The Mother: Our universal self is our relation with all others and all the movements of Nature.  And I have often told you, haven’t I?, that the ﬁrst state of your being is a state of an almost total mixture with all things from outside, and that there is almost no individualisation, that is, specialisation which makes you a different being. You are moved — a kind of form which is your physical being is moved — by all the common universal forces, vital forces or mental forces, which go through your form and put it in motion.  So that is the universal being.  And all that you have wrested from this general semiconsciousness, and have crystallised into a more or less independent being, conscious of itself and having its own qualities, all this is your individual being.


The Mother: And this individual being is full of all the movements of obscurity, unconsciousness, and of the limitations of ordinary life, and that’s... and that’s what you must gradually open to the divine inﬂuence and bring to the consciousness and understanding of things. That’s what Sri Aurobindo says.  In fact, the ﬁrst victory is to create an individuality. And then later, the second victory is to give this individuality to the Divine.


The Mother: And the third victory is that the Divine changes your individuality into a divine being.  There are three stages: the ﬁrst is to become an individual; the second is to consecrate the individual, that he may surrender entirely to the Divine and be identiﬁed with Him; and the third  is that the Divine takes possession of this individual and changes him into a being in His own image, that is, he too becomes divine.   Generally, all the yogas stopped at the second. When one had succeeded in surrendering the individual and giving him without reserve to the Divine to be identiﬁed with Him, one considered that his work was ﬁnished, that all was accomplished.


The Mother: But begin there, and we say, “No, this is only a beginning.  We want this Divine with whom we are identiﬁed to enter our individuality and make it into a divine personality acting in a divine world.” And this is what we call transformation. But the other precedes it, must precede it. If that is not done, there is no possibility of doing the third.


The Mother: One can’t go from the ﬁrst to the third; one must pass through the second.  In fact everything depends entirely on the Divine. It is only the consciousness you have of it which is different. So in the third stage, obviously, one becomes conscious that it is the Divine who does everything; so it depends entirely on the Divine.  When you say this, the part of your consciousness which is still convinced of its separation and its own existence is looking at the other and saying, “Ah, good!


The Mother: Now I shall no longer have to do anything.” But if it no longer exists, if it becomes conscious that it is the Divine, then it can’t have this impression. It does the work, continues to do it, but with the true consciousness, instead of having the distorted consciousness.  ( )


The Mother: That’s all?  Why not?   But I am asking why one should not feel it. Instead of asking the question how to feel it, ask the question: “What do you do that you don’t feel it?” There is no reason not to feel the divine Presence.


The Mother: Once you have felt it, even once, you should be capable of feeling it always, for it is there. It is a fact. It is only our ignorance which makes us unaware of it. But if we become conscious, why should we not always be conscious? Why forget something one has learnt?


The Mother: When one has had the experience, why forget it? It is simply a bad habit, that’s all.  You see, there is something which is a fact, that’s to say, it. But we are unaware of it and do not know it. But after we become conscious and know it, why should we still forget it?


The Mother: Does it make sense? It’s quite simply because we are not convinced that once one has met the Divine one can’t forget Him any more. We are, on the contrary, full of stupid ideas which say, “Oh! Yes, it’s very well once like that, but the rest of the time it will be as usual.” So there is no reason why it may not begin again.


The Mother: But if we know that... we did not know something, we were ignorant, then the moment we have the knowledge... I am sincerely asking how one can manage to forget. One might not know something, that is a fact; there are countless things one doesn’t know. But the moment one knows them, the minute one has the experience, how can one manage to forget? Within yourself you have the divine Presence, you know nothing about it — for all kinds of reasons, but still the chief reason is that you are in a state of ignorance.


The Mother: Yet suddenly, by a clicking of circumstances, you become conscious of this divine Presence, that is, you are before a fact — it is not imagination, it is a fact, it’s something which exists. Then how do you manage to forget it once you have known it?   Ah! And why? Because you are convinced that it is a normal state and that one can’t do otherwise.


The Mother: But the moment you know that it is an absolutely abnormal state, contrary to the Truth, how does it happen that it can be repeated? It is simply because you are not convinced. It’s because when you have the experience of the divine Presence it seems to you something fabulous, miraculous and extraordinary, and almost abnormal. And so... “This sublime state — how can I keep it?


The Mother: It is absolutely contrary to my own existence.” But this indeed is the stupidity. For this sublime state is the natural state, and it’s what you constantly are that is not natural but a falsiﬁcation, a deformation — you see, a state... which is not normal.  But to have the knowledge and live in the Truth — this indeed is the normal state. Then, how does it happen that once you have had it... it is over, the abnormal state disappears, you become normal and live in the Truth.


The Mother: Once one is in the Truth, how does one manage to come out of it again?  Quite simply it’s that you have not entered totally into the Truth, and only one part of yourself has had the experience and the others don’t yet have it; and then you don’t remain in this part of yourself which had the experience and begin to live in other parts which do not have it yet; and all these parts must have this experience one after another.  This is the reply to my question, this is what you should have told me: why, it is because we are not made of a single piece and the piece which had the experience is not the only one in us and is not always there, it is replaced by all kinds of other pieces which have not yet had the experience and must have it.  That’s why.  But truly speaking, it is not inevitable.


The Mother: Because even if the part which had the experience and knows is no longer right in front and master of the consciousness, if it is replaced by another part which is still in the ignorance, that’s no reason for forgetting the other, for that other part is also yourself, and remains yourself, and is there. Why forget it? Why, when the  obscure, unconscious and ignorant part comes up, why not put it immediately face to face with the other — like this — so that the other may show it that it is in the ignorance? This everybody can do. It’s only a question of wanting it.


The Mother: We are not obliged to fall back into error, we are not obliged to fall back into obscurity, ignorance and stupidity.  It is because something in us, through cowardice or defeatism, accepts this. If one did not accept it, it wouldn’t happen.  Even when everything seems to be suddenly darkened, the ﬂame and the Light are always there. And if one doesn’t forget them, one has only to put in front of them the part which is dark; there will perhaps be a battle, there will perhaps be a little difﬁculty, but it will be something quite transitory; never will you lose your footing.


The Mother: That is why it is said — and it is something true — that to sin through ignorance may have fatal consequences, because when one makes mistakes, well, these mistakes have results, that’s obvious, and usually external and material results; but that’s no great harm, I have already told you this several times. But when one knows what is true, when one has seen and had the experience of the Truth, to accept the sin again, that is, fall back again into ignorance and obscurity — this is indeed an inﬁnitely more serious mistake. It begins to belong to the domain of illwill. In any case, it is a sign of slackness and weakness. It means that the will is weak.


The Mother: So your question is put the other way round. Instead of asking yourself how to keep it, you must ask yourself: how does one not keep it? Not having it, is a state which everybody is in before the moment of knowing; not knowing — one is in that state before knowing. But once one knows one cannot forget.  And if one forgets, it means that there is something which consents to the forgetting, it means there is an assent somewhere; otherwise one would not forget.


The Mother: ( )   That’s all?...  That’s all, nothing more?


The Mother: No more questions anywhere?  You want to meditate? Yes?  ()


The Mother: Yes. So?  You understand, it’s like that for everyone.  If there was only one, it could be like this: that he alone could do it for all; but if everybody does it... you understand...


The Mother: You are ﬁfty persons doing the Integral Yoga. If it is only one of the ﬁfty who is doing it, then he does it for all the ﬁfty.  But if each one of the ﬁfty is doing it, each doing it for all the ﬁfty, he does it actually for one person alone, because all do it for all.  One must widen oneself.


The Mother: The work is more complicated, it is more complete, it asks for a greater power, a greater wideness, a greater patience, a greater tolerance, a greater endurance; all these things are necessary. But in fact, if each one does perfectly what he has to do, it is no longer only one single person who does the whole thing: not one single person who does it for all, but all now form only one person who does it for the whole group.  This ought to form a kind of sufﬁcient unity among all those who are doing it, so that they no longer feel the distinction. This  is indeed the ideal way of doing it: that they now form only one single body, one single personality, working at once each for himself and for the others without any distinction.  Truly speaking, it was the ﬁrst question which came up when I met Sri Aurobindo.


The Mother: I think I have already told you this; I don’t remember now, but I spoke about it recently. Should one do one’s yoga and reach the goal and then later take up the work with others or should one immediately let all those who have the same aspiration come to him and go forward all together towards the goal?  Because of my earlier work and all that I had tried, I came to Sri Aurobindo with the question very precisely formulated.  For the two possibilities were there: either to do an intensive individual sadhana by withdrawing from the world, that is, by no longer having any contact with others, or else to let the group be formed naturally and spontaneously, not preventing it from being formed, allowing it to form, and starting all together on the path.  Well, the decision was not at all a mental choice; it came spontaneously.


The Mother: The circumstances were such that there was no choice; that is, quite naturally, spontaneously, the group was formed in such a way that it became an imperious necessity.  And so once we have started like that, it is ﬁnished, we have to go to the end like that.  At the beginning there were ﬁve, ten, not more. There were ﬁve or six for a long time. It became ten, twelve, about twenty; then thirty, thirty-ﬁve.


The Mother: That remained for quite a long while.  And then suddenly, you know, it started; and then here we are!  The last ﬁgure was more than eleven hundred. We are growing.  Now, among these there are many who do not do the sadhana, then the problem does not come up.


The Mother: But for all those who do it, it is like this, it is as Sri Aurobindo has described it here. And if one wants to do the thing in a solitary way, it is absolutely impossible to do it totally. For every physical being, however complete he may be, is only partial and limited; he  represents only one law in the world; it can be a very complex law, but it is only one law; what is called in India, you know, the Dharma, one Truth, one Law.  Each individual being, even if he be of a completely higher kind, even if he is made for an absolutely special work, is only one individual being; that means, the totality of the transformation cannot take place through one single body. And that is why, spontaneously, the multiplication came about.


The Mother: One can reach, alone and solitary, his own perfection. One can become in one’s consciousness inﬁnite and perfect. But when it is a question of a work, it is always limited.  I don’t know if you understand me well. But personal realisation has no limits.


The Mother: One can become inwardly in himself perfect and inﬁnite. But the outer realisation is necessarily limited, and if one wants to have a general action, at least a minimum number of physical beings is needed.  In a very old tradition it was said that twelve were enough; but in the complexities of modern life it doesn’t seem possible.  There must be a representative group. Which means that...


The Mother: you know nothing about it or you don’t imagine it very well, but each one of you represents one of the difﬁculties which must be conquered for the transformation. And this makes many difﬁculties! () I have written somewhere... I have said that, more than a difﬁculty, each one represents an impossibility to be solved. And it is the whole set of all these impossibilities which can be transformed into the Work, the Realisation.


The Mother: Each case is an impossibility to be solved, and it is when all these impossibilities are resolved that the Work will be accomplished.  But now I am more gentle. I take away “impossibility” and put “difﬁculty”. Perhaps they are no longer impossibilities.  Only, from the beginning, and still more now that our group has grown so considerably, each time someone comes to tell me, “I come for yoga”, I say, “Oh, no!


The Mother: Then don’t come. It is much more difﬁcult here than anywhere else.” And the reason is what Sri Aurobindo has written here.   If someone comes to tell me, “I come to work, I come to make myself useful”, it is all right. But if someone comes and says, “I have many difﬁculties outside, I can’t manage to overcome these difﬁculties, I want to come here because it will help me”, I say, “No, no, it will be more difﬁcult here; your difﬁculties will increase.”


The Mother: And that is what it means, because they are no longer isolated difﬁculties; they are collective difﬁculties.  So in addition to your own personal difﬁculty you have all the frictions, all the contacts, all the reactions, all the things which come from outside. As a test. Exactly on the weak point, the thing that’s most difﬁcult to solve; it is there that you will hear from someone the phrase which was just the one you did not want to hear; someone will make towards you that gesture which was exactly the one which could shock you; you ﬁnd yourself facing a circumstance, a movement, a fact, an object, anything at all — just the things which... “Ah, how I should have liked this not to happen!”


The Mother: And it’s that which will happen. And more and more. Because you do not do your yoga for yourself alone. You do the yoga for everybody — without wanting to — automatically.  So when people come and tell me, “I come here for peace, quietness, leisure, to do my yoga”, I say, “No, no, no!


The Mother: Go away immediately somewhere else, you will be much more peaceful anywhere else than here.”  If someone comes and says, “Well, here I am, I feel that I should consecrate myself to the divine Work, I am ready to do any work at all that you give me”, then I say, “Good, that’s all right. If you have goodwill, endurance, and some capacity, it is all right. But to ﬁnd the solitude necessary for your inner development it is better to go somewhere else,, but not here.” There we are.


The Mother: I said all this just today; I had the occasion to do so. And at the same time I said, “There is an exception to this rule: that’s the children.” Because here the children have the advantage of living  from the time when they are still unconscious, in an atmosphere which helps them to ﬁnd themselves. And this one doesn’t have outside. I am saying what I just said to people who are... not necessarily old but still... formed, who are past the age not only of childhood but of their ﬁrst youth.


The Mother: But all those who are quite small, the younger they are, the better it is for them — because from their young and most tender childhood they are in the most favourable atmosphere for an integral development, and so they can grow up, develop more and more in the right atmosphere. It is only when one comes out of the personal development and wants to begin to do the yoga that the problem comes up. But for those who have been entirely brought up here, the problem is much less difﬁcult, because from their very ﬁrst childhood they have already been members of a whole, without knowing it, without being aware of it; and they move with the whole towards the Realisation.  So it is no longer something absolutely new, which adds to the difﬁculty; on the contrary it is something that helps them.  Now, you see, when the problem comes up, it is for them to know whether they want to do the yoga or not.


The Mother: I have already told you this several times. You see, a moment comes when... “Well, now I am going out into life to have my experience.” — “Go, my children, with my blessings; and try to see that it is not too unpleasant.” ( )


The Mother: But those who say, “No, now I have taken my decision, I want to do yoga”, then, well, I don’t hide it from them that the difﬁculty begins. From this moment, special qualities are necessary; and they must know how to proﬁt by all the preparation that has been given to them. They are in a better position than the poor people who come from outside; much better! But all the same they will have to make an effort, because without effort nothing succeeds — unless they have learnt from the time they were very small to let themselves be carried. But there are very few who are mature enough, it can be said, or old enough, in the sense of eternity, to be able to allow themselves to be carried all at  once, like that, at a single go, without needing to receive all the blows from outside in order to know that is the true thing.


The Mother: This depends a great deal on what they are within themselves. Here, really, comes in the question of the predestined one, the one born for this. Then indeed it is much easier.  There we are.


The Mother: Ah! This, my child, is an affair between you and your own conscience. It is not I who shall say anything at all about it. I cannot answer this. This is for you to observe.


The Mother: Oh, it is quite obvious that if each one of you could see this in the true light...  I don’t know if you have had this experience, when reading one of the wonderful stories of mankind, and of those who came to help humanity — you have perhaps heard this more here in India than people in other countries — those stories in which there was an intervention from above, there was one of those chances, one of those miraculous Graces.  And so, if one reads that when one is small, one says, “Oh, how I should like to have lived at that time!” — I don’t know if you have had this experience...  I knew people who had it. And then one tells them, “Well, try to imagine that you have it, this chance, what would be your reaction?”


The Mother: And sometimes suddenly one perceives it; suddenly it seems as if the heavens were opened, and that something has come which was not there before. For how long, one can’t say, but in any case, it is one of those extraordinary moments of earth-life and human life when things are not as they ordinarily are, dull and lifeless. So one has the feeling of living a miracle.  If one can keep this, all goes well. Unfortunately one forgets it very quickly.


The Mother: If one has had it once, it is already something; the door has been opened. Suddenly one has felt... yes, felt, it is something, it is an inﬁnite Grace, it is something marvellous. All those who lived a century ago, two centuries ago, three centuries ago, hoped for it, awaited it. They had only one chance, that was to live again in a new life and in better conditions.  But now, we have these conditions, they are here: the Grace is here.


The Mother: If one can manage to have the experience — not only a thought — the experience of the thing, and then keep it afterwards, then all becomes easy. Unfortunately, one forgets very soon.  Listen, my child, I am sorry, but you don’t listen when I am speaking? This was exactly Tara’s question and I have explained everything to her. Then how do you ask a similar question?


The Mother: You did not understand? I have explained everything.  ( )  Not necessarily concentrate on that.


The Mother: But he has to face it, whether he knows it or not — an aspect of the problem.  I have already said this once. When you represent the possibility of a victory, you always have within you the thing contrary to this victory, which is your perpetual trouble.   Each one has his own difﬁculty. And I have given the example already once, I think.


The Mother: For instance, a being who must represent fearlessness, courage, you know, a capacity to hold on without giving way before all dangers and all ﬁghts , usually somewhere in his being he is a coward, and he has to struggle against this almost constantly because this represents the victory he has to win in the world.  It is like a being who ought to be good, full of compassion and generosity; somewhere in his being he is sharp, sour and sometimes even bad; and he has to struggle against this in order to be the other thing. And so on. It goes into the details.


The Mother: It’s like that.  And when you see a very black shadow somewhere, black, something that’s truly painful, you know, you can be sure that you have in you the possibility of the corresponding light.  What does that mean, “it increases”?  ()  Here it increases?


The Mother: Yes. Because this is the place of the Realisation.  In life you are unconscious, you pass all your life in an absolutely vague semi-consciousness, you know nothing about yourself, except just an appearance, nothing more. And you will always be incapable of fulﬁlling your mission and therefore you do not meet the obstacle in the heart of the difﬁculty, only an appearance; you are all in the midst of appearances. It’s simply that.


The Mother: So your faults are small, your virtues are small, your capacities are mediocre and your difﬁculties are mediocre, you are entirely mediocre, constantly.  It is only when you begin to walk on the path of Realisation that your possibilities become real, and your difﬁculties become much greater — quite naturally. Things become intensiﬁed.   This is why I tell people, “If you can’t ﬁnd peace and solitude in yourself, can’t isolate yourself sufﬁciently to enter within yourself, if you can’t do this in the conditions of ordinary life, it is certainly not here that you will be able to do it, because your ﬁrst difﬁculty will be that you will feel invaded by everything and everybody, and will be absolutely unable to isolate yourself.  If you have learnt to do it before coming here, then it will be good.


The Mother: But if you don’t know how to do it, you will ﬁnd it very difﬁcult to do so here . ”  And for everything it is the same way. People who are ill-natured, those who have no control over their anger, for instance, are much worse here than in the ordinary world, because in the ordinary world they are controlled by all the necessities of life and because, for example, when they go to an ofﬁce, if they get into a temper against the boss, they are thrown out.


The Mother: While here, we don’t throw them out; they are simply told, “Try to control yourself.”   No — a concentration which is open to all that exists; it is a concentration which does not oppose anything. It is a concentration which is open. It means that one must not reject certain things from himself and practise an exclusive concentration on a particular point while neglecting all the others. All the possibilities should be admitted and pursued.


The Mother: It is a part of the being which is not always the same in everyone, and which is instinctively open to the inﬂuence of the psychic.  There is always one part — sometimes indeed quite veiled, of which we are not conscious — something in the being which is turned to the psychic and receiving its inﬂuence. This is the intermediary between the psychic consciousness and the external consciousness.  It is not the same thing in everyone; in each one it is different.  It is the point in his nature or character through which he can touch the psychic and where he can receive the psychic inﬂuence.


The Mother: It depends upon people; for each one it is different; everyone has a point like this.   You may also feel that there are certain things which suddenly push you, lift you above yourself, open a kind of door upon something greater. It can be many things; and it depends upon each one’s nature. It’s the part of the being which enthuses over something; it is this capacity for enthusiasm.  There are two principal things.


The Mother: This, the capacity for enthusiasm which makes one come out of his greater or lesser inertia in order to throw himself more or less totally into the thing which rouses him. As for instance, the artist for his art, the scientist for his science. And in general, every person who creates or builds has an opening, the opening of a special faculty, a special possibility, creating an enthusiasm in him. When this is active, something in the being awakens, and there is a participation of almost the whole being in the thing done.  There is this.


The Mother: And then there are those who have an innate faculty of gratitude, those who have an ardent need to respond, respond with warmth, devotion, joy, to something which they feel like a marvel hidden behind the whole of life, behind the tiniest little element, the least little event of life, who feel this sovereign beauty or inﬁnite Grace which is behind all things.  I knew people who had no knowledge, so to say, of anything, who were hardly educated, whose minds were altogether of the ordinary kind, and who had in them this capacity of gratitude, of warmth, which gives itself, understands and is thankful.  Well, for them, the contact with the psychic was very frequent, almost constant and, to the extent that they were capable of it, conscious — not very conscious but a little — in the sense that they felt that they were carried, helped, uplifted above themselves.  These two things prepare people the most. They are born with one or the other; and if they take the trouble, it develops gradually, it increases.


The Mother: We say: the capacity for enthusiasm, something which throws you out of your miserable and mean little ego; and the  generous gratitude, the generosity of the gratitude which also ﬂings itself in thanksgiving out of the little ego. These are the two most powerful levers to enter into contact with the Divine in one’s psychic being. This serves as a link with the psychic being — the surest link.  ( )


The Mother: That’s all?   In the most nasty people?... yes, my child — even in the Asuras, even in the Adversaries, even in the monsters, there is something.  There is always a corner, a kind of rift, a sensitive point, which is usually called a weakness.


The Mother: But this actually is the strength of the being, the point by which it can be touched.  For even in the most obscure and misled beings, even in those whose conscious will is to ﬁght against the Divine, in spite of themselves, in spite of everything, their origin is divine. And they work in vain, try in vain to cut themselves off from their origin; they cannot do it. Deliberately, consciously, they try all they can; but they know very well they cannot do it. Even the most monstrous being there is always a means to touch.


The Mother: The Divine, the Divine’s action in the world, always acts as a limit to the excess of evil, and at the same time gives an unlimited power to the good. And it is this unlimited power of the good which, externally, in the manifestation, serves as a limit to the spreading of evil.  Naturally, to the very limited vision of human beings it seems sometimes that evil has no limits and that it goes to its extreme. But this extreme itself is a limit. There is always a halt, because there is a point where the Divine rises up and says, “You won’t go any farther.”


The Mother: Whether it be the great destructions of  Nature or men’s monstrosities, there is a moment when the Divine intervenes and prevents things from going farther.  ()   Yes — yes.  In a certain way, yes.


The Mother: Only it may not be apparent in one lifetime, because when there is no conscious participation of the being, the movement is relatively slow, even relative to the short duration of human life. And so it is quite possible, for example, that at the moment of death a being seems not to have progressed, and even sometimes it seems to have been going backwards, to have lost what it had at the beginning of its life. But if we take the great life-curve of its psychic being through many lives, there is always a progress. Each experience it had in one of its physical lifetimes helps it to make some progress. But it is the psychic being which always progresses.


The Mother: The physical being, in the state in which it is at present — well, having reached a certain point of ascent, it comes down again. There are elements which may not come down again grossly; but still it does come down, one can’t deny it.   The vital being — not necessarily, nor the mental being. The vital being, if it knows how to get connected with the universal force, can very easily have no retrogression; it can continue to ascend.


The Mother: And the mental being, it’s absolutely certain, is completely free from all degeneration if it continues to develop normally. So these always make progress so long as they remain co-ordinated and under the inﬂuence of the psychic.  It is only the physical being which grows and decomposes.   But this comes from its lack of plasticity and receptivity and by its very nature; it is not inevitable. Therefore there is room to think that at a given moment, as the physical consciousness itself progresses consciously and deliberately, well, to a certain extent and increasingly the body itself will be able, ﬁrst to resist decay — which, obviously, must be the ﬁrst movement — and then gradually begin to grow in inner perfection till it overcomes the forces of decomposition.


The Mother: But truly speaking, it’s the only thing which for the moment does not progress. Everything else is progressing.  But this substance — that is, this material physical substance which forms it constitutes an organism which lives for a certain length of time in a given form and then this form declines and dissolves — the substance itself constituting these successive forms progresses through all these forms. That is, the molecular, cellular substance — perhaps even the cellular — the molecular and atomic, is progressing in its capacity to express the divine Force and Consciousness. Through all these organisms this substance becomes more and more conscious, more and more luminous, more and more receptive, until it reaches a perfection sufﬁcient for it to become a possible vehicle for the divine Force itself which will be able to use it as it uses the elements of the other parts of the creation, like the mind or the vital.


The Mother: And at that moment the physical substance will be ready to manifest in the world the new Consciousness, new Light, new Will. Through all the centuries, through countless lives, passing through innumerable organisms, using countless experiences it, so to speak, becomes reﬁned; it is prepared, and becomes more and more receptive and open to the divine Forces.  So, a man as a momentary individual being may not appear to progress. But the progress is continued through him, as through all organisms.  (


The Mother: )   ( ) You seem to think that it is not very consoling!  All the same it is a consolation, because, in fact, it is only for each individual being to precipitate the movement of progress by working consciously at it.


The Mother: That freedom is given to everyone, so one has only to proﬁt by it.   There is no ineluctable law preventing anybody from participating consciously in the universal progress. This freedom is given to him.  Nothing?...


The Mother: No questions, then?...  No more questions?... Nothing?... Nothing more?... ( )


The Mother: Or you have something to ask?  It depends on the context.  It is difﬁcult to say. Logically it should mean puriﬁed energy.  Two heads; it depends on the context, that means, the circumstances in which one sees, what has happened before, what happens at that time and what happens afterwards.


The Mother: If it is just a snake like that, with two heads...  It was white?  And had two heads?   ()  You are sure that it bit me?


The Mother: Still, you remember it like that.   In which drawer?  In the box?  (


The Mother: )  I threw it out?  Absolutely white?  The eyes? You didn’t see them?


The Mother: When did this happen?   Good.  So, meditation?  ()


The Mother: Everyone forms an idea of the Divine for himself according to his personal taste, his possibilities of understanding, his mental preferences, and even his desires. People form the idea of the Divine they want, the Divine they wish to meet, and so naturally they limit their realisation considerably.  But if we can come to understand that the Divine is all that we can conceive of, and inﬁnitely more, we begin to progress towards integrality. Integrality is an extremely difﬁcult thing for the human consciousness, which begins to be conscious only by limiting itself. But still, with a little effort, for those who know how to play with mental activities, it is possible to widen oneself sufﬁciently to approach something integral.


The Mother: You form an idea of the Divine which suits your own nature and your own conception, don’t you? So if you want to get out of yourself a little and attempt to do a truly integral yoga, you must try to understand that the Divine is not only what you think or feel Him to be, but also what others think and feel Him to be — and in addition something that nobody can think and feel.   So, if you understand this, you have taken the ﬁrst step on the path of integrality.  Instinctively, and without even being aware of it , people persist in wanting the Divine to suit their own conceptions.


The Mother: For, without thinking, quite spontaneously, they tell you, “Oh, this is divine, this is not divine!” What do they know about it? And then there are those who have not yet set foot on the path, who come here and see things or people, and tell you, “This Ashram has nothing to do with the Divine, it is not at all divine.” But if you ask them, “What is divine?”, they would be hard put to it to answer; they know nothing about it. And the less one knows, the more one judges; that’s an absolute fact.


The Mother: The more one knows, the less can one pronounce judgments on things.  And there comes a time when all one can do is observe, but to judge is impossible. One can see things, see them as they are, in their relations and in their place, with an awareness of the difference between the place they now are in and the one they ought to occupy — for this is the great disorder in the world — but one does not judge. One simply observes.  And there is a moment when one would be unable to say, “This is divine and that is not divine”, for a time comes when one sees the whole universe in so total and comprehensive a way that, to tell the truth, it is impossible to take away anything from it without disturbing everything.


The Mother: And one or two steps further yet, and one knows with certainty that what shocks us as a contradiction of the Divine is quite simply something not in its proper place. Each thing must be exactly in its place and, besides, it must be supple enough, plastic enough, to admit into a harmonious progressive organisation all the new elements which are constantly added to the manifested universe. The universe is in a perpetual movement of inner reorganisation, and at the same time it is growing larger, so to say, becoming more and more complex, more and more complete, more and more integral — and this, indeﬁnitely. And as gradually new elements manifest, the whole organisation has  to be remade on a new basis, so that there is not a second when  is not in perpetual movement. But if the movement is in accordance with the divine order, it is harmonious, so perfectly harmonious that it is hardly perceptible, it is difﬁcult to see it.


The Mother: Now, if one comes down again from this consciousness to a more external consciousness, naturally one begins to feel, very precisely, the things which help one to reach the true consciousness and those which bar the way or pull one back or even struggle against the progress. And so the outlook changes and one has to say, “This is divine, or this helps me toward the Divine; and that is against the Divine, it is the enemy of the Divine.”  But this is a pragmatic point of view, for action, for the movement in material life — because one has not yet reached the consciousness which goes beyond all that; because one has not attained that inner perfection, having which one has no longer to struggle, for one has gone beyond the zone of struggle or the time of struggle or the utility of struggle. But before that, before attaining that state in one’s consciousness and action, necessarily there is struggle, and if there is struggle there is choice and for the choice discernment is necessary.  And the surest means to discernment is a conscious and willing surrender, as complete as possible, to the divine Will and Guidance.


The Mother: Then there is no risk of making a mistake and of taking false lights for true ones.  That depends upon how you look at it, you cannot say that. For  there is a potential attraction, but so veiled and so secret that you can’t even tell that it exists.  In Matter which has an appearance of inertia — it is only an appearance, but still — the attraction for the Divine is a possibility rather than a fact; that is, it is something which will develop, but which does not yet exist perceptibly.  It may be said that all consciousness, whether it knows it or not — even if it doesn’t know it — gravitates towards the Divine.


The Mother: But consciousness must already be there in order to be able to afﬁrm this.  And even among men, who at the moment are the most conscious beings on earth, there is an immense majority who are potentially drawn towards the Divine, but who know nothing about it; and there are even some who deliberately refuse this attraction. Perhaps, in their refusal, behind it, something is preparing but neither willingly nor knowingly.   (


The Mother: ) And so, what was the last part of your question?... First you assume something which is not correct, and on top of that you ask a question which naturally doesn’t make sense, for the assumption is incorrect.  Yes, yes, I know quite well what you want to say.  In fact, ﬁnally, everything will be attracted by the Divine.


The Mother: Only, there are direct roads and there are labyrinthine paths where one seems to be going further away for a very long time before drawing close. And there are beings who have chosen the labyrinthine paths and who intend to remain there as long as they can. So, apparently, they are beings who ﬁght against the Divine.  Although those who are of a higher order know quite well that this is an absolutely vain and useless struggle, without issue, they still take pleasure in it. Even if this must lead them to their destruction, they have decided to do it.


The Mother: There are human beings also who indulge in vice — one vice or another, like drinking or drug-injections — and who know very well that this is leading them to destruction and death. But they choose to do it, knowingly.  There is always a moment when everyone has self-control. And if one had not said “Yes” once, if one had not taken the decision, one would not have done it.  There is not one human being who has not the energy and capacity to resist something imposed upon him — if he is left free to do so.


The Mother: People tell you, “I can’t do otherwise” — it is because in the depths of their heart they to do otherwise; they have accepted to be the slaves of their vice. There is a moment when one accepts.  And I would go even further; I say, there is a moment when one accepts to be ill. If one did not accept to be ill, one would not be ill. Only, people are so unconscious of themselves and their inner movements that they are not even aware of what they do.


The Mother: But it all depends on the way one looks at things. From a certain point of view there is nothing that is totally useless in the world. Only, things which were tolerable and admissible at a certain time are no longer so at another. And when they become no longer admissible, one begins to say they are bad, because then a will awakes to get rid of them. But in the history of the universe — one can even say in the history of the earth, to limit the problem to our little planet — I think everything that exists had its necessity and importance at a given moment.


The Mother: And it is as one advances that these things are rejected or replaced by others which belong to the future instead of the past. So, of things which have no further purpose one says, “They are bad”, because one tries to ﬁnd within oneself a lever to push them out, to break with the habit. But perhaps at one time they were not bad, and other things were.   There are ways of being, ways of feeling, ways of doing, which you tolerate in yourself for quite a long time, and which don’t trouble you, don’t seem to you at all useless or bad or to be got rid of. And then all of a sudden one day, you don’t know why or what has happened, but the outlook changes, you look at things and say, “But what is this?


The Mother: This is in me! Am I carrying this in myself? But it is intolerable, I don’t want it any longer.” And suddenly it seems bad to you because it is time to reject these things, for they do not harmonise with the attitude you have taken or the progress you have made in your march forward in the world. These things should be elsewhere, they are no longer in their place, therefore you ﬁnd them bad.


The Mother: But perhaps the same things which seem bad to you would be excellent for other people who are at a lower level.  There is always someone more dull, more unconscious, more ignorant or worse than oneself. So the state which is intolerable for you, which you can no longer keep, which must disappear, would perhaps be very luminous for those who are on the lower rungs. By what right are you going to say, “This is bad”? All you can say is, “I don’t want it any longer.


The Mother: I don’t want it, it’s not in keeping with my present way of being, I want to go where these things have no place any more; they are no longer in their place, let them go and ﬁnd their place elsewhere!”  But one cannot judge. It is impossible to say, “This is bad.” At the most one can say, “This is bad for me, it is no longer in its place with me, it must go.” That’s all.


The Mother: And one drops it on the way.  And this makes the progress much, much easier, to think and feel like that instead of sitting down in despair and lamenting about things and what you are like, and the misery you endure and the defects you have and the impossibilities which beset you and all that. You say, “No, no, those things are no longer in their place here, let them go elsewhere, where they will be in their place and welcome. As for me, I am going forward, I am going to climb a step, I shall go towards a purer and better  and more complete light; and so all these things which like the darkness must go away.” But that’s all.


The Mother: Each time one sees in oneself something which seems really nasty, well, that proves that one has made progress. So, instead  of lamenting and falling into despair, one should be happy; one says, “Ah! that’s good. I am getting on.”  A powerful yoga?


The Mother: You don’t know what “powerful” means?   Yes. A powerful yoga is a very complete yoga, which contains many things, takes in many elements. So this element of intellectual knowledge makes the yoga more powerful.


The Mother: Not quite. An integral yoga is one which comprises all the parts of the being and all the activities of the being. But the activities of one being are not as powerful as the activities of another; and the integrality of one being is not as total as the integrality of another. You don’t understand?  If all your being, as it is, participates in the yoga, it becomes for you an integral yoga.


The Mother: But your participation may be very poor and mediocre compared with that of someone else, and the number of elements of consciousness which you contain may be very small compared with the elements of consciousness contained in another person. And yet your yoga is integral for you, that is, it is done in all the parts and all the activities of your being.   You know, I had a cat which was doing yoga. Well, the yoga of the cat could not be as powerful as the yoga of man, and yet it was integral, it was quite complete; even its body took part in its yoga. But its way of doing it, naturally, was not human.


The Mother: It is an idea which gives you will, enthusiasm and a power of realisation. A “moving” thing is that which tends towards realisation and gives you the impetus towards realisation.  Have you never felt the difference between a small idea and a great idea, a narrow idea and a wide one?  Listen, I am going to give you quite a concrete and material example. You make an offering of your purse; it contains three rupees.


The Mother: Your neighbour offers his purse which contains ﬁfty.  Well, the gift of ﬁfty rupees is larger than the gift of three. That’s all.  But, from the moral point of view, if you have given that you have, you have done the utmost you could have done, nothing more can be asked of you; you understand, from the moral point of view, from the pure spiritual point of view, not from the point of view of realisation. From the purely spiritual point of view the gift of your three rupees has exactly the same value as the gift of ﬁfty.


The Mother: And even he who gave ﬁfty rupees, if he  has kept back one, his gift is less integral and pure than yours of only three. So, it is not on that plane that the thing must be seen. But from the point of view of the material realisation it is undeniable that ﬁfty is more than three, for all those who know mathematics!  ( )


The Mother: The message I have given this year, what’s your objection to it?  This means perhaps something very simple: that it is better to let things happen without speaking about them. If you ask me, I think this is what it means: that it is much better to say nothing about what will happen before it happens. Otherwise it becomes what I call “beat of drum”, what could be called publicity.  It is like those who ask, “What will it be like?”


The Mother: We shall see! Wait, at least we should get a surprise!... And I reply, “I know nothing about it.” For I put myself immediately in the consciousness of the world as it is, to which is announced that extraordinary things are going to happen, and which is quite incapable of imagining them — for as I told you once, if one begins to imagine them, it means they are there. Before you can imagine something, it has to exist, otherwise you cannot imagine it.


The Mother: Yes, in our higher being we can have a very clear, very exact, very luminous perception of what it is. But if one comes down into the material consciousness, one has to say, “Well, I know  nothing about it.” When it is there, I shall tell you what it’s like — and probably I won’t even need to tell you, you will be able to see it. I hope you will be among those who are able to see it.  For, there again, there are some who won’t be able.


The Mother: And so, what’s the good of it? What’s the use of going round telling people, “It is there, you know, it is like this”? They will reply, as in that play which was staged here: “But I can see nothing!” Do you remember, it was in Don’t you remember that in the messenger says that the Divine is there listening to you, that He is present? And then someone replies, “But I don’t see Him!”


The Mother: It is like that.  It is like those people who come to visit the Ashram and say, “But there is no spirituality here!”... How could they see it?  With what organs?  But still I do hope that when something manifests, you will be able to see it.


The Mother: Naturally, if all of a sudden there were luminous apparitions or if the outer physical forms changed completely, well then, I think even a dog or a cat or anything whatsoever would notice it. But that will take time, it can’t happen right now. It can’t happen right now, it is farther off, for a much later time. Many great things will take place before that, and they will be much more important than that, mark my words.  For, indeed, that is only the ﬂower which blossoms.


The Mother: But before it blossoms, the principle of its existence must be there in the root of the plant.  My child, why do you put this in the future?  There have already been, for years, extraordinary, fantastic consequences in the world. But to see this, one must have a little knowledge; otherwise one takes them for quite normal  and ordinary things — because one doesn’t even know how they happen.  So perhaps this will be exactly the same thing; there are likely to be tremendous changes, fantastic actions, and, well, people will say, “But this — naturally, it is like that”, because they don’t know how it comes about.


The Mother: An action in the world? — It is constant. It is something which spreads and acts everywhere, gives out everywhere new impulsions, new orientations, new ideas, new acts of will — everywhere. But still, as one does not see how it happens, one thinks it “quite natural”, as they say.  It is quite natural, but with another naturalness than that of ordinary physical Nature.


The Mother: Indeed, it is quite logical to say that one must be conscious of the Spirit to be able to perceive the work of the Spirit. If you are not conscious of the Spirit, how will you be able to see it at work? Because the result of what the Spirit does is necessarily material in the material world; and as it is material, you ﬁnd it quite natural. What do you know of what Nature does, and what do you know of what the Spirit does? All that Nature does — I am speaking of physical Nature — we know very little about it, almost nothing, since we have to constantly learn things which upset all that we thought we knew before.


The Mother: And so, how to distinguish between what is purely the work of Nature and the work of the Spirit through Nature? One should know how to distinguish the one from the other. And how to distinguish them when one’s consciousness is not quite limpid and sure of what the Spirit is? How to recognise It, and how to see Its Work? This seems to me very simple logic.


The Mother: The world will go on. Things will happen. And perhaps there will be a handful of men who will know how they were done. That’s all.  And


The Mother: if today one were suddenly precipitated, without any transition, into the world as it was, let us say, two or three thousand years ago; oh! even less than that perhaps — one or  two thousand years ago — it would be such a suffocating contrast that probably very few people would be able to bear it.  But as this came about “like that”, with the amiable slowness of Nature, with all her fantasies, one ﬁnds it quite natural and doesn’t even notice it.  It is not an image, it is not just ﬁne words when it is said that if one enters the true consciousness, if one changes one’s consciousness, well, the world itself changes for you. And it is not only an appearance or an impression: one sees differently than one does in the ordinary consciousness; relations are different, causes are different, effects are different.


The Mother: And instead of seeing only something which is not transparent — one cannot see what’s behind, it is a surface, a crust; it is only this one sees and one can’t even see what moves it, what makes it exist — everything is turned inside out, and it is that which appears artiﬁcial and unreal, and almost inexistent. And so, when one sees things in this way, normally, you know, without straining oneself, without having to practise meditation and concentration and make strenuous efforts to see things like this, when it is one’s normal, natural vision, then one understands things in a completely different way — naturally, the world is different!  There is a short preliminary passage which is indispensable, and those who have made this little preliminary journey, well, there are all sorts of things, all sorts of speculations and questions which they can no longer ask themselves.  But truly, to come back to our point, what I wanted to say very simply is that one day, at the time I was asked for a message — I give it because I am asked — they ask and tell me, “Oh! we want to print it, couldn’t you send it to us?” Then, what do I do?


The Mother: I look at the year that is coming — to be able to speak about it, I must look at it — I look at the coming year, and then, looking at it, I see at the same time all the imaginations of people, all their speculations and all their inventions about what is going to happen in this so-called wonderful year. I look at that, and at the same time I look at what it is — what it already is beforehand, it  is already like that somewhere — and immediately I know very clearly that the best thing to do is not to say what it will be like. And as people expect a lot of ﬂourish and proclamations, I said what I said, that’s all. Nothing more. That is all I meant to say: “Let us not speak about it, if you please, that is better, that is preferable.”


The Mother: I haven’t said anything but this: “It is better not to speak about it, don’t make a lot of noise about it, because that doesn’t help. Let things happen in accordance with a deeper law, without being bewildered like one who does not understand anything and just looks on.”  And above all, above all, don’t come and say, “You know, it will be like this.” Because that is what makes the thing most difﬁcult, I don’t say that what has to be will not be, but perhaps there will be many more difﬁculties if one speaks about it. So it is better to let things happen.


The Mother: And, after all, if one wants to be very reasonable — very reasonable — one has only to ask oneself, “Well, in ten thousand years, this realisation we are preparing, what will it be?  An imperceptible point in the march of time, a preparation, an attempt towards future realisations.” Oh! it is better not to get so excited. Let us do all that we can and keep quiet.


The Mother: That’s all.  Now, there are people who need a little whipping, as one whips cream. But they should go to the poets, not come to me.  I am not a poet, I am content to act. I would rather act than speak.


The Mother: One deceives oneself only when one wants to deceive oneself. It is very, very different.   Good. Well, then that’s enough, if one understands somewhere, that’s enough.


The Mother: Is that all? No questions?   Yes.  I am going to tell you in what circumstances I wrote this; that will make you understand: Someone wrote to me saying that he was very unhappy, for he longed to have wonderful capacities to put at the disposal of the Divine, for the Realisation, for the Work; and that he also longed to have immense riches to be able to give them, to  put them at the feet of the Divine for the Work.


The Mother: So I replied to him that he need not be unhappy, that each one is asked to give what he has, that is, all his possessions whatever they may be, and what he is, that is, all his potentialities — which corresponds to the consecration of one’s life and the giving of all one’s possessions — and that nothing more than this is asked.  What you are, give that; what you have, give that, and your gift will be perfect; from the spiritual point of view it will be perfect.   This does not depend upon the amount of wealth you have or the number of capacities in your nature; it depends upon the perfection of your gift, that is to say, on the totality of your gift.  I remember having read, in a book of Indian legends, a story like this.


The Mother: There was a very poor, very old woman who had nothing, who was quite destitute, who lived in a miserable little hut, and who had been given a fruit. It was a mango. She had eaten half of it and kept the other half for the next day, because it was something so marvellous that she did not often happen to get it — a mango. And then, when night fell, someone knocked at the rickety door and asked for hospitality. And this someone came in and told her he wanted shelter and was hungry.


The Mother: So she said to him, “Well, I have no ﬁre to warm you, I have no blanket to cover you, and I have half a mango left, that is all I have, if you want it; I have eaten half of it.” And it turned out that this someone was Shiva, and that she was ﬁlled with an inner glory, for she had made a perfect gift of herself and all she had.  I read that, I found it magniﬁcent. Well, yes, this describes it vividly. It’s exactly that.


The Mother: The rich man, or even people who are quite well-off and have all sorts of things in life and give to the Divine what they have in surplus — for usually this is the gesture: one has a little more money than one needs, one has a few more things than one needs, and so, generously, one gives that to the Divine. It is better than giving nothing. But even if this “little more” than what they need represents lakhs of rupees, the gift is less perfect than the one of half the mango. For it is not by the quantity or  the quality that it is measured: it is by the sincerity of the giving and the absoluteness of the giving.


The Mother: Yes, but then the question doesn’t arise. If they haven’t met the Divine either within or without, it doesn’t come into question.  They are not asked to give to someone they do not know.  If they have found the Divine within themselves, well, they have only to follow the indication given by the Divine for the use of what they have; and if they follow quite sincerely and exactly the indications they receive, this is all that can be asked of them. But until then nothing is asked of anyone.


The Mother: One begins to ask only when someone says, “Here I am, I want to consecrate myself to the Divine.” Then it is all right, from that moment one asks; but not before. Before that, even if you casually pull out a coin from your pocket and put it there, it is very good; you have done what you thought you ought to do and that’s all; you are not asked for anything at all. There is a great difference between asking the Divine to adopt you, and making a gesture of goodwill, but without the least intention of changing anything whatever in the course of your life.  Those who live the ordinary life, well, if they make a gesture of goodwill, so much the better for them, this creates for them antecedents for future lives.


The Mother: But it is only from the moment you say, “There, now I know that there is but one thing which counts for me, it is the divine life, and I want to live the divine life” — from that moment one asks you, not before.   What?  In what way? By taking from Him all they can?  I tell you, I have already answered, that’s how it is.


The Mother: They come with the idea of taking from the Divine all they can: all the qualities, all the capacities, all the conveniences also, all the comforts, everything, and sometimes even powers, and all the rest. They come to take, they don’t come to give. And their show of devotion is simply a cloak they have thrown over their wish to take, to receive. That covers a wide ﬁeld: from saving one’s soul, having spiritual experiences, obtaining powers, to leading a petty quiet life, comfortable — more or less comfortable, at least with a minimum of comfort — without cares, without botheration, far from the worries of life. That’s how it is.


The Mother: That covers a wide range. But when they give, it is a kind of bargaining; they know that to obtain these things, it would be well to give a little something, otherwise they won’t get them, so they make a show of being very devoted. But it is only a pretence, for it is not sincere.  Unfortunately for them, it deceives no one. It may be tolerated; but that doesn’t mean that anybody is deceived.


The Mother: The bargaining is everywhere, in all the parts of the being.  It is always give and take, from the highest spiritual experiences to the tiniest little material needs. There is not one in a thousand who gives without bargaining.   And the beauty of the story I told you — moreover, there are many others like it here — is just this, that when the old woman gave, she didn’t know that it was Shiva.


The Mother: She gave to the passing beggar, for the joy of doing good, of giving, not because he was a god and she hoped to have salvation or some knowledge in exchange.   ( ) There is still some mischief in his mind.


The Mother: Now then, what is it?  I can’t make out what he means! ( ) Translate!


The Mother: Yes, that is what Sri Aurobindo has written.   () Is that it?   (Laughter)  It is and it isn’t!


The Mother: And so what, what happens?    Ah! at last.  What should be done?...


The Mother: Be sincere.  That’s it; always, always, the little worm in the fruit. One tells oneself, “Oh! I can’t.” It is not true, if one wanted, one could.  And there are people who tell me, “I don’t have the willpower.”


The Mother: That means you are not sincere. For sincerity is an inﬁnitely more powerful force than all the wills in the world.  It can change anything whatever in the twinkling of an eye; it takes hold of it, grips it, pulls it out — and then it’s over.  But you close your eyes, you ﬁnd excuses for yourself.  It comes back because you don’t pull it out completely.


The Mother: What you do is, you cut the branch, so it grows again.   Yes. Well, you have to take it out every time it comes, that’s all — until it doesn’t come back any more.  We have spoken about it, where was it?...


The Mother: Oh! it was in , I think. You push the thing down from one part of your consciousness into another; and you push it down again and then it goes into the subconscient, and after that, if you are not vigilant, you think it is ﬁnished, and later from there it shows its face. And next, even when you push it out from the subconscient, it goes down into the inconscient; and there too, then, you must run after it to ﬁnd it.  But there comes a time when it is over.


The Mother: Only, one is always in too great a hurry, one wants it to be over very quickly. When one has made an effort, “Oh! well, I  made an effort, now I should get the reward for my effort.”  In fact, it is because there is not that joy of progress. The joy of progress imagines that even if you have realised the goal you have put before you — take the goal we have in view: if we realise the supramental life, the supramental consciousness — well, this joy of progress says, “Oh! but this will be only a stage in the eternity of time. After this there will be something else, and then after that another and yet another, and always one will have to go further.”


The Mother: And that is what ﬁlls you with joy. While the idea, “Ah! now I can sit down, it is ﬁnished, I have realised my goal, I am going to enjoy what I have done”, Oh, how dull it is! Immediately one becomes old and stunted.  The deﬁnition of youth: we can say that youth is constant growth and perpetual progress — and the growth of capacities, possibilities, of the ﬁeld of action and range of consciousness, and progress in the working out of details.  Naturally, someone told me, “So one is no longer young when one stops growing?”


The Mother: I said, “Of course, I don’t imagine that one grows perpetually! But one can grow in another way than purely physically.”  That is to say, in human life there are successive periods. As you go forward, something comes to an end in one form, and it changes its form.... Naturally, at present, we come to the top of the ladder and come down again; but that’s really a shame, it shouldn’t be like that, it’s a bad habit.


The Mother: But when we have ﬁnished growing up, when we have reached a height we could consider as that which expresses us best, we can transform this force for growth into a force which will perfect our body, make it stronger and stronger, more and more healthy, with an ever greater power of resistance, and we shall practise physical training in order to become a model of physical beauty. And then, at the same time, we shall slowly begin and seek the perfection of character, of consciousness, knowledge, powers, and ﬁnally of the divine Realisation in its fullness of the marvellously good and true, and of His perfect Love.   There you are. And this must be continuous. And when a certain level of consciousness has been reached, when this consciousness has been realised in the material world and you have transformed the material world in the image of this consciousness, well, you will climb yet one more rung and go to another consciousness — and you will begin again..


The Mother: But this is not for lazy folk. It’s for people who like progress.  Not for those who come and say, “Oh! I have worked hard in my life, now I want to rest, will you please give me a place in the Ashram?” I tell them, “Not here. This is not a place for rest because you have worked hard, this is a place for working even harder than before.”


The Mother: So, formerly, I used to send them to Ramana Maharshi: “Go there, you will enter into meditation and you will get rest.” Now it is not possible, so I send them to the Himalayas; I tell them,“Go and sit before the eternal snows!  That will do you good.”  That’s all, then.   There is a positive side and a negative side to this work.


The Mother: The positive side is to increase one’s aspiration, develop one’s consciousness, unify one’s being, to go within in order to enter more and more into contact with one’s psychic being; to take up all the parts, all the movements, all the activities of one’s being and put them before this psychic consciousness so that they fall into their true place in relation to this centre; ﬁnally, to organise all one’s aspiration towards the Divine and one’s progress towards the Divine. That is the positive side.  At the same time the negative side consists in refusing methodically and with discernment all the inﬂuences which come from outside or from the subconscient or inconscient or from the environment, and stand in the way of spiritual progress.  One must discern these inﬂuences, suggestions, impulses, and systematically refuse them without ever getting discouraged by their persistence and ever yielding to their will. One must, at the same time, observe clearly in one’s being all its different elements, obscure, egoistic, unconscious, or even ill-willed, which consciously or otherwise, answer these bad inﬂuences, and allow them not only to penetrate into the consciousness, but sometimes to get settled there.


The Mother: That is the negative side.  Both must be practised at the same time. According to the moment, the occasion, the inner readiness, you must insist now on one, now on the other, but never forget either of them.   Generally, all progress made on one side is set off by an attack of the adverse forces on the other. So, the more you advance, the more vigilant must you become.


The Mother: And the most essential quality is perseverance, endurance, and a... what shall I call it? — a kind of inner good humour which helps you not to get discouraged, not to become sad, and to face all difﬁculties with a smile. There is an English word which expresses this very well — cheerfulness. If you can keep this within you, you ﬁght much better, resist much better, in the light, these bad inﬂuences which try to hinder you from progressing.  That is the work. It is vast and complex.


The Mother: And one must never forget anything.  You can take it as you like.  One can’t tell who began! But the two usually take place at the same time.  If you want an order of priority, it is evident that the Divine exists before the individual, so it must be the Divine who has chosen ﬁrst!


The Mother: But that is a choice prior to terrestrial life. In the order of the ordinary human consciousness it may be one or the other or both at the same time. In fact, it is likely that the Divine is the ﬁrst to notice that this or that being is ready! But he who is ready generally does not know it to begin with, so he has the impression that it is he who has decided and is choosing.


The Mother: But this is more of an impression than a reality.  And once you are chosen, it is ineluctable, you can’t escape even if you try.   It is in a poetic form.  But what is it you don’t understand? Why he speaks about the bud and the ﬂower?


The Mother: He says that this happens when one is ready; it is precisely to make you think “but the bud opens without effort”; so, when the nature is ready, the same thing happens as with the bud.  “Effort”, I don’t know what we call effort, it is not certain whether the plant makes an effort or not. And in any case, it has an aspiration; plants grow because they aspire for the light, for the sun, for open air.  And it’s a kind of competition. If one goes into a wood, for instance, into a park where there are many different plants, one can observe very clearly that there is a sort of competition among plants to pass each other and reach the light and open air above.


The Mother: It is indeed quite wonderful to see.  Now, Sri Aurobindo means that when one is well prepared and the nature is ready, then the last movement is like a spontaneous blossoming — it’s no longer an effort, it’s an answer. It is a truly divine action in the being: one is prepared and the moment has come, then the bud opens.    Yes.


The Mother: Even, very often it is conscious: they want to be tall.  At a particular time, yes. Indeed, I have known children who have grown tall because they had a very strong will to grow.  Yes, that has an effect even when one is no longer quite a child. I have seen cases of people who grew taller even at twenty-ﬁve, so very anxious were they to grow tall.


The Mother: And I am not speaking of those who have practised physical culture, for that’s different; with physical training one can considerably change one’s body; I am just speaking of an aspiration, an inner will. The body is sufﬁciently plastic till twenty-ﬁve. Later one must introduce more scientiﬁc methods, like physical culture; and if that is done wisely and methodically, one can obtain wonderful results. But always, behind it, there must be a will, that is very important; a kind of tenacious aspiration, a knowledge, or even a faith that one is not necessarily tied down by atavism.  For obviously, like plants, one is limited by the original seed, the species to which one belongs.


The Mother: But all the same there is a wide margin. For instance, I have very many times seen children who were considerably taller than their parents, and had truly wanted to be so. Of course, it was against a certain resistance and within a certain limit, but one can push back the limit a good deal.  And in fact, according to the theories of heredity and atavism, it is said that heredity can skip generations, and there are few families where at least one member was not tall and so could justify the height of his grandchildren or great-grandchildren.   In plants there is a great vital force.


The Mother: And this vital force has a considerable action. And there is also the genius of the species, which is a consciousness. There is already an active consciousness at work in plants.  And in the genius of the species there is a beginning — quite embryonic, but still — there is a beginning of response to the psychic inﬂuence, and certain ﬂowers are clearly the expression of a psychic attitude and aspiration in the plant, not very conscious of itself, but existing like a spontaneous impetus.  It is quite certain, for instance, that if you have a special affection for a plant, if, in addition to the material care you give it, you love it, if you feel close to it, it feels this; its blossoming is much more harmonious and happy, it grows better, it lives longer.


The Mother: All this means a response in the plant itself. Consequently, there is the presence there of a certain consciousness; and surely the plant has a vital being.  This may happen, but it is accidental.  There are trees — trees especially — which have lived long and can be the home of a conscious being, a vital being. Generally it is vital entities which take shelter in trees, or else certain beings of the vital plane which live in forests — as certain beings of the vital live in water.


The Mother: There were old legends like that, but they were based on facts.  The plant serves as home and shelter, but the being is not created by the plant itself!  ()   Even before his birth.  Perhaps his birth is the result of this choice; generally it is like that.


The Mother: But at any time at all in his life this can happen. Yet for those who are predestined it is before birth; usually they come to earth with an intention and a speciﬁc purpose.  You would like to know very much if this has happened to you, yes? ( )


The Mother: Well, try — try to ﬁnd out: have this inner aspiration, concentrate, and then try. If you get a result, tell me; I shall tell you if it is right.  () He has yet something on his mind!   Yes.


The Mother: What do you mean by “generally”? Everyone on earth? Is that what you mean?   Oh!


The Mother: now it begins to take shape! () Is it only one individual the Divine chooses to manifest Him or can He choose several? — He chooses several.  But here too there is a hierarchy.


The Mother: One can understand  of the spiritual life if one does not understand the true hierarchy.   Nowadays it’s not in fashion. It is something which human thought doesn’t favour at all. But from the spiritual point of view, it is automatic, spontaneous and indisputable. And so, if the hierarchy is true, there is a place for everybody; and for each individual in his own place, his individual truth is absolute.


The Mother: That is to say, each element which is truly in its place has a total and perfect relation with the Divine — in its place. And yet, on the whole, there is a hierarchy which too is quite absolute. But to understand spiritual life one must ﬁrst understand that; and it isn’t very easy.  Everyone can be a perfect expression of the Divine in himself, on condition that he knows his place and keeps to it.  But they don’t need to know that they form a hierarchy, it is not necessary to know it.


The Mother: It is only if one wants to physically organise a spiritual society — then one has to materialise the hierarchy. But generally, in the world as it is, there are so many gaps in this hierarchy that it seems a confusion.  The perfect hierarchy is a total hierarchy, and it is not concerned with time and space. But when you want to realise this physically it becomes very difﬁcult. It’s like weaving a piece of cloth with lots of holes everywhere; and the holes disturb the general harmony.


The Mother: Always people are missing, steps are missing, pieces are missing on the chess-board — all this is missing. So it looks like a confusion. But if everything were expressed and each thing in its place, it would be a perfect harmony and a perfect hierarchy.  There is somewhere — not in the material universe, but in the manifested universe — this perfect hierarchy; it exists. But it is not yet manifested upon earth.


The Mother: Perhaps this will be one of the results of the supramental transformation: the world will be ready for a perfect,  spontaneous, essentially true hierarchical manifestation — and without any kind of coercion — where everyone will become aware of his own perfection.  Yes, and that’s quite wrong. That is to say, materially it is like that. But this is not what I call a hierarchy.  It is the organisation of the functions and the manifestation in action of the particular nature of each person.


The Mother: We have often tried to ﬁnd comparisons, but they are worthless. For none of the things we know physically can answer to that condition. There is always the sense of superiority and inferiority as you say.... Some have compared a hierarchy to the various functions of the body, for example.


The Mother: But that always gives the impression that the head is at the top and the feet at the bottom, so it is a nuisance!  Each element has a direct and perfect relation with the Divine.  Yes, all become the Divine; but not the totality of the Divine, for the Divine is everything. You can’t take a piece of the Divine and say, “This is the Divine.” And yet, in his spiritual consciousness each one has a perfect relation with the Divine, that is to say, each  one is the Divine as perfectly as he can be.


The Mother: But to reconstruct the Divine, all the Divine is necessary. And it is precisely this that constitutes the very essence of hierarchy. But as each one is perfect in himself, there can be no feeling of inferiority or superiority.  I don’t think the human mentality can understand that. I think it must be lived; once one has lived it, it is very simple, it appears luminously simple.


The Mother: But to understand it with the mind is not possible, it seems impossible. Above all because the mind, in order to understand anything at all, has to divide and contrast everything, otherwise it does not understand, it gets confused.  By its very functioning, it becomes incapable of understanding.  ( )


The Mother: Yes, within, in the world which is not yet manifested, the decision is there, it is taken there; but then it must come to the surface.  It corresponds exactly to what I have already told you so often about the freedom of India. After going to a certain plane, I said to Sri Aurobindo, “India is free.” I didn’t say, “She be free”; I said, “She free.” Well, between that moment when it was an accomplished fact and the time when it was translated into the material world on earth, how many years were necessary?


The Mother: It was in 1915, and liberation came in 1947, that is, thirty-two years later. There you are, that is the exact picture of the resistance.  So, for the individual it is the same thing; sometimes it takes as long as that, sometimes it goes faster.   No, I did not see: I knew.  I meant specially what happened in 1947, that is, the withdrawal of foreign domination, that’s all.


The Mother: Nothing but that, not her moral or spiritual freedom, I did not speak of that at all. I simply said she was free from foreign domination, because, even to a question Sri Aurobindo put to me, I answered from the same plane, “There will be no violence, this will come about without a revolution, it will be the English who will decide to go away of their own accord, for things will become too hot for them owing to certain world circumstances.” So that was the only point, there was no spiritual question here.  And that’s how things happened. And I had told Sri Aurobindo this in 1915, exactly.


The Mother: It was all there, it was there — I guessed nothing nor prophesied anything: it was a fact.  And so, that gives you the exact picture of the length of time necessary between the established fact and the inner realisation.  And for the individual it is the same thing: he is chosen, he has chosen; and he has chosen the Divine and he is chosen; and it is something which has been decided; and it will be realised inevitably, one can’t escape even if one tries. Only, it may take a very long time.   (laughter)


The Mother: Oh! Oh! that’s what you wanted to know.


The Mother: That... the details were not there. No, there must have been a possibility of its being otherwise, for, when Sri Aurobindo told  them to do a certain thing, sent them his message, he knew very well that it was possible to avoid what happened later. If they had listened to him at that time, there would have been no division.  Consequently, the division was not decreed, it was a human deformation.


The Mother: It is beyond question a human deformation.  What?  No, no, it’s not like that, my child! ()  It’s a, that’s all. It is the Divine who is India, it is the Divine who is freedom, it is the Divine who is subjection, it is the Divine who is everything — then how could He choose?


The Mother: ( )  I advise you to go up there and see, then you will understand.  So long as you have not climbed right up the ladder, it will be difﬁcult to understand.


The Mother: I think so. There seems to be no possibility of its happening other-wise. But it is a very relative question. Perhaps our way of life could become a little more divine without becoming altogether divine.  We always call “Divine” all that we are not but wish to be.


The Mother: All that seems to us inﬁnitely superior, not only to all that we have done, but to all that we feel we can do; all that surpasses both our conception and our present possibilities, we call “Divine”.  I say this, not as a joke, but because I am quite convinced that if we go back some thousands of years, when men spoke of the Divine — if ever they did speak of the Divine, as I believe — they spoke perhaps of a state like that of the godheads of the Overmind; and now this mode of being of the Overmind godheads who, obviously, have governed the earth and formed many things on earth for a very long time, seems to us far inferior  to what we conceive the Supermind to be. And this Supermind, which is, precisely, what we now call the Divine and try to bring down on earth, will probably strike us in the same way a few thousand or million years hence as the Overmind does today.  And I am sure that in the manifestation, that is, in His selfexpression, the Divine is progressive. Outside the manifestation He is something we cannot conceive; but as soon as He manifests in this kind of perpetual becoming, well, He manifests more and more of Himself, as though He were reserving for the end the most beautiful things in His Being.


The Mother: As the world progresses, what He expresses in the world becomes what we might call more and more divine.  So Sri Aurobindo has used the word Supermind to explain to those who are in the outer and evolutionary consciousness and who have some idea of the way in which the earth has developed — to explain to them that this something which is going to be beyond all this, and superior to human creation, to man, whom he always calls the mental being — this something which is going to come will be greater and better than man; and so he calls it supramental in order to make himself understood.  But we could just as well say that it is something more divine than what has been manifested before.  And this he himself says, in what I read today, that it is inﬁnite, that it has no limits.


The Mother: That is to say, there will always be a growing perfection; and what now seems to us imperfect must have been the perfection for which certain ages in earth’s history aspired.  There is no reason why this should stop. If it stopped, it would be ﬁnished. It would be a new Pralaya.   Why has the mental being taken a material body?


The Mother: Is that what you are asking?  The divine discovery is the discovery of the Divine in oneself.  So man, that is, the mental being — for what we call man is a physical body with a mental being within, a mental being manifested in a body, a physical body — so the mental being has incarnated and become man in order to ﬁnd within himself the divine Being, the divine Presence.   Why?


The Mother: Are you asking why? It’s a funny way of going about it! ()  I don’t know if he is going to explain it here, I don’t remember now, but one thing is certain, that this marvellous thing, the divine Presence in Matter, which is at the origin of the formation of the psychic being, belongs in its own right to life on earth.  So — we have already said this many times, I believe — our earth which from the astronomical point of view seems to be only a small insigniﬁcant planet in the midst of all the stars and all the worlds, our earth has been formed to become the symbol of the universe and the point of concentration for the work of transformation, of divine transmutation.  And because of that, in this Matter which was perhaps the most obscure and most inconscient of all the Matter of the universes, there plunged and incarnated directly the Divine Consciousness, from the supreme Origin right into the obscurest Matter, without going through any intermediate stages,.


The Mother: Consequently, the two extremes touch, the Supreme and the most inconscient, and the universal circle closes. And so earthly life is the easiest means, one might say, or the most rapid, of becoming conscious of the Divine.  And it is so true that even the great cosmic Individualities, when they want to be converted or to unite with the Origin, take a physical body for that, because it is more convenient for them, for it can be done faster and better than if they had to progress through all the states of being, from any one of the states of being in the universe to the supreme Origin.  It is easier to come down into a human body and ﬁnd the divine Presence there, it is quicker. Imagine the serpent biting its tail, it makes a circle, doesn’t it?


The Mother: So, if something wants to be united with the Divine, it is easier to enter the tail than to go the whole round of the body! As the head bites the tail, well, if you enter the tail you are immediately in contact with the head, otherwise you have to go all the way round to reach the head.  () Mind you, I am not quite sure if this is what he means, but any way it is one explanation.  ( )


The Mother: Who remembers this?  ( ) One, two, three, four, ﬁve psychological perfections. What are the ﬁve psychological perfections?


The Mother: For they can be changed. And in fact, to tell you my secrets, every time I give it to someone, they are not always the same psychological perfections. That depends on people’s needs. Even to the same person I may give at different times different psychological perfections; so it’s not ﬁxed. But the ﬁrst time this ﬂower was named “Psychological Perfection” (I remember very  well it was at a gathering up there where Prosperity now is, where I go on the ﬁrst of the month; there was a gathering and we had decided the ﬁve psychological perfections), at that time they were noted down, but as for me it is something very ﬂuid — I told you it depends on the circumstances and needs — I don’t remember what was chosen the ﬁrst time.


The Mother: So, if someone knows it, he can tell us, we’ll compare.  You are not sure. Is there anyone who is sure?  That makes only four, so far.  Surrender?


The Mother: Someone told me something else.   ( ) You, do you know?


The Mother: Well, then, come and tell us.  Ah, no, my child, this is a French class, not in English!  But that’s what he just said. ( )


The Mother: You — a little while ago, you told me “faithfulness”.   But why should there not be faithfulness? I didn’t put it down, because I didn’t try to recall anything, I simply wrote down what seemed to me the most important and most general. But it may be put in various ways.  In any case, what is always there, in all combinations and to whomever I give it, the ﬁrst among them all is sincerity.


The Mother: For if there is no sincerity, one cannot advance even by half a step.  So that is the ﬁrst, and it is always there.  But it is possible to translate it by another word, if you prefer it, which would be “transparency”. I shall explain this word: Someone is in front of me and I am looking at him; I look into his eyes. And if this person is sincere or “transparent”, through his eyes I go down and I see his soul — clearly.


The Mother: But — this is precisely the experience — when I look at somebody and see a little cloud, then I continue, I see a screen, and then sometimes it is a wall, and afterwards it is something quite black; and all this must be crossed, and holes bored in order to go through; and even then I am not sure if at the last minute I may not ﬁnd myself before a door of bronze so thick that I shall never get through and see his soul; so, of such a person I can immediately say that he is not sincere. But I can also say, ﬁguratively, that he is not transparent. That is the ﬁrst thing.  There is a second, which is obviously, as indispensable if you want to go forward; it is to have faith. Or another word, which seems more limited but is for me more important, because (it is a question of experience) if your faith is not made of a complete trust in the Divine, well, you may very easily remain under the impression that you have faith and yet be losing all trust in the divine Power or divine Goodness, or the Trust the Divine has in you.


The Mother: These are the three stumbling-blocks: Those who have what they call an unshakable faith in the Divine, and say, “It is the Divine who is doing everything, who can do everything; all that happens in me, in others, everywhere, is the work of the Divine and the Divine alone”, if they follow  this with some kind of logic, after some time they will blame the Divine for all the most terrible wrongs which take place in the world and make of Him a real demon, cruel and frightful — if they have no trust.  Or again, they do have faith, but tell themselves, “Well, I have faith in the Divine, but this world, I see quite well what it’s like! First of all, I suffer so much, don’t I? I am very unhappy, far more unhappy than all my neighbours” — for one is always far more unhappy than all one’s neighbours — “I am very unhappy and, truly, life is cruel to me. But then the Divine is divine, He is All-Goodness, All-Generosity, All-Harmony, so how is it that I am so unhappy?


The Mother: He must be powerless; otherwise being so good how could He let me suffer so much?”  That is the second stumbling-block.  And the third: there are people who have what may be called a warped and excessive modesty or humility and who tell themselves, “Surely the Divine has thrown me out, I am good for nothing, He can do nothing with me, the only thing for me is to give up the game, for He ﬁnds me unworthy of Him!”  So, unless one adds to faith a total and complete trust in the Divine Grace, there will be difﬁculties. So both are necessary....


The Mother: Now, we have put “devotion” in this series. Yes, devotion is all very well, but unless it is accompanied by many other things it too may make many mistakes. It may meet with great difﬁculties.   You have devotion, and you keep your ego.


The Mother: And then your ego makes you do all sorts of things out of devotion, things which are terribly egoistic. That is to say, you think only of yourself, not of others, nor of the world, nor of the work, nor of what ought to be done — you think only of your devotion.  And you become tremendously egoistic. And so, when you ﬁnd out that the Divine, for some reason, does not answer to your devotion with the enthusiasm you expected of Him, you despair and fall back into the same three difﬁculties I was just speaking about: either the Divine is cruel — we have read that, there are many such stories, of enthusiastic devotees who abuse the Divine  because He is no longer as gentle and near to them as before, He has withdrawn, “Why hast Thou deserted me? Thou hast abandoned me, O monster!...”


The Mother: They don’t dare to say this, but think it, or else they say, “Oh! I must have made such a serious mistake that I am thrown out”, and they fall into despair.  But there is another movement which should constantly accompany devotion.... That kind of sense of gratitude that the Divine exists; that feeling of a marvelling thankfulness which truly ﬁlls you with a sublime joy at the fact that the Divine exists, that there is something in the universe which is the Divine, that it is not just the monstrosity we see, that there is the Divine, the Divine exists. And each time that the least thing puts you either directly or indirectly in contact with this sublime Reality of divine existence, the heart is ﬁlled with so intense, so marvellous a joy, such a gratitude as of all things has the most delightful taste.


The Mother: There is nothing which gives you a joy equal to that of gratitude. One hears a bird sing, sees a lovely ﬂower, looks at a little child, observes an act of generosity, reads a beautiful sentence, looks at the setting sun, no matter what, suddenly this comes upon you, this kind of emotion — indeed so deep, so intense — that the world manifests the Divine, that there is something behind the world which is the Divine.  So I ﬁnd that devotion without gratitude is quite incomplete, gratitude must come with devotion.  I remember that once we spoke of courage as one of the perfections; I remember having written it down once in a list.  But this courage means having a taste for the supreme adventure.


The Mother: And this taste for supreme adventure is aspiration — an aspiration which takes hold of you completely and ﬂings you, without calculation and without reserve and without a possibility of withdrawal, into the great adventure of the divine discovery, the great adventure of the divine meeting, the yet greater adventure of the divine Realisation; you throw yourself into the adventure without looking back and without asking for a single minute,  “What’s going to happen?” For if you ask what is going to happen, you never start, you always remain stuck there, rooted to the spot, afraid to lose something, to lose your balance.  That’s why I speak of courage — but really it is aspiration.  They go together. A real aspiration is something full of courage.


The Mother: And now, surrender. In English the word is “surrender”, there is no French word which gives exactly that sense. But Sri Aurobindo has said — I think we have read this — that surrender is the ﬁrst and absolute condition for doing the yoga. So, if we follow what he has said, this is not just one of the necessary qualities: it is the ﬁrst attitude indispensable for beginning the yoga. If one has not decided to make a total surrender, one cannot begin.


The Mother: But for this surrender to be total, all these qualities are necessary. And I add one more — for so far we have only four — I add endurance. For, if you are not able to face difﬁculties without getting discouraged and without giving up, because it is too difﬁcult; and if you are incapable... well, of receiving blows and yet continuing, of “pocketing” them, as they say — when you receive blows as a result of your defects, of putting them in your pocket and continuing to go forward without ﬂagging — you don’t go very far; at the ﬁrst turning where you lose sight of your little habitual life, you fall into despair and give up the game.  The most... how shall I put it? the most material form of this is perseverance.


The Mother: Unless you are resolved to begin the same thing over again a thousand times if need be... You know, people come to me in despair, “But I thought it was done and now I must begin again!” And if they are told, “But that’s nothing, you will probably have to begin again a hundred times, two hundred times, a thousand times; you take one step forward and think you are secure, but there will always be something to bring back the same difﬁculty a little farther on. You think you have solved the problem, you must solve it yet once again; it will turn up again looking just a little different, but it will be the same problem”, and if you are not determined that: “Even  if it comes back a million times, I shall do it a million times, but I shall go through with it”, well, you won’t be able to do the yoga. This is absolutely indispensable.


The Mother: People have a beautiful experience and say, “Ah, now this is it!...” And then it settles down, diminishes, gets veiled, and suddenly something quite unexpected, absolutely commonplace and apparently completely uninteresting comes before you and blocks your way. And then you say, “Ah! what’s the good of having made this progress if it’s going to start all over again?  Why should I do it?


The Mother: I made an effort, I succeeded, achieved something, and now it’s as if I had done nothing! It’s indeed hopeless.” For you have no endurance.  If one has endurance, one says, “It’s all right. Good, I shall begin again as often as necessary; a thousand times, ten thousand times, a hundred thousand times if necessary, I shall begin again — but I shall go to the end and nothing will have the power to stop me on the way.”


The Mother: This is most necessary. Most necessary.  So here’s my proposal: we put surrender ﬁrst, at the top of the list, that is, we accept what Sri Aurobindo has said — that to do the integral yoga one must ﬁrst resolve to surrender entirely to the Divine, there is no other way, this is way. But after that one must have the ﬁve psychological virtues, ﬁve psychological perfections, and we say that these perfections are: Sincerity or Transparency Faith or Trust (Trust in the Divine, naturally) Devotion or Gratitude Courage or Aspiration Endurance or Perseverance.  One form of endurance is, faithfulness to one’s resolution — being faithful.


The Mother: One has taken a resolution, one is faithful to one’s resolution. This is endurance.  There you are.  If one persists, there comes a time when one is victorious.  Victory is to the most persistent.