake.  Because very few people would be able to do it, whereas many can read books (there are not many who understand them, but many can read them!). And this is still more difﬁcult than understanding a book.


The Mother: It is possible that this might be a better alternative to reading books!    All that has happened upon earth — from the beginning of the earth till now, all the movements of the mind have been exactly inscribed, all of them. So when you need any accurate information about something, you have only to go there, you ﬁnd your way. It is a very strange place; it is made as though of small cells, they are like small pigeon-holes; and so, following the shelves and some kind of... how to put it?


The Mother: There are libraries of that kind. Why, I saw a picture shown to us at the cinema, the picture of a library in New York. Well, it is arranged somewhat like that. It is a similar arrangement. It interested me because of that.


The Mother: But instead of being books, these are like small squares.  They are all closed. You put your ﬁnger, press a button and the thing opens. And then something like a scroll comes out and you unroll it and can read it — all that is written about a subject. There are millions and millions and millions of these.


The Mother: And happily, in the mind, one can go down, one can go up, one can go right on the top. You do not need a ladder!  Yes, it is a kind of mental perception. It corresponds to that.  You see quite, quite well all the description or the information (that depends on what it is).


The Mother: Sometimes they are pictures: it is as though a picture had been preserved. Sometimes it is a story.  Sometimes it is simply an answer to a question. All possible and imaginable things recorded mentally are there. You can ﬁnd many corrections too (exactly of those facts that have been put in books and are not correct).


The Mother: And you need not walk on or climb up: you send along quite simply something like a concentrated mental consciousness and that goes forward and touches the thing. Only, if you do this without completely detaching yourself from your own mental activity, I am afraid you will see only what is in your own head! Instead of seeing the thing as it is, perhaps you take a walk in your own brain and see only what is there — it is a danger. You must be able to silence your  head absolutely and be completely detached, not to have (for example, when you are looking for the solution of a problem), not to have already in your head the solution that seems to you right or the best or most proﬁtable. That must not be there.


The Mother: You must become absolutely like a blank paper, with nothing on it.  And you proceed in that way, with a very sincere aspiration to know the truth, without assuming beforehand that it will be like this or like that; because otherwise you will see only your own formation. The very ﬁrst condition is that the head must keep completely silent during the time one is observing.  And in order to be more sure (but here one must be fully trained, one must have a very good education), in order to be altogether sure of reporting clearly the knowledge received without deforming it in any way, it is better to say what one sees and what one reads (we say “reads”, but rather it is what one perceives), to say it as one perceives it, and it should be someone else who notes it down.... I repeat: You lie quietly stretched in your easy-chair, without moving and altogether quiet, and you send a messenger from your head.


The Mother: Now, someone should be sitting by your side and when you reach the place and open the door and pull out the manuscript (or whatever you like to call it) , you begin, instead of reading only with your eyes that are absent, to describe what you see. You acquire the habit of speaking aloud and as you go on observing up there, you speak here. You narrate precisely your journey through those vast halls and how you reached that place and how it had a small mark that was the sign of what you wanted to see. Then you open that little place and pull out the scroll and start reading.


The Mother: And you read it out aloud. And the person who is there, sitting by your side, goes on noting down what you are reading. In this way there is no danger of the thing getting changed when you return. For, the experience is very clear and precise to that part of your being which is there at the moment, but when you come back into the material world as it is, almost always something escapes and this does not escape when you speak directly at the  time you are at work. So all that means very many conditions to fulﬁl: it is not so easy as taking a book in the library and reading it!


The Mother: This is within the reach of everybody. That is a little more difﬁcult to accomplish.  ( ) Pavitra!


The Mother: Will you please explain that to these children?   Pavitra:  Is that all! Why is there so much fuss over this discovery?


The Mother: Pavitra:  It is a revolution? That what one sees depends on who sees? Ah!


The Mother: Well...   Pavitra:   Physical sciences, yes.


The Mother: For measuring the universe, each one measures it in his own way.   Pavitra:  Ah! they have “discovered” that?


The Mother: ( ) A still greater revolution!... () Good.


The Mother: For a very simple reason, because till now the whole physical, material world, the whole earth (let us take the earth) has been ruled by forces and the consciousness that come from what Sri Aurobindo calls the Overmind. Even what men call God is a force, a power coming from the Overmind and the whole universe was under the rule of the Overmind. To get there one has to pass through many intermediate planes and very few people can reach there without getting dazzled. But what Sri Aurobindo  said is that now the time for the “rule” of the Overmind is coming to its end and is going to be replaced by the rule of the Supermind. All who have had spiritual experiences and have discovered the Divine and become united with Him, know what it is, the Overmind.


The Mother: But what Sri Aurobindo says is that beyond the Overmind there is something and that it is now the turn of this something to come and rule the earth, to manifest upon earth and rule the earth. Therefore, there is no need to speak of the Overmind, for many people have spoken about it already and have had the experience of it; whereas this is something new that is going to manifest itself in a new way and nobody has been aware of it before. That is why. The old accounts — there’s no lack of people who have experienced these things or described them, or of books written on the subject. There is no need to repeat once more what others have said.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo came to say something new. And it is precisely because people are unable to come out of the experiences they have known and heard being spoken of, that they try to identify this Force which Sri Aurobindo called supramental with their experience of the intermediary worlds including the Overmind. For they cannot conceive that there could be something else.... Sri Aurobindo always said that his Yoga began where the former Yogas ended, that to be able to realise his Yoga it was necessary ﬁrst of all to have reached the extreme limit of what the older Yogas had realised, that is to say, the perception of the Divine, the union, the identiﬁcation with the Divine. But that Divine, Sri Aurobindo says, is the Divine of the Overmind which is already something quite unthinkable, in comparison with the human consciousness, because even to reach there one must pass through several planes and in these planes one feels dazzled.


The Mother: There are beings of the vital, if they appeared to men, or to say things more exactly, whenever they have appeared to men, men have taken them for the supreme God — these vital entities!  If you like, we shall call that a disguise but it is a very successful disguise, because those who saw it were thoroughly convinced  that they had seen the supreme Godhead. And yet, they were but beings of the vital. And these entities of the Overmind, these overmental gods are mighty entities in comparison with our humanity. When human beings come in relation with them, they become truly bewildered.


The Mother: There is however a kind of Grace which makes it possible for us to proﬁt by the experience of others. It is something similar to the way of teaching the sciences. If each scientist had to do all over again all the experiments of the past in order to arrive at a new discovery, go over all that the others had found, he would have to spend his whole life doing that and there would be no time left to make his new discovery! Now one doesn’t need to do all that: one opens a book and sees the results and starting from there can proceed further. Well, Sri Aurobindo wanted to do the same thing.


The Mother: He tells you where you can ﬁnd the results of what others before him have found — the experiments they made and their results — and where you stand: historically where you stand in the spiritual history of the world. And then he takes you from there, and after the basis has been ﬁrmly laid for you, he makes you climb higher up the mountain.  I don’t want to speak of those who were there at the beginning, what they knew or did not know and their experience. But you all, my children, at what age did you come here? That was not an age to have realised the Overmind!


The Mother: (laughter)  Probably they would have been more refractory!... For what is most difﬁcult is to convince someone who has already had a  realisation. He believes he is above all progress.


The Mother: Not necessarily. It is not necessarily someone who has some experience who is most advanced. He lacks an element of simplicity, modesty, and the plasticity that comes from the fact that one is not yet totally developed. As one grows, something crystallises in the head; it gets more and more ﬁxed and unless you try very hard you ﬁnish by becoming fossilised. This is what usually happens to people, particularly those who have tried for some realisation and succeeded in it or those who have come to believe they have reached the goal.


The Mother: In any case, it was their personal goal. They have reached it, they have attained. It is done, they remain there; they settle there, they say “that’s it.”  And they do no more any more. So, after that they may live ten years more, or twenty or thirty, they will not budge.


The Mother: They are there, they will stay there. Such people lack all the suppleness of stuff that’s necessary for going further and progressing. They are stuck. They are very good objects to be put in a museum, but not for doing work. They are like samples to show what can be done but they are not the stuff to do more.


The Mother: For me personally, I admit I prefer for my work someone who knows very little, has not laboured too much, but who has a great aspiration, much goodwill and who feels in himself this ﬂame, this need for progressing. He may know very little, may have realised still less, but if he has that within him, it is good stuff with which one can go very far, much further. For one must know the way (it is the same thing here as with your library), one must know the way to go. Well, usually in life when you climb a mountain or go to an unknown land, you look for a man who has been there, who is a guide, and you ask him to direct you. It is the same thing.


The Mother: If you follow the guide, you can go much quicker than someone else who has made much effort, found his own way and is usually quite proud of himself and, in any case, has the feeling of having come to the end, reached the goal he aimed at, ﬁnally arrived — and he stops, settles down. And he does not move any more.   Naturally, at the beginning there were no children here and children were not accepted, children were all refused. It was only after the war that children were taken. But I do not regret that they have been accepted.


The Mother: For I believe there is much more stuff for the future among children who know nothing than among those grown-ups who believe they know everything.... I do not know if you have much knowledge of sculpture. But to do sculpture, you have to take some clay, soak it with water; it must be ﬁnely powdered clay, and you soak it with water and make a paste. You have to keep it wet all the time and you make a statue or whatever you want out of that. When it is ﬁnished, you ﬁre it so that it sets.


The Mother: And after that — indeed after that — it cannot move any more. If you want to change something, you must break it and make another. For otherwise, as it is, it is rigid, as hard and stiff as stone.... Something similar happens in life. You must not attain something and then remain crystallised, fossilised, immobilised.


The Mother: For otherwise you have to break it, take it to pieces, or else you can do nothing with it any longer.  So long as one remains thus clay-like, very soft, very malleable, not yet formed, not aware of being formed, something can be done. And as long as one remains a child... it is a blissful state. I was saying this yesterday, children have only one idea, to become grown-ups, and they do not know that when they are grown up, they will have lost three-fourths of their worth which consists in being something which can still be developed, formed, something malleable, progressive, which need not be broken into bits so that it may progress.


The Mother: There are people who are compelled to take a whole turn around the mountain, in that way, from the foot to the top, and they take an entire lifetime to reach the top. There are others who know the road, the shortest cut that can be taken by which one can go straight to the top. And then, once up there, they are still full of youthfulness and energy and they can see the horizon and the next mountain. On the contrary, the others are conscious of having done a considerable  work by turning round and round and spending their whole life to reach the summit. But as for you, my children, it is being tried here to take you quite at the bottom and make you go up by the funicular railway right to the top, the shortest cut.


The Mother: And when you are on the top, you will have the vision of the spaces before you and you will be able to choose the mountain you wish to climb.  Above all, do not be in a hurry not to be a child any more!  One must be a child all one’s life, as much as one can, as long as one can. Be happy, joyful, content to be a child and remain a child, plastic stuff for shaping..  It can be done, it can be done.


The Mother: It is being done. It can be done but it is much more difﬁcult and the more they are convinced of having attained something, the more difﬁcult it is.  That can be done, it has been done, but it is much more difﬁcult. And sometimes it takes more time.  Ah, my children, it is very simple.


The Mother: Because where there are children, you have to be busy most of the time with them only!  Children are very absorbing creatures. Everything must be organised for them, everything must be arranged in view of their welfare, and the whole aspect of life changes. Children are most important personages. When they are there, everything turns around them.


The Mother: And the entire organisation of the Ashram has completely changed. Formerly, it was quite different. First of all there was a kind of austerity that cannot be imposed upon children. There are simplicities and austerities of life that can be imposed upon grown-up people, because they are told: “Take it or leave it: if you cannot bear it, if you do not like it, well,  you may go away. This is what it should be like; if you do not want it, you may leave the place, the door is always open.”


The Mother: But with a child... What right have you to demand of a child things that have no normal relationship with its growth? Children must have reached a certain maturity before they are able to make a choice. You cannot compel them to do a thing before they have the capacity to choose. You have to give them quite naturally all that they need.


The Mother: And this changes life completely. And I knew that very well. I already had the experience of what the life of solitary people or a group of solitary people is like, and of a life in which children are admitted. It is absolutely, totally different.  You have no right to demand of a person something when he has no free choice; and so long as a person is not formed, has not attained a certain maturity, you cannot make him choose.


The Mother: When one reaches this maturity, then one chooses. And the children here have not come of themselves. Most of you were not taller than a boot — when you came here, how old were you?... One cannot tell them: “You have chosen, therefore you have to take it or leave it, either you do this or you go away.” They have been brought here, hence it is one’s duty to give them what they need; and the needs of children are not at all the same as those of big people.


The Mother: It is much more complicated.  Now things are different, because now people are not told: “You are going to come here to do yoga”; they are told: “You are going to try to learn about the conditions under which earthly life can be bettered.” So people come and study. When one thinks he knows what he wants to learn, he goes away. It is not the same thing.


The Mother: And it is not the same conditions as when one comes with a deﬁnite and single aim like realising the Divine in his physical life and nothing else in the world counts for him but that. In order to choose you must at least know a little the elements to choose from. And for that you must have a certain inner formation, a certain culture. And you certainly do not have that when you are ﬁve years old — except some; some among you (more than one would believe) knew very well why they  had come, although they could not formulate it in words. They felt it very intensely.


The Mother: And when their parents tried to take them away, they refused stubbornly, saying: “No, no, I want to remain here.” Even at the age of ﬁve, although they could not know in their head the reason why, because the brain was not formed.  But the psychic consciousness was there, and they could feel.   Well, these children are of an inﬁnitely higher stuff than that of people who have already had three-fourths of their head blunted by the education they have been given in ordinary schools and who come here quite convinced that they know many things, that they are well acquainted with life.


The Mother: They have a formed character and have acquired many bad habits. There, then.   Not necessarily. Memory is a mental phenomenon, purely mental.


The Mother: Remembrance can be a phenomenon of consciousness. One can remember in all the domains of one’s being: one can remember vitally, one can remember physically, one can remember psychically, one can remember mentally also. But memory is a purely mental phenomenon. Memory can, ﬁrst of all, be deformed and it can also be effaced, one can forget. The phenomenon of consciousness is very precise; if you can take the consciousness back to the state in which it was, things come back exactly as they were.


The Mother: It is as though you relived the same moment. You can relive it once, twice, ten times, a hundred times, but you relive a phenomenon of consciousness. It is very different from the memory of a fact which you inscribe somewhere in your brain. And if the cerebral associations are disturbed in the least (for there are many things in your brain and it is a very delicate instrument), if there is the slightest disturbance, your memory goes out of order. And then holes are formed and you forget.


The Mother: On the other hand, if you know how to bring back a particular state of consciousness in you, it comes back exactly the same as it was. Now, a remembrance can also be purely  mental and it may be a continuation of cerebral activities, but that is mental remembrance. And you have remembrances in feeling, remembrances in sensation....  I meant to say that a phenomenon of memory should be replaced by a phenomenon of consciousness. I do not know in what sense


The Mother: I used the word memory the other day. It can be only in this sense.  Well, yes, it is that. That is what I meant: replace a purely mental memory by states of consciousness. That is exactly what I wanted to say.


The Mother: For, if you try to learn a thing by heart, after a time you are sure to forget it. Or else there are holes: you remember one thing and you do not remember another. But if you associate a particular knowledge with a phenomenon of consciousness, you can always bring it back and the knowledge will come back as it was.  , my children.   This does not mean that there is a speciﬁc consciousness of the completed cure.


The Mother: It means: “To live in a state of consciousness that’s conformable to a complete cure.” How shall I explain it?... You have in your mind a picture or an image or formation which realises in itself all the necessary relations and elements for the cure to exist and be total. This is called “having the consciousness of a complete cure”. It does not mean that there is a state of consciousness which is in itself a complete cure, and that if you get this consciousness, well, you get the cure.


The Mother: It is not like that. Have you understood the difference?   In what way do you aspire in the mind and in the vital or aspire spiritually?  A mental aspiration means that the thought-power aspires to have knowledge, for instance, or else to have the power to express itself well or have clear ideas, a logical reasoning. One may aspire for many things; that all the faculties and capacities of the mind may be developed and placed at the service of the Divine.


The Mother: This is a mental aspiration.  Or you may have an aspiration in the vital; if you have desires or troubles, storms, inner difﬁculties, you may aspire for peace, to be quite impartial, without desire or preference, to be a good docile instrument without any personal whims, always at the Divine’s disposal. This is a vital aspiration.  You may have a physical aspiration also; that the body may feel the need to acquire a kind of equipoise in which all the parts of the being will be well balanced, and that you may have the power to hold off illness at a distance or overcome it fast when it enters trickily, and that the body may always function normally, harmoniously, in perfect health. That is a physical aspiration.


The Mother: A spiritual aspiration means having an intense need to unite  with the Divine, to give oneself totally to the Divine, not to live outside the divine Consciousness so that the Divine may be everything for you in your integral being, and you feel the need of a constant communion with Him, of the sense of his presence, of his guidance in all that you do, and of his harmonising all the movements of the being. That is a spiritual aspiration.  Not necessarily. Each part of the being can have its own aspiration.


The Mother: As long as it is the mind that thinks, your physical is something that’s three-fourths inert and without its own consciousness.  There is a physical consciousness proper, a consciousness of the body; the body is conscious of itself, and it has its own aspiration. So long as one thinks of one’s body, one is not in one’s physical consciousness. The body has a consciousness that’s quite personal to it and altogether independent of the mind. The body is completely aware of its own functioning or its own equilibrium or disequilibrium, and it becomes absolutely conscious, in quite a precise way, if there is a disorder somewhere or other, and (how shall I put it?) it is in contact with that and feels it very clearly, even if there are no external symptoms.


The Mother: The body is aware if the whole working is harmonious, well balanced, quite regular, functioning as it should; it has that kind of plenitude, a sense of plenitude, of joy and strength — something like the joy of living, acting, moving in an equilibrium full of life and energy.  Or else the body can be aware that it is ill-treated by the vital and the mind and that this harms its own equilibrium, and it suffers from this. That may produce a complete disequilibrium in it. And so on.   One can develop one’s physical consciousness so well that even if one is fully exteriorised, even if the vital goes completely out of the body, the body has a personal, independent consciousness which enables it to move, to do all kinds of very simple things without the vital’s being there, quite independently.


The Mother: The body can learn how to speak: the mind and the vital may be outside it, very far away, busy elsewhere, but due to the link joining them with matter, they can still ﬁnd expression through a body wherein there is no mind or vital, and which yet can learn to speak and repeat what the others say. The body can move; I don’t mean that it can exert much, but it can move. It can do small, very simple things. It can write, for instance, learn how to write as it can learn to speak.


The Mother: It does speak: a little (how to put it?) slowly, with a little difﬁculty, but still it can speak clearly (sufﬁciently clearly) for one to understand. And yet the mind and vital may have gone out altogether, may be completely outside. There is a body-consciousness.  And so, when one has developed this body-consciousness, one can have a very clear perception of the opposition between the different kinds of consciousness. When the body needs something and is aware that this is what it needs, and the vital wants something else and the mind yet another, well, there may very well be a discussion among them, and contradictions and conﬂicts.


The Mother: And one can discern very clearly what the poise of the body is, the need of the body in itself, and in what way the vital interferes and destroys this equilibrium most often and harms the development so much, because it is ignorant.  And when the mind comes in, it creates yet another disorder which is added to the one between the vital and the physical, by introducing its ideas and norms, its principles and rules, its laws and all that, and as it doesn’t take into account exactly the needs of the other, it wants to do what everybody does.  Human beings have a much more delicate and precarious health than animals because their mind intervenes and disturbs the equilibrium. The body, left to itself, has a very sure instinct. For  instance, never will the body if left to itself eat when it doesn’t need to or take something which will be harmful to it.


The Mother: And it will sleep when it needs to sleep, it will act when it needs to act. The instinct of the body is very sure. It is the vital and the mind which disturb it: one by its desires and caprices, the other by its principles, dogmas, laws and ideas. And unfortunately, in civilisation as it is understood, with the kind of education given to children, this sure instinct of the body is completely destroyed: it is the rest that dominate. And naturally things happen as they do: one eats things that are harmful, one doesn’t take rest when one needs to or sleeps too much when it is not necessary or does things one shouldn’t do and spoils one’s health completely.


The Mother: They shouldn’t be allowed to play when they are sleepy. This is exactly the intrusion of vital movements. A child who doesn’t live much with older people (it is bad for children to live much among older people), a child left to itself will sleep spontaneously whatever it may be doing, the moment it needs to sleep. Only, when children are used to living with older people, well, they catch all the habits of the grown-ups. Specially when they are told: “Oh! you can’t do this because you are too young!


The Mother: When you are older, you can do it. You can’t eat this because you are small, when you are bigger you will be able to eat it. At this particular time you must go to bed because you are young....”  So, naturally, they have that idea that they must grow up at any cost or at least look grown-up!   Not necessarily.


The Mother: One should know of what stuff the faith and the trust are made. Because, for instance, if you live normally, under quite normal conditions — without having extravagant ideas and a depressing education — well, through all your youth and usually till you are about thirty, you have an absolute trust in life. If, for example, you are not surrounded by people who, as soon as you have a cold in the head, get into a ﬂurry and rush to the doctor and give you medicines, if you are in normal surroundings and happen to have something — an accident or a slight illness — there is this certainty in the body, this absolute trust that it will be all right: “It is nothing, it will pass off. It is sure to go. I shall be quite well tomorrow or in a few days.


The Mother: It will surely be cured” — whatever you may have caught. That is indeed the normal condition of the body. An absolute trust that all life lies before it and that all will be well. And this helps enormously. One gets cured nine times out of ten, one gets cured very quickly with this conﬁdence: “It is nothing; what is it after all?


The Mother: Just an accident, it will pass off, it is nothing. ” And there are people who keep it for a very long time, a very long time, a kind of conﬁdence — nothing can happen to them. Their life is all before them, fully, and nothing can happen to them. And what will happen to them is of no importance at all: all will be well, necessarily; they have the whole of life before them. Naturally, if you live in surroundings where there are morbid ideas and people pass their time recounting disastrous and catastrophic things, then you may think wrongly.


The Mother: And if you think wrongly, this reacts on your body. Otherwise, the body as it is can keep  this conﬁdence till the age of forty or ﬁfty — it depends upon people — some know how to live a normal, balanced life. But the body is quite conﬁdent about its life. It is only if thought comes in and brings all kinds of morbid and unhealthy imaginations, as I said, that it changes everything. I have seen instances like that: children who had these little accidents one has when running and playing about: they did not even think about it.


The Mother: And it disappeared immediately. I have seen others whose family has drummed into them since the time they could understand, that everything is dangerous, that there are microbes everywhere, that one must be very careful, that the least wound may prove disastrous, that one must be altogether on one’s guard and take great care that nothing serious happens.... So, they must have their wounds dressed, must be washed with disinfectants, and there they sit wondering: “What is going to happen to me?   Oh!


The Mother: I may perhaps get tetanus, a septic fever....” Naturally, in such cases one loses conﬁdence in life and the body feels the effects keenly. Three-fourths of its resistance disappears. But normally, naturally, it is the body which knows that it must remain healthy, and it knows it has the power to react. And if something happens, it tells this something: “It is nothing, it will go away, don’t think about it, it is over”; and it does go.


The Mother: That of course is absolute trust.  Now, you are speaking of “dynamic faith”. Dynamic faith is something different. If one has within him faith in the divine grace, that the divine grace is watching over him, and that no matter what happens the divine grace is there, watching over him, one may keep this faith all one’s life and always; and with this one can pass through all dangers, face all difﬁculties, and nothing stirs, for you have the faith and the divine grace is with you. It is an inﬁnitely stronger, more conscious, more lasting force which does not depend upon the conditions of your physical build, does not depend upon anything except the divine grace alone, and hence it leans on the Truth and nothing can shake it.


The Mother: It is very different.   That depends upon their age, my child, and upon what they are.  It depends upon their sincerity. You can’t give the same answer to everyone.


The Mother: But do the tiny tots sometimes ask?... Do the youngest ask why they are here?  At that age, already it’s the age when one questions and doubts.  The very tiny ones, if they ask this, it is wonderful. There is only one very simple answer to give them: “My children, it is because this is the divine will.


The Mother: It is due to the divine grace that you are here. Be happy, be calm, be at peace, do not question, all will be well.” And when they grow older they already begin to reason, then it is no longer so well, no longer so easy. But that depends, as I said, that depends upon how intelligent they are, how great is their opening. There are those who are predestined, who are here because they should be here.


The Mother: With these it is easy.  You have only to tell them: “My children, it is because you belong to a future which is being built up, and it is here that it is being built.” For them it is very simple, it is true. There are those who are here because their parents are here, for no other reason. So it is difﬁcult to tell them that, unless you tell them quite simply: “Because your father and mother are here.”


The Mother: Ah! that indeed depends upon you.  The ﬁrst thing is to learn how to know by identity. That is indispensable when one has the responsibility for others.


The Mother: To learn how to guide other people, the ﬁrst indispensable step is to know how to enter into their minds so as to know them  — not to project one’s thought, imagine what they are, but go out of oneself and enter into them, to know what is happening there. Then, in this way, one knows them because one is them.  When one knows only oneself in others, that means one knows nothing. One may be completely mistaken. One imagines it is like this or that — one judges by appearances or else through mental preferences, preconceived ideas; that is to say, one knows nothing.


The Mother: But there is one condition in which one doesn’t even need to know, to try to know what somebody is like: one can’t do otherwise but feel what he is, for he is a projection of oneself.  And unless one knows how to do that, one can never do what is necessary for people — unless one feels as they feel, thinks as they think, unless one is able to enter into them as though one were they themselves. That is the only way. If you try to know with a small active mind, you will never know anything — nor by looking at people and telling yourself: “Why, he does this in this way and that way, so he must be like that.” That is impossible.


The Mother: So, the ﬁrst task of those who have a responsibility — for instance, those who are in charge of educating other children, taking care of others, from rulers to teachers and monitors — their ﬁrst task is to learn how to identify themselves with the others, to feel as they do. Then one knows what one should do.  One keeps one’s inner light, keeps one’s consciousness where it ought to be, very high above, in the light, and at the same time gets identiﬁed, and so one feels what they are, what their reactions are, what their thoughts, and one holds that before the light one has: one succeeds in thinking out perfectly well what should be done for them. You will tell each one what he needs to hear, you will act with each one as is necessary to make him understand. And that is why it is a wonderful grace to have the responsibility for a certain number of people, for that obliges you to make the most essential progress.


The Mother: And I hasten to tell you that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, people don’t make it.  But that is exactly why things are in such a bad way. Particularly those who have the responsibility of governing a country — this  is the last thing they think about! They are very eager rather to keep their way of seeing and their way of feeling, and ﬁercely refrain from realising the needs of those over whom they rule.  But indeed one can see that the result is not up to much; so far it is evident that one can’t say that governments have been remarkable institutions.


The Mother: It is the same thing on all levels: there are small governments, there are big governments. But the laws are the same, for all. And unless, when giving a lesson, you are able, there and then, to take in the entire atmosphere, to gather the vibrations around people, put them all together, keep all that before you, and become aware of what you can do with this stuff (with the vibrations you can spread, the forces you can give out, those which will be received, those which will be assimilated), unless you do that, mostly you too are wasting your time. In order to do the least work, one must make a lot of progress.  It takes interest in the transformation of the world — in the descent of forces in the material world and its transformation, in  its preparation so that it may be able to receive the supramental forces.


The Mother: And it is conscious of the difference between the world as it is and the world as it ought to be. Every moment it sees the gulf between what is and what should be, between the truth and the falsehood that is expressed. And constantly it keeps this vision of the Truth which broods over the world, so that as soon as there is a little opening, it may descend and manifest itself.  And what to the ordinary awareness seems quite natural is for it usually a play of obscure, ignorant, altogether unconscious forces. And it does not ﬁnd that at all natural.


The Mother: It ﬁnds that a detestable accident and tries with all its strength to remedy it. It seeks, looks, and if there is any receptivity anywhere, it intensiﬁes its action. It does not see men in their outward appearance but as vibrations more or less receptive and more or less dark or luminous, and wherever it sees a light it projects its force so that it may have its full effect. And instead of treating each being like a pawn on a chess-board, a small, well-deﬁned person, it sees how forces enter, go out, stir, move and make all things move, how vibrations act. And it sees those vibrations which ascend and lead to progress and it sees those vibrations which cast you further and further into the darkness, which make you go down.


The Mother: And at times someone comes to you with ready-made words which he has learnt generally from books, but nevertheless, full of aspiration and goodwill, and he is answered by a strong rebuff and told that he should try to be sincere — he does not understand. This is because the Force sees that there is no sincerity — the Force does not see the words, does not hear the words, doesn’t even see the ideas in the head but only the state of consciousness, whether the state of consciousness is sincere or not. There are other instances of people who seem to be quite frivolous and stupid and busy with useless things, and suddenly one helps them, encourages them, treats them like friends and comrades, for one sees shining in the depth of all that a sincerity, an aspiration which may have a childish form outwardly but which is there and very pure at times. And so one  does many things for them which people don’t understand, for they cannot see the reality behind the appearance. That is why I say that it is in an entirely different way that the supermind is interested, an entirely different way that it sees, an entirely different way that it knows.


The Mother: Very important, of capital importance! Besides, that’s the ﬁeld of work given to each one. It is this one must understand, that each one — this totality of substance constituting your inner and outer body, the totality of substance with which your being is built from the outermost to the inmost — is a ﬁeld of work; it is as though one had gathered together carefully, accumulated a certain number of vibrations and put them at your disposal for you to work upon them fully. It is like a ﬁeld of action constantly at your disposal: night and day, awake or asleep, all the time — nobody can take it away from you, it is wonderful!  You may refuse to use it (as most people do), but it is a mass to be transformed that is there in your hands, fully at your disposal, given to you so that you may learn to work upon it.


The Mother: So, the most important thing is to begin by doing that. You can do nothing for others unless you are able to do it for yourself. You can never give a good advice to anyone unless you are able to give it to yourself ﬁrst, and to follow it. And if you see a difﬁculty somewhere, the best way of changing this difﬁculty is to change it in yourself ﬁrst. If you see a defect in anyone, you may be sure it is in you, and you begin to change it in yourself.


The Mother: And when you will have changed it in yourself, you will be strong enough to change it in others. And this is a wonderful thing, people don’t realise what an inﬁnite grace it is that this universe is arranged in such a way that there is a collection of substance, from the most material to the highest spiritual, all that gathered together into what is called a small individual, but at the disposal of a central  Will. And that is yours, your ﬁeld of work, nobody can take it away from you, it is your own property. And to the extent you can work upon it, you will be able to have an action upon the world. But only to that extent.


The Mother: One must do more for oneself, besides, than one does for others.  Nothing is impossible. One can’t say it is not possible. But if one is unaware of certain movements in oneself, it is certainly an anomaly to be conscious ﬁrst of these in others. It is an anomaly.


The Mother: It may exist. There may be people so decentralised that they are more sensitive about others than in themselves. But still, usually they are considered a little morbid. This does not give them a very great inner equilibrium, they become unbalanced. There are people who are all at sea, they are like a cork upon the waves: it goes here and there, jumps this way and that.


The Mother: They have no line of consciousness.... It is not an enviable state. I don’t think, truly, sincerely I don’t think that it is possible to help anyone unless one has already helped oneself ﬁrst. If you are unconscious, how do you expect to bring consciousness into others! This seems to me an insoluble problem.


The Mother: That is what people usually do, but that’s no reason for approving it. This is exactly why, I believe, things go so wrong. It is like those who seeing others quarrelling rush forward and begin shouting louder than they to tell them, “Keep quiet!”  Yes, but man happens to be a social animal, and so, instinctively, he forms groups. But that also is why those who wished to go fast and did not feel themselves sufﬁciently strong retired into  solitude.


The Mother: That is the reason, the justiﬁcation of the ascetic who goes away into solitude, for he tries to cut himself off from the world. Only... there is an “only”. One can do that physically to a certain extent, up to a point, cut oneself off from physical nature — not totally. It has been noticed, for instance, that ascetics who went away to sit under a tree in the forest, in a very short while became extraordinarily interested in all the animals living in the forest: it is the need of physical relationship with other living beings.


The Mother: It is possible that some do not need this, but it is a fairly general rule.  But solidarity does not stop there. There is a vital solidarity and a mental solidarity which you cannot prevent. There is, after all (though men are much more individualised than animals), there is a spirit of the species. There are collective suggestions which don’t need to be expressed in words.


The Mother: There are atmospheres one cannot escape. It is certain (for I know this by experience), it is certain that there is a degree of individual perfection and transformation which cannot be realised without the whole of humanity having made a particular progress. And this happens by successive steps. There are things in Matter which cannot be transformed unless the whole of Matter has undergone transformation to a certain degree. One cannot isolate oneself completely.


The Mother: It is not possible. One can do the work, one can choose: there are people who have chosen to go into solitude and try to realise in themselves the ideal they saw — usually they reached a certain point, then stopped there, they could go no further. It has been thus historically. I was saying the other day: “There are perhaps people upon earth whom I don’t know who have realised extraordinary things” but precisely because they have isolated themselves from the earth, the earth does not know them. This is just to say that nothing is impossible.


The Mother: It seems doubtful, is all that I can say. But it is impossible, even if one isolates oneself physically, to do so vitally and mentally. There is the vast terrestrial atmosphere in which one is born, and there is a sort of spirit or genius of the human race; well, this genius  must have reached a certain degree of perfection for anyone to be able to go farther. It is not that one has to wait till all have done it, no; but it is as though all had to reach a certain level for one to be able to take one’s spring and go farther.... Surely the individual will always be ahead of the mass, there’s no doubt about that, but there will always be a proportion and a relation.


The Mother: You mean “most interdependent”?  A common will? You must not mix up things. If you are telling me about the goodwill among human beings, this is in the psychic, there’s no shadow of a doubt about it. But there is a kind of vital interdependence, quite considerable, more than the physical, I believe.


The Mother: For instance, the First World War was the result of a tremendous descent of the forces of the vital world (hostile forces of the vital world) into the material world. Even those who were conscious of this descent and consequently armed to defend themselves against it, suffered from its consequences. The world, the whole earth suffered from its consequences. There was a general deterioration from the vital point of view, I could say, which was inevitable even for those who consciously knew whence the force came, whence the deterioration came, and who could therefore ﬁght against it consciously — they could not prevent certain effects being produced in the earth atmosphere. Naturally, men do not know what happened to them; all that they have said is that everything had become worse since the war.


The Mother: That was all that they could afﬁrm. For example, the moral level went down very much. It was simply the result of a formidable descent of the vital world: forces of disorder, forces of corruption, forces of deterioration, forces of destruction, forces of violence, forces of cruelty.   Perhaps it was a reaction, for there was another Force coming down which wanted to do its work, and perhaps those forces did not want it — it disturbed their habits. It is like a government which fears that it will be thrown out and so intervenes violently in order to keep in power.