The Mother: Just a little hidden ambition is enough to... There are people who do not do Yoga for the sake of Yoga but to obtain a result, to have powers, to know one thing or another.  You think that the Divine has a small human judgment! You must not project human ideas upon the Divine.  If you are not sincere, what happens is that your own consciousness is veiled.


The Mother: Take, for example, a man who tells lies; his consciousness gets veiled and after a while, he can no longer distinguish falsehood from truth. He sees images and calls them truth. One who is wicked loses his aspiration, loses his capacity of realisation, loses all possibility of understanding, feeling and realising. That is the punishment.


The Mother: One puts veils, obstacles between oneself and the Divine.   That is how one punishes oneself. The Divine does not withdraw; one makes oneself incapable of receiving him. The Divine does not distribute in this way rewards and punishments, it is not at all like that.


The Mother: When one is insincere, when one has bad will, when one is a traitor, one punishes oneself instantaneously. Insincere people lose even the little bit of consciousness that would make them know that they are wicked; they become as though unconscious.  They end up by not knowing anything at all any longer.  It is good health, a solid body, well poised; when one does not have the nerves of a little girl that are shaken by the least thing; when one sleeps well, eats well.... When one is quite calm, well balanced, very quiet, one has a solid basis and can receive a large number of forces.


The Mother: If anyone among you has received spiritual forces, forces of the Divine Ananda, for example, he knows from experience that unless he is in good health he cannot contain them, keep them.  He begins to weep and cry, gets restless to expend what he has received. He must laugh and talk and gesticulate, otherwise he cannot keep them, he feels stiﬂed. And so by laughing, weeping, moving about he throws out what he has received.  To be well balanced, to be able to absorb what one receives, one must be very quiet, very calm.


The Mother: One must have a solid basis, good health. One must have a very solid basis. That is very important.  The equality of the soul is a psychological thing. It is the power  to bear all happenings, good or bad, without being sad, discouraged, desperate, upset.


The Mother: Whatever happens, you remain serene, peaceful.   The other is the equality in the body. It is not psychological, it is something material; to have a physical poise, to receive forces without being troubled.  The two are equally necessary if one wants to progress on the path.


The Mother: And other things still. For example, a mental poise; such that all possible ideas, even the most contradictory, may come from all sides without one’s being troubled. One can see them and put each in its place. That is mental poise.   They do not leave the same impression at all.


The Mother: In order to know things well, one must educate oneself, develop the conscious being. But there are all kinds of different things, there are mental and vital projections exactly as in the cinema; then there are visions you may have if you are exteriorised in the mental and vital regions; the great difference is that these dreams are imposed upon you, you are taken in...  Then there are countless dreams without any connection which have no interest. For your brain is like a recording instrument: something comes and strikes hundreds of cells, each thing must strike a small note. Things will strike the brain convolutions — a remembrance, an impression, all kinds of tiny memories — it depends on your condition.


The Mother: But you have the control, ideas follow each other in accordance with a certain logic; there is also a mechanism which puts memories into movement through contagion, and the movement through contagion is made according to logic (what you call logic). But when you sleep, that faculty usually goes to sleep, so all those little cells are left to themselves and the connections — like the connections of electric wires — don’t work any longer, things come the wrong way round or in any direction at all. You must not look for a meaning. It was a contagion: because this one was vibrating, that other also vibrated, one vibration gives rise to another. Your logic works no longer.


The Mother: And you have fantastic dreams, absurd dreams.   It is very difﬁcult to put one’s mind into repose. The majority of men get up very tired, more tired than when they went to sleep.  One must learn how to quieten one’s mind, make it completely blank, and then when one wakes up, one feels refreshed. One must relax the whole mind in the pure white silence, then one has the least number of dreams.


The Mother: Ah, yes, I have already told you that once. If you are in the middle of a dream and something happens which you don’t like (for instance, somebody shouts that he wants to kill you), you say: “That won’t do at all, I don’t want my dream to be like that”, and you can change the action or the ending. You can organise your dream as you want. One can arrange one’s dreams.  But for this you must be conscious that you are dreaming, you must know you are dreaming.


The Mother: Yes, they are, and one must be conscious of what can happen.  Suppose that you have gone for a stroll in the vital world; there you meet beings who attack you (that’s what happens usually), if you know that it is a dream, you can very easily gather your vital forces and conquer. That’s a true fact; you can with a certain attitude, a certain word, a certain way of being do things you would not do if you were just dreaming.  I beg your pardon! Usually, the next day you are ill, or may be a little later.


The Mother: That’s a warning. I know someone whose eye was thus hurt in a dream, and who really lost his eye a few days later. As for me, once I happened to dream getting blows on my face. Well, when I woke up the next morning, I had a red mark in the same place, on the forehead and the cheek.... Inevitably,  a wound received in the vital being is translated in the physical body.


The Mother: It was in the vital that I was beaten. It is from within that this comes. Nothing, nobody touched anything from outside. If you receive a blow in the vital, the body suffers the consequence.  More than half of our illnesses are the result of blows of this kind, and this happens much more often than one believes.


The Mother: Only, men are not conscious of their vital, and as they are not conscious they don’t know that ﬁfty per cent of their illnesses are the result of what happens in the vital: shocks, accidents, ﬁghting, illwill.... Externally this is translated by an illness. If one knows how it reacts on the physical, one goes to its source and can cure oneself in a few hours.  Because the form given to the dream is mental. If you have learnt that such and such a form represents such and such a mythological person, you see that form and say: “It is that.”


The Mother: In your mind there is an association between certain ideas and certain forms, and this is continued in the dream. When you translate your dream you give it an explanation corresponding to what you have learnt, what you have been taught, and it is with the mental image you have in your head that you know.  Moreover, I have explained this to you a little later in the vision of Joan of Arc ():  And then? You are not very talkative today! Is that all?


The Mother: Each individual has his own way of expressing, thinking, speaking, feeling, understanding. It is the combination of all these ways of being that makes the individual. That is why everyone can understand only according to his own nature. As long as you are shut up in your own nature, you can know only what is in your consciousness. All depends upon the height of the nature of your consciousness.


The Mother: Your world is limited to what you have in your consciousness. If you have a very small consciousness, you will understand only a few things. When your consciousness is very vast, universal, only then will you understand the world.  If the consciousness is limited to your little ego, all the rest will escape you.... There are people whose brain and consciousness are smaller than a walnut.


The Mother: You know that a walnut resembles the brain; well these people look at things and don’t understand them. They can understand nothing else except what is in direct contact with their senses. For them only what they taste, what they see, hear, touch has a reality, and all the rest simply does not exist, and they accuse us of speaking fancifully! “What I cannot touch does not exist”, they say. But the only answer to give them is: “It does not exist, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t exist for others.”


The Mother: You must not insist with these  people, and you must not forget that the smaller they are the greater is the audacity in their assertions.  One’s cocksureness is in proportion to one’s unconsciousness; the more unconscious one is, the more is one sure of oneself.  The most foolish are always the most vain. Your stupidity is in proportion to your vanity. The more one knows...


The Mother: In fact, there is a time when one is quite convinced that one knows nothing at all. There’s not a moment in the world which does not bring something new, for the world is perpetually growing. If one is conscious of that, one has always something new to learn. But one can become conscious of it only gradually. One’s conviction that one knows is in direct proportion to one’s ignorance and stupidity.


The Mother: Why? All scientists are not like that. If you meet a true scientist who has worked hard, he will tell you: “We know nothing.  What we know today is nothing beside what we shall know tomorrow.


The Mother: This year’s discoveries will be left behind next year.”  A real scientist knows very well that there are many more things he doesn’t know than those he knows. And this is true of all branches of human activity. I have never met a scientist worthy of the name who was proud. I have never met a man of some worth who has told me: “I know everything.”


The Mother: Those I have seen have always confessed: “In short, I know nothing.” After having spoken of all that he has done, all that he has achieved, he tells you very quietly: “After all, I know nothing.”  There are insincere and hypocritical people everywhere in the  world. So much the worse for them. These shut the door completely to all progress.


The Mother: That is all.  No, quite the contrary! For if you begin to study well, your consciousness awakens, and you can become more aware of what you still lack. This reminds me of the lady who, having gradually become conscious, told me: “Before I heard you, I had trust in men, everybody was very kind, I was happy. Now that I have begun to see clearly and become conscious, I have lost all my serenity!


The Mother: It is awful to become conscious!”  What is to be done? — Become still more conscious. It is very bad to learn just a little. One must learn more until one comes to the point where one sees that one knows nothing....


The Mother: I spoke to you about the novice who wants to pass on to others what he has learnt — until the day he sees he has not much to pass on. Usually all religious teaching is based on that. A very little knowledge, with precise formulas which are well written (often quite well written) and crystallise in the brain, and assert: “That is indeed the truth.” You have only to study what is there in the book. How easy it is!


The Mother: In every religion there is a book — whether it be the Catechism, the Hindu texts, the Koran, in short, all the sacred books — you learn it by heart. You are told that this-is-the-truth, and you are sure it is the truth and remain comfortable. It is very convenient, you don’t need to try to understand. Those who don’t know the same thing as you, are in the falsehood, and you even pray for those who are outside the “Truth”! This is a common fact in all religions.


The Mother: But in all religions there are people who know better and don’t believe in these things. I had met one of these particularly, one belonging to the Catholic faith. He was a big man. I spoke to him about what I knew and asked him: “Why do you use this method? Why do you perpetuate ignorance?”


The Mother: He answered: “It is a policy of peace of mind. If we didn’t do that, people wouldn’t listen to  us. This, indeed, is the secret of religions.” He told me: “There are in our religion, as in the ancient initiations, people who know. There are schools where the old tradition is taught.


The Mother: But we are forbidden to speak about it. All these religious images are symbols representing something other than what is taught.  But that is not taught outside.”  The reason for this is very generous and kind (according to them): “People who have a tiny brain — and there are plenty — if we tell them something that’s too high, too great, it troubles them, disturbs them, and they become unhappy. They will never be able to understand.


The Mother: Why worry them uselessly? They don’t have the capacity to ﬁnd the truth. Whilst, if you tell them: ‘If you have faith in this, you will go to heaven’, they are quite happy.” There, you see. It is very convenient.


The Mother: That is why it is perpetuated, otherwise there would be no religions.  I am not telling you this to encourage one particular religion rather than another. But this is a procedure that generous.... Otherwise there would be no religions; there would be masters and disciples, people who have a higher teaching and an exceptional experience. That would be a very good thing.


The Mother: But as soon as the master is gone, what happens is that the knowledge he gave is changed into a religion. Rigid dogmas are established, religious rules come into being and one cannot but bow down before the Tables of the Law. Yet at the beginning it was not like that. You are told: “This is true, this is false, the Master has said....” Some time later the master becomes a god, and you are told: “God has said this.”


The Mother: Note that I am telling you this because I know that here you are all liberated from religions. If I had before me someone having a religion he believed in, I would tell him: “It is very good, keep your religion, continue.” Happily for all of you, you don’t have one. And I hope you will never have one, for it means a door shut upon all progress.


The Mother: That depends very much upon the level of consciousness in one’s inner being. For most people, all that is a mixture in the mental, vital and physical planes; they are not at all conscious of what is happening. Some are conscious and usually they have a similar feeling when they are told: “Why, it was like that that I knew you, yes, I know you already intimately, and I have a feeling, but the impression is very vague.” Very few people are developed enough to say: “Well, I saw you under such and such circumstances.” Yet this has happened.


The Mother: And then there are those who have learnt a little, who are more or less occultists or believe in rebirth in a childish way, believe that it is a tiny person who has put on a physical robe, that is, a body, and when this garment falls off, it goes away and puts on another and then another... like a doll whose dress is changed. For them it is like that: one changes one’s body, as one changes one’s clothes. Some people have even written books very seriously telling you about all their lives since they were monkeys! That indeed is absolute childishness. For in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand, it is just the tiny psychic formation at the centre of the being that continues after death; all the rest is dissolved, goes to pieces, scattered here and there, the  individuality exists no longer.


The Mother: Now, how often in the physical life does the psychic being take part consciously in what the physical being does?... I am not speaking of people who do yoga and are a little disciplined; I am speaking of average people who have a psychic capacity in the sense that their psychic is already sufﬁciently developed to be able to intervene in life and guide it — some pass years and years without the psychic intervening.  And they come and tell you in which country they were born and what their father and mother were like and the house they lived in, the roof of the church and the forest that was by the side and all the most casual events of their life! It is absolutely idiotic, for it is all rubbed off, these things don’t exist any longer; whilst the memory that one may still have is that of the particular moment in life when there is a special circumstance, “vital” moments, so to say, in which the psychic suddenly takes part, through an inner call or an absolute necessity — all of a sudden the psychic intervenes — and that then is engraved in the psychic memory. When you have the psychic memory you remember a set of circumstances at one of life, particularly of the inner emotion, of the consciousness that acted at that moment.


The Mother: And then that passes into the consciousness along with some associations, with all that was around you, perhaps a word spoken, a phrase heard; but what was most important was the state of the soul in which you were: for that indeed remains very clearly engraved. These are the landmarks of the psychic life, things that have left a deep impression and taken part in its formation. Hence when you ﬁnd your psychic being in you again constantly, continuously, clearly, it is things like these that you remember. There may be quite a few, but they are ﬂashes in one’s life, and one cannot say: “I was such and such a person, I did such and such a thing, I was called by this name and I was doing this or that.” Or otherwise it would mean that at that moment (a rare one) there was a combination of circumstances good enough for one to be able to ﬁx the date or the place, the country and the age.


The Mother: That can happen.   Naturally the psychic takes a greater and greater part, and the larger does the set of memories grow. And then one can retrace one’s life, but not in all its details. One can say that at certain moments, “it was like this,” or “I was that.” Certain moments, yes, very important moments of a life....


The Mother: What’s necessary is a being wholly identiﬁed with the psychic, one that has organised its whole existence around it, uniﬁed its whole being — all the tiniest parts, all the elements, all the movements of the being around the psychic centre — that has made of itself a single being, solely turned to the Divine; then, if the body falls off, that remains. It is only a completely formed conscious being that can remember exactly in another life all that has happened before.  It can even pass consciously from one life to another without losing anything of its consciousness. How many people upon earth have reached that state?... Not many, I believe.


The Mother: And usually they are not in the least inclined to narrate their adventures.  Yes, I know. I know many things, I have heard all that one can hear. They tell stories after stories.... They look at you and say: “You were so-and-so in that life, you did such and such a thing.”


The Mother: Well I guarantee, it is not true. For I know how one can ﬁnd out where one has seen a person and what he was and how it is — it is not just a little story that you can write in a book. When you look within a person, when you have the perception, precisely of the psychic world, which enables you to recognise the psychic there where it was, then all of a sudden you can see a scene, an image, a form, a word; there is a sort of association due to which even in the present being of this person there still remain certain sympathies and attractions which come from previous lives. But, as I was saying, these are “moments” of life. And so one sees, one can see these various moments, but one cannot narrate a whole life.


The Mother: I believe Sri Aurobindo has written something very amusing  about this, the number of Caesars one knew, the number of all the great beings, the Napoleons and all the important personages, the Shakespeares, all the people whose names have survived in history! How many are there! There are hundreds of them! And you hear their stories: “I was this, I was that, I did this”, or in s´eances the so-called spirits come and speak to you.  A large number of people indulge in this playing with “spirits”, practising automatic writing and particularly in communicating with spirits.


The Mother: Now, there are garrulous spirits. They come to many places at the same time, especially people like Napoleon (I do not know why they have a partiality for Napoleon), everywhere Napoleon arrives and tells you extraordinary stories of his life and usually very contradictory stories and perhaps all at the same time! These are really very active people. Well, it is extremely comic — and it is impossible.  The truth is that these are small vital entities, a class of beings formed by the decomposition of desires that have persisted after a man’s death and retained their form; of imaginations that have remained coagulated and try to manifest and reappear.


The Mother: Sometimes they are small beings of the vital world, not very well-disposed; as soon as they see people playing at such things — automatic writing, spirit-communication — they come and play. And as they are in a domain from where it is easy to read human thought, they tell you very well what you have in your head. They respond to what you expect. You wish to have a particular answer: they give you the answer even before you have put the question! They can give you precise details, they can tell you that such and such a thing happened to you, that such and such a member of your family...


The Mother: They know quite well.  They do excellent thought-reading and tell you things altogether convincingly. “I did not say that I was married and had three sons and four daughters, how did he know all that?” — Because it was in your head.  Psychic memories have a very special character and a wonderful intensity.


The Mother: But that cannot be narrated in this way.... They  are unforgettable moments of life when the consciousness is intense, luminous, strong, active, powerful, and sometimes turning-points in life that have changed the direction of one’s life. But one will never be able to say what dress one was wearing or the gentleman with whom one spoke and the neighbours and the kind of ﬁeld where one was.  Because you do not dream always at the same place. It is not always the same part of your being that dreams and it is not at the same place that you dream.


The Mother: If you were in conscious, direct, continuous communication with all the parts of your being, you would remember all your dreams. But very few parts of the being are in communication.  For example, you have a dream in the subtle physical, that is to say, quite close to the physical. Generally, these dreams occur in the early hours of the morning, that is between four and ﬁve o’clock, at the end of the sleep. If you do not make a sudden movement when you wake up, if you remain very quiet, very still and a little attentive — quietly attentive — and concentrated, you will remember them, for the communication between the subtle physical and the physical is established — very rarely is there no communication.


The Mother: Now, dreams are mostly forgotten because you have a dream while in a certain state and then pass into another. For instance, when you sleep, your body is asleep, your vital is asleep, but your mind is still active. So your mind begins to have dreams, that is, its activity is more or less coordinated, the imagination is very active and you see all kinds of things, take part in extraordinary happenings.... After some time, all that calms down and the mind also begins to doze. The vital that was resting wakes up; it comes out of the body, walks about, goes here and there, does all kinds of things, reacts, sometimes ﬁghts, and ﬁnally eats.


The Mother: It does all kinds of things. The vital is very adventurous. It watches.   When it is heroic it rushes to save people who are in prison or to destroy enemies or it makes wonderful discoveries. But this pushes back the whole mental dream very far behind.


The Mother: It is rubbed off, forgotten: naturally you cannot remember it because the vital dream takes its place. But if you wake up suddenly at that moment, you remember it. There are people who have made the experiment, who have got up at certain ﬁxed hours of the night and when they wake up suddenly, they do remember. You must not move brusquely, but awake in the natural course, then you remember.  After a time, the vital having taken a good stroll, needs to rest also, and so it goes into repose and quietness, quite tired at the end of all kinds of adventures.


The Mother: Then something else wakes up. Let us suppose that it is the subtle physical that goes for a walk. It starts moving and begins wandering, seeing the rooms and... why, this thing that was there, but it has come here and that other thing which was in that room is now in this one, and so on. If you wake up without stirring, you remember. But this has pushed away far to the back of the consciousness all the stories of the vital.


The Mother: They are forgotten and so you cannot recollect your dreams. But if at the time of waking up you are not in a hurry, you are not obliged to leave your bed, on the contrary you can remain there as long as you wish, you need not even open your eyes; you keep your head exactly where it was and you make yourself like a tranquil mirror within and concentrate there. You catch just a tiny end of the tail of your dream. You catch it and start pulling gently, without stirring in the least. You begin pulling quite gently, and then ﬁrst one part comes, a little later another.


The Mother: You go backward; the last comes up ﬁrst. Everything goes backward, slowly, and suddenly the whole dream reappears: “Ah, there! it was like that.” Above all, do not jump up, do not stir; you repeat the dream to yourself several times — once, twice — until it becomes clear in all its details.  Once that dream is settled, you continue not to stir, you try to go further in, and suddenly you catch the tail of something  else. It is more distant, more vague, but you can still seize it.


The Mother: And here also you hang on, get hold of it and pull, and you see that everything changes and you enter another world; all of a sudden you have an extraordinary adventure — it is another dream. You follow the same process. You repeat the dream to yourself once, twice, until you are sure of it. You remain very quiet all the time. Then you begin to penetrate still more deeply into yourself, as though you were going in very far, very far; and again suddenly you see a vague form, you have a feeling, a sensation... like a current of air, a slight breeze, a little breath; and you say, “Well, well....”


The Mother: It takes a form, it becomes clear — and the third category comes. You must have a lot of time, a lot of patience, you must be very quiet in your mind and body, very quiet, and you can tell the story of your whole night from the end right up to the beginning.  Even without doing this exercise which is very long and difﬁcult, in order to recollect a dream, whether it be the last one or the one in the middle that has made a violent impression on your being, you must do what I have said when you wake up: take particular care not even to move your head on the pillow, remain absolutely still and let the dream return.  Some people do not have a passage between one state and another, there is a little gap and so they leap from one to the other; there is no highway passing through all the states of being with no break of the consciousness. A small dark hole, and you do not remember.


The Mother: It is like a precipice across which one has to extend the consciousness. To build a bridge takes a very long time; it takes much longer than building a physical bridge.... Very few people want to and know how to do it. They may have had magniﬁcent activities, they do not remember them or sometimes only the last, the nearest, the most physical activity, with an uncoordinated movement — dreams having no sense.


The Mother: But there are as many different kinds of nights and sleep as there are different days and activities. There are not many days that are alike, each day is different. The days are not the same,  the nights are not the same. You and your friends are doing apparently the same thing, but for each one it is very different.  And each one must have his own procedure.


The Mother: Because all things are different. No two minutes are alike in the universe and it will be so till the end of the universe, no two minutes will ever be alike. And men obstinately want to make rules! One must do this and not that.... Well!


The Mother: we must let people please themselves.   You could have put to me a very interesting question: “Why am I fourteen years old today?” Intelligent people will say: “It is because it is the fourteenth year since you were born.” That is the answer of someone who believes himself to be very intelligent.


The Mother: But there is another reason. I shall tell this to you alone.... I have drowned you all sufﬁciently well! Now you must begin to learn swimming!  Surely!


The Mother: In everything, whatever it is that is the only way. There is not a thing that does not carry in itself an eternal truth, otherwise it could not exist. The universe could not exist for even a thousandth part of a second if it did not contain a truth in itself.  For each one a different effect. Because we are in the presence of a fact: there is a universe, at least there is an earth, of that we are almost sure, you cannot dispute that, granted?...


The Mother: Have you ever asked yourself why there is an earth? No! Probably it was quite wise. Once I spoke to you of that occultist whom I knew.   He was a wise man in his own way.


The Mother: People used to come and ask him:  First of all, why is there a universe? Answer: What is that to you?  Secondly, then why is it as it is? Reply: It is as it is.


The Mother: What does it matter to you?  Thirdly, I do not ﬁnd it satisfactory.  That’s very good. We begin to touch the practical. To those who do not ﬁnd it satisfactory, I would say: There is only one thing to do, start working for its change, ﬁnd a way for it to be otherwise and to be good.


The Mother: Things are as they are. Why are they so?... Perhaps one might know — it is not certain. In any case they are so. The most remarkable thing is that if you are sincere you will ﬁnd out why they are so and how they are so: the cause, the origin and the process.


The Mother: For it is one single thing.  There is what we call the Truth, the basis of everything; because if this were not there, there would be nothing. Once you have found the Truth, you ﬁnd the origin, you ﬁnd the means of changing the cause — how it is so, why it is so and the means of changing it. If you are in contact with the Divine, you have the key to everything. You know the how, the why and the process to change.


The Mother: There is something to do: to work, it is so interesting. You represent a small agglomerated mass of substance that makes up yourself. Enter within and ﬁnd the key. You have only to go down inside there. You cannot say: “That is beyond me, it is too big for me.”


The Mother: Go within your little person and you will ﬁnd the key which opens all the doors.    Whatever it may be, they think their state is delightful and remarkable. They have a very high opinion of themselves. They believe they are remarkable people because they are able to sit quietly without moving; and if they don’t think of anything, that is remarkable.


The Mother: But usually it is a kind of kaleidoscope that is going on in their head, they do not even notice it. Still, those who can remain for a moment without moving, without speaking and thinking, have certainly a very high opinion of themselves.  Only, as I have said, if they are pulled out of it, if someone comes and knocks at the door and they are told, “There is somebody waiting for you”, or “Madam, your child is crying”, they immediately get furious and say: “There, my meditation is spoilt!  Completely spoilt.” I am telling you things I have seen with my own eyes.


The Mother: People who were very serious in their meditation, and could not be interrupted in their meditation without their getting violently angry.... Naturally this is not a sign of great spiritual progress. They stormed against everybody because they had been pulled out of their beatiﬁc meditation.  Among people who meditate there are some who know how to meditate, who concentrate not on an idea, but in silence, in an inner contemplation in which they say they reach even a union with the Divine; and that is perfectly all right. There are others, just a few, who can follow an idea closely and try to ﬁnd exactly what it means; that too is all right.


The Mother: Most of the time  people try to concentrate and enter into a kind of half sleepy and, in any case, very tamasic state. They become some kind of inert thing; the mind is inert, the feeling is inert, the body is immobile. They can remain like that for hours, for there is nothing more durable than inertia! All this that I am telling you now — these are experiences of people I have met. And these people, when they come out of their meditation, sincerely believe they have done something very great.


The Mother: But they have simply gone down into inertia and unconsciousness. People who know how to meditate are very few in number. Besides, admitting that through much discipline and years of effort you have in your meditation succeeded in coming into conscious relation with the divine Presence, evidently this is a result, and this result should necessarily have an effect upon your character and your life. But this effect is very different according to individuals. There are cases in which the person is split into two in so radical a way that while in meditation such people can enter into contact with the Divine and obtain this supreme felicity of identiﬁcation, but when they come out of this and lead their normal life, begin to live and act, they can be the most ordinary men with the most ordinary and sometimes even the most vulgar reactions.


The Mother: Indeed, I know people who become altogether ordinary men, and then they do, for example, all the things one should not do, like passing their time in gossiping about others, thinking of themselves only, having all selﬁsh reactions and wanting to organise their life for their petty personal well-being; they do not think of others at all and never do anything for anybody, have no large idea. And yet, in their meditation, they have had this contact. And that is why people who have discovered how very difﬁcult it is to change this petty outer nature that one takes up along with the body, how difﬁcult it is to transcend oneself, to transform one’s movements, say: “It is not possible, it is no use trying; in coming to the world, you have taken a body of dust, you have only to let it fall off and prepare to go away, leaving the world as it is; and the only thing to do is to run away as  quickly as one can; and if everybody runs away, there will no longer be a world and therefore no more misery.” That’s logical.  If they are told: “But perhaps what you propose to do is very selﬁsh, to go away and leave others ﬂoundering?”


The Mother: — “Well, they have only to do what I do. If everybody did what I am doing, they would get out of it, there would be no longer any world, no longer any misery.” As though it depended upon the will of individuals who have not even taken any part in the making of the world! How can they hope to stop it? At least if it was they who had made it, they could know how it was made and could try to undo it (although it is not always easy to undo what one has done), but it is not they who have made it, they do not even know how it has been made and they have the presumption to want to undo it, because they imagine that they themselves can run away from it....


The Mother: I do not think it is possible. One cannot run away, even if one tries. That however is another subject. In any case, for me, my experience (which is sufﬁciently long, for it is now almost ﬁfty-three years since I have been dealing with people, with their yoga, their inner efforts; I have seen much here and there, a little everywhere in the world); well, I do not believe that it is by meditation that you can transform yourself.  I am absolutely convinced of the contrary.


The Mother: If while doing what you have to do — whatever it may be, whatever work it is — if you do it and while doing it are careful not to forget the Divine, to offer to Him what you do and try so to give yourself to Him that He may change all your reactions — instead of their being selﬁsh, petty, stupid and ignorant, making them luminous, generous — then in that way you will make progress. Not only will you have made some progress but you will have helped in the general progress. I have never seen people who have left everything in order to go and sit down in a more or less empty contemplation (for it is more or less empty), I have never seen such people making any progress, or in any case their progress is very triﬂing. I have seen persons who had no pretensions of doing yoga, who were simply ﬁlled with enthusiasm by  the idea of terrestrial transformation and of the descent of the Divine into the world and who did their little bit of work with that enthusiasm in the heart, giving themselves wholly, without reserve, without any selﬁsh idea of a personal salvation; these I have seen making magniﬁcent progress, truly magniﬁcent.


The Mother: And sometimes they are wonderful. I have seen sannyasis, I have seen people who live in monasteries, I have seen people who professed to be yogis, well, I would not exchange one of the others for a dozen such people (I mean, from the standpoint of terrestrial transformation and world progress, that is to say, from the standpoint of what we want to do, to try that this world may no longer be what it is and may become truly the instrument of the divine Will, with the divine Consciousness). It is not by running away from the world that you will change it.  It is by working there, modestly, humbly but with a ﬁre in the heart, something that burns like an offering..  No, and to the extent it is necessary, it will come spontaneously.


The Mother: All of a sudden, you will be seized by something that makes you still, makes you concentrate in the vision of an idea or of a psychological state. That captures you. You must not resist.  Then you make the needed progress. At such a moment you see, you understand something; and then the next minute you start your work again with that something gained in you, but without any pretension.


The Mother: What I most fear are those who believe themselves very exceptional because they sit down and meditate.  Of all things this is the most dangerous, because they become so vain and so full of self-satisfaction that they close up in this way all avenues of progress.... There is one thing that has always been said, but always misunderstood, it is the necessity of humility.  It is taken in the wrong way, wrongly understood and wrongly used. Be humble, if you can be so in the right way; above all, do not be so in the wrong way, for that leads you nowhere.


The Mother: But there is one thing: if you can pull out from yourself this weed called vanity, then indeed you will have done something.   But if you knew how difﬁcult it is! You cannot do a thing well, cannot have a ﬁne idea, cannot have a right movement, cannot make a little progress without getting puffed up inside (even without being aware of it), with a self-satisfaction full of vanity.  And you are obliged then to hammer it hard to break it.


The Mother: And still broken bits remain and these begin to germinate. One must work the whole of one’s life and never forget to work in order to uproot this weed that springs up again and again and again so insidiously that you believe it is gone and you feel very modest and say: “It is not I who have done it, I feel it is the Divine, I am nothing if He is not there”, and then the next minute, you are so satisﬁed with yourself simply for having thought that!  It is very simple, when people are told “be humble”, they think immediately of “being humble before other men” and that humility is wrong. True humility is humility before the Divine, that is, a precise, exact, sense that one is nothing, one can do nothing, understand nothing without the Divine, that even if one is exceptionally intelligent and capable, this is nothing in comparison with the divine Consciousness, and this sense one must always keep, because then one always has the true attitude of receptivity — a humble receptivity that does not put personal pretensions in opposition to the Divine.


The Mother: There is a difference between the will and this feeling of tension, effort, of counting only on oneself, having recourse to oneself alone which personal effort means; this kind of tension, of something very acute and at times very painful; you count only on yourself and you have the feeling that if you do not make an effort every minute, all will be lost. That is personal effort.  But the will is something altogether different. It is the capacity to concentrate on everything one does, do it as best one can and not stop doing it unless one receives a very precise intimation that it is ﬁnished. It is difﬁcult to explain it to you.


The Mother: But suppose, for example, through a concurrence of circumstances, a work comes into your hands. Take an artist who has in one way or another got an inspiration and resolved to paint a picture. He knows very well that if he has no inspiration and is not sustained by forces other than his own, he will do nothing much. It will look more like a daub than a painting. He knows this.


The Mother: But it has been settled, the painting is to be done; there may be many reasons for that, but the painting has to be done. Then if he had the passive attitude, well, he would place his palette, his colours, his brushes, his canvas and then sit down in front of it and say to the Divine: “Now you are going to paint.” But the Divine does not do things this way. The painter himself must take up everything and arrange everything, concentrate on his subject, ﬁnd the forms, the colours that will express it and put his whole will for a more and more perfect execution. His will must be there all the time.


The Mother: But he has to keep the sense that he must be open to the inspiration, he will not forget that in spite of all his knowledge of the technique, in spite of the care he takes to arrange, organise and prepare his colours, his forms, his design, in spite of all that, if he has no inspiration, it will be one picture among a million others and it will not be very interesting. He does not forget. He attempts, he tries to see, to feel what he wants his painting to express and in what way it should be expressed.   He has his colours, he has his brushes, he has his model, he has made his sketch which he will enlarge and make into a picture, he calls his inspiration. There are even some who manage to have a clear, precise vision of what is to be done.


The Mother: But then, day after day, hour after hour, they have this will to work, to study, to do with care all that must be done until they reproduce as perfectly as they can the ﬁrst inspiration.... That person has worked for the Divine, in communion with Him, but not in a passive way, not with a passive surrender; it is with an active surrender, a dynamic will. The result generally is something very good. Well, the example of the painter is interesting, because a painter who is truly an artist is able to see what he is going to do, he is able to connect himself to the divine Power that is beyond all expression and inspires all expression. For the poet, the writer, it is the same thing and for all people who do something, it is the same.


The Mother: If you tried that for your lessons, don’t you think it would succeed?  If you said to yourself, my children, “We want to be as perfect instruments as possible to express the divine Will in the world”, then for this instrument to be perfect, it must be cultivated, educated, trained. It must not be left like a shapeless piece of stone. When you want to build with a stone you chisel it; when you want to make a formless block into a beautiful diamond, you chisel it. Well, it is the same thing.


The Mother: When with your brain and body you want to make a beautiful instrument for the Divine, you must cultivate it, sharpen it, reﬁne it, complete what is missing, perfect what is there.  For example, you go to your class. If you are not in a very good mood, you say, “Oh, how tedious it is going to be!” Supposing it is a professor who does not know how to entertain you (one can be a very good professor without knowing how to  amuse you, for it is not always easy... there are days when one does not like to be amusing), one would like to be somewhere else rather than at the school. Still, you go to your class, in that way, you go because you have to go, for if you go about according to your whims, you will never have control over yourself, it will be your whims that will control you, it won’t be you who will control yourself.


The Mother: You go to your class. But then, on your way there, instead of saying, “Oh, how bored I am going to be, oh, dear! it is not going to be at all interesting”, etc., if you say, “There is not a minute in life, there is not a circumstance in one’s existence that cannot bring an opportunity for progress; what then is the progress that I am going to make today?... I offer all my little person to the Divine. I want it to be a good instrument for Him to express Himself, that I may be ready one day for the transformation. What am I going to do today?


The Mother: I am going to that class, it is a subject that does not enthuse me; but if I do not know how to take interest in this work, it is perhaps because there is something lacking in me, because somewhere in my brain some cells are missing. But then, if that is so, I am going to try to ﬁnd out; I am going to listen properly, concentrate properly and above all drive away from my mind this kind of frivolity, this outward levity which makes me feel bored when there’s something I do not grasp. Why do I get bored?... Because I do not progress.” When one does not progress, one gets bored — old and young, everybody — because we are here upon earth to progress.


The Mother: If we do not progress every minute, well, it is indeed boring, monotonous; it is not always pleasant, it is far from being ﬁne. “So I am going to ﬁnd out today what progress I can make in this class; there is something I do not know and which I can learn.”  If you want to learn, you can learn at every moment. As  for me I have learnt even by listening to little children’s chatter.


The Mother: Every moment something may happen; someone may say a word to you, even an idiot may say a word that opens you to something enabling you to make some progress. And then,  if you knew, how life becomes interesting! You can no longer get bored, that is gone, everything is interesting, everything is wonderful — because every minute you can learn, at each step make progress. For example, when you are in the street, instead of being simply there and not knowing what you are doing, if you look around, if you observe... I remember having been thus obliged to be in the street on a shopping errand or going to see someone or to purchase something, that’s not important; indeed, it is not always pleasant to be in the street, but if you begin to observe and to see how this person walks, how that one moves, how this light plays upon that object, how this little bit of a tree there suddenly makes the landscape pretty, how hundreds of things shine... then every minute you can learn something.


The Mother: Not only can you learn, but I remember to have once had — I was just walking in the street — to have had a kind of illumination, because there was a woman walking in front of me and truly she knew how to walk. How lovely it was!  Her movement was magniﬁcent! I saw that and suddenly I saw the whole origin of Greek culture, how all these forms descend towards the world to express Beauty — simply because here was a woman who knew how to walk! You understand, this is how all things become interesting.


The Mother: And so, instead of going to the class and doing stupid things there (I hope none of you does that, I am sure all who come here to my class will never go and do stupid things at school, that it is exceptions that prove the rule; however, I know that unfortunately too many go there and do all the idiotic things one might invent), so, instead of that, if you could go to the class in order to make progress, every day a new little progress — even if it be the understanding why your professor bores you — it would be wonderful, for all of a sudden he will no longer be boring to you, all of a sudden you will discover that he is very interesting! It is like that. If you look at life in this way, life becomes something wonderful.  That is the only way of making it interesting, because life upon earth is made to be a ﬁeld for progress and if we progress to  the maximum we draw the maximum beneﬁt from our life upon earth. And then one feels happy.


The Mother: When one does the best one can, one is happy.  At that time, yes, certainly without a doubt; not only does one not progress, but one misses an opportunity for progressing.  There was a concurrence of circumstances which seemed to you dull, boring, stupid and you were in their midst; well, if you get bored, it means that you yourself are as boring as the circumstances! And that is a clear proof that you are simply not in a state of progress. There is nothing more contrary to the very reason of existence than this passing wave of boredom.


The Mother: If you make a little effort within yourself at that time, if you tell yourself: “Wait a bit, what is it that I should learn? What does all that bring to me so that I may learn something? What progress should I make in overcoming myself? What is the weakness that I must overcome? What is the inertia that I must conquer?”


The Mother: If you say that to yourself, you will see the next minute you are no longer bored. You will immediately get interested and you will make progress! This is a commonplace of consciousness.  And then, you know, most people when they get bored, instead of trying to rise a step higher, descend a step lower, they become still worse than what they were, and they do all the stupid things that others do, go in for all the vulgarities, all the meannesses, everything, in order to amuse themselves. They get intoxicated, take poison, ruin their health, ruin their brain, they utter crudities.


The Mother: They do all that because they are bored. Well, if instead of going down, one had risen up, one would have proﬁted by the circumstances. Instead of proﬁting, one falls a little lower yet than where one was. When people get a big blow in their life, some misfortune (what men call “misfortune”, there are people who do have misfortunes), the ﬁrst thing they  try to do is to forget it — as though one did not forget quickly enough! And to forget, they do anything whatsoever.


The Mother: When there is something painful, they want to distract themselves — what they call distraction, that is, doing stupid things, that is to say, going down in their consciousness, going down a little instead of rising up.... Has something extremely painful happened to you, something very grievous? Do not become stupeﬁed, do not seek forgetfulness, do not go down into the inconscience; you must go to the end and ﬁnd the light that is behind, the truth, the force and the joy; and for that you must be strong and refuse to slide down. But that we shall see a little later, my children, when you will be a little older.   We speak of the other side of the veil, the other side of existence.


The Mother: It is being no longer in the physical: being in the vital, for example, or in the conscious part of the vital. One becomes conscious of two sides and so knows what is happening. There are people who go out of their body methodically to have the experience of the separation between the two. But as for that, one must know how to do it, and one must not do it all alone.  Someone should be there to look after and watch the body.


The Mother: They are two aspects of the same thing, but not altogether the same. One is more active than the other. They do not belong to quite the same plane of existence.  For example, you have decided to offer your life to the Divine, you take that decision. But all of a sudden, something altogether unpleasant, unexpected happens to you and your ﬁrst movement is to react and protest.


The Mother: Yet you have made the offering, you have said once for all: “My life belongs to the Divine”, and then suddenly an extremely unpleasant incident happens (that can happen) and there is something in you that reacts, that does not want it. But here, if you want to be truly logical with  your offering, you must bring forward this unpleasant incident, make an offering of it to the Divine, telling him very sincerely: “Let Your will be done; if You have decided it that way, it will be that way.” And this must be a willing and spontaneous adhesion.  So it is very difﬁcult.  Even for the smallest thing, something that is not in keeping with what you expected, what you have worked for, instead of an opposite reaction coming in — spontaneously, irresistibly, you draw back: “No, not that” — if you have made a complete surrender, a total surrender, well, it does not happen like that: you are as quiet, as peaceful, as calm in one case as in the other.


The Mother: And perhaps you had the notion that it would be better if it happened in a certain way, but if it happens differently, you ﬁnd that this also is all right. You might have, for example, worked very hard to do a certain thing, so that something might happen, you might have given much time, much of your energy, much of your will, and all that not for your own sake, but, say, for the divine work (that is the offering); now suppose that after having taken all this trouble, done all this work, made all these efforts, it all goes just the other way round, it does not succeed.  If you are truly surrendered, you say: “It is good, it is all good, it is all right; I did what I could, as well as I could, now it is not my decision, it is the decision of the Divine, I accept entirely what He decides.” On the other hand, if you do not have this deep and spontaneous surrender, you tell yourself: “How is it?  I took so much trouble to do a thing which is not for a selﬁsh purpose, which is for the Divine Work, and this is the result, it is not successful!”


The Mother: Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it is like that.  True surrender is a very difﬁcult thing.  Continue to do what one to, what is clearly shown as  the thing that ought to be done, what is to be done — whether one succeeds or does not succeed, whether the result is what one thinks or expects or isn’t — that has no importance; one continues.  If you are quite sincere, you know. Not to know one’s fault is always the sign of an insincerity somewhere.


The Mother: And generally, it is hidden in the vital. When the vital consents to collaborate (which is already a big step), when it decides that it too is going to work, to devote all its effort and all its energy to accomplish the work, even then there is underneath, well hidden somewhere, a sort of — how shall we call it? — an expectation that things will turn out well and the result will be favourable. And that veils the complete sincerity. For this expectation is an egoistic, personal thing, and this veils the full sincerity. Then you do not know.


The Mother: But if one is altogether, absolutely sincere, as soon as what one is doing is not exactly what should be done, one feels it very clearly — not violently but very clearly, very precisely: “No, not this.” And then if one has no attachment, immediately it stops, instantaneously it stops.  But one has attachment, even for a disinterested work.  That’s what you must understand. You have given your life for a cause that is not egoistic, but the ego is there all the same.


The Mother: And you have a way of doing the thing which is special, personal to you; and you have within you a hope (not to speak of a desire) that the result will be like this, that you will get this and it will be done. Even a work that is not done for yourself but which you have undertaken, you expect that it will succeed, that you will have success — not personally — for the thing you have undertaken, the work that you are doing. Well, that brings in just a little bit of something like that, down below, quite hidden,  quite a tiny thing which is a little... not very straight, a little bent, twisted. And then you do not know. But if that were not there, as soon as you failed to do exactly what should be done, you would know.


The Mother: You would know it absolutely precisely. It is as delicate a movement as the thousandth part of a millimetre would be. Yes, it is there, and that is sufﬁcient, you know: “I was mistaken.” But you must have that absolute sincerity which precisely does not want at any cost to blunder, which will do anything, give up everything, everything, rather than live in any kind of illusion. But it is very difﬁcult; it takes time and much labour.


The Mother: When you are doing a thing, always those two, the mind and the vital are there, trying to draw some beneﬁt or other out of what you are doing: the beneﬁt of personal satisfaction, the beneﬁt of happiness, the beneﬁt of a good opinion that you have of yourself. It is difﬁcult not to deceive oneself.  You must not feel with your head (because you may think so, but that’s something vague); you must feel with your sense-feeling.  Naturally one begins by wanting it with the mind, because that is the ﬁrst thing that understands. And then one has an aspiration here (), with a ﬂame which pushes you to realise it.


The Mother: But if you want it to be truly thing, well, you must feel it.  You are doing something, suppose, for example, you are doing exercises, weight-lifting. Now suddenly without your knowing how it happened, suddenly you have the feeling that there is a force inﬁnitely greater than you, greater, more powerful, a force that does the lifting for you. Your body becomes something almost non-existent and there is this Something that lifts. And then you will see; when that happens to you, you will no longer ask how it should be done, you will know.


The Mother: That does happen.  It depends upon people, depends upon what dominates in  their being. Those who think have suddenly the feeling that it is no longer they who think, that there is something which knows much better, sees much more clearly, which is inﬁnitely more luminous, more conscious in them, which organises the thoughts and words; and then they write. But if the experience is complete, it is even no longer they who write, it is that same Thing that takes hold of their hand and makes it write. Well, one knows at that moment that the little physical person is just a tiny insigniﬁcant tool trying to remain as quiet as possible in order not to disturb the experience.


The Mother: Yes, at no cost must the experience be disturbed. If suddenly you say: “Oh, look, how strange it is!”...  Aspire for it, want it. Try to be less and less selﬁsh, but not in the sense of becoming nice to other people or forgetting yourself, not that: have less and less the feeling that you are a person, a separate entity, something existing in itself, isolated from the rest.


The Mother: And then, above all, above all, it is that inner ﬂame, that aspiration, that need for the light. It is a kind of — how to put it? — luminous enthusiasm that seizes you. It is an irresistible need to melt away, to give oneself, to exist only in the Divine.  At that moment you have the experience of your aspiration.  But that moment should be absolutely sincere and as integral as possible; and all this must occur not only in the head, not only here, but must take place everywhere, in all the cells of the body.


The Mother: The consciousness integrally must have this irresistible need.... The thing lasts for some time, then diminishes, gets extinguished. You cannot keep these things for very long. But then it so happens that a moment later or the next day or some time later, suddenly you have the opposite experience. Instead of feeling this ascent, and all that, this is no longer there and you have the feeling of the Descent, the Answer.


The Mother: And nothing but the  Answer exists. Nothing but the divine thought, the divine will, the divine energy, the divine action exists any longer. And you too, you are no longer there.  That is to say, it is the answer to our aspiration. It may happen immediately afterwards — that is very rare but may happen.


The Mother: If you have both simultaneously, then the state is perfect; usually they alternate; they alternate more and more closely until the moment there is a total fusion. Then there is no more distinction. I heard a Suﬁ mystic, who was besides a great musician, an Indian, saying that for the Suﬁs there was a state higher than that of adoration and surrender to the Divine, than that of devotion, that this was not the last stage; the last stage of the progress is when there is no longer any distinction; you have no longer this kind of adoration or surrender or consecration; it is a very simple state in which one makes no distinction between the Divine and oneself. They know this. It is even written in their books.


The Mother: It is a commonly known condition in which everything becomes quite simple. There is no longer any difference. There is no longer that kind of ecstatic surrender to “Something” which is beyond you in every way, which you do not understand, which is merely the result of your aspiration, your devotion. There is no difference any longer. When the union is perfect, there is no longer any difference.


The Mother: There is never any end to progress — never any end, you can never put a full stop there.   Before the transformation of the body?... This is a phenomenon of consciousness. For instance, the physical consciousness may have this experience even for years before the cells change.


The Mother: There is a great difference between the physical consciousness (the  body consciousness) and the material body. This takes a long time, because it is a thing that has never been done. That state, as I have already told you, is a commonly known state which has been realised by some people, the most advanced, the highest among the mystics; but the transformation of the body has never been done by anyone.  And it takes a terribly long time. Sri Aurobindo said — one day I asked him: “How long will it take to transform the body?”


The Mother: He did not hesitate, he said: “Oh! something like three hundred years.”  Three hundred years from the time one has the consciousness I was just speaking about. ( )  No, the conclusion, what you must succeed in doing, is to be able to prolong life at will: not to leave the body until one wants to.  So, if one has resolved to transform the body, well, one must wait with all the necessary patience — three hundred years, ﬁve hundred years, a thousand years, it does not matter — the time needed for the change.


The Mother: As for me, I see that three hundred years is a minimum. To tell you the truth, with the experience I have of things, I think it is truly a minimum.   Just imagine. You have never thought about what it means, have you?


The Mother: How is your body built? In a purely animal way, with all the organs and all the functions. You are absolutely dependent: if your heart stops for even the thousandth part of a second, you are gone and that’s the end. The whole thing works and works automatically without your conscious will (happily for you, for if you had to supervise the functioning, it would have gone the wrong way long ago). All that is there.


The Mother: Everything is necessary, because it was organised in that manner. You cannot do without an organ, at least totally; there must be something in you representing it.   Transformation implies that all this purely material arrangement is replaced by an arrangement of concentrations of force having certain types of different vibrations substituting each organ by a centre of conscious energy moved by a conscious will and directed by a movement coming from above, from higher regions. No stomach, no heart any longer, no circulation, no lungs, no... All this disappears.


The Mother: But it is replaced by a whole set of vibrations representing what those organs are symbolically.  For the organs are only the material symbols of centres of energy; they are not the essential reality; they simply give it a form or a support in certain given circumstances. The transformed body will then function through its centres of energy and not any longer through their symbolic representatives such as were developed in the animal body. Therefore, ﬁrst of all you must know what your heart represents in the cosmic energy and what the circulation represents and what the stomach and the brain represent. To begin with, you must ﬁrst be conscious of all that.


The Mother: And then, you must have at your disposal the original vibrations of that which is symbolised by these organs. And you must slowly gather together all these energies in your body and change each organ into a centre of conscious energy which will replace the symbolic movement by the real one.... You believe it will take only three hundred years to do that? I believe it will take much more time to have a form with qualities which will not be exactly those we know, but will be much superior; a form that one naturally dreams to see plastic: as the expression of your face changes with your feelings, so the body will change (not the form but within the same form) in accordance with what you want to express with your body. It can become very concentrated, very developed, very luminous, very quiet, with a perfect plasticity, with a perfect elasticity and then a lightness at will...


The Mother: Have you never dreamt of giving a kick to the ground and then soaring into the air, ﬂying away? You move about.   You push a little with your shoulder, you go this way; you push again, you go that way; and you go wherever you like, quite  easily; and ﬁnally when you have ﬁnished you come back, enter your body. Well, you must be able to do that with your body, and also certain things related to respiration — but there will no longer be lungs; there’s a true movement behind a symbolic movement which gives you this capacity of lightness; you do not belong any longer to the system of gravitation, you escape it.


The Mother: And so for each organ.  There is no end to imagination: to be luminous whenever one wants it, to be transparent whenever one wants it. Naturally there is no longer any need of any bones also in the system; it is not a skeleton with skin and viscera, it is another thing. It is concentrated energy obeying the will. This does not mean that there will no longer be any deﬁnite and recognisable forms; the form will be built by qualities rather than by solid particles.


The Mother: It will be, if one may say so, a practical or pragmatic form; it will be supple, mobile, light at will, in contrast to the ﬁxity of the gross material form.  So, to change this into what I have just described, I believe three hundred years are truly very little. It seems many more than that are needed. Perhaps with a very, very, very concentrated work...  Well, there is change, it is no longer the same body.


The Mother: But, you see, when our little humanity says three hundred years with the same body, you say: “Why! when I am ﬁfty it  already begins to decompose, so at three hundred it will be a horrible thing!” But it is not like that. If it is three hundred years with a body that goes on perfecting itself from year to year, perhaps when the three hundredth year is reached one will say: “Oh! I still need three or four hundred more to be what I want to be.” If each year that passes represents a progress, a transformation, one would like to have more and more years in order to be able to transform oneself more and more.


The Mother: When something is not exactly as you want it to be — take, for example, simply one of the things I have just described, say, plasticity or lightness or elasticity or luminosity, and none of them is exactly as you want it, then you will still need at least two hundred years more so that it may be accomplished, but you never think: “How is it? It is still going to last two hundred years more!” On the contrary, you say: “Two hundred years more are necessary so that it may be truly done.” And then, when all is done, when all is perfect, then there is no longer any question of years, for you are immortal.  But there are many objections that may be raised.


The Mother: It may be said that it would be impossible for the body to change unless something changes in the surroundings also. What would be your relation with other objects if you have changed so much?  With other beings also? It seems necessary that a whole set of things changes, at least in relative proportions, so that one can exist, continue to exist. This then brings much complication, for it is no longer one individual consciousness that has to do the work, it becomes a collective consciousness.


The Mother: And so it is much more difﬁcult still.  ( )  You progress, but you are not conscious of your progress; and  so it is not a willed progress. That is, it is a progress that the Divine brings about in you without your collaboration.


The Mother: That takes much more time. It does occur, but it takes much more time. When you are conscious and collaborate and indeed do consciously what you should do, it is done much more quickly.  There are many people who are not even conscious, the immense majority of people are not even conscious of the action of the divine Force in them. If you speak to them about it, they look at you in round-eyed wonder, they think you are half mad, they don’t know what you are talking about.


The Mother: That is the vast majority of human beings. And yet the Consciousness is at work, working all the time. It moulds them from within whether they want it or not. But then, when they become conscious of this, there are people who are shocked by it, who are so stupid as to revolt and say: “Ah! no, I want it to be!” Myself, that is, an imbecile who knows nothing.


The Mother: And then, that stage too passes. At last there comes a moment when one collaborates and says: “Oh! What joy!” And you give yourself, you want to be as passive and receptive as possible so as not to stand in the way of this divine Will, this divine Consciousness that is acting. You become more and more attentive, and exactly to the extent you become more attentive and more sincere, you feel in what direction, in what movement this divine Consciousness is working, and you give yourself to it wholly. The thing ripens more quickly.


The Mother: And in this way you are truly able to do in a few minutes the work that would otherwise take years. And that is the goal of yoga: one can do the work in a few hours, in a concentrated, shortened time; one can do in another way what Nature is doing — Nature will do it, Nature will succeed in transforming all this, but when one sees the time she has taken to do what she has done till now, if one wants to do all that in another way.... Evidently, for the divine Consciousness time means very little, but for the consciousness here, it is very long. There is a point of view from which you say: “Bah! That will be done, it is sure to come about, so it is all right, one has  only to let things go on.


The Mother: ” But then it is not the external human consciousness, it does not take part, for this tiny consciousness which has been formed by the body (this body that’s at present made in this way), well, it will have gone away long before the thing is done. Because after all the progress of Nature is not accomplished from one century to another. If we look back, we do not see that there has been really much progress in comparison with what man was some three thousand years ago — just a little, something; something that happens particularly in the head which understands a little better; and then a kind of control over what Nature does, an understanding of her processes; one begins to understand her tricks. Then as one begins to learn her tricks, one begins to intervene.


The Mother: But as one does not have the true knowledge, when one intervenes one may very easily make a lot of blunders.... Indeed, I do not know what will happen when men will know all the secrets of the formation of matter, for example. They have already invented a very ﬁne way of destroying themselves. We shall see what is going to happen.  But this is just a very small step; it happens particularly here (), with very relative material results.


The Mother: You must establish this will to be conscious constantly and then change the mental will into an aspiration. You must have this movement. And then never to forget. You must look, look at yourself, and look at your life with the sincerity not to make a mistake, never to deceive yourself. Oh!


The Mother: how difﬁcult it is!  Did you ever have spontaneously — spontaneously without effort — the perception that you had made a mistake? I am not speaking of an external reaction that gives you a knock, wakes you up suddenly and you say: “Oh my God, what have I done?”  I am not speaking of that. When you do a thing, feel a thing, when you say a thing — take simply the petty quarrels like those I hear about at least a dozen of them a day (at least), idiotic, (I  wonder how, having one’s reason, one can quarrel about such things), well, at the time you utter those words that should not be uttered, that are simply silly, do you see that you are truly stupid — not to say anything worse — spontaneously?...


The Mother: You always give an excuse. You have always the feeling that the other person is wrong, and that you are right and that, indeed, he must be told that he is wrong, yes? Otherwise he would never know it!  Isn’t that so? I am putting the thing rather glaringly, as though under a small microscope, so that it may look a little bigger.


The Mother: But it is like that. And so long as it is like that, you are a million miles away from the true consciousness. When you are unable immediately, instantaneously to step back, put yourself in the place of the other person, understand why he has this feeling, have a glimpse of your own weakness, compare the two and come to the conclusion: “Well, it is that, that’s the true thing”, it means that you are still very far behind. When you are able to do it spontaneously, instantaneously, when it does not take time, when it is a natural movement, then you may feel satisﬁed that you have made a little progress.... How many times do you have the experience during the day?


The Mother: Even if you do not come to an open quarrel, how many times is the reaction there in the head, there, something that leaps up in the head, instead of this wisdom of equanimity which, at the very moment things are happening and it is observing them, understands how they are happening and why all this occurs — and that impersonally enough to be able to smile always and never have a violent reaction, never.  And even if you perceive the Truth, which is far beyond and far above, and the Truth that is not realised and you want to realise, if you have its clear vision and can see constantly the difference between what is true and what should be and what is false and deformed and must give place to the other, see it so clearly, there is no reaction any longer, and even things that seem to you most stupid, most idiotic, most obscure, most ignorant, most vulgar, most crude can make you smile, for you are able  to see the whole length of the way you have to cover so that That which is up there may come down here. And if you had had violent reactions, long ago there would have been no world any more. Because, in truth, if the world could exist only on condition of its being true, then long ago it would have ceased to exist!


The Mother: For it has never been true even to this very day.  But if you remain in that consciousness and look from there, then you begin to understand something of the truth. And this consciousness has to be so total, that even if things come directly against you, even the physical movement of someone coming to beat you (you must not allow him to kill you, no; you have perhaps to do what is necessary not to get killed), but if you are yourself in this perfect consciousness and have no personal reaction, well, I give you the guarantee the other cannot kill you. He will not be able to, even if he tries. He will not be able to beat you, even if he tries.


The Mother: Only, you must not have a single violent or wrong vibration, you understand? Even if there is just a little false vibration, that opens the door and the thing enters and all goes wrong. You must be fully conscious, have the full knowledge, the perfect mastery over everything, the clear vision of the Truth — and perfect peace.   You must make an effort all the time.


The Mother: .   APPENDIX   ( )


The Mother: In the West the highest minds are turned not towards spiritual truth but towards material science. The scope of science is very narrow, it touches only the most exterior part of the physical plane.  And even there, what does science know really? It studies the functioning of the laws, builds theories ever renewed and each time held up as the last word of truth! We had recently the atomic theory, now comes the electronic.


The Mother: There are, for instance, two statements of modern science that would stir up deeper ranges for an occultist: 1. Atoms are whirling systems like the solar system.  2. The atoms of all the elements are made out of the same constituents. Different arrangement is the only cause of different properties.


The Mother: If these statements were considered under their true aspect, they could lead science to new discoveries of which there is no idea at present and in comparison with which the present knowledge is poor.  According to the experience of ancient Yogis, sensible matter was made out of ﬁve elements, Bhutani: Prithivi, Apas, Agni (Tejas), Vayu, Akasha.  Agni is threefold: 1. Ordinary ﬁre, Jada Agni, 2. Electric ﬁre, Vaidyuta Agni, 3.


The Mother: Solar ﬁre, Saura Agni.  Science has only entered upon the ﬁrst and the second of these ﬁres. The fact that the atom is like the solar system could  lead it to the knowledge of the third.  Beyond Agni is Vayu of which science knows nothing. It is the support of all contact and exchange, the cause of gravitation and of the ﬁelds (magnetic and electric).


The Mother: By it, the action of Agni, the formal element, the builder of forms, is made possible.  And beyond Vayu is the ether: Akasha.  But these ﬁve constitute only the grossest part of the physical plane. Immediately behind is the physical-vital, the element of life buried in matter. J. C. Bose is contacting this element in his experiments.


The Mother: Beyond is the mind in matter. This mind has a far different form than the human mind, still it is a manifestation of the same principle of organisation. And deep below there are two more hidden layers....  That is the occult knowledge concerning the physical plane only. Science is far behind this knowledge.


The Mother: The Hindu Yogis who had realised these truths did not elaborate them and turn them into scientiﬁc knowledge. Other ﬁelds of action and knowledge having been open before them, they neglected what for them was the most exterior aspect of the manifestation.  There is a difference between the scientiﬁc mind and the cast of mind of an occultist. There is little doubt that one who could unite these two groups of faculties would lead science towards great progress.   Music is a means of expressing certain thoughts, feelings, emotions, aspirations.


The Mother: There is even a region where all these movements exist and from there, as they are brought down, they take a musical form. One who is a very good composer, with some inspiration, will produce very beautiful music, for he is a good musician. A bad musician may also have a very high inspiration; he may receive something which is good, but as he possesses no musical capacity, what he produces is terribly commonplace, ordinary, uninteresting. But if you go beyond, if you reach just the place where there is this origin of music — of the idea and emotion and inspiration — if you reach there, you can taste these things without being in the least troubled by the forms; the commonplace musical form can be linked up again with that, because that was the inspiration of the writer of the music. Naturally, there are cases where there is no inspiration, where the origin is merely a kind of mechanical music.


The Mother: It is not  always interesting in every case. But what I mean is that there is an inner condition in which the external form is not the most important thing; it is the origin of the music, the inspiration from beyond, which is important; it is not purely the sounds, it is what the sounds express.  There are musical pieces which have no inspiration, they are like mechanical works. There are musicians who possess a great virtuosity, that is, who have thoroughly mastered the technique and who, for example, can execute without making a mistake the fastest and most difﬁcult things. They can play music but it expresses nothing: it is like a machine.


The Mother: It means nothing, except that they have great skill. For what is most important is the inspiration, in everything that one does; in all human creations the most important thing is inspiration. Naturally, the execution must be on the same level as the inspiration; to be able to express truly well the highest things one must have a very good technique. I do not say that technique is not necessary; it is even indispensable, but it is not the only indispensable thing, it is less important than inspiration.


The Mother: The essential quality of music depends upon where the music comes from, upon its origin.  Its starting point. Just as the spring is the source of the river.  All physical life has the vital and mental life as its origin. The mental and the vital reality have themselves another origin, and so on.


The Mother: Nothing can be manifested physically upon earth that has not a higher truth at its origin, otherwise the world would not  exist. If it were a ﬂat thing having its origin in itself, it would very soon cease to exist. It is because there is a force which pushes, an energy which pushes towards manifestation, that life continues to exist. Otherwise it would exhaust itself very soon.  Because there are forces that intervene between the origin and the manifestation.


The Mother: If I ask you, “Do you know the truth of your being?” What will you say?... Do you know it? Well, the same holds for everything. And yet you are already a sufﬁciently evolved thinking being who has passed through all kinds of reﬁnements.


The Mother: You are no longer quite like, let us say, a lizard that runs on the wall; and yet you would not be able to say what the truth of your being is. That is just the secret of all deformations in the world.  It is because there is all the inconscience created by the fact of separation from the Origin. It is due to this inconscience that the Origin, though always there, is not able to manifest itself.  It is there, that is why the world exists.


The Mother: But in its expression it is deformed because it manifests itself through the inconscience, ignorance and obscurity.  It is something I shall try to explain in the next issue of the . But still, very brieﬂy summed up, it is this: In creating the universe as it was, the Will was an individual projection — individual, you understand, a scattering: instead of being a unity containing all, it was a unity made of innumerable small unities which are individualisations, that is, things that feel themselves separated. And the very fact of being separated from all others is what gives you the feeling that you are an  individual. Otherwise you would have the feeling that you were a ﬂuid mass.


The Mother: For example, instead of being conscious of your external form and of everything in your being which makes of you a separate individuality, if you were conscious of the vital forces which move everywhere or of the inconscient that is at the base of all, you would have the feeling of a mass moving with all kinds of contradictory movements but which could not be separated from each other; you would not have the feeling of being an individual at all: you would have the feeling of something like a vibration in the midst of a whole. Well, the original Will was to form individual beings capable of becoming conscious once again of their divine origin. Because of the process of individualisation one must feel separate if one is to be an individual. The moment you are separated, you are cut off from the original consciousness, at least apparently, and you fall into the inconscient. For the only thing which is the Life of life is the Origin, if you cut yourself off from that, consciousness naturally is changed into unconsciousness.


The Mother: And then it is due to this very unconsciousness that you are no longer aware of the truth of your being.... It is a process. You cannot argue whether it is inevitable or evitable; the fact is it is like that.  This process of formation and creation is the reason why purity no longer manifests in its essence and in its purity but through the deformation of unconsciousness and ignorance.... If you had answered immediately: “Yes, of course, I know the truth of my being!” it would have ﬁnished there, there wouldn’t have been any problem.


The Mother: That is why there is all this ugliness, there is death; that is why there is illness; that is why there is wickedness; that is why there is suffering. There is no remedy, there is only one way for all these things. All this is there in different domains and with different vibrations, but the cause of all is the same. It is inconscience produced because of the necessity of individual formation. Once again I do not say that it was indispensable.


The Mother: That is another problem which perhaps later on we shall be  ready to solve; but for the moment we are obliged to state that that’s how it is.  And so, the remedy? Since such is the cause, the only way of putting everything right is to become conscious once again.  And this is very simple, very simple.


The Mother: Suppose that there are in the universe two opposing and contradictory forces, as some religions have preached: there was good and evil, and there always will be good and evil, there will be a conﬂict, a battle, a struggle. The one that is stronger, whether it be the good or the evil, will win; if there is more of the good, the good will win and if there is more of the evil, the evil will win; but the two will always exist. If it were like that, it would be hopeless; one wouldn’t have to say then that it is either difﬁcult or easy, it would be impossible. One would not be able to get out of it. But actually that is not so.


The Mother: Actually there is but one Origin and this origin is the perfection of Truth, for that is the only thing which truly exists; and by exteriorising, projecting, scattering itself, it brings forth what we see, and a crowd of tiny brains, very gentle, very brilliant, in search of something they have not yet seized but which they can seize, because what they are in search of is within them. That is a certainty. It may take more or less time, but it is sure to come.  The remedy is at the very core of the evil..  It has been called by various names, each one has presented it in his own way.


The Mother: According to the angle of seeing, one’s experience differs. All those who have found the Divine within themselves have found Him in a certain way, following a certain experience and from a certain angle, and this angle was selfevident to them. But then, if they are not well on their guard, they begin to say: “To ﬁnd the Divine, one must do this and do that. And it is like that and it is that path one should follow”, because for them that was the path of success. When one goes a little further, has a little more experience, one becomes aware that it is not necessarily like that, it can be done through millions of ways....


The Mother: There is only one thing that is certain, it is that what is  found is always the same. And that’s remarkable, that whatever the path followed, whatever the form given to it, the result is always the same. Their experience and everyone’s is the same.  When they have touched the Thing, it is for all the same thing.  And this is just the proof that they have touched That, because it is the same thing for all.


The Mother: If it is not the same thing, it means that they have not yet touched That. When they have touched That, it is the same thing. And to That, you may give all the names you like, it makes no difference.  Words are words. After all, they mean nothing, unless there is something behind.


The Mother: Have you never noticed that when you speak to certain people, you may express yourself quite clearly and yet they understand nothing; and to others you say just two words and they understand immediately? You have not had this experience? No? I have had it often. Therefore, it does not depend upon the external form, the words one speaks, but on the force of the thought one puts into them; and the greater, stronger, more precise and clear the thought-force, the more the chance of what you say being understood by people who are able to receive that force.


The Mother: But if one speaks without thinking, usually it is impossible to understand what he says. It makes a kind of noise, that is all. For example, when you have the habit of speaking with someone, exchanging ideas with him, when between the two of you there is a certain mental adjustment, that is, when you have taken the precaution of saying, “When I use this word, I mean this”, and the other person has said, “When I use that word, I mean that”, and so on; when you are used to an interchange, when you have established a kind of contact between brain and brain — even if it be only that — you understand each other quite easily. But with people who come altogether from elsewhere, with whom you have never spoken, you need a little time to adjust and adapt yourself to understand what they mean by the words they use.... What is it that makes you understand?


The Mother: It is just the kind of mental sense that is behind the words. When the thought is strongly thought out, there is  a powerful vibration and it is that which is sensed; the word is only an intermediary means. You can develop this sense to the point of having a direct mental contact with a minimum of words or even without any words at all; but then you must have a very great force of thought-concentration. And for everything one does, it is like that. When there is a developed consciousness behind, when one has the power to concentrate it, one can do anything at all — this consciousness will act.


The Mother: Certainly it is not the bodily mechanism that makes you act; the mechanism is simply an instrument, nothing more. The day you catch that (it is invisible, but you can catch it), and when you catch it and put it into your movement, this movement becomes conscious and you do well whatever you do. The day you do not catch it, it slips from you like water through your ﬁngers; and then you are clumsy, you do not understand, you do not know what to do.  Hence, it is not the physical mechanism that counts, it is what is behind.  There are different levels.


The Mother: There is a whole category of music that comes from the higher vital, which is very catching, somewhat (not to put it exactly) vulgar, it is something that twists your nerves. This music is not necessarily unpleasant, but generally it seizes you there in the nervous centres. So there is one type of music which has a vital origin. There is music which has a psychic origin — it is altogether different. And then there is music which has a spiritual origin: it is very bright and it carries you away, captures you entirely.


The Mother: But if you want to execute this music correctly you must be able to make it come through the vital passage. Your music coming from above may become  externally quite ﬂat if you do not possess that intensity of vital vibration which gives it its splendour and strength. I knew people who had truly a very high inspiration and it became quite ﬂat, because the vital did not stir. I must admit that by their spiritual practices they had put to sleep their vital completely — it was literally asleep, it did not act at all — and the music came straight into the physical, and if one were connected with the origin of that music, one could see that it was something wonderful, but externally it had no force, it was a little melody, very poor, very thin; there was none of the strength of harmony. When you can bring the vital into play, then all the strength of vibration is there.


The Mother: If you draw into it this higher origin, it becomes the music of a genius.  For music it is very special; it is difﬁcult, it needs an intermediary. And it is like that for all other things, for literature also, for poetry, for painting, for everything one does. The true value of one’s creation depends on the origin of one’s inspiration, on the level, the height where one ﬁnds it. But the value of the execution depends on the vital strength which expresses it.


The Mother: To complete the genius both must be there. This is very rare. Generally it is the one or the other, more often the vital. And then there are those other kinds of music we have — the music of the, of the cinema — it has an extraordinary skill, and at the same time an exceptional platitude, an extraordinary vulgarity. But as it has an extraordinary skill, it seizes you in the solar plexus and it is this music that you remember; it grasps you at once and holds you and it is very difﬁcult to free yourself from it, for


The Mother: it is well-made music, music very well made. It is made vitally with vital vibrations, but what is behind is frightful.  But imagine this same vital power of expression, with the inspiration coming from far above — the highest inspiration possible, when all the heavens open before us — then that becomes wonderful. There are certain passages of C´esar Franck, certain passages of Beethoven, certain passages of Bach, there are pieces by others also which have this inspiration and power. But it is  only a moment, it comes as a moment, it does not last.


The Mother: You cannot take the entire work of an artist as being on that level.  Inspiration comes like a ﬂash; sometimes it lasts sufﬁciently long, when the work is sustained; and when that is there, the  is produced, that is, if you are attentive and concentrated, suddenly that lifts you up, lifts up all your energies, it is as though someone opened out your head and you were ﬂung into the air to tremendous heights and magniﬁcent lights. It produces in a few seconds results that are obtained with so much difﬁculty through so many years of yoga. Only, in general, one may fall down afterwards, because the consciousness is not there as the basis; one has the experience and afterwards does not even know what has happened. But if you are prepared, if you have indeed prepared your consciousness by yoga and then the thing happens, it is almost deﬁnitive.


The Mother: It is both but in an inverse sense.  This very high inspiration comes only rarely in European music; rare also is a psychic origin, very rare. Either it comes from high above or it is vital. The expression is almost always, except in a few rare cases, a vital expression — interesting, powerful. Most often, the origin is purely vital.


The Mother: Sometimes it comes from the very heights, then it is wonderful. Sometimes it is psychic, particularly in what has been religious music, but this is not very frequent.  Indian music, when there are good musicians, has almost always a psychic origin; for example, the have a psychic origin, they come from the psychic. The inspiration does not often come from above. But Indian music is very rarely embodied in a strong vital.


The Mother: It has rather an inner and intimate origin. I have heard a great deal of Indian music, a great deal; I have rarely heard Indian music having vital strength, very rarely; perhaps  not more than four or ﬁve times. But very often I have heard Indian music having a psychic origin, it translates itself almost directly into the physical. And truly one must then concentrate, and as it is — how to put it? — very tenuous, very subtle, as there are none of those intense vital vibrations, one can easily glide within it and climb back to the psychic origin of the music. It has that effect upon you, it is a kind of ecstatic trance, as from an intoxication.


The Mother: It makes you enter a little into trance. Then if you listen well and let yourself go, you move on and glide, glide into a psychic consciousness. But if you remain only in the external consciousness, the music is so tenuous that there is no response from the vital, it leaves you altogether ﬂat. Sometimes, there was a vital force, then it became quite good.... I myself like this music very much, this kind of theme developing into a play.