The Mother: Truly I believe one can reduce one’s needs to a minimum. But all the same, I must have a tooth-brush.” I had not yet lived in India at that time, otherwise I would have told him: “There are millions of people who have never had a toothbrush and whose teeth are quite clean. This is not the only way of keeping one’s teeth clean.” But at that time he was quite convinced that one could do without everything except keeping one’s mouth clean.


The Mother: And for him, to keep one’s mouth clean meant having a tooth-brush. That gives a very exact picture of what goes on in people’s minds. They cling to something and think they need it. And surely it is a complete ignorance, for perhaps there is a real necessity like that of having a clean mouth (that seems to be in any case quite necessary), but that association of the tooth-brush with the necessity of having a clean mouth is quite arbitrary. For it is not so very long ago that tooth-brushes were invented.


The Mother: There was someone else also who told me: “Oh! I can absolutely do without anything at all” — we were speaking of a walking-tour with a minimum of baggage on the back (when  you are compelled to carry it for miles on end, four or ﬁve kilometres a day, you try to reduce the weight of your bag as much as possible); so we discussed about what was indispensable and had to be put in the bag. He said his tooth-brush. Another told me he needed a piece of soap (usually this spins round very simple tiny things of this kind). But here how many people there are who have never used soap, and that doesn’t prevent them from being clean! There are other ways of being clean.


The Mother: That’s how it is, one is ﬁxed in all kinds of small ideas and believes these are indispensable needs. And then, if you travel a little around the world, you notice that what is a need for you is for others something they don’t even know of, something they have never seen in their life, which doesn’t exist and hasn’t the slightest importance of any kind. Hence it is not indispensable. It is just the result of an education and life in a particular environment.  And these things are quite relative, and not only relative but transitory.


The Mother: .   How can he call? The two things are contradictory. If he has no trust, he won’t even think of the Divine! He won’t think of calling.


The Mother: It is contradictory. He thinks of calling exactly in proportion to his trust.... So?  One ought not to! ...


The Mother: What I have stated here is an experience.  It is the record of an experience which I expressed in general terms. But if, at a particular moment, somebody comes along with the blackest intentions, if one smiles at him, he is completely disarmed, he can do nothing any longer. But one must smile sincerely. One must not just grin or simper and think one... ()


The Mother: I take “smile” in a rather complete meaning.  That is to say, if one can be sufﬁciently master of oneself and above things, in a much higher consciousness which can see from above — even that which appears the most terrible and most dramatic to the ordinary human consciousness makes you smile as at a childishness. And so, if one is in that consciousness in which one can smile at everything (for one understands the causes of everything, and one also sees the forces working in  all things), if one can be in that consciousness and then smile at what happens, immediately things change. Only, this is not a little external and social smile: it must be the psychic being which smiles.


The Mother: It is not altogether like that.... The divine Consciousness works always, everywhere and in the same way. The divine Grace is active everywhere, and in all circumstances in the same way.  And so on. But according to your personal attitude, you create within yourself the conditions for receiving what is done or not receiving it.


The Mother: And trust — indeed, trust in the Truth, trust in the Grace, trust in the divine Knowledge — this puts you in that state of receptivity in which you can receive these things. Whilst, if you have no trust... you may still try to receive something — there are people, for instance, who ﬂing a sort of challenge, they throw a challenge at the Divine and tell him: “Here’s the situation such as it is, I am in these conditions which seem to me at least inextricable, it is impossible to get out of them. But if the Divine pulls me out of the difﬁculty, I shall put my trust in him.” There are many people — they do not formulate it like this but many feel and think in this way. Well, this is the worst of all possible conditions.


The Mother: Generally it puts you into a complete hole. And it is exactly the state most opposed to trustfulness.  And besides, it is quite a vulgar bargaining: “If you do this for me, I shall have faith that you exist. I am going to try and see if you really exist and whether you are what they say. Do this, and we are going to see clearly if you succeed.


The Mother: Then I shall trust in you.” And many people do that, even without being aware of it.  Any number of men say: “How can I have trust in the Divine? I have such a lamentable and unhappy life!” That is to say, they limit the divine Consciousness to their little personal needs.


The Mother: Even an atom of sincerity sufﬁces, and it comes. And if, truly, one calls very sincerely (not just calling and at the same time saying, “We are going to see now if it is going to succeed” — that naturally is not a very good condition), but if one calls very sincerely and sincerely needs the answer, one waits and it  comes. And if one can silence one’s mind and be a little quiet, one even perceives the coming of the help and what form it takes.  That means?... “From where” means what?


The Mother: What is their origin?  Who has formed them?... But everything, everything comes from the one Origin, from the Supreme, the gods also.  There is a very old tradition which narrates this. I am going to tell you the story as one does to children, for in this way you will understand: One day “God” decided to exteriorise himself, objectivise himself, in order to have the joy of knowing himself in detail.


The Mother: So, ﬁrst of all, he emanated his consciousness (that is to say, he manifested his consciousness) by ordering this consciousness to realise a universe. This consciousness began by emanating four beings, four individualities which were indeed altogether very high beings, of the highest Reality. They were the being of consciousness, the being of love (of Ananda rather), the being of life and the being of light and knowledge — but consciousness and light are the same thing. There we are then: consciousness, love and Ananda, life and truth — truth, that’s the exact word.  And naturally, they were supremely powerful beings, you understand.


The Mother: They were what are called in that tradition the ﬁrst emanations, that is, the ﬁrst formations. And each one became very conscious of its qualities, its power, its capacities, its possibilities, and, suddenly forgot each in its own way that it was only an emanation and an incarnation of the Supreme. And so this is what happened: when light or Consciousness separated  from the divine Consciousness, that is, when it began to think it was the divine Consciousness and that there was nothing other than itself, it suddenly became obscurity and inconscience. And when Life thought that all life was in itself and that there was nothing else but its life and that it did not depend at all upon the Supreme, then its life became death. And when Truth thought that it contained all truth, and that there was no other truth than itself, this Truth became falsehood.


The Mother: And when love or Ananda was convinced that it was the supreme Ananda and that there was no other than itself and its felicity, it became suffering. And that is how the world, which was to have been so beautiful, became so ugly. Now, that consciousness (if you like to call it the Divine Mother, the Supreme Consciousness), when she saw this she was very disturbed, you may be sure, she said to herself: “This has really not succeeded.” So she turned back to the Divine, to God, the Supreme, and she asked him to come to her aid. She said to him: “This is what has happened.


The Mother: Now what is to be done?” He said: “Begin again, but try to manage in such a way that the beings do not become so independent! ... They must remain in contact with you, and through you with me.”  And it was thus that she created the gods, who were quite docile and not so proud, and who began the creation of the world. But as the others had come before them, at every step the gods met the others.


The Mother: And it was in this way that the world changed into a battleﬁeld, a place of war, strife, suffering, darkness and all the rest, and for each new creation the gods had to ﬁght with the others who had gone ahead: they had preceded them, they had plunged headlong into matter; and they had created all this disorder and the gods had to put straight all this confusion. That is where the gods came from. They are the second emanations.   No.


The Mother: What is chance?   It is said also — that is the continuation of the story or rather its beginning — that the Divine wanted his creation to be a free creation. He wanted all that went forth from him to be absolutely independent and free in order to be able to unite with him in freedom, not through compulsion. He did not want that they should be compelled to be faithful, compelled to be conscious, compelled to be obedient. They had to do it spontaneously, through the knowledge and conviction that that was much better.


The Mother: So this world was created as a world of total freedom, freedom of choice. And it is in this way that at every moment everyone has the freedom of choice — but with all the consequences. If one chooses well, it is good, but if one chooses ill, ah well, what’s to happen happens — that is what has happened!  The story may be understood in a much more occult and spiritual sense. But it is like all the stories of the universe: if you want to narrate them so that people may understand, they become stories for children.


The Mother: But if one knows how to see the truth behind the symbols, one understands everything. Even with what I have told you, which seems like a little story for children, even like that, if you understand what I have told you and the meaning of what I have told you, you can have the secret of things.  There are traditions which say that it is an “accident”, in the sense that it could have been otherwise. But it happened like that. It is true, it came about like that.


The Mother: Only, it was quite understandable that, every one of these elements having its origin in the Supreme, being quite close to the Emanation at that moment, quite close to the Origin, carried in itself the consciousness of its divinity and superiority, necessarily, since this is not a creation made with something foreign to the Divine: it is simply the Divine who has emanated himself, as though he were looking at himself — he objectivises himself in order to become aware of all that he is; instead of being in an inner static state of concentration in which all is unmanifested, he projects that outside himself  “in order to see”, as though he wanted to see all that is within him, that is, all the inﬁnity of possibilities. So, all was possible. It happened like that — it could have happened otherwise. Besides, nothing tells you that alongside our universe such as it is, there do not exist others which are so different that there cannot be any relation between one universe and another. It can very well be that our universe is not the only exteriorisation of the Divine.


The Mother: Ours is such as we know it; there may be others which are in much less sorry a state than this one! Besides, it is lamentable only in its appearance. If you go behind the appearance, you become aware that it is not lamentable at all. It is only one way of seeing.  They are precisely those four persons who have naturally put forth innumerable emanations, which have again put forth others, which have made formations.


The Mother: And so there are millions and millions and millions of them, and it is these who have formed between themselves a certain habit and have the logic to preserve it and persist in not wanting any other rule than theirs to govern. These are what are called in India the Asuras, the beings of darkness. It is through a sort of logic that they are like that. They began by going wrong, they continue. Now, I must say, there are some among them who change their mind.


The Mother: But this is mentioned in the Gita also; I believe they speak of those who will be converted, and then of those who absolutely refuse  any conversion, who prefer to disappear, to be destroyed rather than be converted. And that’s how it is. Some are of one kind, others of another.  Ah, you know that? You have a good memory.


The Mother: There is one of them who has been converted, and who even collaborates, he is the one of Consciousness and Light.  Naturally, but his power remains. This becomes a formidable being.  It becomes once again consciousness and light — it becomes once more what it was.  But I have just said a minute ago that when it became inconscience or darkness, it produced innumerable formations — emanations, formations, creations.


The Mother: And its conversion does not mean that all the rest follow. They obey that same law of freedom, freedom of choice. They may be converted or not. There are those who are converted, there are those who refuse. And I believe that in fact there are many more who refuse.


The Mother: But the one who does the greatest harm is the “Lord of Falsehood”. He it is indeed who is the biggest obstacle in the universe, this constant negation of the truth. And he has a very strong hold on the terrestrial world, on the material world. Besides, here (on the earth), those who see him, see him as an  absolutely marvellous, splendid being. He entitles himself the “Lord of the Nations”, and he appears formidable, luminous, powerful, very impressive....


The Mother: Historically, he was the inspirer of certain heads of State, and he proclaims himself the Lord of the Nations because it is he who governs the peoples. He is evidently, at the source, the supreme organiser of these last two wars. It was on that occasion that he manifested himself as the Lord of the Nations. And he declared, besides, that he would never be converted. And he knows that his end will come — naturally, he will try to make it as late as possible.


The Mother: And he declared that he would destroy all he could before being destroyed.... We may expect all possible catastrophes.  That would truly be a small result. The death of Stalin (unfortunately not any more than the death of Hitler) has not changed the present state of the world. Something more than that would be necessary.


The Mother: For this is like the assassin who is guillotined: when his head is cut off, his spirit remains behind and is projected outside him. It is a vital formation and it goes and takes shelter in one of the benevolent spectators, who suddenly feels a criminal instinct in himself. There are many men like that, specially very young criminals who when questioned have acknowledged this. They have been asked: “When did this desire to kill come to you?” and the frequent reply is: “It got hold of me when I saw so-and-so executed.”  So, this is of no use, the death of this one or that other.


The Mother: That does not help very much — the thing goes elsewhere. It is only one form. It is as though you did something very wicked with  a particular shirt on and then threw away your shirt and said: “Now, I shall no longer do harm.” You continue with another shirt on!  Because it protects itself well.


The Mother: What you say is quite true, but it takes good care not to incarnate on earth. And in the vital world there is no death, it does not exist there. It is in the material world that this exists, and it takes very good care not to incarnate.  Stalin? I am not quite sure that he was a human being... in the sense that I don’t think he had a psychic being.


The Mother: Or perhaps he did have one — in all matter, in every atom there is a divine centre — but I mean a conscious psychic being, formed, individualised.  I don’t think so. I believe it was a direct incarnation of a being of the vital world. And that was the great difference between him and Hitler. Hitler was simply a man, and as a man he was very weak-minded, very sentimental — he had the conscience of a petty workman (some said of a petty shoemaker), in any case of a little workman or a little school-master, something like that, a very small conscience, and extremely sentimental, what is called in French “ﬂeur bleue”, very weak.


The Mother: But he was possessed . He was rather mediocre by nature, very mediocre. He was a medium, a very good medium — the thing took hold of him, besides, during spiritism s´eances. It was at that moment that he was seized by those ﬁts which were described as epileptic.


The Mother: They were not epileptic: they were attacks of possession. It was thus that he had a kind of power, which however was not very great. But when he wanted to know something from that power, he went away to his castle, and there, in “meditation”, there truly he invoked very intensely what he  called his “god”, his supreme god, who was the Lord of the Nations. And everything seemed to him magniﬁcent. It was a being...


The Mother: it was small — it appeared to him all in silver armour, with a silver helmet and golden plume! It was magniﬁcent! And a light so dazzling that hardly could the eyes see and bear that blaze. Naturally it did not appear physically — Hitler was a medium, he saw. He had a sort of clairvoyance.


The Mother: And it was at such times that he had his ﬁts: he rolled on the ground, he drivelled, bit the carpet, it was frightful, the state he was in.  The people around him knew it. Well, that being is the “Lord of the Nations”. And it is not even the Lord of the Nations in its origin, it is an emanation of the Lord of the Nations, and a very powerful emanation.  What?


The Mother: What are you saying! Disappear where? What do you call disappearing? — Disappear where? You know the story of the Ramayana.


The Mother: What did Ravana choose? You know that? Very well, this is what is called choosing to disappear: that is to say, he has no longer any individuality.  We are not told? To me it has been told.


The Mother: It is said that Ravana chose to disappear into the Supreme, and that he was completely dissolved in Him, that is, he lost his individuality, he was no longer a separate being, he returned to the Origin, he was dissolved in the Supreme. And even before doing it, he had chosen to play that part, his part as a hostile being, because the road is much shorter than for those who are devotees and obey.  One goes much more rapidly, for, one day, the Divine decides that it is enough, and he just destroys them. He cannot go out of  the Divine, for all is divine! He may lose his individuality, that is, may be fused, dissolved into the Supreme.


The Mother: Besides, nothing disappears, it is the form which disappears but the constituent elements continue. Everything is eternal, for everything is the Divine, and nothing can go out of the Divine, for everything is divine. But the forms disappear. And it is through this identiﬁcation with the form that the impression of death comes; but the constituent elements are eternal, for all is eternal. It is the form which disappears.


The Mother: So, some of those beings prefer to be just completely dissolved and to disappear totally like that, into the inﬁnite, the oneness (that is, they lose their personal consciousness, they have no longer any personal consciousness, they exist no longer as a personal consciousness), they prefer that, rather than having a personal consciousness which gives itself to the Divine and becomes by this very fact consciously and personally immortal.  They like dissolution and personal disappearance better than conversion, that is, self-giving.  Through pride, I suppose. It is always pride. Fundamentally, from the very beginning it is pride — but almost all the religions have said it.


The Mother: It is pride, that is, a sort of consciousness of one’s power and one’s importance.  Another consciousness? But there is no other consciousness!  The very principle of emanation is an objectivisation of a part of himself, which potentially keeps the qualities of the emanator. But if this emanation is made (as they were made) with a will to give freedom of choice, as I said, these emanations  can either follow that freedom and independence or continue to keep the connection with the emanator, for there is a freedom of choice.


The Mother: That strength and force which they hold in themselves is quite sufﬁcient to give them the impression of their importance and power. If they themselves, of their own will, choose not to remain in contact, in a relation of surrender to the Supreme, if they choose to use the amount of power and consciousness and force they contain in themselves to do what they must do independently, by that very fact they cut themselves off from their source — but in spite of that the constituent elements of their being are those which belonged to the Source. And it is because of this that, even if they cut themselves off voluntarily, there is in the very depth of the consciousness a link which is indestructible. It is the link of identity. But in the outer manifestation, as they were emanated with this essential quality of freedom of choice, well, they are free to choose to do this or that.


The Mother: That is why, even in the worst criminal, there is somewhere in the depths, somewhere, the divine light. I believe you have read that passage of Vivekananda where he says (I don’t know the exact words), that the criminal must be told: “Awake, awake, being of light, and shine forth!”  Just a while ago, when I told you I shall narrate the story to you as one does to children, that is precisely because I narrated it as if it were a material story. And narrated thus, it becomes a child’s story. But these things must be seen in their own domain, which is a spiritual domain and not a material one.


The Mother: Things do not happen as they would here.  But still, yes! What happens here is symbolically the same thing, in the sense that the child who is born is nothing else but a little piece of his mother, even materially, altogether materially, for during almost... completely during a few hours, about two days, and to a lesser extent though still very perceptibly during at least two months, this link of substance is so great that it feels really like a physical material prolongation of herself, but outside herself. That is just the element of emanation. Well, this  does not prevent children, when they grow up, from becoming quite independent of their parents and at times completely different, but at the source, at the beginning, it is the same thing.


The Mother: It is simply the same matter, absolutely the same, simply exteriorised, that’s all.  And for the emanations, it is the same phenomenon, but instead of being on a material plane it is on the highest spiritual plane. And what happens here is a symbol of what happens up above.  Well, doesn’t it ever occur to you to say: “How is it that this child whose father and mother are so good, so honest, so generous, so truthful, how is it that he is such a rascal?” You may wonder at it, but it does not seem anything impossible.


The Mother: So, this is the same thing. Fundamentally, all depends on the inner constitution of the being. There are no two beings who are exactly alike; there are no two constitutions which are the same. And all depends on the inner organisation, the integral organisation of the being, on the order in which the elements are organised and what their inner relation is — even as the external form differs because the cells are not organised in the same way. But as this is a phenomenon you constantly see, in the midst of which you are born, which you see every day, it seems quite natural to you.


The Mother: But it is the same thing. It seems quite natural to you that a child is different from its mother and father — and yet this is the same thing. And in an emanation of the Supreme, to begin with, one part is necessarily different from the whole, though it may potentially contain the whole, but the whole is not expressed. And as the whole is not expressed, it is perforce different from the whole, for the inner organisation is different. There then, I think that is enough.


The Mother: We have almost touched philosophy.  , my children.   This is very important.  If you think of nasty things, you will be surrounded by nasty things.  There is a spiritual ego even as there is a physical, vital and mental ego.


The Mother: There is a spiritual ego. There are people who have made a great effort to overcome all their egoism and all their limitations, and attained a spiritual consciousness; and there, they have all the vanity and the sense of their importance and contempt for those who are not in the same condition as they.  Indeed, all that is ridiculous and bad in the ego, they ﬁnd there once again. There are many, many like that. They have overcome what was there in the physical or vital consciousness but the very effort they have made to master themselves and this victory they have gained give them the sense of their extreme importance.


The Mother: So they become puffed up and assert their authority.  This happens so frequently that it is not even noticed.   Didn’t understand? ... For instance, take the wind which blows; now scientists will tell you: “These are manifestations of forces of Nature, and it is the result of such and such a phenomenon”, they will speak about heat and cold, high and low, etc., and they will tell you: “That’s the cause of the wind’s blowing, these are currents of air produced in the atmosphere.”


The Mother: But it is not this. There are entities behind, only they are so huge that their form eludes us. It would be like your asking an ant to describe the form of a man — it couldn’t, could it? It sees at the most the tiny end of the little ﬁnger and it takes a walk on the foot — it is a great journey, and it would not know what a man’s form would be like. Well, it is almost the same thing.


The Mother: These forces which bring about wind, rain, earthquakes, etc. are manifestations of — call them gestures, if you like — of movements of certain beings so formidably huge that we hardly see the end of their foot and don’t realise their size.  It is much more dangerous than the ordinary one! For one is not aware that it is the ego. Outwardly, when one is egoistic, not only does one know it oneself but others make you realise it still more, and circumstances prove it to you every moment. But there, as unfortunately you meet people who respect you highly, you are not even aware that you are terribly egoistic.


The Mother: Very dangerous. Spiritual vanity is much more serious than physical vanity.   Not at the moment one unites with Him. It is evident that at that moment the ego disappears. But that state does not last.


The Mother: Or in any case we can put it in another way: those who have brought along their ego with them cannot keep the consciousness for long. They become aware of themselves again whilst having the experience. It is that which is most terrible. They look at themselves having the experience and admire themselves. And they feel they are exceptional beings, much higher than others, and then that becomes deplorable.


The Mother: Well, my child, that text, you know what it is: it is Radha’s prayer to Krishna. And so, it is such a personiﬁcation of divine forces that one is obliged to extend human feelings to the Divine in order to be able to express oneself. To understand it in its true form a whole long explanation would be required, and then it is no longer artistic — it becomes dogmatic or in any case didactic. It is to give the idea that all is in the Divine and all is divine. And necessarily, if one changes the state of consciousness and is identiﬁed with the Divine, that changes the very nature of things.


The Mother: For example, what seemed pain or sorrow or misery — one becomes aware quite on the contrary that it is an opportunity for the Divine’s growing closer to you, and that from this event perhaps one may draw a still greater joy than that experienced from something satisfying.  Only, you must understand it like that, in that spirit and with that consciousness, for otherwise, if taken in the ordinary sense, it is the very contradiction of the principle that all is divine.   The same thing, exactly the same vibration, according to the way in which it is received and responded to, brings either an intense joy or considerable despair, exactly the same, according to the state of consciousness one is in. So there is nothing of which it could be said: it is a misfortune. There is nothing that could be called suffering.


The Mother: All that is necessary is to change one’s state of consciousness. That is all. Only (I have written this somewhere, I don’t know where now), if you yourself succeed in changing your state of consciousness and enter this condition of bliss, you can see others still quarrelling, ﬁghting, being unhappy, suffering and feeling miserable, and you yourself feel that everything is so harmonious, so wonderful, so sweet, so pleasant, and you say: “Well, why don’t they do what I do?” But the trouble is that everybody is not ready to do that! And for those who remain in the ordinary consciousness, for them suffering is something very real.


The Mother: Now, there are people who don’t care to be happy all alone and agree to renounce this perfect bliss in order to help others to walk a little farther on the path.  Attitudes in the world — attitudes towards virtue — are very subjective. And what may succeed with one may not do so with another. And every one must follow his own path. That is why it is always difﬁcult to say to people: “Do what I do.”


The Mother: This is what all gurus usually say: “Do as I do and you will reach the goal.” All that one may say is: “Do as I do and you will be like me.”  ( )


The Mother: Ah! I wanted to ask you a question. We said at the beginning: one is surrounded by what one thinks about. You understand quite well what this means? (


The Mother: ) Every time you think of something, it is as though you had a magnet in your hand and were attracting that thing towards yourself — you understand. Now, there are people who have a very, very  bad habit of always thinking about all possible catastrophes, and are in a sort of constant apprehension about some calamity befalling them the next moment. I know many like that, there are some here. And so, those people have as though a magnet in their hands to attract calamities, not only upon themselves but upon others also.


The Mother: That lays a big responsibility upon them. And if one can’t stop all the time from thinking about something — some have a head that runs on and they haven’t found a way of stopping it — well, why not make it run on the right lines instead of letting it run on the others! Once your head begins to run, let it run on all the good things that can happen. If it is obliged to turn round and round, well, turn then to the good side! That is, if somebody is ill, instead of saying: “What is going to happen, perhaps this is going to be very serious, and if it is that disease... and a calamity comes so quickly”, instead of all that, if one thinks: “Oh! that is nothing, illnesses are outer illusions translating some deeper vibrations which are not seen, that is why one doesn’t speak about them, but that’s how it is.


The Mother: And these deeper vibrations may come and set in order what has been disturbed. And this imbalance, this illness or bad thing that has come, well, it will be absorbed by the Grace and will disappear, no trace of it will remain, except that of things agreeable and pleasant.” One may continue to think in this way uninterruptedly.... People always need to make their mind run, run, run, but then make it run on the right lines, you will see that it has an effect. For instance, let it go like this: that I shall learn better and better, shall know better and better, become healthier and healthier, and all difﬁculties will vanish, and wicked people will become sweet and good, and ill people will be cured, and houses which should be built will be built, and those things which should disappear will disappear, but giving place to better things, and the world will move in a constant progress, and at the end of that progress there will be a total harmony, and so on, and continue thus....


The Mother: You can go on endlessly. But then you will have around you and around  your head all kinds of pretty things. Those who perceive the atmosphere see certain inky stains, like an octopus there, yes, like that, with its tentacles to try and upset your mind — instead of that, one will see happy formations, formations of light or rays of sunlight or perhaps beautiful pictures, all that. One will see beautiful things — there are painters who do that and they always capture the thoughts.  But that’s exactly the thing; I say: pay attention and become conscious.


The Mother: If one is very attentive, one becomes conscious. One must be very concentrated and very attentive, then one becomes conscious.   Savitri  It is because she participates in their nature.


The Mother: She has descended upon earth to participate in their nature. Because if she did not participate in their nature, she could not lead them farther. If she remained in her supreme consciousness where there is no suffering, in her supreme knowledge and consciousness, she could not have any contact with human beings. And it is for this that she is obliged to take on the human consciousness and form, it is to be able to enter into contact with them. Only, she does not forget: she has adopted their consciousness but she remains in relation with her own real, supreme consciousness.


The Mother: And thus, by joining  the two, she can make those who are in that other consciousness progress. But if she did not adopt their consciousness, if she did not suffer with their sorrow, she could not help them. Hers is not a suffering of ignorance: it is a suffering through identity.  It is because she has accepted to have the same vibrations as they, in order to be able to enter into contact with them and pull them out of the state they are in. If she did not enter into contact with them, she would not be felt at all or no one could bear her radiance....


The Mother: This has been said in all kinds of forms, in all kinds of religions, and they have spoken very often of the divine Sacriﬁce, but from a certain point of view it is true. It is a voluntary sacriﬁce, but it is true: giving up a state of perfect consciousness, perfect bliss, perfect power in order to accept the state of ignorance of the outer world so as to pull it out of that ignorance. If this state were not accepted, there would be no contact with it. No relation would be possible. And this is the reason of the incarnations.


The Mother: Otherwise, there would be no necessity. If the divine consciousness and divine force could work directly from the place or state of their perfection, if they could work directly on matter and transform it, there would be no need to take a body like man’s. It would have been enough to act from the world of Truth with the perfect consciousness and upon consciousness. In fact that acts perhaps but so slowly that when there is this effort to make the world progress, make it go forward more rapidly, well, it is necessary to take on human nature. By taking the human body, one is obliged to take on human nature, partially.


The Mother: Only, instead of losing one’s consciousness and losing contact with the Truth, one keeps this consciousness and this Truth, and it is by joining the two that one can create exactly this kind of alchemy of transformation. But if one did not touch matter, one could do nothing for it.  She said so. You have not read it? She had even been told that  she would be alone.


The Mother: And she said: I am ready to be alone. You have not read it? It is in the canto they recited last year.  Indeed she did. It is said all along that she knew all that was going to happen.


The Mother: It is written clearly. Indeed, to each of them she says clearly: I shall bring to you what you need. Consequently, she knows it. Else she would not say so. If she did not know it, how could she say so?


The Mother: Savitri   Ah! that, that is the human consciousness.


The Mother: It is the human consciousness. It is the idea of the human consciousness that when all suffering will be over, well, “I shall sleep”. It is indeed of this that Sri Aurobindo speaks. When there is this aspiration for a supreme peace, one feels that if there were a and the world disappeared, well, at least there would be peace.  But the phrase itself is self-contradictory, for if there were a , there would be no more peace to be felt — there would be nothing at all any longer!


The Mother: But this is just one of the contradictions of the human consciousness: “As long as the world is there and suffering there, I shall suffer with the world. But if ever the world enters into peace, disappears in the peace of Non-Being, then I too shall rest. ” It is a poetic way of saying that as long as misery is there in the world, I shall suffer with the world. Only when it ceases to be there, it shall cease for me also.


The Mother: She will be the “Mother of Delight”.   Yes.  Well, he is the Avatar. He is the incarnation of the Supreme.


The Mother: Mechanical, these are the Asanas, Hathayoga. It is done with this intention. Religious, these are for those who believe in a particular religion and pray and perform religious ceremonies.  When one believes in a religion — no matter which — one abides by the discipline of the religion and prays and asks, one undergoes the discipline according to the teaching and observing the beliefs of the religion. The psychological method is Yoga.


The Mother: To seek within oneself through introspection what is permanent, what is constant. That’s all.  You are asking what that means! High?... For instance, there are those whose aim is to make a fortune, and there are those whose aim is to ﬁnd a cure for a disease.


The Mother: That of making one’s fortune is obviously more self-seeking and lower than the one of ﬁnding a remedy for an illness. There are those who have for their aim in life a comfortable and quiet living, with a family and children,  wanting the best in the best of possible worlds. That is a pretty low aim, in any case quite an ordinary one. There are those who seek the betterment of the whole of society or those who study to make new discoveries, like Mr. and Mrs. Curie, for example, who discovered radium. That is a higher aim.


The Mother: “Disinterested”, that means what is not for one’s own small personal proﬁt, for one’s personal pleasure, but solely for helping others. Naturally, the highest aim is to unite with the Divine and fulﬁl His work, but that, that’s right at the top of the ladder. In this ﬁrst chapter I took good care not to say anything of this kind, for I wrote it intentionally for everybody, even for those who have no mystical conception. But still, it goes without saying that the discovery of the Divine in oneself and uniting with Him and accomplishing His work is the highest and most disinterested aim, and the least selﬁsh.  What adjectives have I used?


The Mother: Yes. Wide, it is something that’s not limited to a small purely personal consciousness and its small purely selﬁsh advantages, something embracing a whole — which may be a group, a nation, a continent or the entire earth. For man an action working on the entire earth is surely a wide action.


The Mother: Yes. If you are useless, it is not precious, if you are useful, it becomes precious! There is nothing more disgusting than to be busy with all the little details of a narrow personal existence.  One feels empty, hollow, useless. One has no interest in life.


The Mother: There are people all shut up in their little family, and if the baby coughs, they spend hours in fretting, if the dinner is not wellcooked, they quarrel, or if the gentleman has lost his job and is  looking for another , he laments: “How shall I feed my family?”  — That’s existing like an earth-worm in a hole.  It is always pure. But it is either more or less individualised and independent in its action.


The Mother: What is psychic in the being is always pure, by its very deﬁnition, for it is that part of the being which is in contact with the Divine and expresses the truth of the being. But this may be like a spark in the darkness of the being or it may be a being of light, conscious, fully formed and independent. There are all the gradations between the two.  It is the outer consciousness that is not in contact with it, for it is turned outwards instead of being turned inwards — for it  lives amidst all the external noises and movements, in what it sees, what it does, what it says, instead of looking within, into the depths of the being and listening to the inner inspirations.


The Mother: Power? It is usually the psychic which guides the being. One knows nothing about it because one is not conscious of it but usually it is that which guides the being. If one is very attentive, one becomes aware of it. But the majority of men haven’t the least idea of it.


The Mother: For instance, when they have decided, in their outer ignorance, to do something, and instead of their being able to do it, all the circumstances are so organised that they do something else, they start shouting, storming, ﬂying into a rage against fate, saying (that depends on what they believe, their beliefs) that Nature is wicked or their destiny baleful or God unjust, or... no matter what (it depends on what they believe).   Whilst most of the time it is just the very circumstance which was most favourable for their inner development. And naturally, if you ask the psychic to help you to fashion a pleasant life for yourself, to earn money, have children who will be the pride of the family, etc., well, the psychic will not help you. But it will create for you all the circumstances necessary to awaken something in you so that the need of union with the Divine may be born in your consciousness. At times you have made ﬁne plans, and if they had succeeded, you would have been more and more encrusted in your outer ignorance, your stupid little ambition and your aimless activity.


The Mother: Whilst if you receive a good shock, and the post you coveted is denied to you, the plan you made is shattered, and you ﬁnd yourself completely thwarted, then, sometimes this opposition opens to you a door on something truer and deeper. And when you are a little awake and look back, if you are in the least sincere, you say: “Ah! it wasn’t I who was right — it was Nature or the divine Grace or my psychic being who did it.” It is the psychic being which organised that.   Yes, surely.


The Mother: It is the will of the psychic. It is also the very reason of its existence. It is for that it is there. For example, in the mind certain activities (and even at times in the physical and vital) certain activities awaken to the inﬂuence of the psychic without even knowing it. That is why those parts adhere to it and begin to aspire also for the divine knowledge, the divine union, the relation with the Divine.


The Mother: I have said that it manifests the truth?    Oh! the truth of our existence — not just the Truth. The truth of the being, that is, the central of an existence.


The Mother: It is that, indeed, which organises circumstances so that the truth of the being may be expressed or the superﬁcial outer being be led to turn round within — not ﬁnd any support outside, for instance, and turn within to have a support; it ﬁnds the psychic support.  That comes from a kind of certitude of inner choice. When one aspires for something, if at the same time one knows that the aspiration will be heard and answered in the best way possible, that establishes a quietude in the being, a quietude in its vibrations; whilst if there is a doubt, an uncertainty, if one does not know what will lead one to the goal or if ever one will reach it or whether there is a way of doing so, and so on, then one gets disturbed and that usually creates a sort of little whirlwind  around the being, which prevents it from receiving the real thing.  Instead, if one has a quiet faith, if whilst aspiring one knows that there is no aspiration (naturally, sincere aspiration) which remains unanswered, then one is quiet. One aspires with as much fervour as possible, but does not stand in nervous agitation asking oneself why one does not get immediately what one has asked for.


The Mother: One knows how to wait. I have said somewhere: “To know how to wait is to put time on one’s side.” That is quite true. For if one gets excited, one loses all one’s time — one loses one’s time, loses one’s energy, loses one’s movements. To be very quiet, calm, peaceful, with the faith that what is true will take place, and that if one lets it happen, it will happen so much the quicker.


The Mother: Then, in that peace everything goes much better.   One must enter the knowledge which belongs to the supramental region.  Every time something attracts this knowledge (something which is evidently ready to receive it), it comes.  Yes, it descends into the mind. Into a higher part of the mind or rather into the psychic.


The Mother: One may have knowledge from the psychic — though it is of another kind and is not formulated as in the mind. It is a sort of inner certitude which makes you do the right thing at the right moment and in the right way, without necessarily passing through the reason or mental formation.  For instance, one may act with a perfect knowledge of what should be done, and without intervention — the least intervention — of the reasoning mind. The mind is silent: it simply looks on and listens in order to register things, it does not act.   We have already spoken about this once, and not so long ago.


The Mother: Pure ideas are those which are translated into numerous thoughts. One idea may give birth to many thoughts, and can be expressed in many different ways; and yet it remains what it is.   Concentration! It is exactly the very principle of concentration.


The Mother: Can you do it spontaneously?  Indeed, that’s very good!   Ah!... If you are suddenly pulled out from it, thought vanishes?


The Mother: That’s because you enter a state of consciousness which is different from your ordinary state of consciousness and probably the link between the two is not established very well. That takes time. It is as though one had to build a bridge. Otherwise one takes a sudden jump to one side or the other, and then in jumping one forgets what was there. One leaves behind the experience one had.


The Mother: But if the thing is done methodically, that is, if every day one keeps a particular time for this, and meditates for ten or ﬁfteen minutes in order to establish a contact between that and the outer life, well, after some time one succeeds and then one remembers, and this becomes very useful. It is very useful. And  if your power of concentration is complete, then there is not a problem you cannot solve — I don’t mean arithmetic problems (), I mean problems about leading one’s life, about decisions to be taken, psychological problems which need solving.  There is not one that can resist this power of concentration.  And in fact it is very convenient to take a point: one looks steadily at the point, and so steadily that at a certain moment one becomes the point.


The Mother: One is no longer somebody looking at the point; one is the point. And then, if you continue with sufﬁcient strength and quietness, without anything disturbing you, you may suddenly ﬁnd yourself before a door which opens and you pass to the other side. And then you have the revelation.  Since when have you been doing this? This has always happened?


The Mother: Or is it recent?  You don’t know? Perhaps you were doing it and were not aware of it!  But you don’t do it deliberately? It just comes upon you, takes hold of you?


The Mother: Ah! this is perhaps also one of the reasons why you don’t remember.  (Another child)  Intermediary?


The Mother: But you see, if one does it by a methodical discipline, generally one is obliged to pass from one plane to another:  one wakes up in a particular plane, and then there one enters a sort of sleep and wakes up in another plane, and so on. And if one does it this way, then one remembers, for one does it with one’s conscious will and witnesses the working — these movements for quietening the being, precisely, in order to enter somewhere and see what is happening there, and the movement of taking notes of what is happening and preparing oneself for another higher opening, all this establishes conscious contact between the different parts of the being, and then one can have experiences without forgetting anything, and even at will.  But there are some rather uneducated people, for instance, who suddenly develop a faculty and have a direct experience somewhere in the higher mind or the psychic being or in some other part of the being. There are many reasons for this: it may be the result of former lives, it may be a phenomenon of consciousness of this life, it could be many things. In any case, for it to be fully useful, it should be done with the will to use it for one’s progress and become conscious of the different parts of the being in order to be able to do what one ought to do to the best of one’s ability.


The Mother: For instance, I have known people who were absolutely ignorant and uneducated but had a gift of vision, and a remarkable gift: they were put into trance and saw marvellously and described things — they knew how to see and describe all they saw whilst they were seeing it. But when they came out of that condition, they were absolutely ordinary beings without any education and intelligence. Yet that was a marvellous gift. That means there are beings who can make the greatest progress from the spiritual point of view, and even the intellectual, and who yet are apparently and in their outer life quite ordinary. There are others — I have known some who had an absolutely marvellous spiritual realisation, who lived constantly in the divine Presence and yet never had a vision in all their life!


The Mother: And they used to complain about it.... It is a question of temperament, destiny, and probably of the work one has to do, for evidently one can’t do everything — physically  it is impossible. Consequently one must choose.  Not necessarily. Illness (I have explained this to you) comes usually from a dislocation between the different parts of the being, from a sort of disharmony.


The Mother: Well, it can very well happen that the body has not followed a certain movement of progress, for instance, that it has remained behind, and that, on the other hand, the other parts of the being have progressed, and so that disequilibrium, that rupture of harmony creates the illness, and the mind may be in a very ﬁne state and the vital also. There are people who have been ill for years — with terrible, incurable diseases — and who have kept their mental capacity marvellously clear and progressed mentally. There is a French poet (a very good poet) called Sully Prudhomme; he was mortally ill; and it was then that he wrote his most beautiful poems. He remained charming, amiable, smiling — amiable with everyone, and yet his body was going to pieces. That depends on people.


The Mother: There are others still — as soon as they feel the least bit ill, everything is upset from top to bottom — they are then good for nothing.   For each one the combination is different.  But certainly there is a relation between the body and the mind!


The Mother: There is even more than a relation: it is a very close tie, for most of the time it is the mind which makes the body ill. In any case, it is the principal factor.  That depends on people, I told you. There are people — as soon  as the least thing happens to their body, their mind is completely upset. There are others still who may be very ill and yet keep their mind clear.


The Mother: It is rarer and more difﬁcult to see a mind that’s upset and the body remaining healthy — it is not impossible but it is much rarer, for the body depends a great deal on the state of the mind. The mind (I have written it there in the book) is the master of the physical being. And I have said the latter was a very docile and obedient servant. Only one doesn’t know how to use one’s mind, rather the opposite. Not only does one not know how to use it, but one uses it ill — as badly as possible.


The Mother: The mind has a considerable power of formation and a direct action on the body, and usually one uses this power to make oneself ill. For as soon as the least thing goes wrong, the mind begins to shape and build all the catastrophes possible, to ask itself whether it could be this, whether it could be that, if it is going to be like that, and how it will all end. Well, if instead of letting the mind do this disastrous work, one used the same capacity to make favourable formations — simply, for example, to give conﬁdence to the body, to tell it that it is just a passing disturbance and that it is nothing, and if it enters a real state of receptivity, the disorder will disappear as easily as it has come, and one can cure oneself in a few seconds — if one knows how to do that, one gets wonderful results.   There is a moment for choice, even in an accident.


The Mother: For instance, one slips and falls. Just between the moment one has slipped and the moment one falls there is a fraction of a second.  At that moment one has the choice: it may be nothing much, it may be very serious. Only, the consciousness must naturally be wide awake and one must be in contact with one’s psychic being constantly — there is no time to make the contact, one must in contact. Between the moment one slips and the moment one is on the ground, if the mental and psychic formation is sufﬁciently strong, then there is nothing, nothing will happen — nothing happens.


The Mother: But if at that moment, the mind according to its habit becomes a pessimist and tells itself: “Oh! I have slipped....” That  lasts the fraction of a second; that doesn’t take even a minute, it is a fraction of a second; during a fraction of a second one has the choice. But one must be so awake, every minute of one’s life!  For a fraction of a second one has the choice, there is a fraction of a second in which one can prevent the accident from being serious, can prevent the illness from entering in.


The Mother: One always has the choice. But it is for a fraction of a second and one must not miss it. If one misses it, it is ﬁnished.   (laughter)


The Mother: No. Afterwards there is yet another moment.... One has fallen, one is already hurt; but there is still a moment when one can change things for the better or worse, so that it may be something very fugitive the bad effects of which will quickly disappear or something which becomes as serious, as grave as it can be. I don’t know if you have noticed that there are people who never miss the opportunity of an accident! Every time there is the possibility of an accident, they have it.


The Mother: And never is their accident ordinary.  Every time the accident can be serious, it is serious. Well, usually in life one says: “Oh! he is unlucky, he is unfortunate, indeed he has no luck.” But all that is ignorance.


The Mother: It depends absolutely on the working of his consciousness. I could give you examples — only I would have to speak about certain people and I don’t want to. But I could give you striking examples! And this — this is the sort of thing one sees all the time, all the time here! There are people who could have been killed and who come out of it unscathed; there are others for whom it was not serious, and it becomes serious.


The Mother: But that does not depend on thought, on the working of the ordinary thought. They may apparently have thoughts as good as the others — it is not that. It is the second of the choice — people knowing how to react just in the right way at the right time. I could give you hundreds of examples. It is quite interesting.


The Mother: This depends absolutely on character. Some have such an awakened consciousness, so alert, that they are not asleep, they are awake within. Just at the second it is required they call the help. Or they invoke the divine Force.


The Mother: But just at the second it is needed. So the danger is averted, nothing happens. They could have been killed: they come out of it absolutely unhurt. Others, on the contrary, as soon as they have the least little scratch, something gets dislocated in their being: a sort of fright or pessimism or defeatism in their consciousness which automatically comes up — it was nothing, they had just twisted their leg and the next minute they break it. There is no reason for it.


The Mother: They could very well have not broken their leg.  There are others who climb up to a ﬁrst ﬂoor on a ladder which gives way under them. They could have collapsed — they come out of that without the least hurt. How did they manage it? Apparently this seems wonderful, and still this is how things happen to them.


The Mother: They ﬁnd themselves lying on the ground in an altogether ﬁne state; nothing has happened to them. I could give you the names, I am telling you exact facts.  So, on what does this depend? It depends on whether one is sufﬁciently awake for the second of the choice to... And note that this is not at all mental, it is not that: it is an attitude of the being, it is the consciousness reacting in the right way.


The Mother: It goes quite far, very far, it is formidable, the power of this attitude.  But as it is just a fraction of a second, it implies an altogether awakened consciousness which never sleeps, never enters the inconscient. For one does not know when these things are going to happen, isn’t that so? Hence, one does not have the time to wake up. One must be awake.


The Mother: I knew someone who, indeed, should have died and did not die because of this. For his consciousness reacted very fast. He had taken poison by mistake: instead of taking one dose of a certain medicine, he had taken twelve and it was a poison; he should have died, the heart should have stopped (it was many years ago) and he is still quite alive! He reacted in the right way.   If these things were narrated they would be called miracles.


The Mother: They are not miracles: it is an awakened consciousness.  I suppose you ought to know!  Very partially, vaguely, a sort of impression “like that” — an impression, almost an attitude, but not knowledge. How that works, one would not be able to say!  But if you can explain to me how that works, it would be interesting for everybody.


The Mother: It would be very interesting to know who exactly had that wakeful consciousness, had faith and a sort of... something that answered automatically, and perhaps not consciously.  There are degrees, many degrees. Human intelligence is such that unless there is a contrast it does not understand. You know, I have received hundreds of letters from people thanking me because they had been saved; but it is very, very rarely that someone writes to thank me because nothing has happened, you understand! Let us take an accident, it is already the beginning of a disorder.


The Mother: Naturally when it is a public or collective accident, the atmosphere of each person has its part in the thing, and that depends on the proportion of defeatists and those who,  on the contrary, are on the right side. I don’t know if I have written this — it is written somewhere — but it is a very interesting thing. I am going to tell you.... People are not aware of the workings of Grace except when there has been some danger, that is, when there has been the beginning of an accident or the accident has taken place and they have escaped it. Then they become aware.


The Mother: But never are they aware that if, for instance, a journey or anything whatever, passes without any accident, it is an inﬁnitely higher Grace. That is, the harmony is established in such a way that nothing can happen. But that seems to them quite natural. When people are ill and get well quickly, they are full of gratitude; but never do they think of being grateful when they are well; and yet that is a much greater miracle! In collective accidents, what is interesting is exactly the proportion, the sort of balance or disequilibrium, the combination made by the different atmospheres of people.


The Mother: There was an aviator, one of the great “aces” as they are called of the First [World] War, and a marvellous aviator. He had won numerous battles, nothing had ever happened to him. But something occurred in his life and suddenly he felt that something was going to happen to him, an accident, that it was now all over. What they call their “good luck” had gone. This man left the military to enter civil aviation and he piloted one of these lines — no, not civil aviation: the war ended, but he continued ﬂying military airplanes.


The Mother: And then he wanted to make a trip to South Africa: from France to South Africa. Evidently, something must have been upset in his consciousness (I did not know him personally, so I don’t know what happened). He started from a certain city in France to go to Madagascar, I believe (I am not sure, I think it was Madagascar). And from there he wanted to come back to France. My brother was at that time governor of the Congo, and he wanted to get back quickly to his post.


The Mother: He asked to be allowed as a passenger on the plane (it was one of those planes for professional tours, to show what these planes could do). Many people wanted to dissuade my brother  from going by it; they told him, “No, these trips are always dangerous, you must not go on them.” But ﬁnally he went all the same. They had a breakdown and stopped in the middle of the Sahara, a situation not very pleasant. Yet everything was arranged as by a miracle, the plane started again and put down my brother in the Congo, exactly where he wanted to go, then it went farther south.


The Mother: And soon after, half-way the plane crashed — and the other man was killed.... It was obvious that this had to happen. But my brother had an absolute faith in his destiny, a certitude that nothing would happen. And it was translated in this way: the mixture of the two atmospheres made the dislocation unavoidable, for there was a breakdown in the Sahara and the plane was obliged to land, but ﬁnally everything was in order and there was no real accident. But once he was no longer there, the other man had all the force of his “illluck” (if you like), and the accident was complete and he was killed.


The Mother: A similar incident happened to a boat. There were two persons (they were well-known people but I cannot remember their names now), who had gone to Indo-China by plane. There was an accident, they were the only ones to have been saved, all the others were killed, indeed it was quite a dramatic affair.  But these two (husband and wife) must have been what may be called bringers of bad-luck — it is a sort of atmosphere they carry. Well, these two wanted to go back to France (for, in fact, the accident occurred on their way back to France), they wanted to return to France, they took a boat.


The Mother: And quite unexpectedly, exceptionally, right in the midst of the Red Sea the boat ran into a reef (a thing that doesn’t happen even once in a million journeys) and sank; and the others were drowned, and these two were saved. And I could do nothing, you know, I wanted to say: “Take care, never travel with these people!”... There are people of this sort, wherever they are, they come out of the thing very well, but the catastrophes are for the others.  If one sees things from the ordinary viewpoint, one does not notice this. But the associations of atmosphere — one must  take care of that.


The Mother: That is why when one travels in groups, one must know with whom one travels. One should have an inner knowledge, should have a vision. And then, if one sees somebody who has a kind of small black cloud around him, one must take care not to travel with him, for, surely an accident will occur — though perhaps not to him. Hence, it is quite useful to know things a little more deeply than in the altogether superﬁcial way.  (


The Mother: ) He looks as if he found life becoming very difﬁcult in this way!   It is not there in all children. I have known many who, on the contrary, were very careful.  Children are not as “concretised”, materialised in their physical consciousness as older people — as one grows up, it is as though one is coagulated and becomes more and more gross in one’s consciousness unless through a willed action one develops otherwise.


The Mother: For instance, the majority of children ﬁnd it very difﬁcult to distinguish their imagination, their dreams, what they see within themselves from outer things. The world is not as limited as when one is older and more precise. And they are extremely sensitive within; they are much closer to their psychic being than when they are grown up, and much more sensitive to the forces which, later, will become invisible to them — but at this moment are not. It is not unusual for children to have some sort of ﬁts of fear or even of joy in their sleep, from dreams. Children are afraid of all sorts of things which for older people don’t exist any more.


The Mother: Their vision is not solely material. They have a kind of perception, more or less exact and precise, of the play of the forces behind. So, being in that state they are inﬂuenced by forces which otherwise have no hold over people who are shut up in themselves and more gross. And these forces — the forces of destruction, for example, or forces of cruelty, forces of wickedness, of ill-will — all, all these things are in the atmosphere. When one is more conscious and more well-formed within, one can see that they are outside oneself and deny them any expression.


The Mother: But when one is very young and lives in a half-dream, these things can exercise much inﬂuence and make children do things which in their normal state they  would not do. I believe it is due to that above all.  There is also the phenomenon of unconsciousness. Very often a child does harm without even being aware that it is doing harm; they are unconscious, they are shut up in their movement, and they are not aware of the effect of what they do.  That happens very often.


The Mother: That means that if a child is rightly educated, and if one appeals to his best feelings and explains to him that to do things in such and such a way is harmful to others (and one can make this very tangible for them with a little demonstration), they stop doing harm, very often.   It is above all a question of education. These half-conscious movements of cruelty — it is very rare for parents not to have them; well, that is enough to set its impression upon a child’s consciousness. There are some — but that is a very small number — who have an adverse formation inside them.


The Mother: These are irretrievably wicked children. But they are very rare. There are none here, happily.   Ah! that depends on their state of consciousness, it depends on the state of their psychic formation. If the psychic being is completely formed, if it has reached the perfection of its being and is free to reincarnate or not, it has also the capacity of choosing.


The Mother: But I believe I have explained that to you already.  They don’t have a physical sight like ours so long as they are not in a body. So, evidently, they look for a body which is adapted and ﬁt to express them, but they must give its share to the material inconscience, if it may be put thus, and to the necessity to adapt themselves to the most material laws of the body. So, from the point of view of the psychic, the choice of the place where one is born is important, it is more than an insigniﬁcant detail. But there are so many things that can’t be foreseen.


The Mother: For instance, one chooses an environment, a country, a certain type of family, one tries to see the nature of the likely parents, one asks for certain already well-developed qualities in them and a sufﬁcient self-mastery. But all this is not enough if one does not carry in oneself a sufﬁcient dynamism to overcome the obstacles. So, all things considered, this is not enormously important.  Anyhow, even at the best, even if the parents have collaborated consciously, there is an enormous mass of the subconscient and the yet lower inconscient which from time to time rises again to the surface, gets stirred up, damages the work, makes calmness and silence indispensable. Always, always a preparation is needed, even if one has chosen — a long preparation.


The Mother: Not to speak of the phenomenon of being half-stunned at the moment of birth, the descent into the body, which often lasts for a very long time before one can escape from it completely.  It is perhaps a subconscious wickedness in the parents. It is said that people throw out their wickedness from themselves by giving it birth in their children. One has always a shadow  in oneself. There are people who project this outside — that does not always free them from it, but still perhaps it comforts them!


The Mother: But it is the child who “proﬁts” by it, you see? It is quite evident that the state of consciousness in which the parents are at that moment is of capital importance. If they have very low and vulgar ideas, the children will reﬂect them quite certainly.  And all these children who are ill-formed, ill-bred, incomplete (specially from the point of view of intelligence: with holes, things missing), children who are only half-conscious and halfformed — this is always due to the state of consciousness in which the parents were when they conceived the child. Even as the state of consciousness of the last moments of life is of capital importance for the future of the one who is departing, so too the state of consciousness in which the parents are at the moment of conception gives a sort of stamp to the child, which it will reﬂect throughout its life.


The Mother: So, these are apparently such little things — the mood of the moment, the moment’s aspiration or degradation, anything whatsoever, everything that takes place at a particular moment — it seems to be so small a thing, and it has so great a consequence: it brings into the world a child who is incomplete or wicked or ﬁnally a failure. And people are not aware of that.  Later, when the child behaves nastily, they scold it. But they should begin by scolding themselves, telling themselves: “In what a horrible state of consciousness I must have been when I brought that child into the world.” For it is truly that.


The Mother: Yes, that’s perfectly true. The worst of all (which men usually do) is to leave their children with servants. It is a crime. For these people have an altogether vulgar consciousness, altogether low, altogether obscure; and quite spontaneously, without wanting  to do so, they let it enter the children. Naturally, there is also the age when children are put to school and there they begin to come in contact with a host of children whose company is not always quite desirable.


The Mother: It is very difﬁcult to avoid these relations. But all the same, if one has started life with a little consciousness and much goodwill, when one meets people who are not desirable company, one feels it. And if one is goodwilled, immediately one tries not to see them or not to be with them.  Yes, that’s true, that may happen. Fundamentally, this is why we always come back to the same thing: one must do all one can, as well as possible, and do it as an offering to the Divine, and then, once all this is settled and organised, well, if there is really an aspiration in the being, and a being that is a being of light, it can counteract all bad inﬂuences.


The Mother: But once one puts one’s foot into this world, one can’t hope very much to be quite pure and free from bad inﬂuences. Every time one eats, one absorbs them; every time one breathes, one absorbs them. Then, essentially, what is necessary is to do the work of cleansing, progressively, as much as possible.  They are tamasic. It is due to the large proportion of tamas in their nature.


The Mother: The more tamasic one is, the more does one need something violent and exciting circumstances. When the physical is tamasic, unless one eats spices and highly ﬂavoured food, one does not feel nourished. And yet these are poisons.  They act exactly like poison on the nerves. They do not nourish.


The Mother: But it is because people are tamasic, because their body’s consciousness is not sufﬁciently developed. Well, mentally it is  the same thing, vitally the same thing. If they are tamasic, they always need new excitements, dramas, murders, suicides, etc. to feel anything at all, otherwise.... And there is nothing, nothing that makes one more wicked and cruel than tamas. For it is this need of excitement which shakes you up a little, makes you come out of yourself.


The Mother: And one must also learn, there, to distinguish between those who are exclusively tamasic and those who are mixed, and those who are struggling within themselves with their different parts. One can, one know in what proportion their nature is constituted, so as to be able to insist at need on one thing or another. Some people constantly need a whipping from life in order to move, otherwise they would spend their time sleeping. Others, on the contrary, need soothing things, silence, a retreat in the country-side — all things that do a lot of good but which must disappear as soon as one needs to make an effort for progress or to realise something or struggle against a defect, conquer an obstacle.... It is complicated, don’t you think so?


The Mother: The proportion is very important, this proportion of the three “gunas” (you know the three gunas?) the proportion of the three gunas in the nature. And one must know the exact proportion in oneself and how to use one guna to ﬁght the other, and so on. But there is a moment when one should attain a certain equilibrium, and then be capable of establishing it in oneself a little steadily and facing life without having to fall into holes or struggle against terrible things. From that moment on everything goes well.


The Mother: Yes, my child. And for years I have been ﬁghting for it to be otherwise. When you — you children, here — when you are old enough and ready to become teachers, then you will be entrusted with teaching the newcomers the right thing, in the right way.  Actually, for the time being, it is much more a school of teachers than a school of students! What is wanted is that you prepare yourselves by learning what everybody knows — for there is an indispensable basis: it is not anything very much, it is not a very detailed or very deeply established basis, but still there is a basis of general human knowledge that’s necessary — but


The Mother: once you have that basis and have at the same time beneﬁted by the inﬂuence that is here, and when you have read and understood sufﬁciently well to be able to see from that angle — the angle of the true life — well, when you know all that, you will be the ones asked to teach the children from outside what you have learnt. That is part of the work.  It is true that apart from a few rare exceptions, the teaching is given on the most ordinary principles. I know it. But, for instance, in order that it be otherwise, the books which are used should be prepared here, with the extracts chosen here, even with the method of teaching worked out here.


The Mother: I have asked several persons to do it. But this is one of those interminable tasks which make you always put off for the next year the possibility of taking a class which does not follow the grooves of the past. That preparation of the material, for instance, for the true understanding of things, that takes time. One has to face very concrete problems. It is difﬁcult to teach children without their having books to be able to study.


The Mother: But these books, ﬁnally, are perforce ordered from the stock available. There is not much choice. One tries to ﬁnd the best that is available, but the best that is there is yet not very good. There also, I need people to prepare them, these books. But precisely, I believe  that someone who has grown up here from childhood and felt things quite subconsciously when very young, and who has in spite of everything...


The Mother: that leaves a trace, it cannot go without any effect; and when one sees children brought up here beside those who come from outside, there is truly a great difference (perhaps not outwardly in the mechanical part of training, but in the understanding, the intelligence, in the inner awakening), there is a considerable difference, and the new ones need some time to come up to the same level. It is something beyond books, don’t you see? It is like the difference between living in a pure atmosphere, ﬁlling the lungs with pure air every time one breathes and living in an infected atmosphere and poisoning oneself every time one breathes. From the point of view of consciousness it is the same phenomenon, and it is essentially the most important thing. And it is this which completely escapes the superﬁcial consciousness.


The Mother: You are plunged in a sea of consciousness full of light, aspiration, true understanding, essential purity, and whether you want it or not it enters. Even for those who are shut up in their outer consciousness, well, they cannot sleep in vain.  There is an action here during sleep which is quite considerable, considerable. So that has an effect, it is visible. I have seen people who had come altogether from outside, who knew nothing (only they had spent their life taking interest in children), well, the impression of these people — visitors, people just passing by — they are all quite bewildered: “But you have children here as I have never seen elsewhere!”


The Mother: As for us, we are used to it, aren’t we? They are spontaneously like that, quite naturally. But there is an awakening in the consciousness, there is a kind of inner response and a feeling of blossoming, of inner freedom which is not found elsewhere. Some of the children who come here are terribly well brought up — so polite, so well-bred, who answer you so... and one gets the impression of little puppets, just half alive, who have been well polished, well brushed, well groomed outside, but within there is no response.


The Mother: Here, I cannot say that we give an example of unusual politeness (!), one is rather a  little... a little what people call “ill-bred”. But in that too one is so alive! One feels a consciousness vibrating here. And that is the most important part of all. And of this one does not speak, for these are things one, but does not talk about — an occasion like today’s must present itself for me to speak to you about it.


The Mother: Indeed, you have been here for so many years, and this is the ﬁrst time I have had it..  You have exhausted all your questions?  Yes, every year.... During the war it was wonderful, it was like a prophecy of what was going to come.


The Mother: Now there is no longer any war and no more need of prophecy! But it is always an indication of the progress which has to be made. You will receive it tomorrow morning, the prayer. But I advise you to reﬂect deeply on it. For truly it was spoken and considered as of great importance.


The Mother: Now we are becoming almost a thing of public interest, in the sense that there are lots of visitors coming and lots of people concerned about what we are doing here, and then they are taken round and told what we have supposedly done and what we are going to do and all that. And there was truly a great need to say: “I beg of you, don’t speak so much about what we are doing: do it.” That is all.  It is always better to do than to speak, and in the least details also.  There is another meaning too, much deeper.


The Mother: But about that I shall speak to you another time.  , my children.


The Mother: No. Even the character itself is not a simple affair, that is, the character of a person is not the expression of his true being but the result of many things. For example, atavism may be expressed, that is, what comes from the father, the mother, from both together which may have a different result; from the antecedents — the past history, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, etc., and then from the environment in which people have lived when they were very young and had no independence at all. That has a considerable effect on the character. And this character affects the physical formation.


The Mother: So, just by seeing somebody one cannot quite say what his true nature is. One may describe his tendencies, know his difﬁculties, his possibilities, but it is only with the growth of the consciousness and as the development becomes voluntary and organised that the body can begin to express the true character of the person.  That may be an accident, you know. Accidents are due to many things; in fact they are the result of a conﬂict of the forces in Nature, a conﬂict between the forces of growth and progress and the forces of destruction. When there is an accident, an accident that has lasting results, it is always the result of a more or less partial victory of the adverse forces, that is, of the forces of disintegration, disorganisation.


The Mother: It depends.  There are teachings, like that of theosophy for instance, which take Karma in an altogether superﬁcial and human sense  and tell you: “Oh! You have met with this accident because in a former life you did something bad, so that comes back upon you in the form of an accident.” This is not true, not at all true.  This is but human justice, it is neither the justice of Nature nor the justice of the Divine.


The Mother: Naturally the formation of the body is very important in this sense that if, for instance, one is constantly under the inﬂuence of a depression, of pessimism, discouragement, a lack of faith and of trust in life, all this enters, so to say, into one’s substance, and then some people, when there is the possibility of an accident, never miss it. Every time there is a chance of something happening to them, they catch it, be it an illness or an accident. You have a whole ﬁeld of observation here — it is always the same people who meet with accidents. Others do the same things, have as many chances of having an accident, but they are not touched. If you observe their character you will see that the former have a tendency to pessimism and more or less expect something unpleasant to happen to them — and it happens.


The Mother: Or else they are afraid. We know that fear always brings what one fears. If you fear an accident, this acts like a magnet drawing the accident towards you. In this sense, it may be said that it is the result of character. And the same thing holds for illness.


The Mother: There are people who can move about among the sick and in places where there are epidemics and never catch a disease. There are others — it is enough for them to spend an hour with a sick person, they catch the illness. That too depends on what they are within themselves.  One cannot say. It is a moral question.


The Mother: The problem should not be judged from a moral point of view, one should not say that those who always enjoy good health and to whom nothing happens are “good children” and those who meet with accidents and suffer catastrophes are “bad”. That is not correct. For, as I  was saying, the logic of Nature is not human logic and its sense of justice (if it has any) is not a human sense. For it there is very little of what we call good and bad. It could rather be said that there is what is constructive and what is destructive, what is progressive and what is retrogressive.


The Mother: That indeed is very important. And then there are those who are luminous, sunny, happy, smiling and those who are gloomy, dull, misanthropic, dissatisﬁed, who live in grey shadows. It is the latter who catch all the unpleasant things. Those who are radiant (they may be radiant without it being a spiritual radiance, they may simply radiate good sense, balance, an inner conﬁdence, the joy of living), those who carry in themselves the joy of living, these are in harmony with Nature and, being in harmony with Nature, generally avoid accidents, they are immune from diseases and their life develops pleasantly as far as it is possible in the world as it is. And now?


The Mother: These were old ideas of the last century. They are no longer in fashion now, but at the end of the last century it was always thought that the more weak and sickly people were, the more brilliant was their mind, the more intelligent they were! Some even explained that the development of their intelligence was due to the fact that they could not draw any joy from their body — for they were quite incapable of living fully, so all their attention was turned to their mind and it was thus that their intelligence had developed. There was even a time when it was the fashion to look a little sickly. Poets, for instance, put on these airs....


The Mother: An artist, he had to be a little sickly to give the impression that his mind was all aﬁre! But that is now over. It was over even before you were born, I believe. It was the romantic age, the end of the last century. Men like Musset, for instance — I don’t know if you have ever seen a portrait of Musset, but indeed he had a sentimental and sickly look, and he added to it as much  as he could by his dress.


The Mother: It was thought that it gave him an artistic and poetic appearance. But now this is altogether out of fashion. People favour a good physical balance, good health, a strong body and all that is given by the physical training of children.  I read a story by a very well-known French novelist (it was a novel), which was set in prehistoric times, in the Stone Age, when man lived in caves, dressed in animal-skins and hunted in order to eat and in self-defence. Now, it happened that by some sort of accident a child was born lame or at least deformed or humpbacked or something like that.


The Mother: And generally, in those days (so it is narrated, I don’t know), malformed children were killed because they were a burden. But for some reason or other its mother had hidden it and it had lived. And then this boy who had no means of hunting, for instance, or of doing all the work his companions were doing, had begun to develop his mind and had become the ﬁrst poet, because he expressed in his words what the others did by their movements. Well, it is just ideas like these which are at the root of this feeling that in order to have a mind one must not have a body, and that the more ill one is, the more intelligent he is! Isn’t that quite silly?


The Mother: It is true that there is a certain independence. I think I spoke to you last time about a French poet called Sully Prudhomme who was dying of a very serious disease — a very painful and grave disease, and it was at this time that he wrote his most beautiful poems and said the most beautiful things to his friends.  His mind was quite independent of his body. But still, this is not an absolute rule.  Not always.


The Mother: The psychic is more “in front” than later when they grow up and the mind develops, but it can’t be said that in all children the psychic may be felt. And one cannot judge from those who are here, for the condition of admission I make when  children are brought to me is this: if I see the psychic on the surface I take them, but if they are already veiled by all sorts of deformed activities, I don’t take them. So, those whom we have here are an exception. It is the cream. It is a selection.


The Mother: Oh, good heavens! Greedy, that’s not a crime! There are greedy children. Perhaps they have a bad digestion and so always want to eat.


The Mother: They don’t gain by what they eat. The whole outer being is full of difﬁculties of all kinds, in everybody — in children also. You would be more justiﬁed to ask me: “Why are there such cruel children?” That indeed is one of the most dreadful things.... But it is due to unconsciousness.


The Mother: It is because they are not even aware that they are making others suffer. And usually, if care is taken to make them understand — for instance, through experience — then they understand. Children who illtreat animals (there are many of these) — well, that is because they don’t even know that animals feel as they do. When they are made to understand that when they pinch animals or pull their hair or beat them it gives them pain, and if necessary when they are shown on their own bodies how it hurts, they don’t do it any more!


The Mother: There are some who are particularly wicked. These are under a pernicious inﬂuence. And at times this shows itself from their very infancy and they are like that all through their life, unless they are converted, which is not easy.  There is a sort of association between the physical and the psychic and between the mental and the vital being. A mental being is very often a very vital being.


The Mother: A psychic being is very often a physical being. Children — just because this psychic consciousness is in the front — live also altogether in their body. But as soon as one begins to develop the mind, the need for association also develops, with all the deformations that go with it. People who make very strict distinctions between man and woman (I  don’t know why, for one is as good as the other), say that man is mental and vital and woman physical and psychic. There is some truth in it.


The Mother: But naturally it involves all possible exceptions and complications. These are arbitrary simpliﬁcations. In fact the physical being has a simplicity and even a goodwill (which is not always very enlightened, far from it), but still a simplicity and goodwill which put it in a closer relation with the psychic than the passions of the vital or the pretensions of the mind. And it is probably because of that also that in children the psychic can feel more at ease, being less constantly jostled by mental and vital contradictions.  Who?


The Mother: Oneself?... It is not felt, no? You don’t feel it? I am not speaking of a small child, for it has no means of control and observation, it lacks the capacity of observation. But then, when one is no longer a baby, doesn’t one feel it?


The Mother: It doesn’t make a difference?... ( ) Ah!... There is not one of you who will dare to tell me that it makes no difference when the psychic is there, when one feels better within oneself, when one is full of light, hope, goodwill, generosity, compassion for the world, and sees life as a ﬁeld of action, progress, realisation.


The Mother: Doesn’t it make a difference from the days when one is bored, grumbling, when everything seems ugly, unpleasant, wicked, when one loves nobody, wants to break everything, gets angry, feels ill at ease, without strength, without energy, without any joy? That makes a difference, doesn’t it?  Naturally, if nobody has ever taught you what the psychic or the vital is, you cannot have any notion of the thing. You may say,  “Today I feel good, yesterday I did not.” Till I was twenty-four I knew nothing about all these things, and yet I could distinguish very well these movements.


The Mother: I did not use these words because no one had taught them to me and I had never read anything, but I felt very clearly the difference at different moments and in what state of consciousness I was.  But you who are here, after all that you have heard and all that you have read and all that I have taught you, you should be aware of all the movements within you and be able to ﬁx a little label: this is this, that is this other.  Do you know the days you are in good health and the days when you are ill? Physically. Do you know it?


The Mother: Physically, quite sure? When you get up in the morning, can you say whether today the balance is good or not?  That’s true, it changes all the time. Even during the same day. But when you have just got up, when just waking up and beginning your day, do you begin your day always in the same way?


The Mother: Ah! There are days when everything seems to you harmonious, and days when you are as with grinding wheels. Things grate within you, they don’t turn round. Well, it is something like that.


The Mother: If you observe it physically, for your body, afterwards you can observe it for your sensations, your feelings (a kind of inner impression), and then you observe your brain, if the head is clear or smoky. Yes?   So it is the same thing.  I think the power of observation develops in all the parts of the being. You may have a mental power of observation, a vital power of observation, a physical power of observation.


The Mother: When you observe ideas, for instance, the train of ideas, the logic of the ideas, it is not altogether the same power of observation as when you look at a friend doing athletics and see whether he is making his movements correctly or not. That is, the capacity of attention is there in both cases, but it works in a different ﬁeld. It can’t be said that it is one part of the being observing the others; it is the faculty of observation developing in each part of the being — that is, the faculty of concentration and attention.  For the capacity of observation must not be confused with the capacity of discernment. Discernment is an intellectual capacity.


The Mother: Something like a judgment already enters into it, what we call “discrimination”: you can distinguish between the origin of one thing and of another, and the reciprocal value of these things.  But that ought to be founded on a correct observation. The power of observation comes ﬁrst, discernment follows.  More than that! There is the capacity for a direct vision of things.


The Mother: It is like a mirror in which all things are reﬂected, whatever they may be. But that is just what most children, when not deformed, have very clearly, a great sensibility — for example, to the atmosphere of those who approach them. There are children who, without any apparent reason, rush towards one person and run away in horror from another. For you both of them are equally good or not good, you make no difference. But in one instance the child is immediately attracted by the person, and in  the other, try as hard as you may, it will weep, it will cry or it will run away, but it will have nothing to do with that person;


The Mother: and all this is a translation, in a consciousness of ignorance, of a psychic phenomenon: the vision of the psychic quality of that person.  Perhaps they are born like that, for some reason or other, or perhaps they have practised it even without knowing that they were doing so. Yes, there are children who, even when very young, are very attentive, and others who are always distracted.  But that is how the inner constitution of different beings is.  There are not two who are the same.


The Mother: Some are born with a great power of attention and there are others who don’t have it.  One can develop it, one can, and there are no limits to the development. And it is even altogether indispensable to develop it.    The names?


The Mother: In the Chaldean tradition they were in Chaldaic. In other traditions, in other languages; in Egypt they were written in hieroglyphs. Each system gave its names. I had a list of the names — not only of the names but also of what they represented, what kind of sense each represented — but it was a very long time ago, I don’t remember them any longer. As I have said there, it is in the ﬁeld of things seen, felt, done at a distance by a concentrated projection of consciousness.


The Mother: For instance, one is in a room and, due to an illness or an accident, one cannot move. Next to this room there is another; next to that there is a sort of bridge; after the bridge there are steps going down; and these steps go down to a big studio in the middle of a garden.  Now, the person laid up in the room wishes to know what is  going on in the studio. He concentrates his consciousness and then extends it, so to say (truly it is as though he extended it almost materially), and he goes along the whole way and reaches the studio. If he does this properly, he sees what there is in the studio, can hear what is going on, though he is not there himself: the body is lying in a bed in a room, but the consciousness is projected.


The Mother: It is a physical consciousness. It is not an inner state, for one sees physically, hears physically. If there are people in the room one sees them, and if they are speaking one hears them speaking. Naturally, it is not from the very ﬁrst day that one succeeds; it asks for a very rigorous discipline. It corresponds a little (a little) to that capacity which was developed in the Red Indians due to the conditions of their life.


The Mother: I don’t know how it is at present, but formerly they used to put their ear to the earth, and they had so ﬁne an ear that they could hear steps more than a mile away. They heard the steps of those who were walking at a distance of more than two or three kilometres simply by putting their ear to the ground. Or take the dog which, if given something to smell, ﬁnds the trail of that scent again, can follow it with its nose. Well, it is one kind of super-sense, that is, a sense that has reached such a degree of intensity and reﬁnement that it can indeed feel what the ordinary sense does not feel, can see at a distance, really see, see physically at a distance, through walls. It is said that the blind develop a sense which enables them to feel an object at a distance.