The Mother: There are three principal paths of yoga: the path of knowledge, the path of love and the path of works. So Sri Aurobindo says that it depends on each case and person. Some people follow more easily the path of knowledge, others follow more easily the path of love, of devotion, and others follow the path of works. He says that for the integral yoga the three must be combined and with them something else, but that everybody can’t do everything at the same time and that there are people who need to be exclusive and to choose one of the three paths ﬁrst in order to be able to combine them all later.


The Mother: The path of knowledge is the well-known path of Raja Yoga, in which one practises detachment from one’s physical being, saying, “I am not the body”, then detachment from one’s sensations, “I am not my sensations”, then from one’s feelings, saying, “I am not my feelings”, and so on. One detaches oneself from thought and goes more and more within until one ﬁnds something which is the Eternal and Inﬁnite.  It is a path of meditation, which is truly the path of selfknowledge seen from the point of view of the divine reality. It is the path of meditation, concentration, of withdrawal from life and action. This was the one most practised in the old yogas.


The Mother: Or else, the path of devotion and love, like that of Chaitanya or Ramakrishna.   This book [Part One of] is entirely about the yoga of works, of action, that is to say, the ﬁnding of union with the Divine in action and work, and in the consecration of one’s work to the Divine. That’s all.  I don’t think that Sri Aurobindo contrasts them. This is only a way of speaking.


The Mother: He does not set one against the other.  It means that they go out of existence to ﬁnd the Divine, to ﬁnd God, a God who is outside life; they themselves go outside life to ﬁnd Him. While in the integral yoga it is in life that the Divine must be found, not outside life.  There are those, for instance, who consider life and the world an illusion, and think it necessary to leave them behind in order to ﬁnd the Divine, whose nature, they say, is the opposite of that of existence. So Sri Aurobindo says that perhaps they will ﬁnd God outside life but will not ﬁnd the Divine in life.


The Mother: He contrasts the two things. In one case it is an extra-terrestrial and unmanifested Divine, and in the other it is the Divine who is manifested in life and whom one can ﬁnd again through life.  Do you catch the point?   And if before even beginning, one has decided that this must not happen, perhaps one makes it impossible for oneself to receive the advice of the Divine!  For, truly speaking, each one ﬁnds only what he wants to ﬁnd of the Divine.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo has said this by turning it the other way round; he has said — I am not quoting the exact words, only the idea: what you expect from the Divine is what you ﬁnd in the Divine; what you want from the Divine is what you meet in the Divine. He will have for you the aspect you expect or desire.  And His manifestation is always adapted to each one’s receptivity and capacity. They may have a real, essential contact, but this contact is limited by their own capacity for receiving and approach.... It is only if you are able to go out of all limits that you can meet the total Divine as He totally is.


The Mother: And this capacity for contact is perhaps what constitutes the true hierarchy of beings. For everyone carries within himself the Divine, and therefore everyone has the possibility of uniting with the Divine — that possibility is the same in all. But according to each one’s capacity — in fact, according to his position in the divine hierarchy — his approach will be more or less partial or total.  It could be said — although these words deform things a lot — that the quality of the approach is the same in every being, but the quantity, the totality is very different....


The Mother: It is very difﬁcult to explain in words, but if one may say so, the at which you are identiﬁed with the Divine is perfect in itself, that is to say, your identiﬁcation is perfect in itself, at this point, but the number of points at which you are identiﬁed differs immensely.  And this is very marked in the difference between the paths followed to approach the Divine. Usually people set limits; they  limit themselves by excluding everything that is not exactly the path they have chosen, for this is much easier and they go much faster — relatively. But if, instead of following road, you go forward in a sort of movement which could be called spherical, where everything is included, which takes in all the possibilities of approach to the Divine, naturally the result is much more complete — and it is this that Sri Aurobindo calls the integral yoga — but the progress is much more difﬁcult and much slower.  One who chooses the path of knowledge — and even in the path of knowledge a special method, for everyone has his own method — and follows it, eliminating from his consciousness and life all that’s not it, advances much more rapidly, for he is in search of only one aspect and this is much more direct, immediate.


The Mother: And so he rejects, rejects, rejects all that is not this, and limits his being just to the path he travels. And the more you want your approach to be integral, naturally the more will it become difﬁcult, complicated, long, laborious.  But he who follows only one path, when he reaches his goal, that is, when he is identiﬁed with the Divine, his identiﬁcation is perfect in itself; that is to say, it is really an identiﬁcation with the Divine — but it is partial. It is perfect; it is perfect and partial at the same time.  This is very difﬁcult to explain, but it is a fact.


The Mother: He is really identiﬁed with the Divine and has found the Divine; he is identiﬁed with the Divine — but at one point. And so he who is able to identify himself in his totality with the Divine is necessarily, from the point of view of the universal realisation, on a much higher level of the hierarchy than one who could realise Him only at a single point.  And that is the true meaning of the spiritual hierarchy, this is why there is a whole spiritual hierarchical organisation, otherwise it would have no basis, for from the minute you touch the Divine, you touch Him perfectly: the point at which you touch Him is perfect in itself. And, from this point of view, all who are  united with the Divine are equally perfect in their union — but not equally complete, if I may say so.  Do you catch a little of what I mean?


The Mother: This may happen.   This may happen, but usually they have so well eliminated from themselves all that was not that, that nothing remains for them to realise that the identiﬁcation is not perfect. They have the experience of identiﬁcation, they are lost in the Divine. From the personal, individual point of view, that is the most they can hope for.


The Mother: It is not that what you say is impossible, indeed I think it is possible — but it is rare. It is not frequent. That would mean that in spite of their work of elimination they have retained in their consciousness something which would be able to feel that they are not entirely satisﬁed.  After the identiﬁcation, there is no longer the position, for example, of Master and disciple, the Lord and the aspirant.  At the moment of identiﬁcation that relationship disappears; there is no longer any Master or disciple, any Lord or aspirant: all is the Divine.


The Mother: So, who receives the lesson? That could only happen if there were an element of consciousness which did not participate in this identiﬁcation, because it needed another approach than the one it had. And all would depend on how perfectly the aspirant has eliminated from his being all that has nothing to do with the exclusive path he follows. For instance, if he keeps latent in his consciousness, elements of devotion or love, then if he has followed the path of knowledge, well, at the time of identiﬁcation these will miss something. And then he  will be able to understand that his experience is not complete.


The Mother: But if they have been so well eliminated that they no longer exist, then who will notice that the union is not perfect? The union is perfect in itself at this particular point. It is purely a phenomenon of consciousness.  ( )


The Mother: In your consciousness there is still the idea that you unite with “Something” which knows more about it than you and will make you recognise your mistake.  But that no longer exists after the identiﬁcation! That is just the ﬁrst contact, but not the identiﬁcation.  In identiﬁcation there is no longer any difference between the one who is identiﬁed and what he is identiﬁed with: it is the same thing. So long as there is a difference, it is not identiﬁcation.


The Mother: I say that by any path whatever and by eliminating all that is not of this path, it is possible for each one to be perfectly identiﬁed with the Divine, that is to say, to become the Divine — but at only one point, the point he has chosen. But this point is perfect in itself. I don’t say it contains everything, I say it is perfect in itself, that is, the identiﬁcation is perfect — but it is not total.  Perfect bliss — perfect bliss, eternity, inﬁnity, everything.  The difference exists only in the manifestation.


The Mother: By this identiﬁcation, whatever it may be, one automatically goes out of the manifestation, except at the point where one is identiﬁed.  And if, in the path one has followed, the aim is to go out, as for instance with those who seek Nirvana, if it is a going out of the manifestation, well, one goes out of the manifestation, it’s the end. And once one goes out of the manifestation, there is no longer any difference or any hierarchy, it is ﬁnished, one  has gone out of the manifestation. That is it, you understand, everything depends on the goal one pursues. If one goes out of the manifestation, one goes out of the manifestation, then there is no longer a possibility of any hierarchy at all.


The Mother: But as soon as one enters the manifestation, there is a hierarchy. That is to say — if we take the realisation of the supramental world — everybody will not be on the same level and made in the same pattern, and with the same capacity and possibility. It’s always this illusion, isn’t it, of a sort of indeﬁnite repetition of something which always resembles itself — it is not that. In the realisation, the manifestation, there is a hierarchy of capacity and action, and of manifestation. But if the aim is to go out of the manifestation, then quite naturally, at whatever point you go out, you go out.


The Mother: It all depends on the ideal one puts before oneself. And while you go out because you have chosen to do so, to enter into Pralaya, there is all the rest of the universe which continues.... But that’s totally immaterial to you. As your aim was to get out of it, you get out of it. But that doesn’t mean that the rest also go out!


The Mother: You are the only one to go out, or those who have followed the same aim and the same path as you.  ( )  That is precisely the problem which faced Sri Aurobindo here and me in France: should one limit one’s path and reach the goal ﬁrst, and later take up all the rest and begin the work of integral transformation; or should one go step by step, not leaving anything aside, not eliminating anything on the path, taking in all the possibilities at the same time and progressing at all points at the same time? That is to say, should one retire from life and action until one reaches one’s goal, becomes conscious of the Supermind and realises it in oneself; or should one embrace the entire creation and with this entire creation gradually go forward towards the Supermind?


The Mother: ()  One can understand that things get done by stages: you go forward, reach one stage, and so, as a consequence, take all the rest forward; and then at the same time, in a simultaneous movement, you reach another stage and again take others forward — and so on.  That gives the impression that you are not moving. But everything is on the move in this way.  That’s all.


The Mother: I would rather we didn’t fall back into inessentials. If you have understood what I said and it is about that you want to ask a question, ask it.   No? Well, then, it would be better to meditate.


The Mother: Not understood? What do you mean, “not understood”? It’s a fact, there is nothing to understand, it’s like that.  I have explained this to you I don’t know how many times .


The Mother: You think it is you who decide: these are impulses coming from outside. You think you are conscious of your will: it is a consciousness which is not yours. And everything... you are made up entirely of something which is the forces of Nature expressing a higher Will of which you are unconscious.  Only, one doesn’t understand this except when one can come out of one’s ego, though it be only for a moment; for the ego — and this is its strength — is convinced that it alone decides.


The Mother: But if one looks attentively, one notices that it is moved by all sorts of things which are not itself.  That is an expression of something which is not personal.  If you analyse carefully, you see, for instance, that all that you think has been thought by others, that these are things which circulate and pass through you, but you have not produced this thought, you are not the originator of this thought.   All your reactions come from atavism, from those who gave you birth and from the environment in which you have lived, from all the impressions which have accumulated in you and constituted something which seems to you yourself, yet which is not produced by you, but merely felt and experienced; you become aware of it in passing, but it is not you who created it, not you who gave it birth.  It could be said that these are like sounds — any kind of sounds: words, music, anything — recorded by an instrument, then reproduced by another instrument which plays them back like a gramophone, for instance.


The Mother: You wouldn’t say that the gramophone has created the sound you hear, would you? That would never occur to you. But as you are under the illusion of your separate personality, these thoughts which cross your mind and ﬁnd expression, these feelings which pass through your vital and ﬁnd expression, you think, have come from you; but nothing comes from you. Where is the “you” which can create all that?  You must go deep, deep within, and ﬁnd the eternal essence of your being to know the creative reality in yourself.


The Mother: And once you have found that, you will realise that it is one single thing, the same in all others, and so where is your separate personality?  Nothing’s left any longer.  Yes, these are recording and reproducing instruments, and  there are always what might be called distortions — they may be distortions for the better, they may be distortions for the worse, they may be fairly great changes; the inner combinations are such that things are not reproduced exactly as they passed from one to the other because the instrument is very complex. But it is one and the same thing which is moved by a conscious will, quite independent of all personal wills.


The Mother: When the Buddha wanted to make his disciples understand these things, he used to tell them: every time you send out a vibration, a desire for example, the desire for some particular thing, your desire starts circulating from one person to another, from one to another across the universe and will go right round  and come back to you. And as it is not only one thing but a world of things, and as you are not the only transmitting centre — all individuals are transmitting centres — it is such a confusion that you lose your bearings in there. But these vibrations move about in a single, absolutely identical ﬁeld; it is only the complication and interception of the vibrations which give you the impression of something independent or separate.  But there’s nothing separate or independent; there is only  Substance, Force, Consciousness, Will, which moves in countless ways of being.  And it is so complicated that one is no longer aware of it, but if one steps back and follows the movement, no matter which line of movement, one can see very clearly that the vibrations propagate themselves, one following another, one following another, one following another, and that in fact there is only one unity — unity of Substance, unity of Consciousness, unity of Will.


The Mother: And that is the only reality. Outwardly there is a kind of illusion: the illusion of separation and the illusion of difference.  This is not personal. Not at all personal. And that is easy to ﬁnd out; of all things this is the easiest to discern, because ninety times out of a hundred it comes to you from someone else or from a certain circumstance or a set of circumstances, or from a vibration coming from another person or several other people.


The Mother: It is very easy to discern, it is the ﬁrst thing one can discern: it is a vibration which suddenly awakens something similar in you. You know, something makes an impact on you, and this impact brings up a response, as when you play a note. Well, this vibration of desire comes and strikes you in a certain way and you respond.  It is not very difﬁcult to discern; even when one is very young, even when one is a child, if one pays attention, one becomes aware of this. One lives amidst constant collective  suggestions, constantly; for example, I don’t know if you have been present at funerals, or if you have been in a house where someone has died — naturally you must observe yourself a little, otherwise you won’t notice anything — but if you observe yourself a little, you will see that you had no special reason to feel any sorrow or grief whatever for the passing away of this person; he is a person like many others; this has happened and by a combination of social circumstances you have come to that house.


The Mother: And there, suddenly, without knowing why or how, you feel a strong emotion, a great sorrow, a deep pain, and you ask yourself, “Why am I so unhappy?” It is quite simply the vibrations which have entered you, nothing else.  And I tell you it is easy to observe, for it is an experience I had when I was a little child — and at that time I was not yet doing conscious yoga; perhaps I was doing yoga but not consciously — and I observed it very, very clearly. I told myself, “Surely it is their sorrow I am feeling, for I have no reason to be specially affected by this person’s death”; and all of a sudden, tears came to my eyes, I felt as though a lump were in my throat and I wanted to cry, as though I were in great sorrow — I was a small child — and immediately I understood, “Oh! it is their sorrow which has come inside me.”


The Mother: It is the same thing for anger. It is very clear, one receives it suddenly, not even from a person, from the atmosphere — it is there — and then all of a sudden it enters you and usually it gets hold of you from below and then rises up and pushes you, and so off you go. A minute earlier you were not angry, you were quite self-possessed, you had no intention of losing your temper. And this seizes you so strongly that you can’t resist — because you are not sufﬁciently conscious, you let it enter you, and it makes use of you — you... what you call “yourself”, that is to say, your body; for apparently (I say apparently) it is something separate from your neighbour’s body. But that is only an optical illusion, because in fact all the time there are what may be called particles, even physical particles, like a sort  of radiation which comes out of the body and gets mixed with others; and because of this, when one is very sensitive, one can feel things at a distance.


The Mother: It is said, for instance, that the blind develop such a sensitivity, so delicate a sense-perception, that when they are nearing an object they feel an impact at a distance. But one can quite easily make the experiment. For example, drawing near to someone without making any noise, then bringing one’s hand quite close — sensitive people feel it at once. You haven’t put your will for them to feel it, you haven’t brought in any psychological element, you have only made a purely physical experiment of approaching noiselessly and without being heard — a sensitive person will feel it at once.  That means that the body seems to end there, but it’s simply the way our eyes are made.


The Mother: If we had a little more subtle vision, with a little wider range, well, we would see that there is something which comes out, as something comes out from other bodies — and that all this gets mixed up and interacts.  That’s what I was saying. There is a dynamic force which moves all things, and when you become conscious of it, you see that it is one single Force which moves all things; and as you become conscious, you can even follow its movement and see how it works through men and things.  From the minute you become conscious of the Unity — unity of Force, unity of Consciousness and unity of Will — well, you no longer have the perception which makes you quite separate from others, so that you do not know what goes on in them, they are strangers to you, you are shut up as it were in your own skin, and have no contact with others except quite externally and superﬁcially. But this happens precisely because you have not realised in yourself the perception of this  oneness of Consciousness, Force and Will — even of material vibrations.


The Mother: It is the complexity which makes this perception difﬁcult — for our faculties of perception are quite linear and very onesided; so when we want to understand, we are immediately assailed by countless things which are almost inconsistent with each other and intermix in such an intricate way that one can no longer make out the lines and follow things — one suddenly enters a whirlwind.  But this is because... For instance, most men think one thought after another, even as they have to say one word after another — they can’t say more than one word at the same time, you know, or else they stammer. Well, most people think like that, they think one thought after another, and so their whole consciousness has a linear movement. But one begins to perceive things only when one can see spherically, globally, think spherically, that is, have innumerable thoughts and perceptions simultaneously.


The Mother: Naturally, up to now, if one wanted to describe things, one had to describe them one after another, for one can’t say ten words at once, one says one word after another; and that is why all one says is practically quite incapable of expressing the truth, quite incapable. For we have to say one thing after another — the minute we say them one after another, they are no longer true. They must all be said at the same time, just as they can all be seen at the same time, and each one in its place.  So, when one begins to see like this — to see, to discern, to feel, to think, to will like this — one draws near the Truth.


The Mother: But so long as one sees as one speaks, oh, what a lamentable poverty!    Yes. There are people who have a happy and comfortable life, and people who have a miserable one. That depends... how shall I put it? — upon individual destiny, that depends perhaps on what they have to do upon earth, on the stage they have reached, on many things.


The Mother: It’s quite obvious that it is not they who choose. For most people would always choose the same thing. If they were asked what they wanted, there would be differences, yes, but not so great. It would be rather monotonous.  Most people want to be what they call “quiet”, what they call “peaceful”, to have a small organisation in their own measure — which is generally microscopic, and consists of a regular routine of almost the same activities always, within almost the same bounds, in almost the same surroundings — and all that repeated without much difference; with a sufﬁcient variety not to become completely boring, but with nothing that might disturb this regular round which makes what is called a peaceful life.


The Mother: For the vast majority of people this is the ideal.   And so, the realisation of this ideal in its details depends solely on the country where they are born, the society in which they are born, and the customs of their environment. Their ideal is fashioned by the manners of the country and society in which they live.


The Mother: Of course, there are exceptions, but they only prove the rule.  Generally speaking, the most common ideal is to be born in an environment comfortable enough to avoid too many difﬁculties in life, to marry someone who won’t give you too much trouble, to have healthy children who grow up normally — again to avoid trouble — and then a quiet and happy old age, and not be too ill, again to avoid trouble. And then to pass away when one is tired of life, again because one does not want any trouble.   Indeed, this is the most widespread ideal.


The Mother: Naturally, there are exceptions, one may even ﬁnd the exact opposite. But existence, as men conceive it, would be rather monotonous. The differences would come in the details, for in one country people prefer one thing and in another, another; and then, in the society in which one is born, there are certain customs and an ideal of happiness, and in another society there are other customs and another ideal of happiness — and that’s all.   If one speaks to Europeans, for example, they will say there is nothing more beautiful than Europe.


The Mother: I knew Frenchmen — not one but hundreds — who used to say that there were no women in the world more beautiful than French women! And I knew a Negro who had been entirely educated in France and who, when asked which women were the most beautiful, said, “There is no woman more beautiful than a Negress.” That was quite natural, wasn’t it? Well, that’s how it is. There is no house more beautiful than the one you are used to living in — the houses of the country you live in, where you are born — and for the landscape it is the same thing, for food the same thing, for habits it’s the same thing.


The Mother: And provided that this goes on fairly harmoniously, without any very violent knocks, you are perfectly satisﬁed.  That is the usual mentality. And one turns round and round — and sometimes it is an iron circle, sometimes a golden one — but one turns round and round and round, and the children will turn round and round and the grandchildren will turn round and round — and so it will go on. There you are.  That’s enough for today.


The Mother: On the other planes, what do you mean?  The earth-Nature contains not only matter — the physical and its different planes — but also the vital and the mind; all this is part of the earth-Nature.  And after that there is no Nature, that is to say, there is no longer this distinction. That belongs essentially to the material world as it is described here.  But, as Sri Aurobindo says, this is not “all the true truth”.


The Mother: He has simply given a summary of what is explained in the Gita.  That is what the Gita says; it is not exactly like that.  Only, as he says, this may be useful, that is, instead of causing a confusion between the different parts of the being, this helps you to distinguish between what is higher and what is lower, what is turned towards the Divine and what is turned towards matter. It is a psychologically useful conception, but, in fact, that’s all there is to it. Things are not like that.


The Mother: There is an intelligence which acts in her and through her, in her action, but she is not conscious of this intelligence. You can understand this with animals. Take ants, for example. They do exactly what they have to do; all their work and organisation is something which really looks perfect. But they are not conscious of the intelligence which organises them.


The Mother: They are moved mechanically by an intelligence of which they are not aware. And even if you take the most developed animals, like the cat and dog for instance, they know exactly what they have to do: a cat bringing up its little ones brings them up just as well as a woman hers — sometimes better than a woman but it is impelled by an intelligence which moves it automatically. It is not conscious of the intelligence which makes it do things. It is not aware of it, it can’t change anything at all in the movement by its own will. Something makes it act mechanically but over that it has no control.


The Mother: If a human being intervenes and trains a cat, he can make it change its behaviour; but it is the consciousness of the human being which acts upon it, not its own consciousness. It is not conscious of the intelligence which makes it act.  And this kind of self-awareness, this possibility of watching oneself acting, of understanding why one does things, how one does them and, therefore, of having a control and changing the action — that belongs to the mind and in his own right to man.  This is the essential difference between a man and an animal — that a man is conscious of himself, that he can become aware of the force which makes him act, and not only become aware of it but control it.   But all those who feel themselves driven by a force and say, “I was forced to do it”, without the participation of their will, show that they are still deeply rooted in animality, that is to say, in the inconscient.


The Mother: One begins to become a conscious human being only when one knows why one does things and when one is capable of changing one’s action by a determined will, when one has a control. Before having any control, one is still more or less an animal with a small embryo of consciousness which is just beginning, a little ﬂame ﬂickering and trying to burn, and likely to be blown out by the slightest passing breeze.  Yes, I was expecting that.  I tell you this is the theory of the Gita, it’s not the whole Truth.  I heard this when I was in France; there are people who explain the Gita, saying there is no ﬂame without smoke — which is not true.


The Mother: And starting from that they say, “Life is like that and you can’t change it, it’s like that. All you can do is to pass over to the side of the Purusha, become the governing force instead of being the force that is governed.” That’s all. But, as Sri Aurobindo says at the end, it is the theory of the Gita, it’s  not the whole truth; it is only a partial way of seeing things — useful, practical, convenient, but not wholly true.  That’s their business.


The Mother: If that makes them happy, it’s all the same to me.  One can’t say no connection; but it’s narrow-mindedness, that’s all. They have caught hold of a small bit and make it the whole.  But that happens to everybody. Who is capable of grasping the whole, I would like to know?


The Mother: Everyone grasps his bit and makes it his whole.   Oh! but you are a propagandist! Why do you want to convince them?


The Mother: If they are content with that, leave them in their contentment.... If they come and tell you, “This is Sri Aurobindo’s theory”, you have the right to tell them, “No, you are mistaken, that is the traditional theory, this is not the theory of Sri Aurobindo.” That’s all. But you can’t tell them, “You must change yours.” If it pleases them, let them keep it.


The Mother: It’s very convenient. I saw this in France, in Paris, before coming to India, and I saw how very practical it was. First, it allows you to grasp a very profound and extremely useful truth, as I said; and then it shields you from all necessity of changing your outer nature.  It’s so convenient, isn’t it? You say, “I am like that, what can I do about it?


The Mother: I separate myself from Nature, I let her do whatever she likes, I am not this Nature, I am the Purusha. Ah!   let her go her own way; after all, I can’t change her.” This is extremely convenient. And that is why people adopt it; for they imagine they are in the Purusha, but at the least scratch they fall right back into Prakriti, and then they ﬂy into a temper or are in despair or fall ill.


The Mother: And that’s that.  I heard someone who had, however, realised precisely this kind of identiﬁcation with the Purusha and radiated a very remarkable atmosphere; but he called dangerous revolutionaries all those who wanted to change something in the earth-Nature, all who wanted things on earth to change — wanted, for example, that suffering might be abolished or ultimately the necessity of death might be done away with, that there might be an evolution, a luminous progress requiring no destruction: “Ah! those who think like that are dangerous revolutionaries. If need be, they should be put in prison!”


The Mother: But if one wants to be wise even without becoming a great yogi, one must be able to look at all these things with a smile, and not be affected by them. You have your own experience; try to make it as true and complete as possible, but leave each one to his own experience. Unless they come seeking you as a guru and tell you, “Now, lead me to the Light and the Truth”; then, there your responsibility begins — but not before. ( ) He is longing to speak!  I don’t know what you mean.


The Mother: But there are also many people who believe they are following the yoga of Sri Aurobindo and who don’t reach the supramental truth.   It does not depend so much on the path one follows; it depends on the capacity one has.  But of course, this is what is written in the Gita, that you must give yourself entirely. You know, in the Gita, Krishna is the Guide and inner Master, and you must give yourself entirely to Him, make a total surrender — so? I tell you, people profess one teaching or another, but they are not always able to follow it; they come to a certain point and stop.


The Mother: I don’t understand your difﬁculty. You mean that those who are convinced of the truth of the teaching of the Gita do not realise this teaching?  Yes, anyway the teaching contained in the Gita — and this surprises you? But there are countless people throughout the world who are convinced of the truth of a teaching, but that doesn’t make them capable of realising it. For instance, all Buddhists, the millions of Buddhists in the world who profess that Buddhism is the truth — does this enable them to become like a Buddha?


The Mother: Certainly not. So, what is so surprising about that?  I told you why there are people who accept this even after having read and studied Sri Aurobindo: why they accept it, hold fast to it, cling to this teaching of the Gita; it is because it’s comfortable, one doesn’t need to make any effort to change one’s nature: one’s nature is unchangeable, so you don’t at all need to think of changing it; you simply let it go its own way,  you look at it from the top of your ivory tower and let it do whatever it likes, saying, “This is not I, I am not that.”  This is very convenient, it may be done very rapidly — at least one could claim that it’s done. As I said, in practice one is rarely consistent with one’s theory; if you have a bad throat or a headache or have grazed your foot, you begin to cry out or complain, to groan, and so you are not detached, you are altogether attached and tightly bound.


The Mother: This is a very human fact.  Or else, when someone says something unpleasant to you, you get quite upset. It is like that — because you are closely attached to your nature, although you have declared you are not. That’s all.   What is it you don’t understand?


The Mother: That an immortal spirit has a strong immobility? It says what it means. An immortal spirit is necessarily immobile and strong, by the very fact of its being immortal.  Yes. But this is a conclusion, my child; you must read the beginning of the sentence if you want to understand....


The Mother: Ah! ( ) Give me the light and the book. ().  Here it is, he says, “The Gita... aims at something absolute, unmitigated, uncompromising, a turn, an attitude that will change the whole poise of the soul. Not the mind’s control of vital impulse is its rule, but the strong immobility of an immortal spirit.”  This is as clear as daylight.


The Mother: The Gita demands the strong immobility of an immortal spirit — all the rest is secondary.  What the Gita wants is that the spirit should be conscious of its immortality and thus have a strong immobility.  For this is a fact, it’s like that. When the spirit is conscious of immortality, it becomes an immobility all made of strength.  Immobility — that is to say, it doesn’t move any longer, but it is a strong immobility, it is not an immobility of inertia or impotence; it is a strong immobility which is a basis for action, that is, all one does founds itself upon this powerful — all-powerful — immobility of the spirit that is immortal.


The Mother: But you see, there is no explanation which can give you that; you must have the experience. As long as one has not had the experience, one can’t understand what this means.... And it is the same for everything: the head, the little brain, cannot understand. The minute one has the experience, one understands — not before.


The Mother: One may have a sort of imaginative idea, but this is not understanding. To understand, one must live it. When you become conscious of your immortal spirit, you will know what its strong immobility is — but not before. Otherwise, these are mere words.  You don’t understand how one can be immobile and strong at the same time, is that what is bothering you?


The Mother: Well, I reply that the greatest strength is in immobility. That is the sovereign power.  And there is a very small superﬁcial application of this which perhaps you will understand. Someone comes and insults you or says unpleasant things to you; and if you begin to vibrate in unison with this anger or this ill-will, you feel quite weak and powerless and usually you make a fool of yourself. But if you manage to keep within yourself, especially in your head, a complete immobility which refuses to receive these vibrations, then at the same time you feel a great strength, and the other person cannot disturb you.


The Mother: If you remain very quiet, even physically, and when violence is directed at you, you are able to remain very quiet, very silent, very still, well, that has a power not only over you but over the other person also. If you don’t have all these vibrations of inner response, if you can remain absolutely immobile within yourself, everywhere, this has an almost immediate effect upon the other person.  That gives you an idea of the power of immobility. And it is a very common fact which can occur every day; it is not a great event of spiritual life, it is something of the outer, material life.  There is a tremendous power in immobility: mental immobility, sensorial immobility, physical immobility.


The Mother: If you can remain like a wall, absolutely motionless, everything the other  person sends you will immediately fall back upon him. And it has an immediate action. It can stop the arm of the assassin, you understand, it has that strength. Only, one must not just appear to be immobile and yet be boiling inside! That’s not what I mean.


The Mother: I mean an integral immobility.  Equality of soul is a way. It is a means, it is a way — it can be a goal also. But it is not the consummation.  For example, there are those who say, who profess that everything that happens is the expression of the divine Will (I spoke about this last time, I think), there is an entire way of looking at life, understanding life, which is like that, which says, “All that is, the world as it is, all that happens, is the expression of the divine Will; therefore wisdom wants us, if we want to be in relation with the Divine, to accept without ﬂinching and without the slightest emotion or reaction all that happens, since it is the expression of the divine Will, and it is understood that we should bow down before it.”


The Mother: This is a conception which tends precisely to help people to acquire this equality of soul.  But if you adopt this idea without adopting its opposite and making a synthesis of the two, well, naturally, you have only to sit through life and do nothing — or, in any case, never try to make the world progress.  I remember having read in a class, before our present class started — a class which also used to be held on Wednesdays, perhaps, I don’t quite know, in which I used to read books — I read a book by Anatole France, who had a very subtle wit — I think it was but I am not absolutely sure — where he says that men would be perfectly happy if they were not so anxious to improve life. I am not quoting the exact words but the idea. Unhappiness begins with this will to make men and things better!...


The Mother: ( ) That is his way of  saying exactly the same thing I was just telling you in another form. If you want to be peaceful, happy, always satisﬁed, to have perfect equality of soul, you must tell yourself, “Things are as they should be,” and if you are religious you should tell yourself, “They are as they should be because they are the expression of the divine Will”, and we have only one thing to do, that is to accept them as they are and be very quiet, because it is better to be quiet than to be restless. He turns the thing round and puts it in another way; he says life is very comfortable and very tolerable and very acceptable, if men don’t begin to wish that it should be different.


The Mother: And the minute they are not happy, naturally nobody is happy! Since they ﬁnd that it is not what it should be, well, they begin to be unhappy — and others too.  But if everyone had the good sense to say, “Things are as they should be; one dies because one has to die, and one is ill because one has to be ill, one is separated from those one loves because one has to be separated, and then, etc... and one is in poverty because one has to be poor, one...”, you know, there is no end to it. Well, if completely, totally, one says, “Things are as they should be”, it makes no sense to grieve or to revolt, it’s foolish!... Ah!


The Mother: one must be logical. So we say that misery begins with the will to make things better than they are. Why do you not want to be ill when you are ill? You are much more ill when, being ill, you don’t want to be ill, than if you tell yourself, “All right, it is God’s Will, I accept my illness!” At least you are quiet, that helps you to recover, perhaps....


The Mother: And poor people — why do they want to be rich? And people who lose their children or their parents — why don’t they want it to be like that? If everybody wanted things to be as they are, everybody would be happy.  This is one point of view. Only it happens that perhaps — perhaps, the divine Will is not quite like that.


The Mother: And perhaps it is as in that story — you all know the story of the elephant and its mahout? — the elephant, its mahout and the Brahmin on the road who refused to get out of the way of the elephant and, when the mahout told him, “Go away”, he replied, “No, God  in me wants to stay here”, and the mahout answered, “Pardon me, but God in me tells you to go away!”  So the reply to Anatole France is perhaps just this that there is a will higher than that of man which wants things to change.  And so there is nothing to do but obey and make them change.  There we are. Is that all?


The Mother: Because one is attached to action. The knot is the knot of the ego. You act because of desire. Sri Aurobindo says this, doesn’t he? The ordinary way of acting is tied to desire in one form or another — a desire, a need — so that is the knot.


The Mother: If you act only to satisfy desire — a desire which you call a need or a necessity or anything else, but in truth, if you go to the very root of the thing, you see that it is the impulse of a desire which makes you act — well, if you act only under the effect of the impulse of desire, you will no longer be able to act when you eliminate the desire.  And this is the ﬁrst answer people give you. When they are told, “Act without being attached to the result of action, have this consciousness that it is not you who are acting, it is the Divine who is acting”, the reply which ninety-nine and a half per cent give is, “But if I feel like that, I don’t move any longer!  I don’t do anything any more; it is always a need, a desire, a personal impulse which makes me act in one way or another.”  So Sri Aurobindo says, if you want to realise this teaching of the Gita, the ﬁrst thing to do is to loosen this knot, the knot binding action to desire — so ﬁrmly tied are they that if you take away one you take away the other.


The Mother: He says the knot must be loosened in order to be able to remove desire and yet continue to act.   And this is a fact, this is what must be done. The knot must be loosened. It is a small inner operation which you can very easily perform; and when it has been performed, you realise that you act absolutely without any personal motive, but moved by a Force higher than your egoistic force, and also more powerful.  And then you act, but the consequences of action no longer return upon you.


The Mother: This is a wonderful phenomenon of consciousness, and quite concrete. In life you do something — whatever you do, good, bad, indifferent, it doesn’t matter — whatever it may be, it immediately has a series of consequences. In fact you do it to obtain a certain result, that is why you act, with an eye to the result. For example, if I stretch out my hand like this to take the mike, I am looking for the result, you see, to make sounds in the mike. And there is always a consequence, always.


The Mother: But if you loosen the knot and let a Force coming from above — or elsewhere — act through you and make you do things, though there are consequences of your action, they don’t come to you any longer, for it was not you who initiated the action, it was the Force from above. And the consequences pass above, or else they are guided, willed, directed, controlled by the Force which made you act. And you feel free, nothing comes back to you of the result of what you have done.  There are people who have had this experience — but these things come ﬁrst in a ﬂash, for a moment, and then withdraw;  it is only when one is quite ready for the transformation that this comes and is established — well, some people have had this experience once, perhaps for a few seconds in their lives, they have had the experience; and then the movement has been withdrawn, the state of consciousness has withdrawn; but the memory remains.


The Mother: And they imitate that. And if by chance they happen to be people who know how to make speeches, like certain gurus who have disciples to whom they teach the path, they tell them this, “When it is the Divine who acts through you and when you have loosened the knot of desire, you no longer  suffer any moral or other consequences of what you do. And you can do anything whatever: you can kill your neighbour, you can violate a woman, you can do everything the Divine wants in you — and you will never suffer any consequences.”  And indeed they do it! Yes, they take the experience as a cloak to cover all their excesses....


The Mother: This is just by the way, to put you on your guard against people who pretend to be what they are not.  But, as a matter of fact, the result is very simple, for immediately they suffer the consequences of their pretences — they say they don’t, but they suffer them.... I knew of a very striking case of a sannyasin who was furious with someone who did not want to be his disciple — already this proved that he was far from having realised this state — and who wished to take revenge. And indeed he had some powers, he had made a very powerful formation to kill this person who had refused to be his disciple. It so happened that this person was in contact with Sri Aurobindo.


The Mother: He told him his story and Sri Aurobindo told it to me. And the result was that the formation made by that man, who was acting with his so-called divine Will, fell back on him in such a way that it was he who died!  And it was simply the fact of re-establishing the truth. There was nothing else to do.  So the moral of the story is that one must not pretend, one must be; that one must be absolutely sincere and not cover up one’s desires with ﬁne theories.


The Mother: I have met many people who claimed they had perfect equality of soul and perfect freedom, and hid themselves behind these theories: “All is the divine Will”, and who, in fact, in their thought, were substituting their own will for the divine Will, and were very far from realising what they claimed. They were idlers who didn’t want to make any effort and preferred keeping their nature as it was, rather than working to transform it.!    Yes! There are some who have great powers.


The Mother: But these powers come from the vital and from an association with vital entities.  There are all kinds of powers. Only, those powers don’t hold out before the true divine Power — they can’t resist. But over ordinary human beings they have much power.  Much.


The Mother: Not only they can, they do it. They do a lot of harm.   The number of people who are tormented because they had the misfortune of meeting a so-called sannyasin, is considerable, considerable. I am not telling you this to frighten you, because here you are protected, but it is a fact.


The Mother: While receiving initiation these men have received the imposition of a force from the vital world, which is extremely dangerous.... This is not always the case, but most often this is what happens.  Because sincerity is so rare a virtue in the world, one ought to bow down before it with respect when one meets it. Sincerity — what we call sincerity, that is to say, a perfect honesty and transparency: that there may be nowhere in the being anything which pretends, hides or wants to pass itself off for what it is not.   It is self-giving.


The Mother: It is the word the Gita uses for self-giving.  Only, the sacriﬁce is mutual, this is what Sri Aurobindo says at the beginning: the Divine has sacriﬁced Himself in Matter to  awaken consciousness in Matter, which had become inconscient.  And it is this sacriﬁce, this giving of the Divine in Matter, that is to say, His dispersion in Matter, which justiﬁes the sacriﬁce of Matter to the Divine and makes it obligatory; for it is one and the same reciprocal movement. It is because the Divine has given Himself in Matter and scattered Himself everywhere in Matter to awaken it to the divine consciousness, that Matter is automatically under the obligation to give itself to the Divine. It is a mutual and reciprocal sacriﬁce.


The Mother: And this is the great secret of the Gita: the afﬁrmation of the divine Presence in the very heart of Matter. And that is why, Matter must sacriﬁce itself to the Divine, automatically, even unconsciously — whether one wants it or not, this is what happens.  Only, when it is done unconsciously, one doesn’t have the joy of sacriﬁce; while if it is done consciously, one has the joy of sacriﬁce which is the supreme joy.  The word “sacriﬁce” in French has slightly too narrow a sense, which it doesn’t have in the original Sanskrit; for in French sacriﬁce implies a sort of suffering, almost a regret. While in Sanskrit this sense is not there at all; it corresponds to “self-giving”.


The Mother: It is precisely the divine Presence.  Because the Divine is essentially one, and yet He has subdivided Himself apparently in all beings, and in this way recreated the primordial Oneness. And it is because of this divine Oneness — which, however, appears fragmented in beings — that the Unity is re-established in its essence. And when one becomes conscious of this, one has the joy of the consciousness of this  Oneness. But those who are not conscious — what they miss is the joy of consciousness.


The Mother: But the fact remains the same.  Sri Aurobindo says: the Oneness exists; whether you are aware of it or not, it exists, in reality it makes no difference; but it makes a difference to you: if you are conscious, you have the joy; if you are not conscious, you miss this joy.  It is made automatically.  Whether you know it or not, whether you want it or not, you are all united by the divine Presence which, though it appears fragmented, is yet One. The Divine is One, He only appears fragmented in things and beings.


The Mother: And because this Unity is a fact, whether you are aware of it or not doesn’t alter the fact at all. And whether you want it or not, you are in spite of everything subject to this Unity.  This is what I have explained to you I don’t know how many times: you think you are separate from one another, but it is the same single Substance which is in you all, despite differences in appearance; and a vibration in one centre automatically awakens a vibration in another.  I don’t understand this conclusion at all.


The Mother: If you are happy to be unhappy, that’s all right, it is your own affair; if you are content to be unhappy and to suffer and remain in the ignorance and inconscience you are in, stay there.   But if this does not satisfy you, if you want to be conscious and you want suffering to cease, then you must make constant efforts to become conscious of the sacriﬁce and to make your sacriﬁce consciously instead of unconsciously.   Everything turns around the consciousness, the fact of being or not being conscious. And it is only in the supreme Consciousness that you can attain the perfect expression of yourself.


The Mother: But that the Oneness exists, even if you feel just the opposite, is a fact you can do nothing about, for it is a divine action and a divine fact — it is a divine action and a divine fact. If you are conscious of the Divine, you become conscious of this fact.  If you are not conscious of the Divine, the fact exists but you simply are not conscious of it — that’s all.  So, everything turns around a phenomenon of consciousness. And the world is in a state of obscurity, suffering, misery, of... everything, all it is, simply because it is not conscious of the Divine, because it has cut off the connection in its consciousness, because its consciousness is separated from the Divine.


The Mother: That is to say, it has become unconscious.  For the true consciousness is the divine Consciousness. If you cut yourself off from the divine Consciousness, you become absolutely unconscious; that is exactly what has happened. And so, everything there is, the world as it is, your consciousness as it is, things in the state they are in, are the result of this separation of the consciousness and its immediate obscuration.  The minute the individual consciousness is separated from the divine Consciousness, it enters what we call the inconscience, and it is this inconscience that is the cause of all its miseries.


The Mother: But all that is, is essentially divine, and the divine Oneness is a fact, you can’t do anything about it; all your unconsciousness and all your denials will change nothing — it is a fact, it’s like that.  And the conclusion is this, that the true transformation is the transformation of consciousness — all the rest will follow automatically.  There we are, that’s all.   It is as if you asked me, “What is unconscious in us?”


The Mother: But in fact, everything is unconscious except the Divine. And it is only when one can unite with the Divine that one re-establishes the true consciousness in one’s being. The rest is a kind of mixture of semi-consciousness and semi-unconsciousness.  Anything else? No?


The Mother: ( ) Oh! he is longing to speak!


The Mother: Ah! only one?  Yes, that is what I was just saying. And then?  Oh! from both.


The Mother: Yes! Because Sri Aurobindo says there is a oneness in Matter, a oneness in the manifestation, a oneness in substance, and that there is necessarily an interchange.  In fact, this is what we have said more than ﬁfty thousand times: that all is the Divine and that consequently all is; that it is only your consciousness which is separated and in a state of unconsciousness because it is separated; but that if you  remove this unconsciousness and this sense of separation, you become divine.   Oh!


The Mother: but you must not understand things so superﬁcially.   (Another disciple)   No.


The Mother: It is the Divine in the inconscient who aspires for the Divine in the consciousness. That is to say, without the Divine there would be no aspiration; without the consciousness hidden in the inconscient, there would be no possibility of changing the inconscience to consciousness. But because at the very heart of the inconscient there is the divine Consciousness, you aspire, and necessarily — this is what he says — automatically, mechanically, the sacriﬁce is made. And this is why when one says, “It is not who aspire, it is the Divine, it is not who make progress, it is the Divine, it is not who are conscious, it is the Divine” — these are not mere words, it is a fact. And it is simply your ignorance and your unconsciousness which prevent you from realising it.


The Mother: ( )  It is certainly one of the obscurest and most unconscious. And the sacriﬁce spoken about here and in the Gita, is the sacriﬁce one makes of oneself, not of others.  Happily for the poor creature which is sacriﬁced!


The Mother: Perhaps it goes straight to the Divine.  It would be very interesting to see.... Imagine a man who wants to win the Divine’s favour, or that of some god or other, some deity, in order to obtain something very selﬁshly personal, something he desires and ﬁnds it hard to get; and so he snatches a chicken from his yard and goes and cuts its throat before the deity, with his prayer, perhaps for a good harvest or the good sale of his harvest, or for a child if he doesn’t have one, or that his wife may be cured if she is ill — anything at all. And then imagine that this evolving psychic particle, already like a tiny spark in semi-consciousness — not even semi-consciousness — the rudiment of consciousness which is in the chicken, goes straight to the Divine who magniﬁes it; while the man who has offered the chicken to obtain some beneﬁt or other is not even heard.  Most probably, this is what happens.


The Mother: So the one who has truly gained in this business is the chicken, not the man!   You mean sacriﬁces like those I have just spoken about, from people offering something for altogether selﬁsh ends?   To hostile forces? But they don’t know they are hostile!


The Mother: Or as they do here, when they take the deity of cholera round in a procession, for example, or the deity of smallpox: it is taken round with songs and beating of drums, and then all sorts of offerings are made to it. This is to satisfy it so that it doesn’t kill too many people.  One should ﬁrst make sure that this deity exists, that it is not just a doll sitting there on its altar.  Anyway, in instances of this kind, I think it is people’s faith, above all, which saves them. When they have performed their little ceremony properly, they feel conﬁdent, “Oh! now it will be over, for she is satisﬁed.


The Mother: ” And because they feel conﬁdent, it helps them to react and the illness disappears. I have seen this very often in the street. There might be a small hostile entity there, but these are very insigniﬁcant things.  In other cases, in some temples, there are vital beings who are more or less powerful and have made their home there.


The Mother: But what Sri Aurobindo means here is that there is nothing, not even the most anti-divine force, which in its origin is not the Supreme Divine. So, necessarily, everything goes back to Him, consciously or unconsciously. In the consciousness of the one who makes the offering it does not go to the Divine: it goes to the greater or smaller demon to whom he turns. But through everything, through the wood of the idol or even the ill-will of the vital adversary, ultimately, all returns to the Divine, since all comes from Him. Only, the one who has made the offering or the sacriﬁce receives but in proportion to his own consciousness  and to what he has asked.


The Mother: So one could say that theoretically it returns to the Divine, but that the response comes from that to which he has addressed himself, not from the supreme Origin, for one is not in contact with it; one is in contact only with the next step, the next intermediary — no higher.  It is quite certain that if the movement is absolutely unconscious, the result will also be absolutely unconscious; and if the movement is entirely egoistic, the result is also entirely egoistic. It is as in that story by Sri Aurobindo I read to you one Friday, the ﬁrst story in which he explained Karma, saying that evil results in evil, and good results in good. Evil begets evil, and good begets good: that is Karma; it is not a punishment or a reward, it is something automatic. Well, if your sacriﬁce is egoistic and obscure, it will necessarily have an obscure and egoistic result.


The Mother: If you like you may replace the word “luminously” by the word “sincerely”, or “transparently”, like something which is not opaque or does not distort; something clear, transparent, sincere, which does not obstruct.   You may take the image of a window open to the light.  If your panes are of blackened or opaque glass, what comes through naturally becomes dark and opaque, and little passes through. And if the glass is quite transparent, then it is a luminous light which comes. Or if your glass is coloured, the light will be coloured in one way or another when it reaches you.


The Mother: While if the glass is absolutely pure and transparent, the light will come through pure and transparent.  When Sri Aurobindo says “integral transformation”, naturally he is speaking of physical transformation. But the Gita does not speak of integral transformation, I don’t think so. Because for the Gita, the idea of physical transformation does not exist.


The Mother: As I was explaining to you the other day, the world is as it is and you have but to take it as it is, and not be affected by what it is. For you enter a higher consciousness, you are liberated from outer forms, but they remain as they are. Indeed, some slight mention is made of changing one’s character, but there is no question of changing the material world.   Not understood? This has never happened to you?


The Mother: No? When, for instance, you have a movement you don’t like — a movement of anger or spite, all kinds of things like that, or an insincerity or something you don’t like — when you reject it from yourself, when you want to make an effort not to have it any more, it hurts you, doesn’t it? It hurts, it is as though something was being pulled out. Well, this is the pain he is speaking about; he says that it is the bad thing you throw away from you which, when leaving, gives you a nice little knock as a parting gift.


The Mother: That’s what he says.  For you are always under the illusion that pain belongs to you. This is not true. Pain is something thrust upon you. The same event could occur, the same in all its details, without its inﬂicting the shadow of a pain on you; on the contrary, sometimes it can ﬁll you with ecstatic joy.


The Mother: And it is exactly the same thing. But in one case, you are open to the adverse forces you want to reject from yourself, and in the other you are not, you are already too far away from them to be affected by them any longer; and so, instead of feeling the negative side they represent, you feel only the positive side the Divine represents in the experience. It is the divine Grace which makes you progress, and with the divine Grace you feel the divine Joy. But instead of identifying yourself with the Grace which makes you progress, you identify yourself with the ugly thing you want to get rid of; and so, naturally, you feel like it and suffer.  That is an experiment you can make if you are just a little conscious.


The Mother: There is something in you which you don’t want, something bad — for one reason or another you don’t want it, you want to pull it out — well, if you identify yourself ever so little with that thing, you feel the pain of the extraction; if, on the contrary, you identify yourself with the divine Force which comes to liberate you, you feel the joy of the divine Grace — and you experience the deep delight of the progress you have made.  And this is a sure sign for you, a sure indication of what you identify yourself with. If you are identiﬁed with the forces  from below, you suffer; if you are identiﬁed with the forces from above, you are happy. And I am not speaking about feeling pleasure; you must not think that when one jumps about, dances, shouts and plays, one is identiﬁed with the divine forces — one may or may not be. That is not what I am speaking of.


The Mother: I am speaking of the divine Joy, the inner Joy which is unalloyed.  Each time a shadow passes, with what may be just an uneasiness or what may become a severe pain or an unbearable suffering, through the whole range, from the smallest to the greatest — as soon as it appears in your being, you may tell yourself, “Ah, the enemy is there!” — in one form or another.  But... do it, my child, then you will know! It is not the same for everybody.  What?


The Mother: Yes, I know.  To me it is as clear as crystal, I don’t understand your question.   What is the difference between the intention and the spirit of the intention?  Isn’t there a spirit behind all things? No?


The Mother: Well, yes, and that is all he has said, nothing else, that you must know what kind of spirit there is behind your intention.  But of course! According to the spirit in which you do things, the result is different.  What do you want me to tell you? If you don’t feel the difference between the two, I can’t explain it to you.


The Mother: There are forces at work all the time, which set people moving, which make them move. In the individual being this is translated into exact intentions; but behind the intention a force is acting which is not individual.  Do you understand?   Ah!


The Mother: I think one of the greatest difﬁculties in understanding things comes from an arbitrary simpliﬁcation which puts spirit on one side and matter on the other. It is this foolishness that makes you incapable of understanding anything. There is spirit and matter — this is very convenient. So if one does not belong to spirit, one  belongs to matter; if one does not belong to matter, one belongs to spirit. But what do you call spirit and what do you call matter?


The Mother: It is a countless crowd of things, an interminable ladder. The universe is a seemingly inﬁnite gradation of worlds and states of consciousness, and in this increasingly subtle gradation, where does your matter come to an end? Where does your spirit begin?  You speak of “spirit” — where does this spirit begin? With what you don’t see?


The Mother: Is that it? So you include in “spirit” all the beings of the vital world, for instance, because you don’t see them in your normal state — all that belongs to “spirit” — and they may indeed be the spirit which is behind your intention — and it isn’t up to much! That’s it.  It is like those people who say, “When you are alive you are in matter; when you are dead, you enter the spirit. There, then!


The Mother: So, liberate the spirit from matter, die, and you liberate your spirit from matter.” It is these stupidities which prevent you from understanding anything at all. But all this has nothing to do with the world as it really is.  For the human consciousness as it is, there are certainly inﬁnitely more invisible things than visible things. What you know, the things which are visible to you and which you are conscious of — it’s almost like the skin of an orange compared with the orange itself — and even an orange with a very thin skin, not a thick one!


The Mother: And so, if you know only the skin of the orange, you know nothing about the orange.  And this is more or less what happens. All that you know about the universe is just a superﬁcial little crust — and even this you hardly know. But that is all you know about it, and all the rest escapes you.   It is a meditation that has the power of transforming your being.


The Mother: It is a meditation which makes you progress, as opposed to static meditation which is immobile and relatively inert, and which changes nothing in your consciousness or in your way of being.   A dynamic meditation is a meditation of transformation.  Generally, people don’t have a dynamic meditation. When they enter into meditation — or at least what they call meditation — they enter into a kind of immobility where nothing stirs, and they come out of it exactly as they went in, without any change either in their being or in their consciousness.


The Mother: And the more motionless it is, the happier they are. They could meditate in this way for eternities, it would never change anything either in the universe or in themselves. That is why Sri Aurobindo speaks of a dynamic meditation which is exactly the very opposite. It is a transforming meditation.   I think it is the aspiration that should be different, the attitude should be different.


The Mother: “Different way” — what do you mean by “way” — () the way of sitting?... Not that? The inner way?  But for each one it is different.  I think the most important thing is to know why one meditates; this is what gives the quality of the meditation and makes it of one order or another.


The Mother: You may meditate to open yourself to the divine Force, you may meditate to reject the ordinary consciousness, you may meditate to enter the depths of your being, you may meditate to learn how to give yourself integrally; you may meditate for all kinds of things. You may meditate to enter into peace and calm and silence — this is what people generally do, but without much success. But you may also meditate to receive the Force of transformation, to discover the points to be transformed, to trace out the line of progress. And then you may also meditate for very practical reasons: when you have a difﬁculty to clear up, a solution to ﬁnd, when you want help in some action or other. You may meditate for that too.


The Mother: I think everyone has his own mode of meditation. But if one wants the meditation to be dynamic, one must have an aspiration for progress and the meditation must be done to help and fulﬁl this aspiration for progress. Then it becomes dynamic.    No, my child.


The Mother: That’s because you don’t understand the turn of the sentence. This means: the nature of the gift we make and to whom we give it is of little importance, provided that it is made as an act of consecration to the Divine.  That is what I always tell people in other words: whatever work you do — whether you go to an ofﬁce, keep accounts, drive a car, anything — whatever the work you do, and naturally whomever you do it for, it must be an offering to the Divine.  While doing it, you should keep the remembrance of the Divine and do it as an expression of your consecration to the Divine.


The Mother: This is what Sri Aurobindo says, nothing else.   Ah! let us see.


The Mother: Why? That person isn’t here?... He is afraid to speak! All right, ask your question.  I can reply with a joke, if you like.


The Mother: There’s talk now about changing the calendar; if it is changed, the numbers will be changed, and then the whole of History will have gone, ﬂown away!  It is a convention, you see.  Obviously, if the convention is generalised, as is the case with the calendar, it can become a very powerful formation. But it must be very widely adopted to become a powerful formation.


The Mother: What I call “formations” are images which can be animated by a force and taken as symbols. Some people create images  for themselves and use them as their own symbols; and for them they may be very useful and valid, as, for instance, the symbols of dreams. But these are valid only for them, they are purely subjective. While, if you take the calendar which has been adopted by almost all human beings, your symbol can act on a much wider ﬁeld; but the origin is the same, it is a convention.  Naturally, these are things we are used to, for they were like that when we were small children; but it depends on the country of one’s birth and the community in which one is born.


The Mother: There are communities which count differently. And so, for them, other numbers at other times have a symbolic signiﬁcance.  Only, if our formation — the one in which you are born, which you have adopted — if this formation is adopted by the vast majority of men, you will be able to act on this majority by acting through this formation. You can act through a formation only to the extent to which it is adopted by a certain number of people. It is purely conventional.


The Mother: We began counting from a certain date — which, besides, was chosen quite arbitrarily — and so the numbers came to be what they are today. But, for instance, one has only to visit a Muslim community, where they started counting from — I don’t know whether it is the birth or the death of Mohammed — and their numbers are quite different. So, if you go and tell them: “2, 3, 4, 5, 6”, they will say, “What does your number mean, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6? Nothing at all.”  These things can be taken usefully as symbols and as a means of bringing a more subtle world in contact with a more material world.


The Mother: They may be used in this way, that’s all.  But if, instead of the millions of people who use the present calendar, there were only three or four, it would be pointless to say that these numbers are symbolic. They would be symbolic only for these three or four people. Therefore, it is not the thing in itself which counts, it is the extent of its usage. That’s what’s important.


The Mother: People make the same mistake with the stars and horoscopes. It is quite simply a language and a convention, and if this  convention is adopted, it may be utilised to do a certain work.  But it has only a relative value in proportion to the number of people who have adopted it.  In this relative world, everything is necessarily relative. So things should not be taken literally, for that makes your mind small and narrow.


The Mother: The more primitive people are, the more simple-minded they are, and these things take on a more superstitious turn.  Superstitions are simply a wrong generalisation of a particular fact.  I always give the example of a person passing under a ladder.  At the top of the ladder a man is working and, by an unlucky coincidence, he drops his tool on the head of the passer-by and breaks his head — that can happen, it is a fact, and the man’s head is shattered. But someone, who sees this accident, later makes a general rule and says, “To walk under a ladder is a bad omen” — is a superstition.


The Mother: And that’s how it happens with everything.  Moreover, many facts of knowledge have exactly the same origin. For instance, if a certain medicine, through a concurrence of favourable circumstances, has cured a number of people, immediately it is proclaimed that this medicine is all-powerful against this disease. But it is not true. And the proof is that if the same medicine is administered in the same way to a hundred people, there won’t be two similar results, and sometimes the effects will be diametrically opposite.


The Mother: Therefore, it is not the property of the medicine itself which cures; to believe in this medicine is a superstition.  And in fact, there is a very slight difference between science and superstition. Perhaps it lies only in the care taken in expressing things. If one is careful as scientists are, to say, “It seems this may be like that... one would think that... everything combines to make us think...” then there’s no longer any superstition! But otherwise when one says, “It is like that”, this is necessarily a superstition..


The Mother: So, to the person who asked you the question you will reply like this: “If with 3, 4, 5, 6, or with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, something exceptional happens to you and you have an inner or outer revelation, you may proclaim that it is an exceptional date. But if nothing happens to you, it will not be an exceptional date for you at all; it will be a date like all the others!”  ()  There was a very old tradition, very, very old, even older than the Vedic tradition here, which said, “If twelve men of goodwill unite and call the Divine, the Divine is obliged to come.” Well, perhaps this is a truth, perhaps a superstition.


The Mother: Perhaps it depends on the twelve men of goodwill and what they are. Perhaps it depends on other things also. If you ask me, I think that it probably happened like this, that in the beginning twelve men gathered together — there happened to be twelve, perhaps they didn’t even know why — and they were so united in their aspiration, an aspiration so intense and powerful, that they received the response. But to say, “If twelve men of goodwill unite in an aspiration, they are sure to make the Divine descend” is a superstition.  In fact, things must have happened like that, and the person who noted it put it down carefully: “If twelve men of goodwill unite their aspiration, the Divine is obliged to come.”


The Mother: And since then, I can tell you that a considerable number of groups of twelve men have united in a common aspiration... and they did not bring down the Divine! But all the same the tradition has been left intact.  There we are.  We are many more than twelve this evening. (


The Mother: )  Shall we try it once and see if we succeed!  ()   By becoming Him, my child. And that is the only way: by identity.


The Mother: As Sri Aurobindo says, “We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature.”  It is because He is the very essence of our being that we can become Him and, consequently, understand Him; otherwise it would be quite impossible.  Well, it is precisely what I have just said.  What do you mean exactly?... By what method?


The Mother: First of all, you must begin to seek Him, and then that must be the most important thing in life. The will must be constant, the aspiration constant, the preoccupation constant, and it must be the only thing you truly want. Then you will ﬁnd Him.  But of course, if in one’s life one thinks of Him for ﬁve minutes and is busy with other things for three-quarters of an hour, there is not much chance of success. Anyway, it will take many lifetimes.


The Mother: It must not be a pastime. It must be the exclusive preoccupation of one’s being, the very reason of one’s existence.   Is that all?   Why say anything?


The Mother: I can say this, that the most precious gifts are given in silence.  ()   What is ordinarily called a spiritual experience is the intense need for something other than the life one lives, and most often this awakens after difﬁculties or disappointments or pain or sorrow, all these things which bring unhappiness and at the same time arouse the aspiration for a better state. It is this that is generally at the root of spiritual experiences: it is something negative.  The positive need to know the Divine and unite with Him usually comes much later.


The Mother: I say usually; there are exceptions, but usually it is at ﬁrst a ﬂight from the miseries of life which pushes you towards the spiritual life. Very few people, if they were in a state of perfect inner and outer harmony and nothing unpleasant or painful happened to them, very few people would think of  the Divine; they would not concern themselves with Him, they would be content with the half-measures of ordinary things and would not seek for an absolute. That is what Sri Aurobindo means.  But, when one has found this spiritual life, one realises that it is everywhere behind all appearances, as well as directly, without appearances. Behind appearances it also exists; this is what he says: we must ﬁnd and reconcile these oppositions.


The Mother: There is a place or a state of consciousness in which they are reconciled.  But, ﬁrst, one must go like this (), and then one comes back like this (). There!  It is an attempt at formulating something which cannot be formulated.  In fact, one could almost say that the details are ﬁnite and the whole is inﬁnite, but he doesn’t say “inﬁnite”, he says “boundless” — boundless in space and boundless in time, but still limited in itself.


The Mother: Each detail has its own limit and the whole has none.   It is because you carry this division within you and can taste of an eternal life that the outer life seems unreal to you; and therefore, because of this opposition, you begin to do what is necessary to pass from the outer life to the divine life. If there were no opposition in the being, if you were a middle term between the two, like that, this could last indeﬁnitely; you would not objectify your difﬁculty and your need, you would continue to live as you do, without thinking, by force of habit.  Also because of this opposition, one part of the being acquires the habit of watching over the other. Otherwise you would live without even realising what you do, automatically.


The Mother: ( ) Something over there?  Because it is like that, my child. All that is unmanifested wants to manifest, and all that is manifested tries to return to its Origin.


The Mother: It is as if you asked me, “Why is the earth round and why are the sun and the planets there?” It is like that, the law of the universe is like that.  Most of these things are simply statements of fact; but there are no explanations, for one can’t give mental explanations. One  can give some, but each thing one wants to explain is explained by another, which has to be explained by another, which has to be explained by another — indeﬁnitely. And you can go right round the universe, and with one thing explaining another, it explains nothing at all.


The Mother: The only thing one can do is to say, “It is like that.”  That is why it is said that the mind can know nothing: it can know nothing because it needs explanations. An explanation is valuable only to the extent it gives you a power to act on the thing explained, otherwise what’s the good of it? If explaining something does not give you the power to change it, it is absolutely useless, because, as I said, the explanation you give entails another explanation, and so on. But if through an explanation you obtain some power over a thing, to make it different from what it is, then it’s worth the trouble.


The Mother: But this is not the case. So you go on turning round and round in this way, on the surface, instead of springing up into the air towards a new height.  Is that all?  ( )


The Mother: Yes, yes, you have already asked your question, but still, you may ask it aloud if you like.   Of course. I don’t understand your question.  It is an appearance, it is not a fact.  That means one has gone behind the appearances, one has established a fact which was always there.


The Mother: But look, after all, when one has made a progress, one has made a progress! I don’t understand your question. If you make a progress, you make a progress; if you perceive a truth behind an illusion, usually this is considered a progress.  Yes, but as you have realised that it is one and the same thing.... That’s what I was saying a while ago: when you have an explanation, does it sufﬁce to change your outer nature?


The Mother: Has it changed, are you different from what you were in your outer nature?  No. Then something more is required. This is what I meant; an explanation is not enough, something else is needed. Evidently, it is a progress to know something one did not know before, but unless this knowledge becomes dynamic and changes into a power for transformation, it is not much use.


The Mother: You understand? Good.  ( ) You want to ask a question?


The Mother: Speak up, take courage.   One’s understanding? Well, by increasing one’s consciousness, by going beyond the mind, by widening one’s consciousness, deepening one’s consciousness, by reaching regions beyond the mind.  I would add one thing now: experience. Changing knowledge into experience.


The Mother: And experience will automatically lead you to another experience.  But by “experience” I mean something quite different from what it is usually taken to mean. It is not to experience what one knows — that is of course obvious — but instead of knowing and understanding — even a knowledge much higher than mental knowledge, even a very integral knowledge — it is to become the Power which makes. Fundamentally, it is to become the Tapas of things — the Tapas of the universe.  It is always said that at the beginning of the Manifestation there is Sachchidananda, and it is put in this order: ﬁrst, Sat, that is to say, pure Existence; then Chit, the self-awareness of this Existence; and Ananda, the delight of Existence which makes it continue.


The Mother: But between this Chit and Ananda, there is Tapas, that is to say, the self-realising Chit. And when one becomes this Tapas, the Tapas of things, one has the knowledge which gives the power to change. The Tapas of things is what governs their existence in the Manifestation.  When one is there, one has the feeling of so tremendous a power! — It is the universal power.


The Mother: One has the feeling of a total mastery over the universe.   It is the soul entering into a state in which it observes without acting. A witness is one who looks at what is done, but does not act himself. So when the soul is in a state in which it does not participate in the action, does not act through Nature, simply draws back and observes, it becomes the witness soul.  If one wants to stop the outer activities, this is the best method.


The Mother: One withdraws into one’s soul, to the extreme limit of  one’s existence, in a kind of immobility — an immobility which observes but does not participate, does not even give orders.  That’s all.  You don’t understand?  When one wants to detach oneself from something, from a certain movement or activity or state of consciousness, this is the most effective method; one steps back a little, watches the thing like that, as one would watch a scene in a play, and one doesn’t intervene. And a moment later, the thing doesn’t concern you any longer, it is something which takes place outside you.


The Mother: Then you become very calm.  Only, when you do this, you never remedy anything in the outer movement, it remains what it is, but it no longer affects you. We have said this already I don’t know how many times: it is only a ﬁrst step, it helps you not to feel much troubled by things. But things remain as they are — indeﬁnitely. It is a negative state.


The Mother: Yes. It liberates, precisely. It’s just that. One practises it for that, don’t you see, for liberation, in order to be free from attachments, free from reactions, free from consequences.


The Mother: Those who understand the Gita in this way, tell you that — they don’t understand much further than that — they tell you, “Why do you want to try and change the world? The world will always be what it is and remain what it is, you have only to step back, to detach yourself, to watch it as a witness watches something which doesn’t concern him — and leave it alone.” That was my ﬁrst contact with the Gita in Paris. I met an Indian who was a great Gita enthusiast and a very great lover of silence. He used to say, “When I go to my disciples, if they are in the right state I don’t need to speak.


The Mother: So we observe silence together, and in the  silence something is realised. But when they are not in a good enough state for this, I speak a little, just a little, to try to put them in the right state. And when they are in a worse state still, they ask questions!” ( )


The Mother: Oh, that’s to excuse your questions! ( )  No, that was one way of understanding the Gita; these people always quote — I believe in a truncated form the sentence about there being no ﬁre without smoke. Perhaps this was true a thousand years ago or even ﬁve hundred years ago, but now it is a stupidity.


The Mother: So you can’t use this sentence to explain things: “Why do you worry about the state the world is in? — There is no ﬁre without smoke.”  It is not true.  But still, it is one point of view.


The Mother: I think every point of view is necessary — if each one keeps to his own place and doesn’t try to impede the others. If he had just added: “My experience is like that”, it would have been all right; but he used this to criticise what others were doing. And there he was wrong.   Why?


The Mother: Perhaps he was sincere in his own conviction.... You mean when one makes propaganda, one is not sincere?  No, excuse me, he is convinced. He had neglected — perhaps  out of politeness — to tell me about the fourth state, which was still worse: that in which after having asked the question, one begins to discuss the answer. That is really the limit!


The Mother: If you arrive at the conception of the world as the expression of the Divine in all His complexity, then the necessity for complexity and diversity has to be recognised, and it becomes impossible for you to want to make others think and feel as you do.  Each one should have his own way of thinking, feeling and reaction; why do you want others to do as you do and be like you? And even granting that your truth is greater than theirs — though this word means nothing at all, for, from a certain point of view all truths are true; they are all partial, but they are true because they are truths but the minute you want your truth to be greater than your neighbour’s, you begin to wander away from the truth.  This habit of wanting to compel others to think as you do, has always seemed very strange to me; this is what I call “the propagandist spirit”, and it goes very far. You can go one step further and want people to do what you do, feel as you feel, and then it becomes a frightful uniformity.


The Mother: In Japan I met Tolstoy’s son who was going round the world for “the good of mankind’s great unity”. And his solution was very simple: everybody ought to speak the same language, lead the same life, dress in the same way, eat the same things.... And I am not joking, those were his very words. I met him in Tokyo; he said: “But everybody would be happy, all would understand one another, nobody would quarrel if everyone did the same thing.”  There was no way of making him understand that it was not very reasonable!


The Mother: He had set out to travel all over the world for that, and when people asked him his name he would say “Tolstoy” — now, Tolstoy, you know... People said, “Oh!” — some people didn’t know that Tolstoy was dead — and they thought: “Oh! what luck, we are going to hear something remarkable” — and then he came out with that!   Well, this is only an exaggeration of the same attitude.  Anyway, I can assure you that there comes a time when one no longer feels any necessity at all, at all, of convincing others of the truth of what one thinks.  You may politely tell him, “Mind your own business.”


The Mother: But you must leave it at that. You want to convince someone who criticises that he is wrong to criticise? — The more you tell him, the more will he be convinced that he is right!   Oh!


The Mother: you are afraid they will make adverse propaganda....  It doesn’t matter at all. We had an instance like that, which was very amusing. Someone whom I won’t name, came here and wrote in one of the leading French newspapers an absolutely stupid article which was... well, which showed the stupidity of the man and was extremely violent against the Ashram — that’s not the reason I call him a fool, but still... Well, the result — one of the results — of this article was that we received a letter from someone: “I have read the article, I want to come to the Ashram immediately.”


The Mother: This can have just the opposite effect.   Self-creator? It means, that He creates Himself.  Create is taken in the sense of manifesting, of making objective, apparent. So it is His own self that He manifests.


The Mother: It is Himself He manifests, makes evident, objectivises.  In fact, the word “create” is usually taken in another sense: it means to make something out of something else. That is why Sri Aurobindo says “self-creator”, which means that He gives an external form of Himself to Himself. It is a change in the mode of being: instead of being an unmanifested possibility it becomes a manifested reality. It is simply reversed, nothing else.


The Mother: It is the same thing: from this side it is not seen; from that side it is seen — that’s all. You turn it round again and it is seen. You turn it like that and don’t see it, you turn it like this and see it.  That’s all. As simple as that.


The Mother: Yes, that’s it, that’s exactly what I was saying : from one side it is as if it did not exist, and then it is “put forth”, you see, He does that (), He puts it forth and it becomes visible and existent, and then, instead of being one thing existing all at once, it develops, it is manifested in Time and Space. This is what Sri Aurobindo says, this is where the idea of Time and Space begins, for it is no longer simultaneous.  The other one is simpler, isn’t it? For it is cut into two, distinct: one is Reality and the other illusion; one is Light and the other darkness; one is Consciousness, the other inconscience; one is Truth, the other falsehood.


The Mother: That is very convenient.  Here, it is much more difﬁcult: it is the same thing which exists in itself, unmanifest, and then, suddenly, it does this ( ). And it is exactly the same thing, but it is a movement which puts forth what was within. And that’s what makes the world. It is the same thing in a double movement: as when you sleep and when you wake up, or when you remain still and when you begin to move, or when you are silent and then begin to make a noise, it is like that.


The Mother: One movement is within, containing everything in itself, without any  expression of what is there; and the other movement is just this (), and all that is within oneself comes out.  And then, for this to become perceptible, it must be continuous. When it is within, it can be simultaneous, for it is unmanifest, so all is in an eternity outside Time and Space — immobile, inexistent. In the opposite direction, everything becomes and so there is a continuity of perceptions which follow one after another and spread out in Space and Time.  And it is the same thing.


The Mother: It is exactly as if you are like this ( ), and then you do this () — and so what was there comes out. So these two movements are literally opposite, but it is the same thing in two opposite attitudes which are simultaneous: it remains like this (), and at the same time it is like this (); the one does not cancel out the other and they exist simultaneously. But in one direction it is imperceptible because it is contained within itself, in the other movement it is thrown outside, and so it can be seen. And when it is self-contained, it is co-existent in a perfect simultaneity; and in the other movement, it unfolds itself in a constant becoming. And when it unfolds itself, it necessarily creates Time and Space, while there it is outside Space, outside Time and beyond all possible perception.


The Mother: But it is the same thing in two opposite movements.  And that is what is.  It is like that. And when it does this (), it does not cease to be like that (); that is to say, when it is self-contained, it does not cease to manifest itself and when it manifests, it does not cease to be self-contained. To put it otherwise, it is a permanent and simultaneous duality, but it is the same thing, one single thing in two opposite aspects.


The Mother: Has all this gone in a little? No?  Nothing? You have nothing more to ask?   Ah!


The Mother: let us see if I can make myself clearer.   Yes.  You, you are personal, aren’t you? You feel you are a person.


The Mother: And then there’s the air, you don’t feel the air is a person — so the air is impersonal.  This is not altogether correct, it is an analogy: the air, wind, water, do have a personality, but this is only to make you understand. To the air you cannot give a precise and deﬁnite form, it is everywhere: in your body, outside your body, here, there; but it has no precise form. It has an exact, precise composition, but of course we are not talking about chemistry, we are speaking only of the appearance. You don’t get the feeling of a person when you think of the air.


The Mother: I wouldn’t say as much of water, because water has very speciﬁc characteristics. The water of one river is not the same as that of another; and this is perceptible, so it also has something of a personal character.  But air or steam gives you the impression of something which is not a person; well, that’s it. When a force or a quality manifests in a deﬁnite body like yours or someone else’s, it becomes personal. But when it is everywhere at the same time and without particular characteristics, expressed in an indeﬁnite way, it is called “impersonal”.


The Mother: So, the personal God is the God to whom a form is given.  For example, the inner God of each one is a personal God, for  He has a personal relation with each one, He is the God who belongs to this person, who is his very own.  But something which has neither form nor characteristics nor any deﬁnite outline of any kind, and with which one cannot have a personal relation — that is the impersonal Divine.  And so Sri Aurobindo says that there is a state in which the two are one. Still it is the same thing: it is like the right and wrong side of the same material.


The Mother: If you approach the Divine in a certain way, you meet Him in His impersonal form, that is to say, you cannot have any personal contact with Him. But if you approach Him in the other way, you meet Him as a person — who is quite out of proportion to your little person, but with whom you can have personal relations. And yet it is the same Divine, seen in this way or that.   Yes, if he sees the two aspects — that is to say, the Master of Existence and the World-Mother — he may see them with an unequal vision, which would mean that he still separates them and gives more importance to one than to the other. And in that case there is a one-sided tendency; he sees only one side or there is a lack of balance between the two perceptions.