The Mother: They do not see, they walk in darkness as in a black night; but they have a kind of sense of touch at a distance, a material contact due to which, long before touching the object, they know; for example, if there is a piece of furniture in their way, long before knocking against it, they feel it from a distance.  No, the vital is much more developed than the mind. You know,  I have said there that things are crystallised, that is they take a form, and a more and more precise, a more and more ﬁxed form  (the more precise the form, the more ﬁxed it is). In children it is much more like water; it is not yet in a very concrete and precise form.


The Mother: That is why, moreover, one can have a great inﬂuence upon them, for it is still supple, it is not crystallised; one can notice it: it has something malleable about it, as though one were moulding butter; however, as soon as they are about twenty or twenty-ﬁve, the special disposition, the turn of character is ﬁxed  and, at that moment, instead of preventing defects, it becomes necessary to mend them. That is another thing. If one wants to give an education which prevents bad habits from being formed or bad tendencies from being pursued, an education which leads children constantly into the right path (that one wants them to follow), well, when they are small it is possible, when they become bigger, it becomes hard. One cannot change the imprint easily.


The Mother: Even sometimes it is necessary to break things to be able to change them: as those who are not progressive, who are ﬁxed and remain ﬁxed, who cling with all their strength to their petty habits. While the little ones are supple, one can change their opinions, one can make them progress, give them the sense that tomorrow one must do better than today.  That depends. For example, children who have no order, who can’t keep their things carefully but lose or spoil them — there  are three reasons for this. Most often it is a child who lacks vitality.


The Mother: When it is like that, when it can’t keep its things carefully and all is in disorder around it, this is always a sign of a lack of vitality; it does not have sufﬁcient vitality to take interest in these outer things. The second reason is that it lacks interest in material life, the life of things, and that it has no discipline, doesn’t discipline itself. For instance, children when they undress throw their clothes all over the place; or else, when they have ﬁnished playing, they leave their toys lying about; when they have written out their homework, everything is littered all around: the fountain-pen on one side, the notebook on another, the reader on a third, and then all these get lost. Unfortunately that’s how it is with the great majority of the children here at the school, they lose everything. I have found books reduced to pulp because they had spent the whole night on a ﬂower-pot and it had rained the next morning!


The Mother: When they were found, they were like gruel. But that is rare. Pencils too — I have a collection of fountain-pens and pencils picked up thus, having been lost. These are absolutely undisciplined natures, those who have no method — and within themselves they don’t have any method either. And moreover they despise things — so, as Sri Aurobindo says, they are not worthy of having them.


The Mother: People who don’t know how to deal with things carefully, don’t deserve to have them. Sri Aurobindo has often written on this subject in his letters. He has said that if you don’t know how to take care of material things, you have no right to have them. Indeed this shows a kind of selﬁshness and confusion in the human being, and it is not a good sign. And then later when they grow up, some of them cannot keep a cupboard in order or a drawer in order.


The Mother: They may be in a room which looks very tidy and very neat outwardly, and then you open a drawer or a cupboard, it is like a battleﬁeld! Everything is pell-mell. You ﬁnd everything in a jumble; nothing is arranged. These are people with a poor little head in which ideas lie in the same state as their material objects. They have not organised their ideas.


The Mother: They haven’t put  them in order. They live in a cerebral confusion. And that is a sure sign, I have never met an exception to this rule: people who don’t know how to keep their things in order — their ideas are in disorder in their heads, always. They exist together, the most contradictory ideas are put together, and not through a higher synthesis, don’t you believe it: simply because of a disorder and an incapacity to organise their ideas. You don’t need to speak even for ten minutes with people if you can manage to enter their room and open the drawers of their tables and look into their cupboard.


The Mother: You know in what state they are, don’t you?  On the other hand, there was someone (I shall tell you who afterwards) who had in his room hundreds of books, countless sheets of paper, notebooks and all sorts of things, and so you entered the room and saw books and papers everywhere — a whole pile, it was quite full. But if you made the mistake to shift a single little bit of paper from its place, he knew it immediately and asked you, “Who has touched my things?” You, when you come in, see so many things that you feel quite lost. And yet each thing had its place.


The Mother: And it was so consciously done, I tell you, that if one paper was displaced — for instance, a paper with notes on it or a letter or something else which was taken away from one place and placed in another with the idea of putting things in order — he used to say, “You have touched my things; you have displaced them and put my things in disorder.” That of course was Sri Aurobindo! That means you must not confuse order with poverty. Naturally if you have about a dozen books and a very limited number of things, it is easier to keep them in order, but what one must succeed in doing is to put into order — and a logical, conscious, intelligent order — a countless number of things. That asks for a capacity of organisation.


The Mother: Of course, if someone is very ill, has no strength to spare, then that’s different. And yet even here, there are limits. I knew ill people who could tell you, “Open this drawer and in the left corner at the back you will ﬁnd such and such a thing under such another”; the man could not move and take it himself, but  he knew very well where it was. But apart from that, the ideal is to have some organisation, as for instance of the kind found in libraries where there are hundreds of thousands of books and where everything is classiﬁed (naturally it is not done by just one man), but it is a work in which each thing is so well classiﬁed that even if you bring a card and say “I want this book”, a quarter of an hour later you have it or sometimes in ﬁve minutes. That is organisation.


The Mother: And yet there are rooms full of books there. But all this is the result of work perfected by a large number of men, the result of a professional organisation. Well, for oneself, one must organise one’s own things — and at the same time one’s own ideas — in the same way, and must know exactly where things are and be able to go straight to them, because one’s organisation is logical. It is your own logic — it may not be your neighbour’s logic, not necessarily, it is your own logic — but your organisation being logical, you know exactly where a thing is and, as I told you, if that thing is displaced, you know it immediately


The Mother: .  And those who can do that are generally those who can put their ideas into order and can also organise their character and can ﬁnally control their movements. And then, if you make progress, you succeed in governing your physical life; you begin to have a control over your physical movements. If you take life in that way, truly it becomes interesting. If one lives in a confusion, a disorder, an inner and outer chaos in which everything is mixed up and one is conscious of nothing and still less is master of things, this is not living.


The Mother: This is not living, it is being in a sea of inconscience, being tossed about by the waves, caught by the currents, thrown against rocks, seized again by another wave and thrown against another rock; and one goes on thus with bruises and blows and bumps. And then, should one ask you, “Why is it like this?” — “I don’t know.” — “Why did you do that?”


The Mother: — “I don’t know.” — “Why do you think in this way?”  — “I don’t know.” — “Why did you make that movement?” — “I don’t know.”


The Mother: All the answers are “I don’t know”.  Essentially there is but one single true reason for living: it is  to know oneself. We are here to learn — to learn what we are, why we are here, and what we have to do. And if we don’t know that, our life is altogether empty — for ourselves and for others.  And so, generally, it is better to begin early, for there is much to learn.


The Mother: If one wants to learn about life as it is, the world as it is, and then really know the why and the how of life, one can begin when very young, from the time one is very, very tiny — before the age of ﬁve. And then, when one is a hundred, one will still be able to learn. So it is interesting. And all the time one can have surprises, always learn something one didn’t know, meet with an experience one did not have before, ﬁnd something one was ignorant of. It is surely very interesting.


The Mother: And the more one knows, the more aware does one become that one has everything to learn. Truly, I could say that only fools believe they know. That indeed is a sure sign, someone coming and telling you, “Oh! I know all that; oh! I know all that”; he is immediately sized up!


The Mother: Yes, if one eliminates the shadow. But it must be eliminated.  That does not happen by itself. The world as it is is a mixed  world. You cannot have an object which gets the light from one side without its casting a shadow on the other.


The Mother: It is like that, and indeed it is the shadows which make you see the lights. The world is like that, and to have only the light one must deﬁnitely go through the entire discipline necessary for eliminating the shadow. This is what I have explained a little farther; I have said that this shadow was like a sign of what you had to conquer in your nature in order to be able to realise what you have come to do. If you have a part to play, a mission to fulﬁl, you will always carry in yourself the main difﬁculty preventing you from realising it, so that you have within your reach the victory you must win. If you had to ﬁght against a difﬁculty which is everywhere on earth, it would be very difﬁcult (you would need to have a very vast consciousness and a very great power),


The Mother: while if you carry in your own nature just the shadow or defect you must conquer, well, it is there, within your reach: you see all the time the effects of this thing and can ﬁght it directly, immediately.  It is a very practical organisation.  You haven’t seen in the that letter of Sri Aurobindo’s: the “Evil Persona”? It is in the The thing is very well explained there.   I say there that a great variety of subjects should be studied.


The Mother: I believe that is it. For instance, if you are at school, to study all the subjects possible. If you are reading at home, not to read just one kind of thing, read all sorts of different things.   Yes, yes!


The Mother: I have heard that, especially from your teachers. I don’t agree. And I know it very well, this is being continuously repeated to me: if anything is to be done properly, one must specialise. It is the same thing for sports also. It is the same for everything in life.


The Mother: It is said and repeated, and there are people who will prove it: to do something well one must specialise. One must do that and concentrate. If one wants to become a good philosopher, one must learn only philosophy, if one wants to be a good chemist, one must learn chemistry only. And if one wants to become a good tennis-player, one must play only tennis. That’s not what I think, that is all I can say.


The Mother: My experience is different.  I believe there are general faculties and that it is much more important to acquire these than to specialise — unless, naturally, it be like M. and Mme. Curie who wanted to develop a certain science, ﬁnd something new, then of course they were compelled to concentrate on that science. But still that was only till they had discovered it; once they had found it, nothing stopped them from widening their mind.   This is something I have heard from my very childhood, and I believe our great grandparents heard the same thing, and from all time it has been preached that if you want to succeed in something you must do only that. And as for me, I was scolded all the time because I did many different things!


The Mother: And I was always told I would never be good at anything. I studied, I did painting, I did music, and besides was busy with other things still. And I was told my music wouldn’t be up to much, my painting wouldn’t be worthwhile, and my studies would be quite incomplete. Probably it is quite true, but still I have found that this had its advantages — those very advantages I am speaking about, of widening, making supple one’s mind and understanding. It is true that if I had wanted to be a ﬁrst-class player and to play in concerts, it would have been necessary to do what they said.


The Mother: And as for painting, if I had wanted to be among the great artists of the time, it would have been necessary to do that. That’s quite understandable. But still, that is just one point of view. I don’t see any necessity of being the greatest artist, the greatest musician. That has always seemed to me a vanity.


The Mother: And besides, it is a question of opinion....  There is but one instance, that’s when one wants to make a discovery. Then, naturally, one must dedicate all one’s effort to that. But that is not necessarily a whole lifetime’s effort — unless one chooses a very difﬁcult subject as the Curies did. There was a time they had made their discovery — they could go beyond it.


The Mother: Yet spontaneously, people who wish to keep their balance rest from one activity and take up another. Examples are always cited of great performers or great artists or great scientists who have a kind of hobby, a diversion. You have perhaps heard of Ingres’s violin. Ingres was a painter; he did not lack talent and when he had some free time he started playing the violin, and his violin interested him much more than his painting. It seems he did not play the violin very well but it interested him more.


The Mother: And his painting he did very well and it interested him less.  But I believe that was quite simply because he needed balance.   Concentration on a single thing in order to attain one’s aim is very necessary for the human mind in its normal functioning, but one can arrive at a different working that’s more complete, more subtle. Naturally, physically one is bound to be limited, for in physical life one depends a great deal on time and space, and also it is difﬁcult to realise great things without special concentration. But if one wants to lead a higher and deeper life, I believe one can acquire perhaps much greater capacities by other means than those of restriction and limitation.


The Mother: There is a considerable advantage in getting rid of one’s limits, if not from the point of view of realisation in action, at least from that of spiritual realisation.   Ah! I suppose there are several reasons. First, because one makes use of the memory to remember.


The Mother: Memory is a mental instrument and depends on the formation of the brain. Your brain is constantly growing, unless it begins to degenerate, but still its growth can continue for a very, very long time, much longer than that of the body. And in this growth, necessarily some things will take the place of others. And as the mental instrument develops, things which have served their term or the transitory moment in the development may be wiped out to give place to the result.  So the result of all that you knew is there, living in itself, but the road traversed to reach it may be completely blurred.


The Mother: That is, a good functioning of the memory means remembering only the results so as to be able to have the elements for moving forward and a new construction. That is more important than just retaining things rigidly in the mind.  Now, there is another aspect also. Apart from the mental memory, which is something defective, there are states of consciousness. Each state of consciousness in which one happens to be registers the phenomena of a particular moment, whatever they may be.


The Mother: If your consciousness remains limpid, wide  and strong, you can at any moment whatsoever, by concentrating, call into the active consciousness what you did, thought, saw, observed at any time before; all this you can remember by bringing up in yourself the same state of consciousness.  And that, that is never forgotten. You could live a thousand years and you would still remember it. Consequently, if you don’t want to forget, it must be your consciousness which remembers and not your mental memory. Your mental memory will be wiped out inevitably, get blurred, and new things will take the place of the old ones.


The Mother: But things of which you are conscious you do not forget. You have only to bring up the same state of consciousness again. And thus one can remember circumstances one has lived thousands of years ago, if one knows how to bring up the same state of consciousness. It is in this way that one can remember one’s past lives. This never gets blotted out, while you don’t have any more the memory of what you have done physically when you were very young.


The Mother: You would be told many things you no longer remember. That gets wiped off immediately. For the brain is constantly changing and certain weaker cells are replaced by others which are much stronger, and by other combinations, other cerebral organisations. And so, what was there before is effaced or deformed.  Yes, if you go to a certain place, if you succeed in entering into contact with the place which existed thousands of years ago.


The Mother: And, moreover (I believe I have written this somewhere), there is the record of the earth’s consciousness, and if you know how to go to that place, you can not only remember your own life but everything that happened upon earth. It is recorded there, and it is a phenomenon of consciousness.   I have just told you how, my child, you did not listen to what I said. I said that if it is a mental remembrance it will be effaced; even in your present life you cannot recall incidents which took place twenty or thirty or forty years ago. But a state of consciousness is not a mental state.


The Mother: It has nothing to do with the mind. Indeed, most minds are dissolved with the body, except when there is a very well-made special formation, very “cohesive”, very well organised, which can last. But that is fairly rare.   These are only exceptional cases.


The Mother: But consciousness is something quite different. Consciousness is an eternal state. The state of consciousness is an eternal state. Creation is born through consciousness and if consciousness were withdrawn, there would be no creation any longer. And if you enter into contact with consciousness, you can discover the whole history of creation, for creation comes from consciousness.


The Mother: Consciousness is eternal.   There are several methods. Generally — but it depends on people — generally, the easiest way is to think of something else. That is, to concentrate one’s attention upon something that has nothing to do with that thought, has no connection with that thought, like reading or some work — generally something creative, some creative work.


The Mother: For instance, those who write, while they are writing (let us take simply a novelist), while he is writing, all other thoughts are gone, for he is concentrated on what he is doing. When he ﬁnishes writing, if he has no control, the other thoughts will return. But precisely when a thought assails you, one can try to do some creative work; for example, the scientist could do some research work, a special study to discover something, something that is very absorbing; that is the easiest way.   Naturally, those who have begun to control their thought can make a movement of rejection, push aside the thought as one would a physical object. But that is more difﬁcult and asks for a much greater mastery.


The Mother: If one can manage it, it is more active, in the sense that if you reject that movement, that thought, if you chase it off effectively and constantly or almost repeatedly, ﬁnally it does not come any more. But in the other case, it can always return. That makes two methods.  The third means is to be able to bring down a sufﬁciently great light from above which will be the “denial” in the deeper sense; that is, if the thought which comes is something dark (and especially if it comes from the subconscient or inconscient and is sustained by instinct), if one can bring down from above the light of a true knowledge, a higher power, and put that light upon the thought, one can manage to dissolve it or enlighten or transform it — this is the supreme method. This is still a little more difﬁcult.


The Mother: But it can be done, and if one does it, one is cured — not only does the thought not come back but the very cause is removed.  The ﬁrst step is to think of something else (but in this way, you know, it will be indeﬁnitely repeated); the second is to ﬁght; and the third is to transform. When one has reached the third step, not only is one cured but one has made a permanent progress.   It is not the psychic that hides itself, it is the being which returns to its ordinary consciousness!... It is difﬁcult for it to remain at its highest.


The Mother: One slides down, falls back. Only, the second time the discovery is easier. And each time the road is easier until one no longer falls back.  What is it that you don’t understand? I mean that what one thinks is not of much importance because thought is formed by the surroundings in which one is born and the education one has received — but that is only one way of saying things.


The Mother: And you can say them in all sorts of ways: they remain what they are. What is it that you don’t understand?   It all depends on what meaning you put into the word “God”.   It is a word (I have told you this at least four or ﬁve times) to express “something” you do not know but are trying to attain.


The Mother: Well, if you have received a religious education, you are accustomed to call this “God”. If you have received a more positivist and also a more philosophical education, you are accustomed to call this by all sorts of names, and you may at the same time have the idea that it is the supreme truth. If one wants to speak of God and describe him, one is obliged to make use of things which are the most inaccessible to our consciousness, and to call God what is beyond anything we know and can grasp and be — all that is too far for us to be able to understand, we call God. Only some religions (there are some) give a precise form to the godhead; and sometimes they give several forms and they have several gods; sometimes they give one form and have only one God; but all this is human fabrication. There is “something”, there is a reality which is beyond all our expressions, but which we can succeed in contacting by practising a discipline.


The Mother: We can identify ourselves with it. Once one is identiﬁed with it one knows what it is, but one cannot express it, for words cannot say it. So, if you use one kind of vocabulary, if you have a particular mental conviction, you will use the vocabulary corresponding to that conviction. If you belong to another group which has another way of speaking, you will call it or even think about it in that way. I am telling you this to give you the true impression, that there is something there which cannot be grasped — grasped by thought — but which exists.


The Mother: But the name you give it matters little, that’s of no importance, it And so the only thing to do is to enter into contact with it — not to give it a name or describe it. In fact, there is hardly any use giving it a name or describing it. One must try to enter into contact, to concentrate upon it, live it, live that reality, and whatever the name you give it is not at all important once you have the experience.  The experience alone matters.


The Mother: And when people associate the experience with a particular expression — and in so narrow a  way, so closed up in itself that apart from this formula one can ﬁnd nothing — that is an inferiority. One must be able to that reality through all possible paths, all occasions, all formations; one must live it, for that indeed is true, for that is supremely good, that is all-powerful, that knows everything, that... Yes, one can live that, but one cannot speak about it. And if one does speak, all that one says about it has no great importance.  It is only one way of speaking, that is all.


The Mother: There is an entire line of philosophers and people who have replaced the notion of God by the notion of an impersonal Absolute or by a notion of Truth or a notion of justice or even by a notion of progress — of something eternally progressive; but for one who has within him the capacity of identifying himself with that, what has been said about it hasn’t much importance. Sometimes one may read a whole book of philosophy and not progress a step farther.  Sometimes one may be quite a fervent devotee of a religion and not progress. There are people who have spent entire lifetimes seated in contemplation and attained nothing. There are people (we have well-known examples) who used to do the most modest of manual works, like a cobbler mending old shoes, and who had an experience.


The Mother: It is altogether beyond what one thinks and says of it. It is a gift, that’s all. And all that is needed is to be that — to succeed in identifying oneself with it and live it. At times you read one sentence in a book and that leads you there.  Sometimes you read entire books of philosophy or religion and they get you nowhere.


The Mother: There are people, however, whom the reading of philosophy books helps to go ahead. But all these things are secondary. There is only one thing that’s important: that is a sincere and persistent will, for these things don’t happen in a twinkling. So one must persevere. When someone feels that he is not advancing, he must not get discouraged; he must try to ﬁnd out what it is in the nature that is opposing, and then make the necessary progress.


The Mother: And suddenly one goes forward. And when you reach the end you have an experience. And what is remarkable is that people who have followed altogether different  paths, with altogether different mental constructions, from the greatest believer to the most unbelieving, even materialists, have arrived at that experience, it is the same for everyone. Because it is true — because it is real, because it is the sole reality. And it is quite simply I do not say anything more.


The Mother: This is of no importance, the way one speaks about it, what is important is to follow the path, path, no matter which — yes, to go there.  It is a little philosophical.... You know the difference between what is subjective and what is objective? You know it! Well, imagine precisely this Reality we were speaking about, which is at the origin of all things, passing from the subjective to the objective state.


The Mother: That is, what was within becomes as though projected outside. It is the thing: it is the state that changes.  And so, within it there are all the possibilities of objective existence; within they are unexpressed, unmanifested; outside they are projected, as a picture is projected on the cinema-screen: we see it before us. And every element that was a possibility within, a law, becomes the law of a realisation. And every one of these possibilities becomes the reality of a being, of an individuality if you like, of something existing objectively.


The Mother: And it is that law which is the origin of the centre of the psychic being: it is the truth of the being or the law of the being. The Buddha called it the “law”, he spoke of the. It is the truth of the being.  It is that which binds it again indestructibly to its origin. And  that is the starting-point of the psychic being.


The Mother: And so, even as this develops, like the picture on the screen, it takes a more and more complex and precise form in the manifestation. But the reality of that form is one, it is bound to the One. And all the units are linked together and reproduce the One.  Is it not easier?... () It is still more difﬁcult!


The Mother: But indeed, that’s what I have said here.  Yes, that’s quite simple! It is very clear!   Eh?


The Mother: What? In sports? No, the value of the will depends on your aim. If it is in order to be successful and earn a reputation for yourself and be better than others — all sorts of ideas like that — then that becomes something very egoistic, very personal and you won’t be able to progress — yes, you will make progress but still it won’t lead you anywhere. But if you do it with the idea of being open, even in the physical, to the divine Inﬂuence, to be a good instrument and manifest Him, then that is very good.


The Mother: Not clear?  Physical things are not necessarily more egoistic than mental or emotional ones. Far from it. They are often much less so. Egoism does not lie in that, egoism lies in the inner attitude.


The Mother: It does not depend on the ﬁeld in which you are concentrated, it depends  on the attitude you have. It does not depend on what you do, it depends on the way you do it.  This means that the material world, just as it is, is very awkward at expressing the truth which is behind. That is obvious. I believe we don’t need to reﬂect very deeply to perceive that, unless there are people...


The Mother: Yes, in “The Four Austerities” I speak of those who are perfectly adjusted in life and ﬁnd everything wonderful, but I haven’t yet met many of these who can believe it all their life through. I am speaking of optimists — one is optimistic so long as one is healthy and very young, and then, as soon as one begins to be less strong and less healthy, optimism vanishes. But still, if one has a little sense and sensibility, it is easy to see that everything is not for the best in the best possible world, for if you yourself are comfortable and have all you need, if you are getting on well and have no cares, that does not mean that there are not millions of beings in altogether hard and painful situations.  Then, it may be very easy to think only of oneself. But it is not something very advisable.


The Mother: I knew people who were very rich and had never had the chance to come into contact with those who had nothing or hadn’t enough, and for them it was something unthinkable. I knew a lady (I knew many) who lived in a very ﬁne apartment with many servants and all possible comfort — she had always lived thus and had never known any but easy circumstances — and one day I spoke to her about someone, a person of great worth and merit but who had nothing, hadn’t enough to eat — and I asked her to help that person, not with money for he would not have accepted it, but with some work  or by inviting him to pass some time with her (for she had a philosophical mind and could have helped intellectually). So I told her: “You know, he doesn’t always eat his ﬁll.” I saw that she did not understand. I said: “Well, yes, he does not always have enough money to buy food — buy bread and what he needs to eat.”


The Mother: — “But surely there is always bread and food in the kitchen!” ( ) She said that so spontaneously!   What do you call the Divine?


The Mother: Give me your deﬁnition of the Divine. We have already dealt with this here once.  No, I am asking you what you call the Divine. You have an idea of the Divine, haven’t you? You say “the Divine”, what do you mean by that?


The Mother: That’s but a word. The Creator!!!  Where have I said it was necessary to be identiﬁed with the Divine in us? — In the, I think. Don’t you remember?


The Mother: In any case, I have already told you many a time that the manifestation was progressive and will always be progressive and that what manifests in a certain period is only the beginning of something that will be manifested in the following age.  Therefore, if one reaches the summit of creation, one must come upon something which has not yet manifested but will manifest since there are always new elements which manifest. This is  exactly what I have said. I have said that if one attained the summit of consciousness and passed beyond the forms presently manifested, one would enter into contact with a force, a reality which is not yet manifested but will manifest. And this summit of consciousness is never the last, for what has been attained one day, what seemed to be the ﬁnal consciousness will be only a step so that the next day, in the next period, the next age, there may manifest something which was beyond and not then ready to manifest, not on the point of being manifested.


The Mother: Oh! There’s a very simple way. Depression occurs generally in the vital, and one is overpowered by depression only when one keeps the consciousness in the vital, when one remains there.  The only thing to do is to get out of the vital and enter a deeper consciousness.


The Mother: Even the higher mind, the luminous, higher mind, the most lofty thoughts have the power to drive away depression.  Even when one reaches just the highest domains of thought, usually the depression disappears. But in any case, if one seeks shelter in the psychic, then there is no longer any room for depression.  Depression may come from two causes: either from a want of vital satisfaction or from a considerable nervous fatigue in the body. Depression arising from physical fatigue is set right fairly easily: one has but to take rest.


The Mother: One goes to bed and sleeps until one feels well again, or else one rests, dreams, lies down. The want of vital satisfaction comes up rather easily and usually one must face it with one’s reason, must ferret out the cause of the depression, what has brought about the lack of satisfaction in the vital; and then one looks at it straight in the face and asks oneself whether that indeed has anything to do with one’s inner aspiration or whether it is simply quite an ordinary movement.  Generally one discovers that it has nothing to do with the inner aspiration and one can quite easily overcome it and resume one’s  normal movement. If that is not enough, then one must go deeper and deeper until one touches the psychic reality. Then one has only to put this psychic reality in contact with the movement of depression, and instantaneously it will vanish into thin air.


The Mother: As for ﬁghting in the vital domain itself — well, some people are good ﬁghters and love to struggle with their vital — but to tell you the truth, that is much more difﬁcult.   Yes. Generally one has a series of experiences of identiﬁcation, very intense at ﬁrst, which later gradually diminish, and then one day you ﬁnd that they have disappeared. Still you must not be disturbed, for it is quite a common phenomenon.


The Mother: But next time — the second time — the contact is more easily obtained.  And then comes a moment, which is not very far off, when as soon as one concentrates and aspires, one gets a contact. One may not have the power of keeping it all the time, but can get it at will. Then, from that moment things become very easy.


The Mother: When one feels a difﬁculty or there is a problem to be solved, when one wants to make progress or there is just a depression to conquer or an obstacle to be overcome or else simply for the joy of identiﬁcation (for it is an experience that gives a very concrete joy; at the moment of identiﬁcation one truly feels a very, very great joy), then, at any moment whatever, one may pause, concentrate for a while and aspire, and quite naturally the contact is established and all problems which were to be solved are solved. Simply to concentrate — to sit down and concentrate — to aspire in this way, and the contact is made, so to say, instantaneously.  There comes a time, as I said, when this does not leave you, that is, it is in the depths of the consciousness and supports all that you do, and you never lose the contact. Then many things disappear. For instance, depression is one of these things,  discontentment, revolt, fatigue, depression, all these difﬁculties.


The Mother: And if one makes it a habit to step back, as we say, in one’s consciousness and see on the screen of one’s psychic consciousness — see all the circumstances, all the events, all the ideas, all the knowledge, everything — at that moment one sees and has an altogether sure guide for everything that one may do. But this is bound to take a very long time to come.  Naturally.   Yes.


The Mother: And so what happens is very remarkable, the result is always the same: those who have done that, at the last minute, have received a sort of intimation that they had to return to the world and do their work. It is as though they reached the door and — “Ah! No, no, not yet — go back and work. When the world is ready, then this will be all right.”  Indeed this habit of escaping from the difﬁculty is a supreme selﬁshness. You are told, “Do this, and then, when all the others have done it, all will be well with the whole world”, but it is only a very small ´elite among men who are ready to be able to do it.


The Mother: And these precisely are those who can be the most useful to the earth, for they know more about things than others, they have overcome many difﬁculties and can be of help to others just where those others can’t. But the whole human mass, the immense human mass... For when some have succeeded — even a few hundred — one may tend to think it is “humanity”, but  truly speaking it is only a kind of ´elite of humanity, it is a selection. The immense mass, all the people living all over the earth — merely in India, the immense population — formidable — which lives in the villages, the countryside, there is no question of their making an effort for liberation, to come out of the world in order to live the spiritual life. They don’t even have the time to become aware of themselves!


The Mother: They are just there, attached to their work like a horse to the plough. They move in a rut from which, generally, they can’t get out. So they can’t be told, “Do as I do and all will be well.” Because “Do as I do” means nothing at all. There are perhaps a few hundred who can do the same thing, no more!


The Mother: Generally this comes from a kind of inner disequilibrium. There may be many reasons for it, but it all comes to this: a sort of disequilibrium between the different parts of the being. Now, it is also possible that the day one had the energy, one spent it too much, though this is not the case with children; children spend it until they can no longer do so. One sees a child active till the moment he suddenly falls fast asleep. He was there, moving, running; and then, all of a sudden, pluff! ﬁnished, he is asleep.


The Mother: And it is in this way that he grows up, becomes stronger and stronger. Consequently, it is not the spending that harms you.  The expenditure is made up by the necessary rest — that is set right very well. No, it is a disequilibrium: the harmony between the different parts of the being is no longer sufﬁcient.  People think they have only to continue doing for ever what they were doing or at least remain in the same state of consciousness, day after day do their little work, and all will go well.


The Mother: But it is not like that. Suddenly, for some reason or other, one part of the being — either your feelings or your thoughts  or your vital — makes progress, has discovered something, received a light, progressed. It takes a leap in progress. All the rest remains behind. This brings about a disequilibrium.


The Mother: That is enough to make you very tired. But in fact, it is not tiredness: it is something which makes you want to keep quiet, to concentrate, remain within yourself, be like that, and build up slowly a new harmony among the different parts of the being. And it is very necessary to have, at a given moment, a sort of rest, for an assimilation of what one has learnt and a harmonisation of the different parts of the being.  Now, as you know, from the physical point of view human beings live in frightful ignorance. They cannot even say exactly...


The Mother: For instance, would you be able to tell exactly, at every meal, the amount of food and the kind of food your body needs?  — simply that, nothing more than that: how much should be taken and when it should be taken.... You know nothing about it, there’s just a vague idea of it, a sort of imagination or guesswork or deduction or... all sorts of things which have nothing to do with knowledge. But that exact knowledge: “This is what I must eat, I must eat this much” — and then it is ﬁnished. “This is what my body needs.”


The Mother: Well, that can be done. There’s a time when one knows it very well. But it asks for years of labour, and above all years of work almost without any mental control, just with a consciousness that’s subtle enough to establish a connection with the elements of transformation and progress.  And to know also how to determine for one’s body, exactly, the amount of physical effort, of material activity, of expenditure and recuperation of energy, the proportion between what is received and what is given, the utilisation of energies to reestablish a state of equilibrium which has been broken, to make the cells which are lagging behind progress, to build conditions for the possibility of higher progress, etc... it is a formidable task.  And yet, it is that which must be done if one hopes to transform one’s body.


The Mother: First it must be put completely in harmony with the inner consciousness. And to do that, it is a work in each cell, so  to say, in each little activity, in every movement of the organs.  With this alone one could be busy day and night without having to do anything else.... One does not keep up the effort and, above all, the concentration, nor the inner vision.  I have put to you quite a superﬁcial question: it seems astonishing to you that one can know the exact amount of what one should eat, and what should be eaten at a certain time, and at what time one should take one’s meal, and when one is ready for another!


The Mother: Well, that is an altogether superﬁcial part of the problem, yet if you enter into the combination of the cells and the inner organisation in order that all this may be ready to respond to the descending Force... First, are you conscious of your physical cells and their different characteristics, their activity, the degree of their receptivity, of what is in a healthy condition and what is not? Can you say with certainty when you are tired, why you are tired? When there’s something wrong somewhere, can you say, “It is because of this that I am suffering”?... Why do people rush to the doctor?


The Mother: Because they are under the illusion that the doctor knows better than they how to look inside their body and ﬁnd out what’s going on there — which is not very reasonable, but still that’s the habit!  But for oneself, who can look inside himself quite positively and precisely and know exactly what is out of order, why it is disturbed, how it has been disturbed? And all this is simply a work of observation; afterwards one must do what is necessary to put it back into order again, and that is still more difﬁcult.  Well, this is the A B C of the transformation of the body.   What do you want to say?


The Mother: You have not understood what I meant?... I am not surprised! Has anyone understood?...  This is a domain about which I have so far refrained from speaking to you, for one must be already very conscious of oneself, have a good mastery over one’s reﬂexes and be above all fear, precisely — above all possibility of fear, in order to be able to enter upon it. It is a knowledge which in the modern world is hardly recognised as scientiﬁc, but it scientiﬁc in the sense that it follows some deﬁnite processes and that if the circumstances are correctly reproduced, the same results are obtained.


The Mother: It is a progressive science and one can devote oneself to it, can make quite a regular progress, as logical as in all the sciences that are acknowledged as such in modern times. But this one concerns a reality or certain realities which do not belong to the most material domain. One needs special capacities and a special development to be conscious in that domain, for it escapes our ordinary senses.  We have subtle senses; even as we have a physical body, we have other more subtle bodies which also have senses, and  much more reﬁned senses, much more precise and much more powerful than our physical senses. But naturally, as it is not customary in modern education to work in these domains, these things generally escape our ordinary knowledge.


The Mother: Yet children spontaneously live a great deal in this domain. They see things which are as real for them as physical things, they speak about them — and they are usually told that they are stupid because they speak of things others don’t see but which are as true for them, as tangible and real as what can be seen by everyone. Their dreams have an intensity and a capital importance in their life, and it is only with intensive mental growth that those capacities diminish. Now, there are people who are fortunate to be born with their inner senses naturally developed, and nothing can prevent them from remaining awake. If these people meet in good time someone who can help them in a methodical development, they can become very interesting instruments for the study and discovery of this occult world.


The Mother: In all ages there have been initiatory schools which took up these particularly talented people and educated them in this kind of science. These schools were always more or less secret or hidden, for ordinary men are quite intolerant of those capacities which are beyond them — and disturb them. But there were ﬁne periods in human history when these schools were recognised and much appreciated and respected, as in ancient Egypt, ancient Chaldea, ancient India, and even partially in Greece and Rome. There were always schools of initiation, even in mediaeval Europe, but there they had to be very carefully hidden, for they were pursued and persecuted by the ofﬁcial Christian religion, and if perchance it was discovered that such and such men or women were practising these occult sciences, they were tied to the stake and burnt alive as sorcerers!... In our times this knowledge is almost lost; there are only a very few people who have it; but with mental growth the intolerance also has gone.


The Mother: People don’t like these things very much — they are disturbed, annoyed by them — but still they are obliged to admit that these things are not crimes and  people practising occultism are no longer burnt at the stake or imprisoned. Only, there are many people who claim to know but there are very few who do know. In any case, before entering upon this study, one must have, as I told you at the beginning, a very great self-mastery, must have attained a kind of abnegation, a self-forgetfulness, an egolessness, a disinterestedness and sense of sacriﬁce which enables one to practise this without any danger. For, if you keep all egoistic or passionate movements, full of desires, you are sure, in the practice of this science, to meet with accidents which may have fatal consequences. As I said at the beginning, the indispensable condition is to have an intrepidity which does not allow any fear to enter into you.


The Mother: For this has been very often said, and it is quite true, that when you enter the invisible realm, the ﬁrst things you meet are literally terrifying. If you have no fear, there is no danger, but the least fear puts you into danger. So, before anybody at all was allowed to practise this science, for a very long time, sometimes for years, the novice was submitted to a discipline which gave him the assurance that he could practise it without experiencing the least fear and without any danger. That is why, my children, I have never spoken to you about it. This article was not specially for you — the goes to the whole world and it can reach here and there people who are prepared.


The Mother: But still, because it is written, I am telling you about it this evening, and I tell you that if anyone among you feels a special inclination, possesses special faculties and is ready to overcome every weakness, all egoism and all fear, I am ready to help him on the way and reveal these secrets to him.  Now, you will have to be a little more mature for me to undertake this task.  That depends upon you, my children! I practised occultism when I was twelve. But I must say I had no fear, I feared nothing.


The Mother: One  goes out of one’s body, but is tied by something resembling an almost imperceptible thread; if the thread is cut, it is all over.  Life also is ended. One goes out, and then can begin seeing the world he has entered. And usually the ﬁrst things one sees, as I said, are terrifying. Because, for you the air is empty, there is nothing in it — you see something blue or white, there are clouds, sunbeams, and all that is very pretty — but when you have the other sight, you see that it is ﬁlled with a multitude of small formations which are all residues of desires or of mental deformation and these swarm inside it, you see, in a mass, and this is not always very pretty.


The Mother: At times it is extremely ugly. This assails you; it comes, presses upon you, attacks you; and if you are afraid, it takes absolutely frightful forms. Naturally, if you do not ﬂinch, if you can look upon all that with a healthy curiosity, you perceive that it is not at all so terrifying. It may not be pretty, but it is not terrifying.  I could tell you a little story.


The Mother: I knew a Danish painter who was quite talented and who wanted to learn occultism. He had come here, you know, had met Sri Aurobindo; he had even done his portrait. That was during the war, and when he came back to France, he wanted me to teach him a little of this occult science. I taught him how to go out of his body etc., and the controls, all that. And I told him that, above all, the ﬁrst thing was not to have any fear.


The Mother: Then, one day he came to tell me that he had had a dream the night before. But it was not a dream, for, as I have told you, he knew a bit about how to go out of his body, and he had gone out consciously. And once he had gone out he was looking around seeing what was to be seen, when suddenly he saw a formidable tiger coming towards him, drawing close with the most frightful intentions.... He remembered what I had told him, that he must not be afraid. So he began to say to himself, “There is no danger, I am protected, nothing can happen to me, I am wrapped up in the power of protection”, and he began looking at the tiger in that way, without any fear.


The Mother: And as he went on looking at  the tiger, immediately it began to grow smaller and smaller and smaller and — it became a tiny little cat! ()  It was probably... That day he had become angry with somebody, he had lost his temper and entertained bad thoughts; he had hoped that something very unpleasant would happen to this person. Now, in occultism there is the “rebound”. You send out a bad thought, it returns to you as an attack.


The Mother: That is exactly one of the reasons why you must have a complete control over your feelings, sensations, thoughts, for if you become angry with someone or think badly of him, or if, still worse, you wish him ill, well, in your very dream you see this person coming with an extreme violence to attack you. Then, if you do not know these things, you say, “Why, I was right in having bad thoughts against him!” But in fact, it is not at all that. It is your own thought that comes back to you. And the person may be absolutely unaware of all that has happened, for — and this is one of the commonest laws in occultism — if you make a formation, for instance a mental formation that an accident or something unpleasant should happen to a certain person and you send out this formation, if it so happens that this person is in a very high state of consciousness, does not at all wish anything bad, is quite indifferent and disinterested in the affair, the formation will come up against his atmosphere and instead of entering will rebound upon the one who has made it.


The Mother: In this way serious accidents have taken place. There were certain people who practised that low deformation of occultism which is called magic and they had made formations through magic against someone. But this person happened to be far above this and could not be touched by those formations. So they returned upon those people, fatally. If they had made a formation of death, it would have been they who died.


The Mother: I don’t know whether you remember or not the story of the  stones which fell in Sri Aurobindo’s house? Everybody knows it, so I won’t narrate it.   No. When a formation of this kind acts, it goes with a deﬁnite purpose.


The Mother: It has been made with a deﬁnite purpose. It acts and once its action is over, it disappears, it has no longer any   It was a formation for a particular action. When the action is accomplished, the formation dissolves. There are many other kinds of formations with more or less durable lives.


The Mother: I tell you it is a science — you cannot learn chemistry in an hour! But still, in a case like that, when the formation returns and strikes the one who has made it, it is ﬁnished. Its action is accomplished and comes to an end.  I narrated it to the little ones....  It is nine o’clock.


The Mother: You have no other questions? If I tell you the story...  Look here, I had another. How many stories can I tell you!  Well, the other one is very short.


The Mother: It is also interesting. It is about curing oneself of fear. (Perhaps Pavitra knows the name!)... There was a French scientist who had written a book in which he narrated an experience he had had in the    He wanted to know to what extent reason can have an effect over reﬂexes.


The Mother: I don’t remember now — for years I knew his name; I have forgotten it, but still the story remains. He was a well-known scientist and he has written about his experiment in a book. It is often quoted as an example. He was very much interested in knowing to what extent reason, intelligence with clear knowledge, could have an effect upon reﬂexes, that is, upon movements which come up spontaneously from the subconscious, automatic movements, and he made this experiment:  he went to the in Paris where not only plants but animals also are kept.


The Mother: And among these animals there were huge snakes. There was a snake there (I knew it, that snake), which had the reputation of having a very bad temper. That is, it could be made angry very easily. It was a very large snake and was very beautiful; it was black. And the scientist had been told by the keeper that this snake was very aggressive.


The Mother: These snakes are enclosed in huge glass cases, the glass being sufﬁciently thick to prevent any accident, as you may well imagine. So, he went to the cage of this serpent just when it was hungry (it had not eaten; when they have eaten they sleep). It had not eaten, so it was active. And he stood there in front of the cage, quite close to the glass and began exciting the snake — I don’t remember now what he did — until it started getting angry. Then it coiled up and shot out like a released spring against the glass, against the face of that gentleman who was on the other side, and the man — who knew very well that the glass was there and nothing could happen to him — jumped back!


The Mother: And he repeated the experiment several times, and not once could he control his movement of recoil. He recoiled — every time the snake jumped he recoiled!  ( )  So he has spoken of his experiment.


The Mother: But he lacked one element of knowledge, for he did not know that the physical movement was accompanied by a considerable vital projection of the nervous force of the snake, and that it was this that affected him. It was because of this. He tried in vain to remain  stiff, to tell himself, “But after all there is no danger, nothing can happen to me, there is the glass; why do I recoil?” ( )


The Mother: It was that which came and gave him a shock and he jumped back.  There you are, now, my children. The story of the stones for another day. It is too late now.   Because it was necessary to say this.


The Mother: Ah! There are many things I have not said. One must indeed begin one day. I don’t think or have the impression that there was any occasion for it so far.


The Mother: Perhaps it came as the result of an experience.... Why, yes, I thought later that people would see a special signiﬁcance in it, but there isn’t any! ( ) Perhaps within you there is something.  There is one thing I have noticed, that every time somebody dies in the Ashram, many people are seized by panic.


The Mother: Now, I cannot say I appreciate this very much! Perhaps it was because of that that I wrote this article. For truly it is high time we were free from these things — a sort of tremor. I remember, the ﬁrst time someone died in the Ashram, there was a veritable panic. I know lots of people of this kind, whom I won’t name; they came here (they were already quite old) with the idea that, because they lived here, they would not die!


The Mother: It was an old idea, a very long time ago. And the ﬁrst time someone died, it literally caused a panic. We received heaps of letters saying: “How is it possible?  But then we are not safe! I was obliged to tell them that immortal life is something acquired with much effort, and not only much effort but the renunciation of so many things that there is not one among all those who were protesting who would give up his attachments for this immortal life.


The Mother: That is, they would prefer to die  and keep their old habits to living immortally and losing them!  There are many things which must be given up.... I have just mentioned this by the way in that article, but there are yet many more. All the small personal satisfactions, generally, must disappear — satisfactions of all kinds. I remember having spoken to someone — that was a long time ago — of the possibility of physical transformation, and I told him that one of the results would be that one would no longer need to eat, that one would recuperate strength directly from the universal forces or else from the Divine.


The Mother: And this person in an absolute consternation said to me, “And all the ﬁne things one eats!” ( ) So, it is like that.  Which creation?


The Mother: Oh! Naturally. Why, even long before becoming immortal. If anyone wants in the least to transform himself, this is the ﬁrst thing that must stop. I have said it elsewhere, but...


The Mother: Oh, no! Not at all. That is not what I have said, besides. I said that if one wanted to conquer death it was necessary to begin by not fearing it, which is quite a different thing.


The Mother: But I have not said that it was fear that brought about death.   No. This is altogether something else and on another plane. I  have written elsewhere that one dies only when one consents to die — which seems to contradict what I have said here.


The Mother: But this is the truth. I have told you this once already, I believe; in any case, I have written it somewhere. There are two points of view.  Here I have taken quite an ordinary, material point of view, that of the physical consciousness. But I have explained somewhere that there are, as it were, different “layers of determinisms” in our being.


The Mother: The physical existence has a determinism; the vital existence has a determinism; the mental existence has a determinism; the higher mental, the psychic have a determinism. And then the higher existences have determinisms — the supramental existence has a determinism. And the determinism of everyone comes from the combination of all these determinisms (I am sure I have written this somewhere). If, for instance, at a given moment, when the entire physical determinism must necessarily bring death, you suddenly enter into contact with an extremely high determinism, like the supramental one, for example, and you succeed in joining the two, you change your physical determinism completely at that moment: death which had been determined by the physical determinism is abolished, and the conditions change and are pushed back.  I do not speak of this in that article.


The Mother: I have taken a purely material point of view. I have given the example of people (and people who lived almost exclusively in their material consciousness, their physical consciousness, you understand, mental, vital and material), and who eagerly wanted to die from the time they were ﬁfty — they lived to be eighty-seven! I have had an instance of that. I had another example the very opposite of this, of someone who ardently wanted to live very long, who felt that he had many very important things to do and that he must not die, and he took all kinds of precautions against that — and yet he died. There may be cases which seem contradictory, but that is only an appearance.


The Mother: There are explanations for all these things, they obey different laws. Here I have taken the purely material point of view.    If you do not make a higher determinism intervene, truly you can change nothing. That is the only way of changing your physical determinism.


The Mother: If you remain in your physical consciousness and want to change your determinism, you cannot... During the First War I knew a boy who had been told he would die of a gunshot (you know in war one dies easily), and he had even been given an approximate date. And that caused him such agony that he had succeeded in getting a long leave. He came to Paris on leave. He was an ofﬁcer and had his pistol in his pocket.


The Mother: He jumped from a tram and fell down, the pistol went off and he was killed on the spot. He could not escape.  I could narrate any number of such examples to you. But this belongs to a single plane, the material plane — the purely material physical, mental and vital plane. It is only a higher knowledge and a contact with the higher planes and the descent of these higher planes into the physical plane, which can change circumstances.


The Mother: So too, if one succeeded in bringing down the supramental plane permanently into the physical life, physical life would be transformed, that is, it would change totally. But only on this condition. I do not speak of this in that article, that’s another subject.   Anything else?


The Mother: I have been told — and this was one of the teachings of a very old tradition — that it was the inﬂuence of the adverse forces upon earth that had created fear, for it was their way of acting on human beings. But animals also feel fear. So that takes away a little from the strength of the argument, for I don’t think the adverse beings have any special interest in creating fear in animals.  Fear is a phenomenon of unconsciousness. It is a kind of anguish that comes from ignorance.


The Mother: One does not know the nature of a certain thing, does not know its effect or what  will happen, does not know the consequences of one’s acts, one does not know so many things; and this ignorance brings fear. One fears what one does not know. Take a child, if it is brought before someone it does not know (I am not speaking of a child with an awakened inner consciousness, I am speaking of an ordinary child), — you bring it before someone it does not know, its ﬁrst movement will always be one of fear. Only very rare children — and they have another consciousness — are very bold. It may also be a mixture of apprehension, a kind of instinct.


The Mother: When one instinctively feels that something is dangerous and hasn’t the means to remedy it, when one does not know what to do to protect himself from it, then he is afraid. There are, I believe, countless reasons for fear. But it is a movement of unconsciousness, in every case.  That which knows has no fear. That which is perfectly awake, which is fully conscious and which knows, has no fear.


The Mother: It is always something dark that is afraid.  One of the great remedies for conquering fear is to face boldly what one fears. You are put face to face with the danger you fear and you fear it no longer. The fear disappears. From the yogic point of view, the point of view of discipline, this is the cure recommended.


The Mother: In the ancient initiations, especially in Egypt, in order to practise occultism, as I was telling you last time, it was necessary to abolish the fear of death completely.  Well, one of the practices of those days was to lay the neophyte in a sarcophagus and leave him in there for a few days, as though he were dead. Naturally, he was not left to die, neither of hunger nor suffocation, but still he remained lying there as though he were dead. It seems that cures you of all fear.  When fear comes, if one succeeds in putting upon it consciousness, knowledge, force, light, one can cure it altogether.


The Mother: There is indeed the Christian religion which says that fear comes of our having eaten the apple in the Garden of Eden — that with knowledge came fear; and upon earth it is always this fear which governs all life, for all human beings. Only, here again I repeat  my argument that animals also have fear — animals have not sinned, haven’t eaten the apple, so they shouldn’t have any fear!  It is a half-consciousness mixed with a sort of ignorant instinct which stresses a danger and at the same time does not know its remedy. But certainly, the fact is that the adverse beings, beings of the vital world who ﬁght against the divine Work, make an extensive use of fear. It is through that that they have the strongest hold on human beings.


The Mother: Besides, they are not the only ones: there are also all the political and religious means which are of that type. There are religions which found their power over the believers simply through the fear of death and of what will happen thereafter, and of all catastrophes which await you after death if you do not obey blindly the laws they dictate to you.  This fear may also come from an antipathy, that is, a lack of afﬁnity with something. Some people are especially afraid of ﬁre, some especially fear water, others have a special fear of one animal or another. It comes from a disharmony between the vital vibrations.


The Mother: And then it is translated in this body-unconsciousness by fear. The body is a terribly unconscious thing. How one has to work to give it just a very little consciousness! It lives automatically, by habit. It is terribly unconscious.


The Mother: So, the sequel?  This is exactly what I have just explained. It is a very few who are capable of bringing down another determinism into the physical determinism. These can change the hour of death.


The Mother: This is exactly what I have just been explaining at full length. The power lies in bringing down a higher consciousness into the material consciousness, and with the higher consciousness bringing down a higher determinism which changes the material determinism.   And not many have that power. I have said a very few do. In fact it is a very, very few.


The Mother: Yes.  Yes, but they don’t all go into the world of death.  Yes, but that is only the beginning. One begins by learning how to go out of one’s body.


The Mother: Many people, when they sleep, go out of their body. They do it more or less consciously — the majority unconsciously, but still there are a few who do it consciously.  They go out of their body but remain in the physical domain.  At the most they go into some mental region but they do not go into the domain of death.  There are some who go there, but then, for the process to be complete...


The Mother: you must know that when one goes out of one’s body, one remains tied to the body by a certain number of links — what shall I call them? They may be vital links, links of the mind, psychic links — when one goes out, it can be all kinds of things which go out of the body. Usually what goes out is something quite subtle, like the mind or the higher vital, and much remains in the body, enough for the body not to enter into trance. Among sleepers some even move about often in their sleep: there is one part of their being which is exteriorised but the most material part of their vital being is in the body. And as  long as that is there, it is altogether in the domain of life.


The Mother: First of all, it is not easy to detach from the body exactly that part which leaves it at the moment of death. This asks for a very rigorous discipline practised for a very long time. There is a process of exteriorisation to follow in order to succeed in making all the parts which leave at death go out; and in this case the body  enters into a cataleptic state. It goes into the state in which it is found when one dies.


The Mother: It even becomes very rapidly completely rigid. Well, this is something one must learn to do, and it is not very easy; and if one wants to do it quite completely, somebody must always be there to watch the body so that nothing may happen. One can never do it all alone. Somebody must be there to guard the body.  But even if one does all that, that is not quite the experience I am speaking about.


The Mother: The experience I am speaking about is still much more difﬁcult. Once one has gone out like that and left his body in a cataleptic state, one cuts the links. So, one is really dead; that is, the heart beats no longer. But as there is still “the life of the form”, and it is not through an accident that one has left, as it is by an act of will with knowledge and power, one can force one’s way back, re-establish the connection and come back forcibly into one’s body. It is not a comfortable business — the whole thing is difﬁcult.


The Mother: Like that, on paper it seems to be nothing at all. But it is not easy.  Immortality! No, I have not said that this was immortality. I have said that they got rid of all fear of death.


The Mother: That is quite a different thing.    Yes, but the body is in a good condition. The body is in good order and one can ﬁnd it again — it is not a question of remaining outside for long like that!   their body is in good condition.


The Mother: But usually, when one dies something has happened to the body, you know. There is something seriously out of order in the body. But still, it is not yet certain that having gone out of one’s body, one cannot keep the ability to put what is disturbed back into order unless it is something very serious like a stab in the heart or when the head’s cut off! That is grave enough but still if the body remains intact, if it is only a disequilibrium, it can be re -established.


The Mother: If the links are broken? — One dies.  That, if it is conscious, remains absolutely conscious. It has its own independent life, it remains absolutely conscious. Cut off or not, that changes nothing in its life. It does not give it more consciousness, does not take away any from it — the consciousness it has, the knowledge it has, the power it has, these it keeps.


The Mother: One who is able to do this does not depend upon the body. That is, in order to be conscious, one does not depend at all — at all — upon the body. He has an altogether independent consciousness.  Every religion has spoken about it differently. The Greeks had their “Elysium”, one crossed over in a “boat”.


The Mother: There are all the paradises, all the hells.   Generally, “domain of death” is the name given to a certain region of the most material vital into which one is projected at the moment one leaves one’s body. The part — how to put it? — of one’s life that’s usually the most conscious is projected there at the moment of death. Well, that region, that material vital world is very dark, it is full of adverse formations having desires at their centre or even adverse wills, and these are very, very elemental entities which have a very fragmentary life and are like vampires, in the sense that they feed on all that is thrown out from human beings. And so, at that moment, from the shock of death — for very few die without a shock, go out consciously, in full knowledge of the thing, there are not many such — usually it is an accident: a last accident; well, at that shock of death, those entities rush in upon this, upon this vitality that goes out, and feed upon it.


The Mother: So long as a person is alive, they cannot touch him. For, you have all had the experience of a nightmare in which, when the situation becomes really very dangerous, suddenly you wake up — you come back into your body, for the body is your protection. In the physical they can do nothing to you but when you are completely outside the physical (and even this link I spoke about serves as a protection to a certain extent when you go out), but if the links are broken and you are entirely without a body, well, unless you take advantage of special circumstances... as for instance when a person is much loved by others who are yet alive; if at that moment these people who love him concentrate their thought and love on the departed one, he ﬁnds a refuge therein, and this protects him completely against those entities; but one who passes away without anyone’s having a special attachment for him, either because he is surrounded by people he has harmed and who do not love him or by people who are in a terribly unconscious state — he  is like a prey delivered to these forces. And that indeed is an experience that’s difﬁcult to bear.


The Mother: They cannot touch anything  else except what belongs to their own domain, that is, the most material vital — the higher vital escapes them altogether, they can do nothing there. And so, this material vital goes out but the other remains; and this higher vital is attacked by other dangers, simply that. And if it also disappears, the mind remains.  But behind all this is the psychic being which nothing can touch, which is above all possible attacks, and it indeed is free to go where it wants. Usually — unless it has a special opportunity and has reached a state of complete development — it goes to rest in the psychic worlds.


The Mother: There it enters into a kind of beatiﬁc contemplation in which it remains, and this is an assimilation of all its experiences, and when it has ﬁnished assimilating them and resting, well, it starts preparing to come down again for a new life. That being nothing can touch. But so very few are conscious of their psychic that one can hardly say that it is such and such a person whom one has known, for people as we know them are made of what? — of all their physical experiences, all their vital reactions, all their mental formations — that is, the body, the character, the thought — and with these we have a human being! Well, all that cannot persist after death unless it is organised and centralised around the psychic being and to the extent it is perfectly uniﬁed with the psychic. Otherwise all this mixture is dissolved and the psychic being alone remains, at times just as a ﬂame, at times as a completely conscious being.


The Mother: This of course is the general law. Now there are bridges, as it were, “protected passages” which have been built in the vital world in order to cross over all these dangers. There are atmospheres which receive people leaving their body, give them shelter, give them protection. There are all kinds of other conditions; what I have told you just now is the normal state of those who die, of ordinary human beings, but as soon as we come to a little higher type of humanity, all these conditions change. The general law remains unless there is a special higher development within the being.


The Mother: There are people with so total a cohesion in  their being that they no longer depend upon the body — not at all — whether it be there or not there.  But all this development does not come about just like that, simply by thinking about it from time to time, desiring it still less often and forgetting it most of the time — no, it is not like that that it can happen. These are disciplines, I may say, at least as arduous as the strictest spiritual disciplines.... Essentially it is for this that we are on the earth. Truly speaking, human beings were made for this purpose, to do that work, and it is perhaps because they refuse to do it that there is so much chaos in the world.


The Mother: If they did it truly, things would go much better.  My children, it is 9.20; if you have a very interesting question to ask, ask it!  That is quite another domain. That’s not the domain of death; it is a domain of the material vital, the most material vital, that which controls the physical, is just behind the physical — the material vital.  There was a time we were living in the Guest House.


The Mother: Sri Aurobindo lived on the ﬁrst ﬂoor, in the room right at the end which is now the meditation-room of the children’s boarding. I believe there are two rooms side by side, one used to be a bathroom but is now an ordinary room, and a room next to it which was mine — the bathroom and another room. Sri Aurobindo was on one side.  How many of us were there in that house? ...


The Mother: Amrita was there (), weren’t you, Amrita, do you remember that day? ( ) We had a cook called Vatel. This cook was rather bad-tempered and didn’t like being reproved  about his work.


The Mother: Moreover, he was in contact with some Musulmans who had it seems, magical powers — they had a book of magic and the ability to practise magic. One day, this cook had done something very bad and had been scolded — I don’t know if any of you knew Datta, it was Datta who had scolded him — and he was furious. He had threatened us, saying, “You will see, you will be compelled to leave this house.” We had taken no notice of it.  Two or three days later, I think, someone came and told me that stones had fallen in the courtyard — a few stones, three or four: bits of brick.


The Mother: We wondered who was throwing stones from the next house. We did exactly what we forbid children to do: we went round on the walls and roofs to see if we could ﬁnd someone or the stones or something — we found nothing.  That happened, I believe, between four and ﬁve in the afternoon. As the day declined, the number of stones increased. The next day, there were still more.


The Mother: They started striking specially the door of the kitchen and one of them struck Datta’s arm as she was going across the courtyard. The number increased very much. The interest was growing. And as the interest grew, it produced a kind of effect of multiplication! And the stones began falling in several directions at the same time, in places where there were neither doors nor windows; there was a staircase, but it had no opening in those days: there was only a small bull’s-eye.


The Mother: And the stones were falling on the staircase this way (); if they had come through the bull’s-eye, they would have come like this (), but they were falling straight down. So, I think everyone started to become truly interested. I must tell you that this Vatel had informed us that he was ill and for the last two days — since the stones had started falling — he hadn’t come. But he had left with us his under-cook, a young boy of about thirteen or fourteen, quite fat, somewhat lifeless and a little quiet, perhaps a little stupid.  And we noticed that when this boy moved around, wherever he went the stones increased.


The Mother: The young men who were there  — Amrita among them — shut the boy up in a room, with all the doors and windows closed; they started making experiments like the spiritists (): “Close all the doors, close all the windows.” And there was the boy sitting there inside and the stones began falling, with all the doors and windows closed!  And more and more fell, and ﬁnally the boy was wounded in the leg. Then they started feeling the thing was going too far.  I was with Sri Aurobindo: quietly we were working, meditating together.


The Mother: The boys cast a furtive glance to see what was going on and began warning us, for it was perhaps time to tell us that the thing was taking pretty serious proportions. I understood immediately what the matter was.  I must tell you that we had made an attempt earlier to exhaust all possibilities of an ordinary, physical explanation.  We had called in the police, informed them that there was somebody throwing stones at us, and they wanted very much to come and see what was happening. So a policeman — who was a ﬁne good fellow — immediately told us, “Oh!


The Mother: You have Vatel as your cook. Yes, yes, we know what it is!” He had a loaded pistol and stood waiting there in the courtyard — not a stone! I was on the terrace with Sri Aurobindo; I said to Sri Aurobindo, “That’s a bit too bad, we call the police and just then the stones stop falling! But that is very annoying, in this way he will think we haven’t told the truth, for no stones are falling.”


The Mother: Instantaneously the stones began falling again. ( )  You should note that the stones were falling quite a long way off from the terrace and not one of them came anywhere near us.  So the policeman said, “It’s not worthwhile, my staying here, I know what it is, it is Vatel who has done this against you, I am going.”


The Mother: It was after this that we made the experiment of shutting up the boy, and the stones began to fall in the closed room and I was informed that the boy had been wounded. Then I said, “All right, send the boy out of the house immediately. Send him to another  house, anywhere, and let him be looked after, but don’t keep him here, and then, that’s all. Keep quiet and don’t be afraid.”  I was in the room with Sri Aurobindo and I thought, “We’ll see what it is.”


The Mother: I went into meditation and gave a little call. I said, “Let us see, who is throwing stones at us now? You must come and tell us who is throwing stones.”... I saw three little entities of the vital, those small entities which have no strength and just enough consciousness conﬁned to one action — it is nothing at all; but these entities are at the service of people who practise magic. When people practise magic, they order them to come and they are compelled to obey.


The Mother: There are signs, there are words. So, they came, they were frightened — they were terribly frightened! I said, “But why do you ﬂing stones like that? What does it mean, this bad joke?” They replied, “We are compelled, we are compelled...


The Mother: ( ) It is not our fault, we have been ordered to do it, it is not our fault.”  I really felt so much like laughing but still I kept a serious face and told them, “Well, you must stop this, you understand!”  Then they told me, “Don’t you want to keep us?


The Mother: We shall do all that you ask.” “Ah!” I thought, “Let us see, this is perhaps going to be interesting.” I said to them, “But what can you do?” — “We know how to throw stones.”


The Mother: ( ) — “That doesn’t interest me at all, I don’t want to throw stones at anyone... but could you perchance bring me ﬂowers? Can you bring me some roses?” Then they looked at one another in great dismay and answered, “No, we are not made for that, we don’t know how to do it.”


The Mother: I said, “I don’t need you, go away, and take care specially never to come back, for otherwise it will be disastrous!” They ran away and never came back.  There was one thing I had noticed: it was only at the level of the roof that the stones were seen — from the roof downwards, we saw the stones; just till the roof, above it there were no stones.  This meant that it was like an automatic formation. In the air nothing could be seen: they materialised in the atmosphere of the house and fell.


The Mother: And to complete the movement, the next morning — all this happened in the evening — the next morning I came down to pay a visit to the kitchen — there were pillars in the kitchen — and upon one of the pillars I found some signs with numbers as though made with a bit of charcoal, very roughly drawn — I don’t remember the signs now — and also words in Tamil. Then I rubbed out everything carefully and made an invocation, and so it was ﬁnished, the comedy was over.  However, not quite. Vatel’s daughter was in the house, the maid-servant. She came early in the afternoon in a state of intense fright saying, “My father is in the hospital, he is dying; this morning something happened to him; suddenly he felt very ill and he is dying, he has been taken to the hospital, I am terribly frightened.”


The Mother: I knew what it was. I went to Sri Aurobindo and said to him, “You know, Vatel is in the hospital, he is dying.”  Then Sri Aurobindo looked at me, he smiled: “Oh, just for a few stones!” ( )


The Mother: That very evening Vatel was cured. But he never started anything again.  That’s what is remarkable. There are beings that have the power of dematerialising and rematerialising objects. These were quite ordinary pieces of bricks, but these pieces materialised only in the ﬁeld where the magic acted.


The Mother: The magic was practised for this house, especially for its courtyard, and the action of vital forces worked only there. That was why when I sent away the boy and he went to another house, not a single stone hit him any more. The magical formation was made specially for this house, and the stones materialised in the courtyard. And as it was something specially directed against Datta, she was hit on her arm.  There was yet something else....


The Mother: Ah, yes! We came to know later to which magician Vatel had gone. He had gone to a  magician who, it seems, is very well known here and he had said that he wanted deﬁnitely to make us leave that house — I don’t know why. He was furious. And so he asked the magician to make stones fall there.


The Mother: The magician told him, “But that’s the house Sri Aurobindo lives in!” He said, “Yes.” — “Ah! No, I am not going to meddle in this business; you manage it, I am not getting involved.” Then Vatel insisted very much; he even promised him a greater reward, a little more money.


The Mother: The magician said, “Well, look here; we are going to make a rule: in a circle of twenty-ﬁve metres around Sri Aurobindo” — I think he said twenty or twenty-ﬁve metres — “the stones will not fall. Always there will have to be twenty-ﬁve metres’ distance between the stones and Sri Aurobindo.” And he arranged his order of magic in this way. And that was why never did a single stone come anywhere near us, never. They fell at the other end of the courtyard.


The Mother: They know how to do all that, it is written in their books.  These are words and ceremonies having a certain power. Naturally, those who do that must have a vital force. A vital force is necessary — a little mental force also, not much, even very little — but quite a strong vital power to control these little entities, govern them. And these people rule them precisely through fear, for they have the power to dissolve them, so these entities fear this very much.


The Mother: But upon all these formations, all these entities, it is enough to put simply one drop of the true, pure light, the pure white light — the true, pure light which is the supreme light of construction — you put one drop upon them: they dissolve as though there had been nothing at all there. And yet this is not a force of destruction; it is a force of construction but it is so alien to their nature that they disappear. It is this they feared, for I had called them by showing them this white light; I had told them, “Look, here is this! Come.” But their offer was touching: “Oh!


The Mother: We shall do everything you want.” I said, “Good, what can you do?” — “Throw stones!” ( )   In the old spiritual doctrines, the body was always considered incapable of being transformed and only as something inert and useless obstructing the path — the spirit had to be made to go out of its body so that, free, it could have all possible experiences.


The Mother: And so they ill-treated the body as much as they could to take away from it its vitality and strength, to keep it very quiet like something utterly useless.   The physical consciousness was for them something to be done away with.  That was it. I am speaking as they themselves spoke.


The Mother: I am putting myself in their place.  A calm and a grateful submission?... When you receive an order, you may carry it out with resignation because you  have resolved to submit; so you carry out this order without any joy or pleasure, just very drily and superﬁcially, and you tell yourself, “I was told to do this and I am doing it.” This means that you do not try to understand and make no effort to adhere willingly to what is asked. This is resigned submission.


The Mother: You accept your fate and if you do not complain it is because you have determined not to complain, it is because of this determination, otherwise you would complain.  The other instance is of understanding why an order was given, of grasping its inner value and wanting to express what has been asked with all one’s strength, with the knowledge and joy that it is something that’s bound to bring the Divine closer and give you full satisfaction. Then you are happy, you are satisﬁed and you collaborate. That makes quite a considerable difference.  Usually one is very proud of oneself!


The Mother: One becomes vain, tells oneself that one is doing something remarkable. One doesn’t question, doesn’t try to understand: one obeys, and besides is resigned. One doesn’t even ask oneself if it is good or not: one is too superior! One is puffed up with pride. There are many people of this kind here.


The Mother: I think the other one is better. At least here one has the satisfaction of understanding why he does things; one does them with joy and feels strengthened through the very fact of doing them, while in the ﬁrst instance one bends the head lower and lower and feels as though one were a poor victim of some despotic authority crushing one with its omnipotence.   This comes much closer to ignorance and unconsciousness than to cruelty. They don’t do it because they are cruel — there are exceptions — but still, generally speaking, it is not that they feel a special pleasure in killing but they are afraid of a particular god and think that by such killing they will win his favour.  Close by here, near the seashore, there is a ﬁshermen’s temple — Virampatnam, I think; when you go as far as Ariancouppam and from there turn to the left and go towards the sea, at the end of the road there is a temple.


The Mother: It is the temple of a strange godhead... it is one of the Kalis. Well, extraordinary stories are told about this Kali, but in any case, the custom is to kill a fairly large number of chickens every year in her honour. I happened to go down there — I believe it was the day after the festival had been celebrated: one could still see all the feathers scattered on the sands — and, above all, there was in that place an atmosphere of creepy dread and total ignorance, and also (I don’t know the practice — who eats the chickens? whether it is the one who kills them or the priests — but here truly there were too many! If the priests ate all that they would be quite sick!


The Mother: So it must probably have been also the people who had killed the chickens), there was that atmosphere of greed, not only greed but of gluttony, of people who think about eating.  And there was that Kali who was particularly satisﬁed with all the vital forces of all those poor little chickens; they had been killed off by hundreds and each one had a little vital force which escaped when its throat was cut, and so that Kali was feeding upon all that: she was very happy. And there was evidently — I don’t know if it could be called cruelty, it was rather greed, — greed of vital forces, of a very unconscious vital force, for these poor chickens don’t have anything very conscious. And the whole thing created a very low, very heavy, very unconscious and painful atmosphere, yet not of the intensity of cruelty. So it  can’t be said that this practice is due to cruelty, I don’t think so.


The Mother: Perhaps some of these people, had they to sacriﬁce a little kid, a little lamb they loved, perhaps they would even ﬁnd this a little  sad. It is rather a great unconsciousness and a great fear. Oh, fear! In religions there is so much fear!


The Mother: Fear: “If I don’t do this or that, if I don’t cut the throat of a dozen chickens, disastrous things will happen to me all my life through or at least the whole of this year. My children will be ill, I shall lose my job, I won’t be able to earn my living; very, very unpleasant things will happen to me.”... And so, let us sacriﬁce the dozen chickens. But it is not from the desire to kill. It can’t be said that it’s through cruelty: it’s through unconsciousness.


The Mother: You know the story, don’t you? ... I did not know the place, but there is a bit of a road between Ariancouppam and this temple. And so, half-way, I was seated quietly in my car knowing nothing — I knew nothing, neither the story of that Kali nor of the chickens nor anything — I was seated in my car when suddenly I saw a black being coming, with hair all dishevelled, who asked me to make a pact. And she assumed a tone of great supplication and told me, “Ah!


The Mother: If you wish, if you wish to adopt me and come to help me, how many people would come, how very glorious this place would become.” She was a funny little creature. She was black, dishevelled, quite thin, she didn’t seem to be ﬂourishing much! Later I was told — I don’t know the story exactly, I can’t say — that some misfortune had befallen her: her head had been cut off, wasn’t that it? Something like that.


The Mother: ( ) Amrita, do you know the story of the Kali of Virampatnam?... No, you don’t? Someone had related it to me, anyway it was not very interesting, it was an unfortunate Kali.


The Mother: I told her to remain quiet and that I did not understand what she wanted of me, that I came... that if she had a sincere aspiration, well, there would be a response to her aspiration. The  next moment we reached the temple; then I began to understand that this was the person for whom the temple had been built.  Later we went to walk on the seashore under the casuarina trees, and there we saw all the feathers and drops of blood and the remains of the ﬁre — the ﬁre on which, evidently, people had cooked their chickens. And we asked for the story. And I knew then the story of that Kali and how, for that festival, chickens were massacred in great numbers.


The Mother: So, that’s it. I don’t suppose that creature felt any considerable satisfaction in seeing the chickens killed — I know nothing about it. As I said, all the proﬁt she could get out of it was the absorption of some vital forces coming out of the chicken. But it was evident that she felt an enormous satisfaction in seeing a large crowd — the more people came there and the more chickens were killed, the greater was the sign of success. This proved that she had become a person of considerable importance!


The Mother: And so in her ingenuousness she came to ask my help, telling me that if I wanted to help her and give her something of my vital force and vital presence, there would be still more people and more chickens! Then that would be a very great success. I replied that as things stood it was quite enough, that she should remain quiet.  The most material vital.  I don’t know.


The Mother: It is one of the Kalis — I have a vague impression that her head was cut off or that she was buried up to the neck or I don’t know what. Something like that. There is a story of a head which comes out of the sand, buried up to the neck.  But that, anyone in this country will tell you the story, I don’t remember it. It is a form of Kali — there are countless forms  of Kali.


The Mother: Each believer has his image, has his particular relation with a certain Kali. Sometimes it is their own Kali: there are family Kalis — lots of family Kalis. I knew families who had very dangerous Kalis. If what they wanted was not done, always some misfortune befell the family members. There was a very strong formation.


The Mother: I suppose it was the family members who were still more responsible than their Kali. And I knew people who, when the misfortune came, a real misfortune in the family — someone’s death — took the image of Kali and went and threw it into the Ganges.   No. She has a very close connection with the human mind.


The Mother: I believe these are almost exclusively constructions of the human mind.... But I have found that there is really a Ganapati — something I didn’t believe. I used to think it was a purely human formation, that story of the elephant head — but there is a being like that. I saw it, it is quite alive, and it is not a formation. So too there is a black Kali with her garland of skulls and her huge hanging tongue.


The Mother: I have seen her. I saw her entering my room with her eyes wide open. So I am sure she exists. And it was not a human formation: it was a being — a real being. Now, it is possible that some of the details may have been added by human thought.


The Mother: But still the being was a real being, it was not purely a formation.  Well, I believe she does fairly bad things! It is obvious that she takes a great pleasure in destruction.  That one — it was at the time of the First World War, the early days of the First War. I was here.


The Mother: I was staying in the house on Dupleix Street, Dupleix House. From the terrace of that house could be seen Sri Aurobindo’s room, the one in the Guest  House. Sri Aurobindo was staying there. He had two rooms and the small terrace. And from the terrace of Dupleix House the terrace of the Guest House could be seen.