The Mother: And so the power of effectuation is not perfectly supported, that is to say, the action of the Mother does not have the support of  what he calls the Master, the action of the Mother does not have a sufﬁcient basis of support from the Master; or else it is the light of a revelation — that is, the Consciousness of the Master — which is not realised, not perfectly dynamic, that is, it is not translated into a creation.  Either the creative Power is not supported by the revelation, or the revelation is not expressed in the creative Power. This is what Sri Aurobindo means. There is a tendency to go towards one or the other, instead of having both at the same time, if one no longer separates them in one’s consciousness.  Sri Aurobindo says that when one succeeds in not separating them in one’s consciousness, one can fully understand who the Lord of the Sacriﬁce is.


The Mother: Otherwise one leans to one side or the other and naturally what one does is incomplete. He says very clearly, doesn’t he? that if one leans to the side of the Master without laying stress on the Shakti or the Mother, one goes into the Impersonal and out of the creation, one returns into Nirvana. He says that this tendency towards the Impersonal may exist even in the yoga of works, in Karmayoga, and that impersonal force, impersonal action is always considered as the liberating aspect which frees you from the narrowness of the person. And that is why there is nothing surprising in the overwhelming strength of this experience....


The Mother: Till today this is what has always been considered as yoga: to abandon the personal and enter into the consciousness of the impersonal. Sri Aurobindo speaks of it as an overwhelming experience, for it gives you the impression of liberation from all the ego’s limitations.  And later, he describes the union: insistence on the personal side and union with the divine Person; then the world is no longer an illusion nor something transient which will disappear after a time, but the constant and dynamic expression of the eternal divine Person.  That is the other side.  And when one has the two together, one is perfect.


The Mother: Anything else?   It is the soul which he calls this ﬁne ﬂower of the cosmic Energy.   (Mother reads:)  This is the presence of the divine Person.


The Mother: This is the soul.  The realisation of the conscious and living Eternal.  That’s it.  It is a hint of the aim.  And the very motive of the labour.


The Mother: And so, what do you want? We have spoken about this I don’t know how many times. What do you want to know about this?  You want a description of these worlds, or the means of going there — which of the two?   The means of going there, oh!


The Mother: oh!  Do you know how to exteriorise yourself?  Do you even know what it means to exteriorise oneself?  Not philosophically or psychologically, I mean occultly. Are you conscious in your exteriorisation, do you do it at will?


The Mother: Do you know how to leave your body and live in a more subtle body, and then again leave that body and live in another more subtle body and so on? Do you know how to do all that? Have you ever done it? No. Then we shall speak about it again another day.


The Mother: In dreams? Do you know where you are in your dreams?  A little? This is becoming interesting!


The Mother: And where do you go in your dreams?  What regions?  Oh! oh! You go into the vital world — and nothing unpleasant happens to you there?


The Mother: Ah! and how do you get out of it?    Is that where your knowledge ends?


The Mother: It doesn’t last. But do you go in and out at will?  Can you return to a place you have already been to several times before?  You don’t ﬁnd the same place again several times?


The Mother: Ah! but there are children who know how to do this, they continue their dreams. Every evening when they go to bed they return to the same place and continue their dream.  You are no longer a child, that’s a pity!  Well, become a child once more and you will know how to do it again.


The Mother: Nothing is more interesting. It is a most pleasant way of passing the nights. You begin a story, then, when it is time to wake up, you put a full stop to the last sentence and come back  into your body. And then the following night you start off again, re-open the page and resume your story during the whole time you are out; and then you arrange things well — they must be well arranged, it must be very beautiful. And when it is time to come back, you put a full stop once again and tell those things, “Stay very quiet till I return!”


The Mother: And you come back into your body. And you continue this every evening and write a book of wonderful fairy-tales — provided you remember them when you wake up.  No, it depends on the candour of the child.  And on the trust he has in what happens to him, on the absence of the mind’s critical sense, and a simplicity of heart, and a youthful and active energy — it depends on all that — on a kind of inner vital generosity: one must not be too egoistic, one must not be too miserly, nor too practical, too utilitarian — indeed there are all sorts of things one should not be... like children.  And then, one must have a lively power of imagination, for — I seem to be telling you stupid things, but it is quite true — there is a world in which you are the supreme maker of forms:


The Mother: that is your own particular vital world. You are the supreme fashioner and you can make a marvel of your world if you know how to use it. If you have an artistic or poetic consciousness, if you love harmony, beauty, you will build there something marvellous which will tend to spring up into the material manifestation.  When I was small I used to call this “telling stories to oneself”. It is not at all a telling with words, in one’s head: it is a going away to this place which is fresh and pure, and... building up a wonderful story there.


The Mother: And if you know how to tell yourself a story in this way, and if it is truly beautiful, truly harmonious, truly powerful and well co-ordinated, this story will be realised in your life — perhaps not exactly in the form in which you  created it, but as a more or less changed physical expression of what you made.  That may take years, perhaps, but your story will tend to organise your life.  But there are very few people who know how to tell a beautiful story; and then they always mix horrors in it, which they regret later.  If one could create a magniﬁcent story without any horror in it, nothing but beauty, it would have a inﬂuence on everyone’s life. And this is what people don’t know.


The Mother: If one knew how to use this power, this creative power in the world of vital forms, if one knew how to use this while yet a child, a very small child... for it is then that one fashions his material destiny. But usually people around you, sometimes even your own little friends, but mostly parents and teachers, dabble in it and spoil everything for you, so well that very seldom does the thing succeed completely.  But otherwise, if it were done like that, with the spontaneous candour of a child, you could organise a wonderful life for yourself — I am speaking of the physical world.   The dreams of childhood are the realities of mature age.


The Mother: What man calls God is a limited consciousness of God, not the full consciousness of God; so he will go beyond this limited consciousness of God and towards the true Divine.   Sri Aurobindo means that man has a limited knowledge, a limited consciousness and perception and experience of God, the full experience of the Divine, and that he must pass beyond this knowledge and perception in order to go to the vaster and truer perception.   Yes, the justiﬁcation of earthly existence is that one is on earth to realise the Divine.


The Mother: Without this reason earthly life would be a monstrosity.  ( )  If there were not this supreme reason, of rediscovering the Divine and becoming Him, manifesting Him, realising Him externally, earthly life as it is would be something monstrous.  Naturally, the more people are unconscious, the less do they understand this, for they do not objectify, they live mechanically, according to habit, without even objectifying or being aware of their way of living.


The Mother: And as the consciousness grows, they realise the kind of monstrous hell life is — life as it is.  And it is only when one becomes conscious of  this life leads, that one can accept it and understand it. It is only this purpose of life which makes it acceptable.   Without that it would truly be a frightful monstrosity.  It is the pleasure of the Divine.


The Mother: What do you want me to tell you, child? You must live it and then you will know what it is.  It is what is called Ananda in Sanskrit. And we have often said before that to know this Ananda, one must ﬁrst have completely renounced all human pleasures, to begin with, for so long as a human pleasure delights you, you are not in the right state to know the Ananda.  It may come to you and you will not even be aware of it.


The Mother: Yes, and many more.   This is only a very brief description!  But here too, if one wants to have this experience, one must not seek in life and among men for these relationships, because if one seeks them in the ordinary life, as ordinary relationships, one becomes incapable of feeling them exactly as the Divine can give them. And usually, most people, even those who have a living soul, seek these relations with the Divine only after they have had the most bitter and disappointing experiences in their search for human relationships.


The Mother: This makes them lose much time and wastes a lot of energy.  And usually, they are already quite worn out and spent when they reach the state in which they are capable of having these relations in all their splendour with the divine Presence.  That means much time lost and much wastage of energy; but it would seem that very few people can go straight avoiding all these roundabout ways. Mostly, when they are told that there is a divine Joy and a divine Plenitude which far surpass all they can imagine in ordinary life, they don’t believe it; and to believe it they must have, as I said, gone through a painful experience of all that is false, deceptive and disappointing in ordinary relationships.  It is said that example is the best teacher, but in fact there are very few who care to follow an example — especially when the examples are a little too far beyond them.


The Mother: They all want to have their own experience; they have the right to it, but that makes the path interminable.  What exactly do you want to say?   By asking the Divine for it. If you do not ask Him, how can you have it?  If you turn to the Divine and have full trust and ask Him, you will get what you need — not necessarily what you imagine you need; but the true thing you need, you will get.


The Mother: But you must ask Him for it.  You must make the experiment sincerely; you must not endeavour to get it by all sorts of external means and then expect the Divine to give it to you, without even having asked Him.  Indeed, when you want somebody to give you something, you ask him for it, don’t you? And why do you expect the Divine to give it to you without your having asked Him for it?  In the ordinary consciousness the movement is just the opposite.


The Mother: You assume something, saying, “I need this, I need this relationship, I need this affection, I need this knowledge, etc.  Well, the Divine ought to give it to me, otherwise He is not the Divine.” That is to say, you reverse the problem completely.  First of all, you say, “I need.” Do you know whether you truly need it or whether it is only an impression you have or a desire or quite an ignorant movement?


The Mother: First point: you know nothing about it.  Second point: it is precisely your own will you want to impose upon the Divine, telling Him, “I need this.” And then you don’t even ask Him for it: “Give it to me.” You say, “I need it. Therefore, since I need it, it must come to me, quite naturally, spontaneously; it’s the Divine’s job to give me all that I need.”


The Mother: But if it so happens that truly you don’t know what you need and it is merely an illusion and not a truth and that, into the bargain, you ask it from life around you and don’t turn to the Divine, don’t create any relationship between yourself and Him, don’t think of Him or turn to Him with at least some sincerity in your attitude, then, as you ask nothing from Him, there is no reason for Him to give you anything.   But if you ask Him, as He is the Divine He knows a little better than you what you need; He will give you what you need.  Or else, if you insist and want to impose your own will, He may give you what you want in order to enlighten you and make you conscious of your mistake, that it was truly not the thing you needed. And then you begin to protest — I don’t mean you personally, I am speaking of all human beings — and you say, “Why has the Divine given me something which harms me?” — completely forgetting that it was you who asked for it!  In both cases you protest all the same.


The Mother: If He gives you what you ask and then that brings you more harm than good, you protest. And again, if He doesn’t give it, you also protest: “What!  I told Him I needed it and He doesn’t give it to me.”  In both cases you protest, and the poor Divine is accused.  Only, if instead of all that, you simply have an aspiration within you, an urge, an intense ardent need to ﬁnd That, which you conceive more or less clearly to be the Truth of your being, the Source of all things, the supreme Good, the Answer to all we desire, the Solution to all problems; if there is this intense need in you and you aspire to realise it, you won’t any longer say to the Divine, “Give me this, give me that”, or, “I need this, I must have that.”


The Mother: You will tell Him, “Do what is necessary for me and lead me to the Truth of my being. Give me what Thou in Thy supreme Wisdom seest as the thing I need.”  And then you are sure of not being mistaken, and He will not give you something which harms you.  There is a still higher step, but it’s a little more difﬁcult to begin with that.  But the ﬁrst one is already a much truer approach than that of telling the Divine, “I need this.


The Mother: Give it to me.” For indeed, very few people really know what they need — very few. And the proof of it is that they are always in pursuit of the fulﬁlment of their desires, all their effort is bent upon that, and each time one of their desires is fulﬁlled, they are disappointed. And they pass on to another.   And after much seeking, making many mistakes, suffering a good deal and being very disappointed, then, sometimes, one begins to grow wise and wonders if there isn’t a way out of all this, that is to say, a way to come out of one’s own ignorance.


The Mother: And it is then, at that moment that one can do this ( ): “Here I am, take me and lead me along the true path.”  Then all begins to go well.   This is the yoga of knowledge.  That is the aim of the yoga of love.  That is to say, not only is there union in the depths, but there is also union outwardly, in the activities.


The Mother: There is union in knowledge, union in love and union in works. To put it otherwise: the yoga of knowledge, the yoga of love and devotion, and the yoga of works. These are the three modes of approach he speaks about.  It is the divine Principle.


The Mother: ( )  Is that all?   Ah, that’s ignorance indeed! This was promised a very long time ago, this was said very long ago — not only here — since the beginning of the earth.


The Mother: There have been all kinds of predictions, by all kinds of prophets; it has been said, “There will be a new heaven and a new earth, a new race will be born, the world will be transformed....” Prophets have spoken about this in all the traditions.  Yes. And so?  The new race?


The Mother: Wait for something like... a few thousand years, and you will see it!  When the mind descended upon earth, between the time the mind manifested in the earth-atmosphere and the time the ﬁrst man appeared, nearly a million years elapsed. Now it will go faster because man expects it, he has a vague idea; he is expecting in some sense the advent of the superman, while, certainly, the apes did not expect the birth of man, they had never thought of  it — for the good reason that they probably don’t think much.  But man has thought of it and awaits it, so it will go faster. But faster means still thousands of years probably.


The Mother: We shall speak about it again after a few thousand years!  ( )  People who are inwardly ready, who are open and in contact with higher forces, people who have had a more or less direct personal contact with the supramental Light and Consciousness are able to feel the difference in the earth-atmosphere.  But for that...


The Mother: Only the like can know the like, only the supramental Consciousness in an individual can perceive this Supermind acting in the earth-atmosphere. Those who, for some reason or other, have developed this perception, can see it.  But those who are not even conscious of an inner being — just slightly within — and who would be quite at a loss to say what their soul is like, these certainly are not ready to perceive the difference in the earth-atmosphere. They still have a long way to go for that. Because, for those whose consciousness is more or less exclusively centred in the outer being — mental, vital and physical — things need to take on an absurd and unexpected appearance for them to be able to recognise them.


The Mother: Then they call them miracles.  But the constant miracle of the intervention of forces which changes circumstances and characters and has a very widespread result, this they do not call a miracle, for only the mere appearance is seen and this seems quite natural. But, truly speaking, if you were to reﬂect upon the least little thing that happens, you would be obliged to acknowledge that it is miraculous.  It is simply because you don’t reﬂect upon it that you take things as they are, for what they are, without questioning; otherwise every day you would have any number of occasions to tell yourself, “Really, but this is quite astonishing! How did it happen?”


The Mother: Quite simply, it is a habit of seeing things in a purely superﬁcial way.  That depends on what you want to do with it.  If you want to look at it as a curiosity, you have only to watch, to try to understand.  If you want it to change you, you must open yourself and make an effort to progress.


The Mother: Why do you ask this question?   Oh!  And why should they proﬁt from it? What are their claims to proﬁt? Just because they have taken a train to come here?


The Mother: I knew some people who came here quite a long, long time ago, something like — oh! I don’t remember now, but very long ago — certainly more than twenty years ago, and the ﬁrst time someone died in the Ashram, they showed considerable dissatisfaction, saying, “But I came here because I thought this yoga would make me immortal; but if people can die, why would I have come?”  Well, it is the same thing. People take the train to come here — there were nearly a hundred and ﬁfty more than usual this time, just because they wanted to “proﬁt”. But perhaps this is  just why they did not proﬁt! For That has not come to make people proﬁt in any way whatever.


The Mother: I shall repeat the same thing. What grounds and what right have they to ask that it should be easier? What have they done, these people, on their side? Why would it be easier? To satisfy people’s laziness and indolence — or what?


The Mother: No! not only when there is something new: everywhere and always people have the idea of proﬁting. But that is indeed the best way of not getting anything.  Whom do they want to deceive here?


The Mother: The Divine?... That is hardly possible.   It is the same with those who ask for an interview. I tell them, “Listen, you have come in large numbers, and if everybody asks me for an interview, I won’t even have enough minutes in all these days to see everyone.


The Mother: During your stay, I won’t have even a minute.” Then they say, “Oh! I have taken trouble. I have come from, I have come down from this place, I have come down from that far, I travelled so many hours — and have I no right to an interview?”


The Mother: I say, “I am sorry, but you are not the only one in that position.”  That is it, you see: it is give and take, bargaining. We are not a commercial establishment, we have said we didn’t do business.  But naturally it will go on increasing more and more! And that is  why I can’t do now what I used to do when there were a hundred and ﬁfty people in the Ashram.


The Mother: If only they had a little common sense, they would understand that I can’t have the same relations with people now — there were 1800 of them here recently, my children! So I can’t have the same relations with 1845 people — I believe that was the exact number — as with about thirty or even a hundred. This seems to me a logic easy enough to understand.  But want everything to remain as it used to be, and, as you say, they want to be the ﬁrst to “beneﬁt”.  But it is not man who is going to change himself into superman!


The Mother: Just try! ( )  That’s it, you see, it is something else which is going to work.  Only — yes, there is an only, I don’t want to be so cruel: Now .


The Mother: That is to say, he can lend himself to the process, with goodwill, with aspiration, and help as best he can. And that is why I said it would go faster. I hope it will go  faster.  But even so, much faster is still going to take a little time!  (


The Mother: )  Listen. If all of you who have heard about this, not once but perhaps hundreds of times, who have spoken about it yourselves,  thought of it, hoped for it, wanted it — there are people who came here for that, with the intention of receiving the supramental Force and being transformed into supermen — that was their aim, wasn’t it?... But how is it that all of you were so unfamiliar with this Force that when it came you didn’t even feel it?  Can you solve this problem for me?


The Mother: If you have the solution to this problem, you will have the solution to the difﬁculty.  I am not speaking of people from outside who have never thought of this, never been concerned with it, and who don’t even know that there is something like a Supermind to be received, you understand. I am speaking of those who have based their life on this aspiration — and I do not doubt their sincerity, not for a moment — who have worked, some for thirty years, some for thirty-ﬁve, some a little less, who have done everything saying,“When the Supermind comes... When the Supermind comes...”, that was the refrain, “When the Supermind comes...”  Therefore, they were truly in the best possible state, one couldn’t dream of a better. How is it that the inner preparation was so — let us say simply — so incomplete, that when the Vibration came they did not immediately feel it with the impact of identity?


The Mother: Individually, the aim of each one was to prepare himself, to enter into a more or less close individual relation with this Force, to help; or, if they could not help, at least to be ready when the Force would manifest, to recognise it and open to it. And instead of being an alien element in a world where what you carry within yourself is not manifested, you suddenly become , you enter straight in, fully, into this very atmosphere: it is this Force that is there, surrounding you, penetrating you.  If you had had even a little inner contact, immediately you would have recognised it, wouldn’t you?  Well, anyway, that is what happened to those who had a little inner contact; they recognised it, felt it; they said, “Ah! here it is, it has come. ”


The Mother: But how is it, then, that so many hundreds of people, not to speak of the small handful of those who truly wanted nothing but that, thought of nothing but that, had staked  their whole life on that, how is it that they did not feel anything?  What can this mean?  Of course, it is only like that knows like. That is an obvious fact.  There was a possibility of coming into contact with the Thing individually — Sri Aurobindo had even described it as the necessary process: a certain number of people who, through their inner effort and aspiration, enter into contact with this Force.


The Mother: That was what we used to call the ascent to the Supermind.  And so, even if it were by an inner ascent — that is to say, by freeing themselves from the material consciousness — if by an inner ascent they had touched the Supermind, they should  have recognised it the moment it came. But it was indispensable to have had a previous contact: if they had not touched it, how could they have recognised it?  That is to say, the universal movement is like that — I read that to you some days ago — certain individuals, who are the pioneers, the vanguard, through inner effort and inner progress enter into communication with the new Force which is to manifest and receive it into themselves. And then, as there are calls of this kind, the thing is made possible, and the age, the time, the moment of the manifestation comes.


The Mother: This is how it happened — and the Manifestation took place.  But, then all those who were ready must have recognised it.  I hasten to tell you that there are some who did recognise it, but still... But those who ask questions, who even came here, took the train in order to drink this up as one drinks a glass of syrup, if they had not made any preparation, how could they feel anything at all? And already they talk about beneﬁting: “We want to proﬁt from it....”


The Mother: After all, it is quite possible — I am joking a little — it is quite possible that if they have even the least bit of sincerity — not too much, for that is tiring! just a little sincerity — that will give them a few good knocks to make them go faster. This is possible. In fact, I think, this is what will happen.   But indeed, this attitude... this attitude, which is a little too mercenary, is not usually very proﬁtable.


The Mother: If one aspires sincerely and if one has difﬁculties, perhaps these difﬁculties will diminish.   Let us hope so.  () So this is what you can tell them: be sincere and you will be helped.


The Mother: Yes, yes, yes. In fact I said all this, I acknowledge it. So?  But I have just explained all this to you at length (), this is terrible!  What I call a “descent” is this: ﬁrst the consciousness rises in an ascent, you catch the Thing up there, and come down with it.


The Mother: That is an event.  When this individual event has happened in a way that proves sufﬁcient to create a possibility of a general kind, it is no longer a “descent”, it is a “manifestation”.   What I call a descent is the individual movement, in an individual consciousness. And when it is a new world manifesting in an old world — just as, for a comparison, when mind spread upon the earth — I call that a manifestation.


The Mother: You may call it whatever you like, it’s all the same to me, but we should understand each other.   What I call a descent is in the individual consciousness. Just as one speaks of ascent — there is no ascent, you see: there is neither above nor below nor any direction, it is a way of speaking — you speak of ascent when you have the feeling of rising up  towards something; and you call it a descent when, after having caught that thing, you bring it down into yourself.  But when the gates are open and the ﬂood comes in, you can’t call it a descent.


The Mother: It is a Force which is spreading out.  Understood?... Ah!  It’s all one to me, the words you use. I am not particularly attached to words, but I explain them to you, and it is better to understand each other, for otherwise there is no end to explanations.


The Mother: Now, to people who ask you these insidious questions, you may reply that the best way of receiving anything whatever is not to pull, but to give. If they want to give themselves to the new life, well, the new life will enter into them.  But if they want to pull the new life down into themselves, they will close their door with their own egoism. That’s all.   The true spiritual life begins when one is in communion with the Divine in the psychic, when one is conscious of the divine Presence in the psychic and in constant communion with the psychic.


The Mother: Then the spiritual life begins, not before. The spiritual life.  When one is united with one’s psychic being and conscious of the divine Presence, and receives the impulses for one’s action from this divine Presence, and when the will has become a conscious collaborator with the divine Will — that is the startingpoint.   Before that, one may be an aspirant to the spiritual life, but one doesn’t have a spiritual life.


The Mother: That means that it is the Spirit, the spiritual consciousness and the divine Presence which give to life all its value, that without this spiritual consciousness and divine Presence life has no value.  The same holds true for the individual, whatever his material capacities and the material conditions in which he lives, his only worth is that of the divine Presence and the spiritual consciousness in him.  And so from the point of view of the truth of things, a man who has no material possessions and no remarkable capacities or possibilities, but who is conscious of his psychic being and united with the Divine in him, is inﬁnitely greater than a ruler upon earth or a millionaire who possesses considerable material power but is unconscious of his psychic being.   From the point of view of the truth, it is like that. This is what Sri Aurobindo means: no apparent and outer things have any true value.


The Mother: The only thing which is valuable is the divine consciousness and union with the Spirit.   What, what, what?  What difference do you make between the spiritual force and the supramental?  Inﬂuenced, yes.


The Mother: But if they don’t care to be helped! You want to help them despite themselves?  If one aspires, wants the help, even if the opening is very small, still there is necessarily some opening. But if one doesn’t want to be helped... Or rather, I could say there are people who are sure they don’t need to be helped, they feel that they can help themselves quite well, that they need no help, that it is they who do the work, they who make the progress, they who do everything.


The Mother: So they don’t want help, they feel no need for it.  Why do you want them to be helped when they don’t care for it?   I said that it will be visible even to those who are ill-willed — is that what you mean? But that’s quite different. When you receive a punch on the nose, you have to recognise something even though it hasn’t helped you!


The Mother: Yes.  Yes.  Recognise this Force? — Oh! when he has received the punch!  ( )


The Mother: Perhaps. It may happen. Anything can happen.   And then?


The Mother: What is your conclusion? What do you expect to happen?  That he’s been punched? ( )


The Mother: He won’t call that a miracle, he will call it a bad deed.  He will say, “That’s bad luck, it’s my unfortunate fate, it is an injustice”, he will say anything at all, as people are in the habit of saying.   But what I have not yet caught is the point of your question.  What are you driving at? You mean the whole world whether it wants it or not, whether it aspires or not, whether it recognises it or not, will sooner or later come under the inﬂuence of the supramental presence on earth — is that what you mean?


The Mother: Ah! what a pity, for that had some meaning. ( )


The Mother: And I would have answered, “Yes” — and then it would have been over!  They will receive half more than those who are not open at all!   ( )


The Mother: Ah! that I don’t know. It must depend on the case. For each one it will be different.


The Mother: Is it for yourself you are pleading?  Oh! Oh! You want to know what will happen to you?  Set your mind at rest, it will be quite all right.


The Mother: I could almost say as for the banner of Joan of Arc: “You have shared in the labour, you will share in the Glory.” There then, are you satisﬁed?    this, not only physical necessities. All these things are at times lights, that is to say, knowledge diminished and mixed with ignorance, at times false lights, that is, no knowledge at all: simply ideas, conceptions, ways of seeing, ways of feeling — all these things considered as knowledge by the ordinary human consciousness.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo speaks even of physical needs, the needs of the body, which are generally considered as imperative and which have their own truth; he says that even that can be only quite  a partial light, that is to say, a semblance of knowledge or even something false.  That goes against all modern ideas.  People always have the impression that what they call the needs of the body, what the body demands, is an absolute law; that if it is not obeyed, well, one commits a great wrong against one’s body which will suffer the consequences. And Sri Aurobindo says that these needs in themselves are either very partial lights, that is to say, only a way of seeing things, or even no lights at all — completely false.  If one were to study the problem attentively enough, one would ﬁnd out to what an extent these so-called needs of the body depend on the mental attitude.


The Mother: For example, the need to eat. There are people who literally die of hunger if they have not eaten for eight days. There are others who do it deliberately and observe fasting as a principle of yoga, as a necessity in yoga.  And for them, at the end of eight days’ fasting, the body is as healthy as when they started, and sometimes healthier!  Finally, for all these things, it is a question of proportion, of measure.


The Mother: It is obvious that one can’t always live without eating.  But it is as obvious that the idea people have about the need to eat is not true. Indeed, it is a whole subject for study: The importance of the mental attitude in relation to the body.  Sri Aurobindo does not recognise the needs of the body as things true in themselves. He says: it is not true, it is only an idea you have, an impression, it is not something true which carries its truth in itself.


The Mother: It is the truth of each being.  Each being carries in himself his own spiritual law, his supramental law. It is not the same for everyone, it is not one single identical law. For each one it is the truth of his being, that is to  say, thing he must realise in the universe and place he must occupy in the world.  That is the truth of his being.


The Mother: That is how Sri Aurobindo describes the different pantheons of different countries, specially of Greece or India. That is to say, it is an aesthetic and intellectual way of transforming all things into divine creatures, divine beings: all the forces of Nature, all the elements, all spiritual forces, all intellectual forces, all physical forces, all these are transformed into a number of godheads and they are given an aesthetic and intellectual reality. It is a symbolic and artistic and literary and poetic way of dealing with all the universal forces and realities. That is how these pantheons came into existence, like the Greek or Egyptian pantheon or else the pantheon of India.


The Mother: All these gods are representations which Sri Aurobindo calls “aesthetic and intellectual” — a way of conceiving the universe.  This is not to say that they do not correspond to a truth — to a reality rather than a truth. There are beings like that; but this is a particular way of approaching the universal world or rather the universal worlds.   That depends on people. There are people who are helped by it, there are people who are not helped.


The Mother: Morality is something altogether artiﬁcial and arbitrary, and in most cases, among the best, it checks the true spiritual effort by a sort of moral satisfaction that one is on the right path and a true gentleman, that one does one’s duty, fulﬁls all the moral requirements of life. Then one is so self-satisﬁed that one no longer moves or makes any progress.  It is very difﬁcult for a virtuous man to enter the path of God; this has been said very often, but it is altogether true, for he is self-satisﬁed, he thinks he has realised what he ought to have realised, he no longer has either the aspiration or even that elementary humility which makes one want to progress.  You see, one who is known here as a sattwic man is usually very comfortably settled in his own virtue and never thinks of coming out of it.


The Mother: So, that puts you a million leagues away from the divine realisation.  What really helps, until one has found the inner light, is to make for oneself a certain number of rules which naturally should not be too rigid and ﬁxed, but yet should be precise enough to prevent one from going completely out of the right path or making irreparable mistakes — mistakes the consequences of which one suffers all one’s life.  To do that, it is good to set up a certain number of principles in oneself, which, however, should be for each one, in conformity with his own nature. If you adopt a social, collective rule, you immediately make yourself a slave to this social rule, and that prevents you almost radically from making any effort for transformation.   Well, is the light within, now.


The Mother: What is the difﬁculty? Where do you see any objection or contradiction? What is your difﬁculty?  Well, wait until it occurs in you and you will know it!  All right.


The Mother: Imagine that in a dark room you have put an oil lamp, one which burns oil, as we used to have ﬁfty years ago — we had oil lamps in the rooms, as now there are lanterns; they were a little better but it was the same thing. So you were lighting your room with that, and then suddenly somebody invented the means of lighting it by electricity. So your oil lamp is replaced by a beautiful electric lamp which gives ten times more light.  What is your difﬁculty, your problem?  You have always had a light to illumine your room — your inner room — but instead of an oil lamp it has become an electric lamp.


The Mother: That’s all.  You don’t understand? No? It is not very difﬁcult to understand.  To see?


The Mother: Ah!... Enter the room, you will see it.  ( )  Is that all?


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo is speaking of the mental constructions, representations or conclusions of the intellect, of the suggestions and instigations of the Life-force, of the needs of the body. Now, all this, these half-lights or false lights can serve a little on the path, can help us a little, and only for a while. And all that is not this, all the rest, that is to say, all the countless thoughts and movements, sensations and feelings one has, well, all this is of no use at all. And worse than being quite useless, it detains us on the way, that’s all. It confuses us.


The Mother: That is to say, it creates an inner confusion and must be altogether ignored.  All the countless things one thinks, experiences, feels, sees, does... all that is of no use at all. Naturally, if one looks at it from the point of view of yoga.   (


The Mother: ) You have still another question?  You take a key and open the door!  You must ﬁnd the key.  Or you sit down in front of the door until you have found the word, the idea or the force which opens it — as in the  tales.


The Mother: It is not a joke, it is very serious. You must sit down in front of the door and then concentrate until you have found the key or the word or the power to open it.  If one doesn’t try, it doesn’t open by itself. Perhaps after thousands of years, but you want to do it immediately — so?  To do it immediately, you must sit down before the door until you have found the means.


The Mother: It may be a key, it may be a word, it may be a force, it may be anything at all, and you remain there before the door until it opens.  And you do not think of anything else.  Only of the door.   A key-hole! What do you mean?


The Mother: A chink through which the light can escape?... Perhaps it is escaping, but perhaps no one sees it either!  It is escaping.  But then that’s another problem: you must open your eyes.  You must learn to open your eyes, to look.


The Mother: Very small babies do not see, even very small animals do not see, tiny baby kittens do not see. It takes them several hours or several days — they don’t see.  You must learn to see.   Ah! my child... it is as though you were asking me the difference between a dog and a cat!


The Mother: ( )  Imagine someone who, in some way or other, has heard of something like the Divine or has a personal feeling that something of the kind exists, and begins to make all sorts of efforts: efforts of will, of discipline, efforts of concentration, all sorts of efforts to ﬁnd this Divine, to discover what He is, to become acquainted with Him and unite with Him. Then this person is doing yoga.  Now, if this person has noted down all the processes he has used and constructs a ﬁxed system, and sets up all that he has discovered as absolute laws — for example, he says: the Divine is like this, to ﬁnd the Divine you must do this, make this particular gesture, take this attitude, perform this ceremony, and you must admit that is the truth, you must say, “I accept that this is the Truth and I fully adhere to it; and your method is the only right one, the only one which exists” — if all that is written down, organised, arranged into ﬁxed laws and ceremonies, it becomes a religion.


The Mother: Those who carry within themselves a spiritual destiny and are born to realise the Divine, to become conscious in Him and live Him, will arrive, no matter what path, what way they follow.  That is to say, even in religion there are people who have had  the spiritual experience and found the Divine — not because of the religion, usually in spite of it, notwithstanding it — because they had the inner urge and this urge led them there despite all obstacles and through them. Everything served their purpose.  But if these very people want to express their experience, they naturally use the terms of the religion in which they were brought up, so they restrict their experience and inevitably limit it very much, they make it sectarian, so to say. But they themselves may very well have gone beyond all the forms and all the limitations and all the conventions and may have had the true experience in its pure simplicity.


The Mother: Not much.  Perhaps they are taking it up again now, but for a very long time, towards the beginning of this century, they had repudiated religion as something opposed to knowledge — at least all intellectual people had. And it is only recently that a movement of return to something other than a thorough-going positivism has begun.  People follow religion by social habit, in order not to get into the bad books of others.


The Mother: For instance, in a village it is difﬁcult not to go to religious ceremonies, for all your neighbours will point at you. But that has absolutely nothing to do with spiritual life, nothing at all.  ( )  The ﬁrst time I came to India I came on a Japanese boat.


The Mother: And on this Japanese boat there were two clergymen, that is, Protestant priests, of different sects. I don’t remember exactly which sects, but they were both English; I think one was an Anglican and the other a Presbyterian.   Now, Sunday came. There had to be a religious ceremony on the boat, or else we would have looked like heathens, like the Japanese! There had to be a ceremony, but who should perform it?


The Mother: Should it be the Anglican or should it be the Presbyterian?  They just missed quarrelling. Finally, one of them withdrew with dignity — I don’t remember now which one, I think it was the Anglican — and the Presbyterian performed his ceremony.  It took place in the lounge of the ship. We had to go down a few steps to this lounge.


The Mother: And that day, all the men had put on their jackets — it was hot, I think we were in the Red Sea — they put on their jackets, stiff collars, leather shoes; neckties well set, hats on their heads, and they went with a book under their arm, almost in a procession from the deck to the lounge. The ladies wore their hats, some carried even a parasol, and they too had their book under the arm, a prayer-book.  And so they all crowded down into the lounge, and the Presbyterian made a speech, that is to say, preached his sermon, and everybody listened very religiously. And then, when it was over, they all came up again with the satisﬁed air of someone who has done his duty. And, of course, ﬁve minutes later they were in the bar drinking and playing cards, and their religious ceremony was forgotten.


The Mother: They had done their duty, it was over, there was nothing more to be said about it.  And the clergyman came and asked me, more or less politely, why I had not attended. I told him, “Sir, I am sorry, but I don’t believe in religion.”  “Oh! oh! you are a materialist?”


The Mother: “ No, not at all.”   “Ah! then why?”  “Oh!” I said, “if I were to tell you, you would be quite displeased, perhaps it is better for me not to say anything.”


The Mother: But he insisted so much that at last I said, “Just try to see, I don’t feel that you are sincere, neither you nor your ﬂock. You all went there to fulﬁl a social duty and a social custom, but not  at all because you really wanted to enter into communion with God.”  “Enter into communion with God! But we can’t do that!  All that we can do is to say some good words, but we have no capacity to enter into communion with God.”


The Mother: Then I said, “But it was just because of that I didn’t go, for it doesn’t interest me.”  After that he asked me many questions and admitted to me that he was going to China to convert the “heathens”. At that I became serious and told him, “Listen, even before your religion was born — not even two thousand years ago — the Chinese had a very high philosophy and knew a path leading them to the Divine; and when they think of Westerners, they think of them as barbarians. And so you are going there to convert those who know more about it than you? What are you going to teach them?


The Mother: To be insincere, to perform hollow ceremonies instead of following a profound philosophy and a detachment from life which lead them to a more spiritual consciousness?... I don’t think it’s a very good thing you are going to do.”  Then he felt so suffocated, the poor man; he said to me, “Eh, I fear I can’t be convinced by your words!”  “Oh!” I said, “I am not trying to convince you, I only described the situation to you, and how I don’t quite see why barbarians should want to go and teach civilised people what they have known long before you. That’s all.”


The Mother: And there, that was the end of it.   Oh! Oh! you are becoming a Buddhist.


The Mother: It’s the fashion.  Yes?   Yes, he will return to earth to preach a new Buddhism, is that it?  Yes, it is that gentleman, what is his name... X, who told you that?


The Mother: But that is his theory. He told me also that he thought that it was Sri Aurobindo who had realised the teachings of the Buddha. Is that it? You didn’t go to his lecture?... No, then what did you want to ask?


The Mother: What new thing?   Oh! Listen, this seems to me just the kind of discovery one makes when one wants something sensational.  There are always many ways of interpreting texts, and one does it according to what one likes them to say.


The Mother: ( )  That reminds me of something: () have they found the sounds with which hieroglyphs are to be read?  Yes, hieroglyphs are Egyptian!   That means they have found the spoken language of ﬁve thousand years ago?


The Mother: Phonetic! Where can we get this information from?  Oh!... Because I was wondering how they had restored the names of the pharaohs and gods. Naturally, more recent peoples have spoken about them, the Greeks mention them, the Phoenicians speak of them; had phonetic writing.


The Mother: But earlier than that? The ﬁrst pharaohs and all those names of the gods, who discovered these?  He was sure it was the same thing written in Egyptian and in Greek? How was he sure of that?  But that was for the meaning, not for the sounds.


The Mother: What language was spoken in the Schools of Initiation? How did they express themselves, those people?   Greek? They don’t know the pronunciation?


The Mother: Is the language of ancient Egypt contemporaneous with the earliest Sanskrit, or is it earlier still? And then, something else: was the cuneiform script of Assyria phonetic or hieroglyphic?   Yes. Oh!


The Mother: that has been changed.  Yes, that seems strange to me. For a book came to my hands in which the names had been restored, and had become a little queer! But still, there must have been a certain way of pronouncing them. I mean, does any other human language go back further than the earliest Sanskrit?


The Mother: And one last thing: is this hieroglyphic Egyptian language related to the Chaldean line or to the Aryan? There are Sanskrit roots in all the languages. That was precisely what I wanted to ask.   Sanskrit mantras? But that must be in a novel, surely!


The Mother: There are Sanskrit roots — with some distortions — in all languages. And there is a very old tradition claiming to be older than the two bifurcating lines, Aryan and Chaldean. But Greek, for instance, which is relatively recent, is it a language of Aryan or Chaldean origin?  Entirely Aryan.  Chaldean, yes.


The Mother: But everywhere there was an intermixture of Egyptian and Greek.  But Phoenician is phonetic, it is a phonetic language.  And hieroglyphs were written from top to bottom and from right to left, or was it from left to right?  From right to left. Chaldean languages are written like that.


The Mother: Chinese and Japanese also. Only Aryan languages are written from left to right.   ( )  It used to interest me very much once, to know about them.


The Mother: I tried to recall the memory of the elements which existed at that time, but I could not get any answer. There was a complete blank.  ( ) Look, I’ll give you an instance. About two years ago, I had a vision about Z’s son....


The Mother: She had brought him to me, he was not quite one year old, and I had just seen him there, in the room where I receive people. He gave me the impression of someone I knew very well, but I didn’t know who. And then, in the afternoon of the same day, I had a vision. A vision of ancient Egypt, that is to say, I was someone there, the great priestess or somebody — I don’t know who, for one doesn’t tell oneself “I am so and so”: the identiﬁcation is complete, there is no objectifying, so I don’t know. I was in a wonderful building, immense! so high!


The Mother: but quite bare, there was nothing, except a place where there were magniﬁcent paintings. So there I recognised the paintings of ancient Egypt. And I was coming out of my apartments and was entering a kind of large hall. There was a sort of gutter running all round the base of the walls, for collecting water.  And then I saw the child, who was half naked, playing in it.


The Mother: And I was quite shocked, I said, “What! this is disgusting!” —  but the feelings, ideas, all that was translated into French in my consciousness . There was the tutor who came, I had him called.


The Mother: I scolded him. I heard sounds. Well, I don’t know what I said, I don’t remember the sounds at all now. I heard the sounds I was articulating, I knew what they meant, but the translation was in French, and the sounds I could not remember. I spoke  to him, told him, “How can you let the child play in there?”


The Mother: And he answered me — and I woke up with his reply — saying — I did not hear the ﬁrst words, but in my thought it was — “Amenhotep likes it.” I heard Amenhotep, I remembered. Then I knew the child was Amenhotep.  So I know that I spoke: I spoke a language but I don’t remember it now. I remembered “Amenhotep” because I know it in my waking consciousness: “Amenhotep.”


The Mother: But otherwise, the other sounds did not remain. I have no memory for sounds.  And I know I was his mother; at that moment I knew who I was, for I know Amenhotep is the son of so-and-so — besides, I looked up the history. Otherwise there is no connection: a blank.  I always admire those mediums — usually very simple people — who have the exact memory of the sound, who can tell you, “Look, I said this and this.”


The Mother: In that way one would have the phonetic notation. If I could remember the sounds I pronounced, we would have the notation, but I don’t.  I remember this conversation; suddenly I said to myself, “It would be so interesting if one could hear that language”, and then, from curiosity, “How did they discover the pronunciation?  How?” Besides, all the names we were taught as children, in ancient history, have been changed today.


The Mother: They say they have discovered the sounds, or at least they claim to have discovered them. But I don’t know.  It is the same thing for ancient Babylon: I have extremely precise memories, completely objective, but when I speak I don’t remember the sounds I utter, there is only the mental translation.  I have no memory for sounds.  It’s just that, it is that I am aware I have no memory for sounds.


The Mother: There are people who have a memory for sounds, I don’t have that memory. So I would be interested to know that. Otherwise I have always been able — when there was something of the  past which was doubtful for me, or interesting or incomplete — I have always found the means of making it come back to my consciousness. But sounds don’t come. It comes as a state of consciousness which is translated mentally, and so it is translated mentally into words which I know.


The Mother: So it is not at all interesting.  Even now, while I was playing music, the memory of the sounds was vague and incomplete. I had the memory of the sounds I heard in the “source of music” ( ), and then, when the material music reproduced something of these sounds, I recognised them; but there is not that precision, that exactness which would make it possible for me to reproduce with the voice or with an instrument the exact sound. That is not there, that is missing. While the memory of the eyes was... it was stupefying.


The Mother: A thing I had seen just — it was ﬁxed, never forgotten.  Several times in this way, in visions — “visions”, actually memories: memories relived — I have spoken the language of that time, spoken it, heard myself speaking, but the sound has not remained. The of what I said has remained but the sound hasn’t.  It is a pity.   I have already told you, explained to you,


The Mother: that outer forms, if looked at not in themselves, for themselves, in their outer appearance alone, but as the expression of a deeper and more lasting reality, all these forms — as indeed all circumstances and events — all become symbolic of the Force which is behind and uses them to express itself. There is not a single circumstance, not a form, not an action, not a movement which is not symbolic of something deeper, something which stands behind and which, normally, ought to animate all action.  For a certain state of consciousness there is not a single word, not a gesture, not an action which does not express a deeper or higher reality, more lasting, more essential, more true; and once one has seen and felt that, everything takes on a meaning, and one sees more clearly how things ought to be organised, arranged, so that a deeper truth may express itself still better than it does at present.   It depends on the subject one wants to express: gods, men or things.  When one paints a picture or composes music or writes poetry, each one has his own way of expression.


The Mother: Every painter, every musician, every poet, every sculptor has or ought to have a unique, personal contact with the Divine, and through the work which is his speciality, the art he has mastered, he must express this contact in his own way, with his own words, his own colours. For himself, instead of copying the outer form of Nature, he takes these forms as the covering of something else, precisely of his relationship with the realities which are behind, deeper, and he tries to make them express that. Instead of merely imitating what he sees, he tries to make them speak of what is behind them, and it is this which makes all the difference between a living art and just a ﬂat copy of Nature.  Have you noticed this ﬂower?  It has twelve petals in three rows of four.


The Mother: We have called it “Supramental psychological perfection”.  I had never noticed that it had three rows: a small row like this, another one a little larger and a third one larger still. They are in gradations of four: four petals, four petals, four petals.  Well, if one indeed wants to see in the forms of Nature a symbolic expression, one can see a centre which is the supreme Truth, and a triple manifestation — because four indicates manifestation — in three superimposed worlds: the outermost — these are the largest petals, the lightest in colour — that is a physical world, then a vital world and a mental world, and then at the centre, the supramental Truth.  And you can discover all kinds of other analogies.


The Mother: Is that all?  I suppose it is different for each one. So each one must ﬁnd those activities which increase his aspiration, his consciousness, his deeper knowledge of things, and those which, on the contrary, mechanise him and bring him back more thoroughly into a purely material relation with things.  It is difﬁcult to make a general rule.


The Mother: Truly speaking, it depends more on the way of doing a thing than on the thing itself.  You take up some work which is quite material, like cleaning the ﬂoor or dusting a room; well, it seems to me that this work can lead to a very deep consciousness if it is done with a certain feeling for perfection and progress; while other work considered of a higher kind as, for example, studies or literary and artistic work, if done with the idea of seeking fame or for the satisfaction of one’s vanity or for some material gain, will not help you to progress. So this is already a kind of classiﬁcation which depends more on the inner attitude than on the outer fact.  But this classiﬁcation can be applied to everything.  Of course, there is a kind of work which is done only for purely pecuniary and personal reasons, like the one — whatever it may be — which is done to earn a living.


The Mother: That attitude is exactly the one Sri Aurobindo compares with the damp logs of wood which are heaped so thick the ﬂame cannot leap up. It has something dark and heavily dull about it.  And this brings us to something which I have already told you several times, but which presents a problem not yet solved by circumstances. I think I have already spoken to you about it, but still I shall speak about it again this evening because of this sentence of Sri Aurobindo’s.  At the beginning of my present earthly existence I came into contact with many people who said that they had a great inner aspiration, an urge towards something deeper and truer, but that they were tied down, subjected, slaves to that brutal necessity of earning their living, and that this weighed them down so much, took up so much of their time and energy that they could not engage in any other activity, inner or outer.


The Mother: I heard this very often, I saw many poor people — I don’t mean poor from the monetary point of view, but poor because they felt imprisoned in a material necessity, narrow and deadening.  I was very young at that time, and I always used to tell myself that if ever I could do it, I would try to create a little world — oh!  quite a small one, but still... a small world where people would be able to live without having to be preoccupied with food and lodging and clothing and the imperative necessities of life, so as to see whether all the energies freed by this certainty of a secure material living would turn spontaneously towards the divine life and the inner realisation.  Well, towards the middle of my life — at least, what is usually the middle of a human life — the means were given to me and I could realise this, that is, create such conditions of life.  And I have come to this conclusion, that it is this necessity which hinders people from consecrating themselves to an inner realisation, but that it is a dullness, a tamas, a lack of aspiration, a miserable laxity, an I-don’t-care attitude, and that those who face even the hardest conditions of life are sometimes the ones who react most and have the intensest aspiration.  That’s all.


The Mother: I am waiting for the contrary to be proved to me.  I would very much like to see the contrary but I haven’t yet seen it. As there are many energies which are not utilised, since this terrible compulsion of having something to eat or a roof to sleep under or clothes on one’s back does not exist — as one is sure of all that — there is a whole mass of energies which are not utilised for that; well, they are spent in idle stupidities.  And of these, the foolishness which seems to me the most disastrous is to keep one’s tongue going: chatter, chatter, chatter. I haven’t known a place where they chatter more than here, and say everything they should not say, busy themselves with things they should not be concerned with.


The Mother: And I know it is merely an overﬂow of unused energy.  That is all.  So the division in works is perhaps not quite what one thinks....   Everybody can do it. It is done in this way: you concentrate.


The Mother: Now, it depends on what you want. If you have an inner problem and want the solution, you concentrate on this problem; if you want to know the condition you are in, which you are not aware of — if you want to get some light on the state you are in, you just come forward with simplicity and ask for the light. Or else, quite simply, if you are curious to know what the invisible knowledge has to tell you, you remain silent and still for a moment and then open the book. I always used to recommend taking a paper-knife, because it is thinner; while you are concentrated you insert it in the book and with the tip indicate something.


The Mother: Then, if you know how to concentrate, that is to say, if you really do it with an aspiration to have an answer, it always comes.  For, in books of this kind ( “The Synthesis of Yoga”), books of revelation, there is always an accumulation of forces — at least of higher mental forces, and most often of spiritual forces of the highest knowledge. Every book, on account of the words it contains, is like a small accumulator of these forces. People don’t know this, for they don’t know how to make use of it, but it is so. In the same way, in every picture, photograph, there is an accumulation, a small accumulation representative of the force of the person whose picture it is, of his nature and, if he has powers, of his powers.


The Mother: Now, you, when you are sincere and have an aspiration, you emanate a certain vibration, the vibration of your aspiration which goes  and meets the corresponding force in the book, and it is a higher consciousness which gives you the answer.  Everything is contained potentially. Each element of a whole potentially contains what is in the whole. It is a little difﬁcult to explain, but you will understand with an example: when people want to practise magic, if they have a bit of nail or hair, it is enough for them, because within this, potentially, there is all that is in the being itself. And in a book there is potentially — not expressed, not manifest — the knowledge which is in the person who wrote the book.


The Mother: Thus, Sri Aurobindo represented a totality of comprehension and knowledge and power; and every one of his books is at once a symbol and a representation. Every one of his books contains symbolically, potentially, what is in him.  Therefore, if you concentrate on the book, you can, through the book, go back to the source. And even, by passing through the book, you will be able to receive much more than what is just in the book.  There is always a way of reading and understanding what one reads, which gives an answer to what you want.


The Mother: It is not just a chance or an amusement, nor is it a kind of diversion.  You may do it just “like that”, and then nothing at all happens to you, you have no reply and it is not interesting. But if you do it seriously, if seriously your aspiration tries to concentrate on this instrument — it is like a battery, isn’t it, which contains energies — if it tries to come into contact with the energy which is there and insists on having the answer to what it wants to know, well, naturally, the energy which is there — the union of the two forces, the force given out by you and that accumulated in the book — will guide your hand and your paper-knife or whatever you have; it will guide you exactly to the thing that expresses what you ought to know.... Obviously, if one does it without sincerity or conviction, nothing at all happens. If it is done sincerely, one gets an answer.


The Mother: Certain books are like this, more powerfully charged than others; there are others where the result is less clear. But  generally, books containing aphorisms and short sentences — not very long philosophical explanations, but rather things in a condensed and precise form — it is with these that one succeeds best.  Naturally, the value of the answer depends on the value of the spiritual force contained in the book. If you take a novel, it will tell you nothing at all but stupidities. But if you take a book containing a condensation of forces — of knowledge or spiritual force or teaching power — you will receive your answer.


The Mother: So now, what do you want to know? I have explained the mechanism to you; you want me to do it? Is that what you wanted, or did you only want to know how it is done?  You didn’t ﬁnd anything, because probably at that time there was no curiosity in your mind!  There are many explanations in this book [ ], so if you tumble into the midst of an explanation...


The Mother: It should be rather a book like, or , or; also .   Letters of Sri Aurobindo The?... Give me the book. Isn’t this the one about literature?  Then it’s the worst of them all! ()


The Mother: Then I am going to draw ﬁrst for the collectivity. That is, what will answer and express the collective state of all those who are gathered here. We are going to see what it will do. ( .)  My child, this is in English!


The Mother: I must translate it off-hand.  My card was on this, which indeed seems to me quite a general problem for everybody here: the true attitude in work.   ( )


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo says this, that the true attitude in work comes “when the work is always associated with the thought of the Mother, done as an offering to her, with the call to do it through you.” This is the sentence I have found, I think that’s not bad for a beginning!  Now, does anyone want me to draw for him?   You!


The Mother: And what do you want? Do you want to know the state you are in, or what?   ( ) This is the problem you are interested in: the purpose of the Avatar: This is where I put my paper-knife.


The Mother: He adds this:  I don’t know if this is a problem which you have been thinking about, but anyway this is what has come in reply.... It was obviously for someone who had asked him: “The Avatar comes and opens the Way, but if there is nobody to follow him, what happens?” Sri Aurobindo says: either his conception is wrong or his life is quite futile. That is to say, if a divine Power comes on earth to open the Way to a higher realisation and it so happens that there is nobody on earth to follow the path, it is quite obvious that it was useless for him to come. But as a matter of fact, I don’t think it has ever happened.


The Mother: Let me see the end of the sentence.... Yes, it is in reply to someone who said:  and That well-known English word! This person declared that there was That is to say, the denial of the life of all those mentioned here.  And Sri Aurobindo adds that  and


The Mother: He adds ():  He can do it just like this (), he is all-powerful, he has only to pull them up and then they will be lifted up. Why should he come and take all this trouble here?   And Sri Aurobindo says in conclusion: There he touches on a problem you were concerned about, no?


The Mother: You have never asked yourself this question: what was the purpose of a divine incarnation in a human body, whether it was necessary or not, and how it happened and why it happened?  This question has never interested you? No?   Not in this way.


The Mother: Then it was in reply to something you were not conscious of. I know what it was an answer to, but you were not conscious.   Ah! does anyone else want anything?


The Mother: Nobody?... Oh! how shy you all are.   Ah!


The Mother: what are we going to ﬁnd for you? (Mother opens the ....) These are answers to people who want scholarly knowledge. You want to know in Indian terminology what the transcendental Mother is?... People always ask scholarly questions — there is no life in them, it goes on only in the head.


The Mother: Wait, I am going to try with this ( The Synthesis of Yoga), we’ll see if by any chance we can ﬁnd something.   (.) Ah! this answers very well: This is the very thing for you ! ()  It continues, he explains: Why! this is really very ﬁne.


The Mother: (:) “The representative ego which is the shadow cast by some central and centralising self on our superﬁcial ignorance.” And then: This is indeed very ﬁne.  (Another disciple) (He takes the and reads:)   So, what do you want to know?


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo says, Yes, it’s clear to me that you haven’t understood! He says it is not like that. That is not what happens, for if it were like that, it would be absurd.  He says later:  If the spiritualised mind continues to function like the ordinary mind, there would be no difference.


The Mother: But in fact that is just the opposite of what happens.  You must not read just one sentence and not read what goes ahead and what follows, because in this way one can prove anything at all.   Need to go through.... But he has said all along that everyone follows his own path, in his own way, and that no two paths are alike, and each one has his own road.


The Mother: So, what “need”, need for whom? For you? I don’t know. Go through what? Putting one’s ideas in some order?


The Mother: That is quite necessary for everybody perhaps.  I don’t know what you want to know!   ( )


The Mother: It is likely that a sequence of this kind always occurs. But the duration of the stages and their importance vary considerably according to individuals.... For some the passage may be rapid enough to be hardly perceptible, while for others it may take a very long time; and according to the nature of the resistance in each one, the stress on one or another of these stages varies enormously.   For some, it may be so rapid that it seems almost instantaneous, as though it didn’t exist. For others it may take years.


The Mother: There is one phenomenon which obviously seems indispensable if one wants the realisation to become stable.... Experiences come, touch the consciousness, sometimes bring great illuminations, then get blurred, retreat into the background and, outwardly, in your ordinary consciousness, you don’t feel that there is a great change, a great difference. And this phenomenon may occur very often, may repeat itself for many years. Suddenly you get a sort of revelation, like an illumination, you are in the true consciousness and have the feeling of having got hold of the real thing. And then, slowly or suddenly, it seems to recede behind you, and you seek but do not ﬁnd that there is any great change in you....


The Mother: These things seem to come as heralds or as promises: “See, it will happen”, or to tell you, “Well, have faith, it like that.”  And this may recur very often. There is progress, obviously, but it is very slow and hardly apparent.  But then, suddenly — perhaps because one is sufﬁciently prepared, perhaps simply because the time has come, and it has been so decreed — suddenly, when such an experience occurs, its result in the part of the being where it takes place is a complete reversal of consciousness. It is a very clear, very concrete phenomenon.


The Mother: The best way of describing it is this: a complete reversal. And then the relation of the consciousness with the other parts of the being and with the outer world is as if completely changed. Absolutely like an overturning. And that reversal no longer comes back to the same old place, the consciousness no longer returns to its former position — Sri Aurobindo would say “status”. Once this has happened in any part of the being, this part of the being is stabilised.


The Mother: And until that happens, it comes and goes, comes and goes, one advances and then has the impression of marking time, and one advances again and then marks time again, and sometimes one feels as though one were going backwards, and it  is interminable — and indeed it is interminable. It may last for years and years and years. But when this reversal of consciousness takes place, whether in the mind or a part of the mind, whether in the vital or a part of the vital, or even in the physical consciousness itself and in the body-consciousness, once this is established, it is over; you no longer go back, you do not ever return to what you were before. And this is the true indication that you have taken a step forward deﬁnitively. And before this, there are only preparations.


The Mother: Those who have experienced this reversal know what I am speaking about; but if one hasn’t, one can’t understand. One may have a kind of idea by analogy, people who have tried to describe yoga compare it with the reversal of a prism: when you put it at a certain angle, the light is white; when you turn it over, it is broken up. Well, this is exactly what happens, that is to say, you restore the white. In the ordinary consciousness there is decomposition and you restore the white. However, this is only an image.


The Mother: It is not really, this is an analogy. But the phenomenon is extremely concrete. It is almost as though you were to put what is inside out, and what is outside in. And it isn’t that either! But if you could turn a ball inside-out, or a balloon — you can’t, can you? — if you could put the inside out and the outside in, it would be something like what I mean.


The Mother: And one can’t say that one “experiences” this reversal — there is no “feeling”, it is almost a mechanical fact — it is extraordinarily mechanical. ( ...) There would be some very interesting things to say about the difference between the moment of realisation, of — like this reversal of consciousness for example — and all the work of development, the ; to say how it comes about.... For the sadhana, is one thing and the another, quite a different thing. You may do for centuries, and you will always go as at a tangent — closer and closer to the realisation, nearer and nearer, but it is only when the is given to you...


The Mother: then, everything is  changed, everything is reversed. And this is inexpressible, for as soon as it is put in words it escapes. But there is a difference — a real difference, essential, total — between aspiration, the mental tension, even the tension of the highest, most luminous mind and realisation: something which has been decided above from all time, and is absolutely independent of all personal effort, of all gradation. Don’t you see, it is not bit by bit that one reaches it, it is not by a small, constant, regular effort, it is not that: it is something that comes suddenly; it is established without one’s knowing how or why, but all is changed.  And it will be like that for everybody, for the whole universe:


The Mother: it goes on and on, it moves forward very slowly, and then one moment, all of a sudden,, ﬁnished — not ﬁnished: it’s the beginning!  ( )  It is usually the ﬁrst contact with the psychic being which brings this experience, but it is only partial, only that of the consciousness — or of the activity in any part of the being — that part of the consciousness which is united with the psychic has the experience. And so, at the moment of that experience, the position of that part of the consciousness, in relation to the other parts and to the world, is completely reversed, it is different.


The Mother: And that is never undone. And if you have the will or take care or are able to put into contact with this part all the problems of your life and all the activities of your being, all the elements of your consciousness, then they begin to be organised in such a way that your being becomes one unity — a single multiplicity, a multiple unity — complex, but organised and centralised around a ﬁxed point, so well that the central will or central consciousness or central truth has the power to govern the parts, for they are all in order, organised around this central Presence.  It seems to me impossible to escape from this necessity if one wants to be and is to be a conscious instrument of the divine  Force. You may be moved, pushed into action and used  instruments by the divine Force, if you have a minimum of goodwill and sincerity. But to become a conscious instrument, capable of identiﬁcation and conscious, willed movements, you must have this inner organisation; otherwise you will always be running into a chaos somewhere, a confusion somewhere or an obscurity, an unconsciousness somewhere.


The Mother: And naturally your action, even though guided exclusively by the Divine, will not have the perfection of expression it has when one has acquired a conscious organisation around this divine Centre.  It is an assiduous task, which may be done at any time and under any circumstances, for you carry within yourself all the elements of the problem. You don’t need anything from outside, no outer aid to do this work. But it requires great perseverance, a sort of tenacity, for very often it happens that there are bad “creases” in the being, habits — which come from all sorts of causes, which may come from atavistic malformation or also from education or from the environment you have lived in or from many other causes. And these bad creases you try to smooth out, but they wrinkle up again.


The Mother: And then you must begin the work over again, often, many, many, many a time, without getting discouraged, before the ﬁnal result is obtained.  But nothing and nobody can prevent you from doing it, nor any circumstance. For you carry within yourself the problem and the solution.  ( )


The Mother: And to tell the truth, the most common malady humanity suffers from is boredom. Most of the stupidities men commit come from an attempt to escape boredom. Well, I say for certain that no outer means are any good, and that boredom pursues you and will pursue you no matter what you try to escape from it; but that this way, that is, beginning this work of organising your being and all its movements and all its elements around the central  Consciousness and Presence, this is the surest and most complete cure, and the most comforting, for all possible boredom. It gives life a tremendous interest. And an extraordinary diversity.


The Mother: You no longer have the time to get bored.  Only, one must persevere.  And what adds to the interest of the thing is that this kind of work, this harmonisation and organisation of the being around the divine Centre can only be done in a physical body and on earth. That is truly the essential and original reason for physical life. For, as soon as you are no longer in a physical body, you can no longer do it.


The Mother: And what is still more remarkable is that only human beings can do it, for only human beings have at their centre the divine Presence in the psychic being. For example, this work of selfdevelopment and organisation and becoming aware of all the elements is not within the reach of the beings of the vital and mental planes, nor even of the beings who are usually called “gods”; and when they want to do it, when they really want to organise themselves and become completely conscious, they have to take a body.   And yet, human beings come into a physical body without knowing why, most of them go through life without knowing why, they leave their body without knowing why, and they have to begin the same thing all over again, indeﬁnitely, until one day, someone comes along and tells them, “Be careful! you know, there is a purpose to this.


The Mother: You are here for this work, don’t miss your opportunity!”  And how many years are wasted.   There are two stages, you see. One may rise beyond the mind into a certain domain, then that domain pass into yet another which is the origin of all things. This implies two successive stages.


The Mother: Who said that one can’t?  Sri Aurobindo is describing here what was to be done to enter into contact with the Supermind and prepare the ground for its manifestation; but now that it has entered the earthatmosphere, I don’t see why a single, precise procedure should be inﬂicted upon it in its manifestation. If it chooses to directly illuminate an instrument which it ﬁnds suitable or ready or adaptable, I don’t see why it should not do so.  And I repeat this: who has said that it cannot be otherwise? Nobody.


The Mother: What Sri Aurobindo has described here is quite another thing and, indeed, this is what did happen. It was the preparation necessary for the manifestation to take place. But now I don’t see why or on what basis a particular process should be imposed upon the supramental action and why it should not have the freedom to choose its own means.  I think that all possibilities are predictable and that all sincere aspiration and complete consecration will have a response, and that the processes, means, transitions, transformations will be innumerable in nature — not at all that things will happen only in a particular way and not otherwise.  In fact, anything, everything that is ready to receive even a particle or a particular aspect of the supramental consciousness and light must receive it.


The Mother: And the effects of this consciousness and light will be innumerable, for they will certainly be adapted to the possibilities, the capacity of each one according to the sincerity of his aspiration.  The more total the consecration and the intenser the aspiration, the more integral and intense can be the result. But the effect of the supramental action will be countless in its manifestations — multiple, innumerable, inﬁnitely varied, not necessarily following a precise line which is the same for all.   That is impossible. For it is contrary to the very nature of the supramental consciousness.


The Mother: The very quality of the atmosphere has changed.  The consequences are bound to be inﬁnitely varied, but perceptible. That is to say, it will be possible to distinguish the consequences of ordinary movements from the consequences of the supramental action, for these will have a particular nature, a special character.  But that does not mean that anybody at all, at any moment and in any way, is suddenly going to become a supramental genius. That is not to be expected.


The Mother: I was going to say, if one only noticed that one was a little less stupid than before, that would already be something!  Why do you want to deny it one ﬁeld or another?  You are speaking of the education which give to your students, is that it? But it is high time it changed!  People have a lamentable habit of copying what has been done before and what is done by others.


The Mother: Long ago I told you this. That argument: “This must be done, because this is what is done everywhere!” I reply, “That is why perhaps it should not be done! For if all others do it, what is the use of doing it here also?”  But why do you ask me that?


The Mother: You should ﬁrst change your system of education in accordance with the principles of the  Supermind. At least you should try. You must not ask, you must do it. If you always move in the same rut, you can continue indeﬁnitely in that rut. You must try to get out of it.


The Mother: Indeed, I am constantly discussing this subject. I think it was just today or perhaps yesterday, I was pleading for the right of everyone to remain in ignorance if it pleases him — I am not speaking of ignorance from the spiritual point of view, the world of Ignorance in which we live, I am not speaking of that.  I am speaking of ignorance according to the classical ideas of education. Well, I say that if there are people who don’t want to learn and don’t like to learn, they have the right not to learn.  The only thing it is our duty to tell them is this, “Now, you are of an age when your brain is in course of preparation.


The Mother: It is being formed. Each new thing you study makes one more little convolution in your brain. The more you study, the more you think, the more you reﬂect, the more you work, the more complex and complete does your brain become in its tiny convolutions. And as you are young, it is best done at this time.  That is why it is common human practice to choose youth as the period of learning, for it is inﬁnitely easier.”


The Mother: And it is obvious that until the child becomes at least a little conscious of itself, it must be subjected to a certain rule, for it has not yet the capacity of choosing for itself.  That age is very variable; it depends on people, depends on each individual. But still, it is understood that in the sevenyear period between the age of seven and fourteen, one begins to reach the age of reason. If one is helped, one can become a reasoning being between seven and fourteen.  Before seven there are geniuses — there are always geniuses, everywhere — but as a general rule the child is not conscious of itself and doesn’t know why or how to do things.


The Mother: That is the time to cultivate its attention, teach it to concentrate on what it does, give it a small basis sufﬁcient for it not to be entirely like a little animal, but to belong to the human race through an elementary intellectual development.   After that, there is a period of seven years during which it must be taught to choose — to choose what it wants to be. If it chooses to have a rich, complex, well-developed brain, powerful in its functioning, well, it must be taught to work; for it is by work, by reﬂection, study, analysis and so on that the brain is formed. At fourteen you are ready — or ought to be ready — to know what you want to be.  And so I say: if at about that age some children declare categorically, “Intellectual growth does not interest me at all, I don’t want to learn, I want to remain ignorant in the ordinary way of ignorance”, I don’t see by what right one could impose studies on them nor why it should be necessary to standardise them.


The Mother: There are those who are at the bottom and others who are at another level. There are people who may have very remarkable capacities and yet have no taste for intellectual growth. One may warn them that if they don’t work, don’t study, when they are grown up, they will perhaps feel embarrassed in front of others.  But if that does not matter to them and they want to live a nonintellectual life, I believe one has no right to compel them. That is my constant quarrel with the teachers of the school!


The Mother: They come and tell me: “If they don’t work, when they are grown up they will be stupid and ignorant.” I say: “But if it pleases them to be stupid and ignorant, what right have you to interfere?”  One can’t make knowledge and intelligence compulsory.  That’s all.  Now, if you believe that by abstaining from all effort and all study, you will become geniuses, and supramental geniuses at that, don’t have any illusions, it won’t happen to you.


The Mother: For even if you touch a higher light, through an inner aspiration or by a divine grace, you will have nothing in there, in your brain, to be able to express it. So it will remain quite nebulous and won’t in any way change your outer life. But if it pleases you to be like this, nobody has the right to compel you to be otherwise. You must wait till you are sufﬁciently conscious to be able to choose.   Of course, there are people who at fourteen are yet like children of ﬁve.


The Mother: But these — there’s little hope for them. Especially those who have lived here.  Here’s something then which already changes your outlook on education completely.  Essentially, the you should do assiduously is to teach them to know themselves and choose their own destiny, the path they will follow; to teach them to look at themselves, understand themselves to will what they want to be. That is inﬁnitely more important than teaching them what happened on earth in former times, or even how the earth is built, or even... indeed, all sorts of things which are quite a necessary grounding if you want to live the ordinary life in the world, for if you don’t know them, anyone will immediately put you down intellectually: “Oh, he is an idiot, he knows nothing.”


The Mother: But still, at any age, if you are studious and have the will to do it, you can also take up books and work; you don’t need to go to school for that. There are enough books in the world to teach you things. There are even many more books than necessary. You can exhaust all subjects simply by going there to Medhananda’s, to the Library. You will have enough to ﬁll you up to here! ()


The Mother: But what is very important is to know what you want. And for this a minimum of freedom is necessary. You must not be under a compulsion or an obligation. You must be able to do things whole-heartedly. If you are lazy, well, you will know what it means to be lazy....


The Mother: You know, in life idlers are obliged to work ten times more than others, for what they do they do badly, so they are obliged to do it again. But these are things one must learn by experience. They can’t be instilled into you.  The mind, if not controlled, is something wavering and imprecise. If one doesn’t have the habit of concentrating it upon something, it goes on wandering all the time.


The Mother: It goes on without a stop anywhere and wanders into a of vagueness. And then, when one wants to ﬁx one’s attention, it hurts! There is a  little effort there, like this: “Oh! how tiring it is, it hurts!” So one does not do it.


The Mother: And one lives in a kind of cloud. And your head is like a cloud; it’s like that, most brains are like clouds: there is no precision, no exactitude, no clarity, it is hazy — vague and hazy. You have impressions rather than a knowledge of things.  You live in an approximation, and you can keep within you all sorts of contradictory ideas made up mostly of impressions, sensations, feelings, emotions — all sorts of things like that which have very little to do with thought and... which are just vague ramblings.  But if you want to succeed in having a precise, concrete, clear, deﬁnite thought on a certain subject, you must make an effort, gather yourself together, hold yourself ﬁrm, concentrate.


The Mother: And the ﬁrst time you do it, it literally hurts, it is tiring! But if you don’t make a habit of it, all your life you will be living in a state of irresolution. And when it comes to practical things, when you are faced with — for, in spite of everything, one is always faced with — a number of problems to solve, of a very practical kind, well, instead of being able to take up the elements of the problem, to put them all face to face, look at the question from every side, and rising above and seeing the solution, instead of that you will be tossed about in the swirls of something grey and uncertain, and it will be like so many spiders running around in your head — but you won’t succeed in catching the thing.  I am speaking of the simplest of problems, you know; I am not speaking of deciding the fate of the world or humanity, or even of a country — nothing of the kind. I am speaking of the problems of your daily life, of every day.


The Mother: They become something quite woolly.  Well, it is to avoid this that you are told, when your brain is in course of being formed, “Instead of letting it be shaped by such habits and qualities, try to give it a little exactitude, precision, capacity of concentration, of choosing, deciding, putting things in order, try to use your reason.”  Of course, it is well understood that reason is not the  supreme capacity of man and must be surpassed, but it is quite obvious that if you don’t have it, you will live an altogether incoherent life, you won’t even know how to behave rationally.  The least thing will upset you completely and you won’t even know why, and still less how to remedy it. While someone who has established within himself a state of active, clear reasoning, can face attacks of all kinds, emotional attacks or any trials whatever; for life is entirely made up of these things — unpleasantness, vexations — which are small but proportionate to the one who feels them, and so naturally felt by him as very big because they are proportionate to him.


The Mother: Well, reason can stand back a little, look at all that, smile and say, “Oh! no, one must not make a fuss over such a small thing.”  If you do not have reason, you will be like a cork on a stormy sea. I don’t know if the cork suffers from its condition, but it does not seem to me a very happy one.   There, then.


The Mother: Now, after having said all this — and it’s not just once I have told you this but several times I think, and I am ready to tell it to you again as many times as you like — after having said this, I believe in leaving you entirely free to choose whether you want to be the cork on the stormy sea or whether you want to have a clear, precise perception and a sufﬁcient knowledge of things to be able to walk to — well, simply to where you want to go.  For there is a clarity that’s indispensable in order to be able even to follow the path one has chosen.  I am not at all keen on your becoming scholars, far from it! For then one falls into the other extreme: one ﬁlls one’s head with so many things that there is no longer any room for the higher light; but there is a minimum that is indispensable for not... well, for not being the cork.   Who said that?


The Mother: People who don’t like physical education? Stiff old teachers who can’t do exercises any longer? These? — I am not asking for names!  Well, I don’t think so.


The Mother: You remember the ﬁrst article Sri Aurobindo wrote in the ? He answers these people quite categorically.  I don’t think it is that. I am quite sure it is not that, I believe, rather — and I put all the blame on myself — that you have been given a fantastic freedom, my children; oh!


The Mother: I don’t think there is any other place in the world where children are so free. And, indeed, it is very difﬁcult to know how to make use of a freedom like that.  However, it was worthwhile trying the experiment. You don’t appreciate it because you don’t know how it is when it is not like that; it seems quite natural to you. But it is very difﬁcult to know how to organise one’s own freedom oneself.


The Mother: Still, if you were to succeed in doing that, in giving yourself your own discipline — and for higher reasons, not in order to pass exams, to make a career, please your teachers, win many prizes, or all the ordinary reasons children have: in order not to be scolded, not to be punished, for all that ; we leave out all those reasons — if you manage to impose a discipline upon yourself — each one his own, there is no need to follow someone else’s — a discipline simply because you want to progress and draw the best out of yourself, then... Oh! you will be far superior to those who follow the ordinary school disciplines.  That is what I wanted to try.


The Mother: Mind you, I don’t say I have failed; I still have great hope that you will know how to proﬁt by this unique opportunity. But all the same, there is something you must ﬁnd out; it is the of an inner discipline.  Without discipline you won’t be able to get anywhere, without discipline you can’t even live the normal life of a normal man. But instead of having the conventional discipline of ordinary societies or ordinary institutions, I would have liked and I still want you to have the discipline you set yourselves, for the  love of perfection, your own perfection, the perfection of your being.  But without that...


The Mother: Note that if one didn’t discipline the body, one would not even be able to stand on two legs, one would continue like a child on all fours. You could do nothing.  You are obliged to discipline yourself; you could not live in society, you could not live at all, except all alone in the forest;  and even then, I don’t quite know. It is absolutely indispensable, I have told you this I don’t know how often.


The Mother: And because I have a very marked aversion for conventional disciplines, social and others, it does not mean that you must abstain from all discipline. I would like everyone to ﬁnd his own, in the sincerity of his inner aspiration and the will to realise himself.  And so, the aim of all those who know, whether they are teachers, instructors or any others, the very purpose of those who know, is to inform you, to help you. When you are in a situation which seems difﬁcult to you, you put your problem and, from their personal experience, they can tell you, “No, it is like this or it is like that, and you must do this, you must try that.” So, instead of forcing you to absorb theories, principles and so-called laws, and a more or less abstract knowledge, they would be there to give you information about things, from the most material to the most spiritual, each one within his own province and according to his capacity.


The Mother: It is quite obvious that if you are thrown into the world without the least technical knowledge, you may do the most dangerous things. Take a child who knows nothing, the ﬁrst thing he will do if he has any matches, for instance, is to burn himself. So, in that ﬁeld, from the purely material point of view, it is good that there are people who know and who can inform you; for otherwise, if each one had to learn from his own experience, he would spend several lives learning the most indispensable things. That is the usefulness, the usefulness of teachers and instructors. They have learnt more or less by practice or through a special study, and they can teach you those things it is  indispensable to know.