The Mother: I don’t know if it can still be seen; that depends on the houses in between, but at that time it could. And I used to sit on the terrace to meditate every morning, facing Sri Aurobindo’s room. That day I was in my room, but looking at Sri Aurobindo’s room through a small window. I was in meditation but my eyes were open. I saw this Kali entering through my door; I asked her, “What do you want?”


The Mother: And she was dancing, a truly savage dance. She told me, “Paris is taken, Paris will be destroyed.” We used to have no news, it was just at the beginning of the war. I was in meditation. I turned towards her and told her, “No, Paris will not be taken, Paris will be saved”, quietly, just like this, but with a certain force.


The Mother: She made a face and went away. And the next day, we received the “dispatch”. In those days there were no radios yet, we had telegraph messages, “dispatches”, which were proclaimed, posted on the gate of the Government House.  We got the news that the Germans had been marching upon Paris, that Paris was not defended; the way was quite open, they had to advance only a few kilometres more and they would have entered the city. But when they saw that the road was clear, that there was nobody to oppose them, they felt convinced that it was an ambush, that a trap had been set for them.


The Mother: So they turned round and went back! () And when the French armies saw that, naturally they gave chase and caught them, and there was a battle. It was the decisive battle: they were stopped. Well, evidently it was that. It took this form: When I said to Kali, “No”, they were panic-stricken.


The Mother: They turned back. Otherwise, if they had continued to advance it would have been all over.  Well, my children, when you see her, you can tell me! She is not like that Kali. All I can tell you is that she is not black, she  doesn’t stick out a big tongue, and she doesn’t wear a necklace of human heads!


The Mother: Ah! You know there are ascetics who sleep on nails. Have you never seen them? I have seen some photographs myself.


The Mother: This sort of thing is done; they sleep upon a nail-bed. Even quite recently I saw a photograph like that. Well, they do that for... I don’t know if it is to prove their saintliness. You know, when they do this in public, one always suspects that it is a bit of histrionics.  But still there are those who can do it sincerely, in the sense that they don’t do it for display.


The Mother: And so these, if they are asked why they do it, say that it is to prove to themselves that they are detached from the body. And there are others who go still farther: they say that the body must be made to suffer in order to liberate the spirit. Well, if you ask me, I would say that behind this there is a vital taste for suffering which imposes suffering on the body because the vital takes a very perverse pleasure in suffering. I have known children who had hurt themselves somewhere or other and who pressed as hard as they could on the injury to make it hurt still more! And they took pleasure in it.


The Mother: I have known grown-ups also. Morally, it is a very wellknown fact. I spend my time telling people, “If you are unhappy, it is because you want to be. If you suffer, it is because you like suffering, otherwise you would not suffer.” This sort of thing I call unhealthy, for it is against harmony and beauty, it is a kind of morbid need for strong sensations.


The Mother: I don’t know if you know that China is a country where the most frightful tortures have been invented, unthinkable things.   When I was in Japan I asked a Japanese, who liked the Chinese very much (which is very rare) and always spoke very highly about China, why this was so. He told me, “It is because all the peoples of the Far East, including the Japanese themselves, have a very blunted sensitivity. They feel very little; unless the suffering is extremely strong, they feel nothing. And so this has compelled them to use their intelligence to invent extremely acute sufferings.”


The Mother: Well, all these people who are unconscious, the more unconscious they are, the more tamasic they are; the more blunted their sensibility, the more do they need strong sensations to feel something. And usually this is what makes people cruel, for cruelty gives very strong sensations. That kind of nervous tension obtained through suffering imposed upon somebody, that gives a sensation, and they need it in order to feel; otherwise they feel nothing. And that is why entire races are particularly cruel. They are very unconscious — vitally unconscious.


The Mother: They may not be unconscious mentally or otherwise, but they are unconscious vitally or physically — above all, physically.   That’s a psychological problem. It depends on where their sense of beauty is located. One may have a physical sense of beauty, a vital sense of beauty, a mental sense of beauty.


The Mother: If one has a moral sense of beauty — a sense of moral beauty and nobility — one will never be cruel. One will always be generous and magnanimous in all circumstances. But as men are made of many different pieces... For instance, I was thinking about all the artists I knew — I knew all the greatest artists of the last century or the beginning of this century, and they truly had a sense of beauty, but morally, some of them were very cruel.  When the artist was seen at his work, he lived in a magniﬁcent beauty but when you saw the gentleman at home, he had only a very limited contact with the artist in himself and usually he became someone very vulgar, very ordinary.


The Mother: Many of them did,  I am sure of it. But those who were uniﬁed, in the sense that they truly lived their art — those, no; they were generous and good.  I remember a very amusing story that Rodin told me. You know Rodin — not the man but what he has done? Rodin put a question to me one day; he asked me, “How can one prevent two women from being jealous of each other?” ()


The Mother: I said to him, “Ah, here’s a problem indeed! But won’t you please tell me why?” Then he told me, “It’s like this: most of my work I do in clay, at least much of it, before sculpting it in stone or casting it in bronze. And so this is what happens: at times I go away for a day or two or more. I leave my clay models covered with wet cloth because if it dries up it cracks and all the work is lost, I have to do it over again.”


The Mother: All sculptors know this. And this is what happened to that poor man: he had a wife, and he had his favourite model who was quite... very intimate in the house, she came in when she liked — she was the model he used for his sculptures. Now, the wife wanted to be the wife. And when Rodin was absent, she came early every morning to the studio and sprinkled water on all the cloths, all the heads or bodies, everything. It was all covered up, wrapped in wet cloth.


The Mother: Water is sprinkled upon it as on plants. So she came and sprayed them.  And then, after a while, two or three hours later, there came the model who had the key to the studio. She opened the studio and she sprayed them. She saw very well that it was all wet, but she had the privilege of looking after the sculpture of her sculptor — and so she sprayed it.


The Mother: “And so,” said Rodin to me, “the result is that when I return from my travels, all my sculpture is melting and nothing of what I had done is any longer there!”  He was an old man, already old at that time. He was magniﬁcent. He had a faun’s head, like a Greek faun. He was short, quite thick-set, solid; he had shrewd eyes.


The Mother: He was remarkably ironical and a little... He laughed at it, but still he would have preferred to ﬁnd his sculpture intact!   I don’t remember now. ( )


The Mother: Perhaps I answered by a joke.  No, I remember one thing, I asked him, “But why don’t you say: this one will sprinkle the water?” He then pulled at the little hair that was left on his head and said, “But that would be a ﬁght with knives.” ( )


The Mother: , good night.   Because there is a very close connection between dreams and the condition of the stomach. Observations have been made and it has been noticed that in accordance with what is eaten, dreams are of one kind or another, and that if the digestion is difﬁcult, the dream always turns into a nightmare — those nightmares which have no reality but still are nightmares all the same and very unpleasant — seeing tigers, cats, etc.... Or else you experience things like... for instance, you are facing a great danger and must hurry up, get dressed quickly and go out, and then you can’t dress, try as you will, you can’t put on your things, you don’t ﬁnd your things any more, and if you want to put on your shoes they never ﬁt you, and if you want to go somewhere very fast, the legs don’t move any longer, they are paralysed and you are stuck there making formidable efforts to advance, and you can’t move. It is this kind of nightmare that comes from a disordered stomach.


The Mother: Why? Because they do so. There is no moral reason. It is a fact.


The Mother: There is a poison in alcohol, there is a poison in tobacco; and this poison goes into the cells and damages them. Alcohol is never expelled, so to say; it accumulates in a certain part of the brain, and then, after the accumulation, these cells no longer  function at all — some people even go mad because of it, that is what is called, the result of having swallowed too much alcohol which is not absorbed but remains in this way concentrated in the brain. And it is so radical even that... There is a province in France, for instance, which produces wine, a wine with a very low percentage of alcohol: I believe it is four or ﬁve per cent, a very low percentage, you understand; and these people, because they make it, drink wine as one drinks water. They drink it neat, and after some time they become ill.


The Mother: They have cerebral disorders. I knew people of this kind, the brain was disordered, didn’t function any more. And tobacco — nicotine is a very serious poison. It is a poison that destroys the cells. I have said that it is a slow poison because one doesn’t feel it immediately except when one smokes for the ﬁrst time and it makes one very ill.


The Mother: And this should make you understand that it ought not to be done. Only, people are so stupid that they think it is a weakness and so continue until they get used to the poison.  And the body no longer reacts, it allows itself to be destroyed without reacting: you get rid of the reaction.  It is the same thing physically as morally. When you do something you ought not to do and your psychic tells you in its still small voice not to do it, then if you do it in spite of that, after a while it will no longer tell you anything, and you will no longer have any inner reactions at all to your bad actions, because you have refused to listen to the voice when it spoke to you.


The Mother: And then, naturally, you go from bad to worse and tumble into the hole. Well, for tobacco it is the same thing: the ﬁrst time the body reacts violently, it vomits, it tells you, “I don’t want it at any cost.” You compel it with your mental and vital stupidity, you force it to do so; it doesn’t react any longer and so lets itself be poisoned gradually until it decomposes.  The functioning deteriorates; it is the nerves that are affected; they no longer transmit the will because they are affected, they are poisoned. They no longer have the strength to transmit the will.


The Mother: And ﬁnally people begin to tremble, they have nervous  movements. There are quite a few, one doesn’t need to go very far to ﬁnd them. And they are like that only because they have committed excesses: they drank and smoked. And when they lift an object, their hands shake () That’s what one gets by doing this.  Usually it is...


The Mother: Perhaps they have a very weak vital build: their nerves may be weak, they may have a weak nervous system; perhaps it is that, perhaps it is a birth defect. But it could also be a mental weakness, because while it is true that a healthy body gives strong nerves, it is still more important to have healthy thoughts in order to have solid nerves. If your thought is not healthy, if your feelings and thoughts are bad so to speak, your nerves become very bad, still worse. For instance, those who entertain all kinds of unhealthy fancies, those who like unhealthy reading, unhealthy conversations — there are many of this kind, there is a large number of them — well, they may lose all control over their nerves, they may become extremely nervous and yet have a body that’s in a ﬁne condition and very healthy. Unhealthy conversations and reading — I can tell you that there’s nothing worse than that, and when you do sadhana truly, when you are really trying to progress, you notice that when you say useless words, no matter how few they are, immediately there is a terrible uneasiness which gets hold of you; you feel as though all the nerves of the head were being pulled and there is also something churning here () which hurts you, and you feel a great emptiness within and have heartburn, as though you had eaten something very bad — all this only because of some uselessly spoken words.


The Mother: Besides, it is a sure indication: as soon as the uneasiness begins, one knows one must stop: “Now it is ﬁnished. ” Only, most people are so unconscious that they don’t even notice it, and with their warped will they compel their  system to do what it should not. So, the system is more or less docile, obeys and continues to deteriorate slowly, in this way, without even showing visible reactions.  This is quite well known in yogic disciplines in India, when one begins to become conscious of one’s energies and have control over them.


The Mother: You know, don’t you, the theory of the different “centres” where the energies are concentrated? Generally, it is said that there are ﬁve. But the true number is seven or even twelve. Anyway, these centres are centres of accumulation of energy, energies which control certain activities. Thus, there is an accumulation of energy at the sex-centre, a great accumulation of energy, and those who have control over these energies succeed in mastering them and raising them up, and they place them here ().


The Mother: And here is the centre of the energies of progress. This is what is called the seat of, but it is the energies of progress, the will to progress, that are here. So the energies concentrated in the sexcentre are pulled upwards and placed here. And they increase considerably, so that the sex-centre becomes absolutely calm, peaceful, immobile.  The ordinary practice for controlling these energies is to manage to “uncoil” the Kundalini which is coiled up at the base of the spine and raise the energies through the spinal column to the different centres, and awaken the centres, open them, wake  them up and set them in motion one after another right up to the top of the head, and then, go out from up there.


The Mother: And when one has succeeded in doing this (this is the ﬁrst practice), when one has uncoiled the Kundalini, next to master it, guide and develop it, to guide it to all the centres, awaken all these centres. Once that has been done, one is master of the functioning. Once one is master of the functioning, instead of leaving the energies in places where they are not wanted, one pulls them up and puts them in places where they are useful, and uses them in this way for progress, for transformation.  All this is the result of enlightened, assiduous, very patient practice; this is not done, while thinking of other things or playing about. These are disciplines.


The Mother: Naturally, once one is master of the working, it becomes very interesting. But this is not done in a ﬂash without one’s doing what is necessary.   What?  Human?


The Mother: Why, haven’t I said it? It is Love. When it becomes human love, it is as I have described it. Love in its origin is divine love. Love in man, that is, love grown human, is distorted, deformed; it is only divine love which is pure.


The Mother: Developing through sensations? It is very much in fashion.  It is much in fashion. Now in the schools certain disciplines are invented to develop children’s power of observation, the quickness of decision, of choice, the capacity to reckon with the  eyes, appreciation, all that.


The Mother: All kinds of games are made for children now, to teach them all that. The sense of hearing can also be developed, the sense of smell, the sense of sight — all these can be methodically developed. If, instead of merely living in one’s sensations — this is “pleasant or unpleasant”, this is “pleasing or displeasing” and all kinds of things which are perfectly useless — one succeeds in calculating, measuring, comparing, noting, studying in detail all the vibrations.... You see, human beings live like blind men, constantly, absolutely unconscious, and they plunge into sensations and reactions, all the impulses, and so it is pleasant, it is unpleasant, it is pleasing, it is displeasing, all that.  What is all that, then?


The Mother: What’s the sense in it? — None at all. One ought to be able to appreciate, calculate, judge, compare, note, know exactly and scientiﬁcally the full value of the vibrations, the relations between things, study everything, everything — for instance, study all sensations in connection with the reactions they produce, follow the movement from the sensation to the brain, and then follow the movement of response from the brain to the sensations. And in this way one succeeds in controlling one’s will, one’s sensations completely, to such an extent that if there is something one does not want to feel, it is enough, with one’s will, to cut it off: one feels it no longer. There are many disciplines of this kind.


The Mother: Some of them keep you busy for a lifetime, and if they are well followed, you don’t waste a moment and are altogether interested. You no longer have time for impulses, this takes away all impulses. When you become scientiﬁc in these studies, you are no longer like a cork: one wave sending you here, another sending you there! There is a passing movement of Nature. Nature, oh how she plays with men!


The Mother: Good heavens, when you see how it is, oh! Truly it is enough to make you revolt. I don’t understand how they do not revolt.... She sends round a wave of desire, and they are all like sheep running after their desires; she sends round a wave of violence, they are once again like other sheep living in violence, and so on, for everything. Anger — she just does “poof”, and  everybody gets into a rage.


The Mother: She has but to make a gesture — a gesture of her caprice — and the human mobs follow. Or else it passes from one to another, just like that; they don’t know why. They are asked, “Why?” — “Well, suddenly I felt angry.  Suddenly I was seized by desire.” Oh!


The Mother: It is shameful.  Good night.   What haven’t you understood?  You are breaking up the sentence wrongly. ( )


The Mother: There are three sources, you know. The third source is usually closed to people; it comes to them only in moments of great aspiration. When they have a very great aspiration and rise towards higher forces, at that time the vital can receive these higher forces into itself; and then this becomes a source of considerable energy for it. But in its ordinary, habitual life it is not in contact with these forces — unless, of course, it is  transformed; but I am speaking of the ordinary vital in ordinary life. It is not open to this source of higher forces, and for it this is even altogether non-existent.


The Mother: In the immense majority of people all their vital force comes to them from below, from the earth, from food, from all the sensations. From food... they draw vital energy out of food, and they... it is by seeing, hearing, touching, feeling that they contact the energies contained in matter. They draw them in this way.


The Mother: This is their customary food.  Now, some people have a very developed vital which they have subjected to a discipline — and they have a sense of immensity and are in contact with the world and the movements of world-forces. And so they can receive... if they aspire and call... they can receive the universal vital forces which enter them and renew the amount of energy they need.  There are others, very rare ones — or maybe in very rare moments of their individual life — who have an aspiration for the higher consciousness, higher force, higher knowledge, and who, by this call, draw to themselves the forces of higher domains. Then this also renews in them very special energies, of a special value.


The Mother: But unless one is practising yoga, a regular discipline, usually one does not often contact this source; one draws from the same level or from below.   How? But it is through sensations that you learn: by seeing, observing, hearing. Classes develop your sensations, studies develop your sensations, the mind receives things through sensations.


The Mother: By the education of the senses the growth of one’s general education is aided; if you learn to see well, exactly, precisely; if you learn to hear well; if you learn through touch to know the nature of things; if you learn through the sense of smell to distinguish between different odours — all these are a powerful  means of education. In fact, they should be used for this, as instruments of observation, control and knowledge. If one is sufﬁciently developed, one can know the nature of things through sight; through the sense of smell one may also know the value, the different nature of things; by touch one can recognise things.  It is a question of education; that is, one must work for it.  For example, there is a considerable difference between the vision of ordinary people and that of artists.


The Mother: Their way of seeing things is much more conscious and complete than that of ordinary people. When one has not trained one’s vision, one sees vaguely, imprecisely, and has impressions rather than an exact vision. An artist, when he sees something and has learnt to use his eyes — for instance, when he sees a ﬁgure, instead of seeing just a form, like that, you know, a form, the general effect of a form, of which he can vaguely say that this person resembles or doesn’t much resemble what he sees — sees the exact structure of the ﬁgure, the proportions of the different parts, whether the ﬁgure is harmonious or not, and why; and also of what kind or type or form it is; all sorts of things at one glance, you understand, in a single vision, as one sees the relations between different forms.  When you have trained your eyes to see things with exactness, you can do so; it is an exercise you can quite easily do.  For example, you have to put something, an object or a number of things, into a box.


The Mother: An ordinary person will need to take the tape-measure and measure the box to ﬁnd out precisely what is needed. The man who has trained his eyes will see the things which are to be put in and at a glance will see which box is required; or perhaps, if there is a liquid to be poured, he will know the exact size of the bottle, because his eye is used to measuring things and he can, by seeing the thing, know its exact size. For instance, see another example: you have to put a ring on someone’s ﬁnger. Ordinary people are obliged to take the rings and try them on one after another till they ﬁnd one of the right size. He who has trained his eyes looks at the ﬁnger and  then at the rings; he won’t be deceived and will immediately pick up the ring which ﬁts exactly, without making a mistake.


The Mother: Well, this kind of training for the eyes can also be given to hearing, in order to distinguish sounds and all the qualities of sound. It can be given to the sense of smell, to distinguish odours and the different qualities of odours; for taste, the same thing.  And if you approach things with this idea — of studying, of wanting to develop exactitude of perception and the relation between things — then, instead of living in sensations for sensations’ sake (that is, “Oh, this is pleasant” or “this is unpleasant”, “I like this, I don’t like that” and all this kind of foolishness), you know the quality of things, their use and their interrelations through this study of the senses. This puts you in contact with the world in a completely conscious way. For everything, the least detail...


The Mother: For example, you are obliged to cook and want to prepare a good dish. Well, if you have not trained your senses you will have to try out a little of this and a little of that and then taste it and again correct, arrange. If you have trained your taste you know very well — the taste and smell at the same time, these two are very close and must complement each other — you know what kind of food you are cooking, you get the smell of the thing you are cooking and then, because of the smell and the nature of the thing you will know exactly what more you can put in to complete the taste, what you must add of this thing or that, all kinds of ingredients, you see, to combine things; combine the different vegetables, for instance, or the different tastes of things, in such a way that they make a homogeneous whole.  And then you will have a dish without needing to taste it every three minutes to ﬁnd out if you have put enough salt or pepper, enough butter or...


The Mother: You will know exactly what should be done and will do it without a mistake.   It is the same thing for smell. If you have trained your sense of smell, for instance, you can mix things in exact proportions, know the nature... the nature of a perfume, for example, know  with which other perfume... Take ﬂowers; you smell them.


The Mother: Well, there are smells which do not harmonise. If you put them together it makes something that grates, that has no... harmony, unity. But if you have cultivated your sense of smell, when you get one particular odour you know exactly what kind of smells can go harmoniously with it. And you will be able to bring close things made to go together.


The Mother: With colours it is the same thing. The education in colours is tremendous — in both detail and complexity. If you learn how to distinguish all the colours, to know to what family of colours each belongs, what kind of harmony it can bring about — you can know, it is the same thing. You can keep the memory of the colour as you keep the memory of the form. You want to match all your things...


The Mother: for example, you want to match two things: you want to match a cloak with a skirt or a... well, anything at all... or maybe one kind of cloth with another. Usually you are obliged to take one and then go and compare it with the others; and ﬁnally, after many trials, if you are not too clumsy, you ﬁnish by ﬁnding it. But if you have the training in colour, you look at the colour once and go straight to what matches with it, without any hesitation, because you remember exactly the nature of this colour and go to a colour that can harmonise with it.  But you see, in order to educate yourself you can make lots and lots of... almost games, can’t you? You have a whole series of things, take anything you like: bits of cloth, anything at all, bits of ribbons, little bits of paper, many different colours.


The Mother: And then you arrange them to make a scale, and you see in what order they have to be put. By the side of this one, which should go? By the side of this other, which should go? And so on. And you make an uninterrupted scale in such a way that nothing shouts and you can go from one extreme of colour to the other.


The Mother: There are countless opportunities for doing things like that.  One doesn’t use them. But if you look at the problem from the point of view of education, you have constantly an opportunity  for educating yourself, constantly. It seems people make terrible mistakes in taste; if you knew, from the point of view of artistic harmony, you simply live in a chaos! Take just the relations of colours — there are many other things, there is the relation of forms which is more complicated still — but the relation of colours: you take a colour and put it beside another; and it happens that these groups of colours don’t go together.


The Mother: Then, if you have no training, sometimes you are not even aware of it.  Sometimes you say, “Oh, it is not very pretty.” But you don’t know why, you are not at all conscious of the reason. But when you are trained, when you have trained your eye, ﬁrst of all you never make a mistake like this, you never bring together two things which don’t go together; and if by chance, on someone else you see things which are not at all made to go together, you don’t have that vague kind of feeling which says, “Oh, it is not pretty, oh, it is not good”, a kind of vague thing... you don’t know why it isn’t pretty, it isn’t pleasant.


The Mother: And it is precisely because one colour belongs to one class and the other to another class of colours, and if you bring together these two different classes without some intermediary colours to harmonise them, they shriek. You can immediately ﬁnd the remedy because you know where the fault lies.  Well, from the point of view of forms it is the same thing, you know. You arrange a room. You place anything at all anywhere at all and then, when entering, someone who has a sense of harmony feels uneasy.


The Mother: He feels he is entering a chaos. But if you have the sense of colour and form, you must add to it the sense of order and organisation; but still, even without this utilitarian sense of order and organisation, if you have the true sense of form — of forms which can complement and harmonise with one another, and of colours which can complement and harmonise with one another — when you have to arrange a room, even if you have just three pieces of furniture, you will put them in the right place. But most people do not know, it makes no difference to them. They think only of one thing: “Oh, it will be  more convenient to have this here and more convenient to have that there!” And then, sometimes they don’t even think of this, they put things anywhere at all.


The Mother: But when they enter their room, the place where they have to live for several hours of the day, they enter a confusion and disorder; and if they are not sensitive they do not become aware of it, they do not feel uneasy. However, this does not help to bring about an inner harmony while if one has... You have a room like that; in this room which has certain dimensions, you have to put a given number of articles of furniture, not more, not less; and you must arrange them in a particular order. For example, there is a harmony of lines, you see; and if you place things without considering this harmony of lines, immediately you get the impression of something jarring. But if you know where a curve is required, where an angle, where something small is needed and where something large, and you put things in order...


The Mother: Take just four articles of furniture: you can put them in the right place or the wrong one; and it happens that if you truly have good taste and are well trained, your organisation is not only harmonious but the most practical. Some people, you know, pile up a considerable number of things in one small place and put them so clumsily that they can’t even move without knocking against something.  I know people of this kind. They enter their room and spend their time bumping against this and that; and so they have to go round about and make all kinds of extraordinary movements in order to be able to use the things they need. And they don’t give it a thought, they don’t give it a thought, it happened like that....


The Mother: Most people are so unconscious that when they are asked, “Why is it like that?” — “It happened like that, it is like that.”  It happened like that, you see, by chance! And they live all their life “by chance”, things happen like that.... Well, this is indeed a lack of the education of the senses. If you really train them in the true way, ﬁrst of all you escape immediately from this unbearable thing: “It is pleasant, it is unpleasant, this pleases, that  displeases....


The Mother: Oh, what an unpleasant sensation!” One doesn’t know why, besides, it is just this. And then, suddenly, “Ah, how pleasant it is!”  And then again, you eat too much of something because you ﬁnd it good, and you make yourself ill. Or again you can’t take a remedy because it is not pleasant and so...


The Mother: you don’t even have a remedy — I mean something that does you good! Many times I have to tell people, “But why don’t you take this?” — “Oh, it is so bad!” But if it does good, it should not seem bad to you. If you are conscious, you ought to feel the good it does and that prevents you from ﬁnding it bad.  It is the ignorance of the senses which betrays you to this feeling.


The Mother: You see, you can begin the training when quite small, quite small, and you can continue for more than a hundred years. And then, truly, within yourself to begin with, you never grow old because it is always interesting and always you make progress; and ﬁnally, after some time, not very long, something like about twenty years — that’s not much — you succeed in using your senses in a logical, rational, useful way and this helps you to enter into contact with the world consciously. Otherwise you go like half-blind people groping in the darkness there, like this (), trying to ﬁnd your way and at every step bumping into something. Or maybe, you mistake the road and then you must begin again. You make a mistake, you must correct it.


The Mother: And I tell you, it is like a small exercise you can do, which can be done during any... “Why is it like that? Why have you done that?” — “I don’t know.” — “Why have you arranged this in this way?”


The Mother: — “I don’t know.” If you are honest to yourself, you will be obliged to say to yourself a hundred times a day, “I don’t know.”  I don’t think there’s one in a hundred who does things consciously and deliberately and who is in tune with an inner principle of taste or sense of harmony. There are people like that, but not many, not very many. And even those who have an innate taste (there are people with an innate taste, whose senses  are reﬁned from birth — they should show some gratefulness to their parents always, for it is something very rare and they must have been born under a lucky star), even these can reach through education an extraordinary perfection.


The Mother: To develop the faculty of observation, nowadays they do — it is in fashion — they do exercises. I think... I don’t know, perhaps you are made to do them also, all kinds of exercises of all types; as for example, putting a certain number of objects on a table, like that. And then the students are called in — certain objects are put in certain places: they come in, stay for a few seconds and go out again. And then they are asked what was on the table.


The Mother: Now it is interesting to see who has observed. They know, of course, that they have to see something; they are informed beforehand, not even taken by surprise. They are informed, they are told, “You are to look.”  And so, those who can tell exactly how many objects there were and where they were, these are ﬁrst-class ones. But you can do it for yourself as an exercise, it is very interesting.


The Mother: You go somewhere... you go to a friend’s and then come out after a while and ask yourself, “Where was the furniture? How was it arranged? What were the objects on the table?” You will see whether you can remember and have observed clearly or not.


The Mother: What was the colour of the curtains? What was the colour of the cushions? All kinds of things; it is a boundless ﬁeld of experience.  Well, you must train it.  Well, you develop it, you develop it.


The Mother: Everything can be developed, methodically. This is again something else, this kind of submission to fate. “Oh, my eyes are bad! Oh, my nose does not work! Oh, my ears are of no use!”


The Mother: And what’s more, one spends his time repeating, “My eyes are bad”, so this becomes  worse and worse. Unless there is, you see — yes, of course, there can be people who from their birth have no eyes at all. But then that is hopeless, one cannot mend them. But those who have just... most people have one organ which is bad because they did not know how to use it, because from their very childhood they have not made good use of it; and in every case one can improve it so much — by education — so much that it becomes quite sufﬁcient.


The Mother: Of course you will tell me there are people who don’t have legs and others who don’t have ﬁngers or who... This may happen; but to these I won’t say, “Use your legs or your ﬁngers!”  I am not so unreasonable. But I think that if children are taken very young, there are very few who cannot be set right so much so that they become normal — if not exceptional at least normal. Naturally, there can be accidents, that is something else.


The Mother: But even with an accident one can lessen its importance and its consequences through an appropriate education at the proper time. You see, it is exactly the same thing as the woodland or virgin forest and the cultivated garden. Obviously, the woodland or virgin forest can have its beauty but in any case it is a chaos: it is the beauty of chaos. On the other hand, say you have a cultivated garden: you can in a given space have all kinds of ﬂowers, for example, and produce the maximum number of things. Well, a human body is like that.


The Mother: If it grows up like that, as it wants, it is a woodland or a virgin forest, a jungle. But if you take it very young and take great care of it, well, it can become a very beautiful garden; and yet the elements are the same. You are not asked to change the nature of the ground, you are told to cultivate it, instead of letting it go its own way in disorder.  Some people, of course, will tell you, “Oh, the woodland is beautiful, it is more beautiful than a garden!” It depends on how one sees things; but then we shall not speak about education any longer, it is not worthwhile.


The Mother: We shall no longer speak of selfmastery, it is not worthwhile. We won’t speak of discipline any more, we won’t speak of yoga any more, we shall leave Nature  to go her own way as she wants. It amuses her but doesn’t amuse certain people. So these prefer to do otherwise. Those who are amused by it can continue if they like, but those who are not must have the power to do otherwise.


The Mother: There are some who ﬁnd that everything is all right. They feel this until something fairly unpleasant happens to them; then, at that time the little ego says, “Oh, yes! It is no longer as good as I thought.” Yet for a time some people say, “Why! But I have no fault to ﬁnd with the world.


The Mother: It is quite charming.” Let them enjoy their world. But otherwise, if we want to make something of it, well, we must cultivate our garden. Here we are!  Well, you can ask one...


The Mother: If I ﬁnd it interesting I shall reply, if not we shall leave it. What is it? Give me a sample.   (Another child)


The Mother: (Another child)  What, what?   Ah, yes. I saw the photographs, yes.


The Mother: How did it happen? But I don’t know about it. I know nothing about this adventure. I saw a photograph, that’s all; and I did not  ﬁnd it at all interesting and thought a lot of noise was being made about something quite uninteresting. The child was hideous.


The Mother: A little monstrosity. That’s all.  Perhaps it wanted this accident, what do you know about it? It could have just this desire to have an experience of this kind. I don’t know.


The Mother: I saw the photograph... there didn’t seem to be much of a psychic being there! ( ) It was rather a rudimentary something, a possibility which will be realised after centuries and centuries. Still, even if it was a conscious psychic being which wanted an experience, perhaps it wanted this one, perhaps it asked itself: “What kind of sensations does one have if nursed by a wolf instead of a woman?”


The Mother: This should not be very thrilling; still perhaps it was someone who had been struck by the history of the foundation of Rome and wanted to see how it felt, if it was true; but in any case it did not succeed. Kipling’s story is ﬁner than this real history. The little child there was nursed by a wolf... his name was... Mowgli, wasn’t it?


The Mother: But at least he was good, he was nice; while this child is a horror. It is something... it is not interesting. Are these the kind of questions people ask you?  This type?


The Mother: Something better than this?  But you don’t have these for today? No? Then we shall stop.   It is just another way of speaking about the Supermind.


The Mother: Gnostic — it means Knowledge, but the true knowledge. It is the knowledge aspect of the supramental realms.   Um!... And so? What do you want to know?


The Mother: Yes, words serve merely as a means of communication between one mind and another. That is their only justiﬁcation. But if the mind is clear and powerful enough to communicate without using words, it communicates much better, much more clearly and precisely and much more exactly. And then words are not needed.


The Mother: Yes, one may try an experiment. For instance, when two people have attuned their minds, if one thinks, “Why, that object ought to be here instead of being there”, the other goes quite naturally looking for the object and puts it in its place. He understands quite clearly, he doesn’t need to be told. Or else one thinks,“It is time to go out”, or else, “I need such and such a thing”, the other will understand perfectly well and does not need to be told. Before reaching so far, something happens very frequently — I am speaking of those who exercise a control over themselves and are conscious, people living together — one answers a question that the other has not spoken.


The Mother: He had it in his mind, and the other answers: “Why, yes, that’s how it is; no, that was not done.” The other person has not asked but he has heard, has understood, received the message. That happens  often, doesn’t it? And then, even in things where it is necessary to say something, well, instead of saying ten words you may say one, and it is sufﬁcient, the rest is understood, known. And this direct communication is an experience which one may have very easily.


The Mother: If you speak with another person and don’t have a sufﬁcient mental contact with him, he will use words which you are accustomed to use in a particular sense and you won’t understand him at all, it is as though you did not speak the same language. After a while, if you meet several times and are attuned mentally, you begin to understand each other.  Indeed, words serve only as a vehicle for something that is beyond words and can be expressed without words for those who have a sufﬁciently developed and precise instrument. When one is truly in the realm of thought, words diminish the meaning. They reduce it, make it narrow, limited, they take away its power.


The Mother: Thought which is projected directly is much more powerful than that expressed through words. Words reduce, limit, harden, take away the suppleness and true strength — the life. It is simply because men’s apparatus is ill-adjusted that we can’t have telegraphy without words. If the sets were very well tuned in, one would not have to say even ten words in the whole day, and yet be understood all the while.  Yes, what is there in this that cannot be understood?


The Mother: It’s a constant fact!  No other questions? You don’t have courage?  (Another child)   I have only said that one cannot remain still.


The Mother: You say, “does not move forward much” — one may go forward just a very little!  And that is enough for not moving backward. But if one is not very careful all the time, as one is made up of a lot of pieces, if he doesn’t have the habit of dragging along those parts which lag behind, he may advance on one side and go backward on another. That happens. And then the sum total is not very, very satisfactory.


The Mother: In ordinary life, with ordinary people, this happens all the time. For instance, take someone who is studying, working — a scientist making discoveries. He progresses in his studies, he knows more and more. But as he does not take any care of his inner life or private life or outward life, he may become more and more backward or unconscious or even full of nasty defects; even though he progresses from the scientiﬁc point of view, as a man he may become an absolutely regrettable being. That’s quite a frequent occurrence.


The Mother: And for oneself, if one does not take good care, one may have a part which is progressing and another that’s going backward. If one does not keep a close watch, if one does not control one’s outer movements, if one does not take a special care not to allow the vital to go according to its own fancy, well, he will suddenly realise that he has formed very bad habits and is following a very nasty road though the mental part of the being was full of aspiration and progressing in knowledge and even in the spiritual life. If one does not pay attention, things slide very easily into a hole: one takes a false step, then slips and suddenly bumps against the bottom of the hole. Then one asks oneself, “But how did this come about? What happened?”


The Mother: Simply a false step: you did not take care, you allowed that part of the being  to draw you into its own ﬁeld; because you did not pull it out of its way, did not compel it to follow you, it now drags you back instead.  If one wants to lead the spiritual life, one must not be three-fourths asleep. It is necessary to be wide awake and very attentive, otherwise you are like a little boat upon a river or a great sea with terrible currents, and if you are not alert, if you do not pay close heed to these currents, if you relax, relax your vigilance, all of a sudden you ﬁnd that you are at the other end from where you wanted to go! You are carried away, just like that, quite naturally. “Why, yes, I wanted to go there and I ﬁnd myself here!”


The Mother: That’s how it is.  In ordinary life this happens all the time. Only, you know, in ordinary life one says, “It is circumstances, it is fate, it’s my bad luck, it is their fault”, or else, “I have no luck.” That is very, very, very convenient. One veils everything and expects...


The Mother: yes, one has happy moments and then bad ones, and ﬁnally — ah, well, ﬁnally one falls into a hole, for everybody tumbles over, and expects to, sooner or later. So, one does not worry, or worries all the time — which comes to the same thing. That is, one is unconscious, one lives unconsciously and puts all the blame for what happens on others and on the circumstances but never tells oneself: “Why! It is my own fault.”... It needs a sufﬁciently vast consciousness to begin.


The Mother: Even among those who profess to be conscious, there are not many who see clearly enough to become aware that all that happens to them comes from what they are and from nothing else. They always say, “He is wrong; circumstances are unfavourable; oh! Why was that done?” — If you were not what you are, it would not happen in this way. It would happen differently.


The Mother: No, it is not at all necessary, not at all. It is just one of the bad habits. Why, on the 1st of January this year I wrote something like that: “Do not boast, do not boast about anything. Let your acts speak for themselves.” It is exactly that.


The Mother: It is not worthwhile saying, “Oh! I have so great a goodwill for you and I want to do so much and I...” Do it. That’s all.  This means that one has not yet touched the true domain of the idea.


The Mother: In the domain of the idea there are no words: there are states of consciousness.  That’s something else. The Word — it is not pronounced speech and words. There are old traditions which speak of “Let there be light and there was light.” The Word is the Mantra.


The Mother: But it is something quite exceptional, it is when the will formulated in the spirit wants to come down into matter and act directly upon matter that it makes use of the sound — not only of the word but of the sound, the vibration of the sound — to act directly upon matter itself, in matter. It is the opposite movement. You are in the region of thought formulated in words, then from there you may rise higher and get an expression of the silent idea; again from there you may rise yet higher and have the Force: the Force is the Consciousness which is the very source of that thought. And so it becomes a total consciousness instead of something formulated — expressed and formulated. That is, you  climb right back to the source.


The Mother: From there, once you possess this light in itself, this consciousness in itself and want to act upon matter to produce a result, this will comes down from plane to plane, and as it becomes more and more material, it deﬁnes itself clearly in words or even in a single word, and when it touches matter, instead of its being a silent word, it becomes a word articulated with sounds: a vibration that will act directly upon matter. But one must ﬁrst have gone high up above in order to be able to come down again. One must have reached the silent consciousness to be able to descend and do this. It must come from above, the source of this word must be up there, not in any intermediary domain. That then is the Word.


The Mother: And one must do what I have said — it is not an easy thing.  What I have said there ( ) is that one must keep the right attitude and be mentally silent: an attitude not expressed through words or through formulated thoughts, but through a living state of consciousness.  An attitude of aspiration, you understand. I am obliged to put it in words because it must be printed on paper (this is why all this loses three-fourths of its force), but still otherwise it would not be acceptable at all; if I gave you a blank sheet, you would not know exactly what I have put there! I am obliged to put it into words.


The Mother: An aspiration for all that is essentially true, real, perfect.  And this aspiration must be free from words, simply a silent attitude, but extremely intense and unvacillating. Not a word must be allowed the right to enter there and disturb it. It must be like a column of vibrations of aspiration which nothing can touch — and in total silence — and therein, if something comes down, what descends (and will be clothed in words in your mind and in sounds in your mouth) will be the Word. But nothing less than this will do.


The Mother: There we are., my children, good night.   There is nothing to understand; it is a fact. You don’t know what “the power of attraction” means? You don’t know what “the need for self-giving” means?... Well, you put them face to face and when they unite, that creates love.


The Mother: It is as simple as that. If you wish, it is like the obverse and reverse of the same medal; but it is not the obverse and reverse. These two things are destined to unite by their very nature and it is through this meeting that love in its external manifestation is born.  Yes, because the moment the individual consciousness broke off from the divine Consciousness, from its divine source, it created the sense of separation. The moment the individual consciousness ceased to follow, did not remain identiﬁed with the movement of the divine Consciousness, this produced a separation.


The Mother: The divine Consciousness follows its own movement, and if the individual consciousness does not remain united and  does not follow or changes the course or slows down on the way, this creates a separation. And it is this separation that is the cause of all misery. All the miseries in the universe are the result of this separation of the individual consciousness which, for some reason or other, did not remain identiﬁed with the primal Consciousness, its origin, and separated from it. Separated... it did not deliberately separate itself, but it did not remain identiﬁed.


The Mother: So, not remaining identiﬁed, while the divine Consciousness followed one particular movement, it followed another, and naturally this caused them to move farther and farther away from each other. Let us take an illustration: one goes forward with a certain movement, a certain speed, and the other, not having remained united, is unable to follow and consequently, little by little, falls farther and farther behind, far, far, very far; the ﬁrst one goes ahead and the other is left behind.  It goes limping along while the ﬁrst one ﬂies; it takes one step while the other leaps. So this brings about a greater and greater separation. And it is this separation which has created all other separations, and it is all these separations which have caused universal misery — or in any case the misery on earth, the one we know.


The Mother: It began by a separation of consciousness and ﬁnished with a separation of worlds and of the elements of matter. It began by a division of consciousness and ended with the kind of division we see (). There are thousands of things all separated from one another and it is the cause of all these miseries. If they had remained united in consciousness, there would have been no misery. But as the consciousness was separated, this separation of consciousness caused the separation of forms and the separation of forms produced all the miseries.


The Mother: If the sense of unity were re-established, the miseries would disappear.    Love another? I have said there that it is impossible. I have said that if one wants to know what love is, one must love the Divine.


The Mother: Then there is a chance of knowing what love is. I have said that one grows into the likeness of what one loves. So if one loves the Divine, gradually, through this effort of love, one grows more and more like the Divine, and then one can be identiﬁed with the divine love and know what it is, otherwise one can’t.  Inevitably, love between two human beings, whatever it may be, is always made of ignorance, lack of understanding, weakness and that terrible sense of separation. It is as though one wanted to enter the presence of a unique Splendour and that the ﬁrst thing one did was to put a curtain, two curtains, three curtains between oneself and that Splendour, and one is quite surprised to have only a vague impression and not at all the thing itself.


The Mother: The ﬁrst thing to do is to remove the curtains, to take them all away, to go through and ﬁnd oneself in the presence of the Splendour. And then you will know what that Splendour is. But if you put veil after veil between it and yourself, you will never see it. You may have a sort of vague feeling like “Oh! There is something”, but that is all.  Naturally, there are all those who don’t care for the Splendour, who turn their back upon it and live in their instincts, who are just animals, a little perfected.


The Mother: Let us not speak of these. We have only to let them do what they like, that is of no importance at all. They don’t affect us. It is not for them that I have written these things.  The quality of the love is in proportion to the transformation of your consciousness.


The Mother: It is childishly simple. If you have the consciousness of an animal, you will love like an animal. If you have the consciousness of an ordinary man, you will love like an ordinary man. If you have the consciousness of an ´elite being, you will love like an ´elite being, and if you have a god’s consciousness, you will love like a god. It is simple!


The Mother: That’s what I have said. And so, if by an effort for progress and inner transformation, by aspiration and growth, you pass from one consciousness to the other and your consciousness becomes vaster and vaster, well, the love you experience will be vaster and vaster. That is quite clear!  You take the purest water, water from the crystalline rocks, you collect it in a fairly large vase, and then, in this vase there is a little mud, or much, or a huge quantity of mud. And you could not say it is the same water which came down, yet it is the same, only you have mixed it with so many things in your vase that it no longer resembles it at all!


The Mother: Well, love in its essence is an absolutely pure, crystalline, perfect thing. In the human consciousness it gets mixed with a fairly considerable amount of mud. So it becomes more and more muddy in proportion to the amount of mud.  It has been said that the tiger’s need for devouring is one of the ﬁrst expressions of love in the world. I think that long before the tiger, there must have been primitive creatures in the depths of the sea which had only this one function: a stomach.


The Mother: They existed only as stomachs. And so they swallowed — that was their one occupation. Evidently that was one of the ﬁrst results of the Power of Love inﬁltrating into Matter, for before this there was nothing: there was perfect inconscience, complete immobility, nothing stirred. With Love movement began: the awakening of consciousness and the movement of transformation. Well, the ﬁrst forms, it may be said, were the ﬁrst expression of Love in Matter.


The Mother: So we can go from the need of swallowing which is the only consciousness — a need of swallowing, of uniting — right up to... Excuse me, we say that Love is the power of the world — it is a primitive way of uniting with things, but it is a very direct  way: one swallows and absorbs the thing; well, the tiger indeed takes a great joy in it. So there is a joy already, it is already quite a high form of love. You may go higher and end up with one of the highest expressions of love in human beings: the total selfgiving to what is loved, that is, to die for one’s country or to give one’s life to defend somebody, and things like that. That indeed is already... fairly high.


The Mother: It is still mixed with some mud.  It is not the highest form but it is already something. And you see all the steps, don’t you? Well, from this one has still to climb a good deal to reach the true expression, to reach what I have described, which is at the summit of the ascent — I would not like to travesty my own words ( “The Four Austerities”)  At ﬁrst, before the emanation of love, there is something which we may express very clumsily by “the joy of identity”.


The Mother: That indeed is very difﬁcult to conceive, for human thought cannot conceive of things except by their opposites, while the ﬁnal stage is when love has gone full circle in the universe in order to go back to its origin; then it has the result of all that experience it gained and it returns to its starting-point. It goes back to its starting-point with something which it did not have before starting: the experience of the universe. And fundamentally, that is the very of creation. It is because the consciousness would not be what it is if it had not expressed itself in a creation. Well, the return from creation — which, mark it, is not something that takes place in time — is very difﬁcult to conceive, for we conceive time and space and for us things are successive, one thing follows another, but if it were possible to conceive a total movement which would englobe everything and be at once the beginning and the end, and which would contain everything, well, this return, which would not be a return in time, which  would be a return in consciousness — how shall I explain that to you?


The Mother: — the return of love to its origin, instead of being simply the joy of identity, becomes the ecstasy of union — and obviously, if one sees from the pure psychological point of view, there is an enriching of consciousness which comes from the experience gained in the universe; that is, there is a richness of content and a plenitude of consciousness which would not be there if there had been no manifested universe. And that obviously is the most logical explanation, the most logical reason for the creation.  What is it, what haven’t you understood? That the universe and the world as it is, are a deformation of the Divine? The world as it is, in the state of consciousness in which it is, is a deformation of the Divine, and love here also is a deformation of the Divine.


The Mother: So, even if your love remained as pure as it can be in the manifested world, it could not keep you in constant contact with the Divine unless all the rest was transformed. For it is deformed in the same way as the rest. For it should be said,  surely, that purity as conceived on earth has nothing to do with divine purity. At the best it is an approximation.  Haven’t understood?


The Mother: It will come one day.  What kind? A human love, don’t they? Like all human loves: frightfully mixed, with all sorts of things. The need of possession, a formidable egoism.


The Mother: At ﬁrst, I must tell you that a wonderful picture has been painted... many books written, wonderful things said about a mother’s love for her children. I assure you that except for the capacity of speaking about the subject in ﬂowery phrases, the love of the higher animals like the... well, the mammals for their children is exactly of the same nature: the same devotion, the same self-forgetfulness, the same self-denial, the same care for education, the same patience, the same... I have seen absolutely marvellous things, and if they had been written down and applied to a woman instead of to a cat, superb novels would have been made, people would have said: “What a person! How marvellously devoted are these women in their maternal love!”


The Mother: Exactly the same thing. Only, cats could not use ﬂowery language. That’s all. They could not write books and make speeches, that is the only difference. But I have seen absolutely astonishing things.


The Mother: And that kind of self-giving and self-oblivion — as soon as there is the beginning of love, it comes.   But men... I sincerely believe, from all that I have studied, that there is perhaps a greater purity in animals for they do not think, while human beings with their mental power, their capacity of reﬂecting, reasoning, analysing, studying, all that, oh!  They spoil the most lovely movement.


The Mother: They begin to calculate, reason, doubt, organise.   Take, for instance, parents. At the risk of removing many illusions in your consciousness, I must tell you something about the source of a mother’s love for her child. It is because this child  is made of her very own substance, and for quite a long time, relatively long, the material link, the link of substance, between mother and child is close — it is as though a bit of her ﬂesh had been taken out and put apart at a distance — and it is only much later that the tie between the two is completely cut.


The Mother: There is a kind of tie, of subtle sensation, such that the mother feels exactly what the child feels, as she would feel it in herself.  That then is the material basis of the mother’s attachment for the child. It is a basis of material identity, nothing else but that.  Feeling comes much later (it may come earlier, that depends on people), but I am speaking of the majority: feeling comes only long afterwards, and it is conditioned. There are all kinds of things....


The Mother: I could speak to you for hours on the subject. But still this must not be mixed up with love. It is a material identiﬁcation which makes the mother feel intimately, feel quite concretely and tangibly what the child is feeling: if the child receives a shock, well, the mother feels it. This lasts at least for two months.  This is the basis.


The Mother: The rest comes from people’s nature, their state of development, their consciousness, education and capacity for feeling. This is added to the ﬁrst. And then there are all the collective suggestions that make up all sorts of stories — for people are wonderful at constructing stories. They write novels about everything. They have used their minds to build up their imaginations which go round in the atmosphere and then are caught just like that.


The Mother: So some catch a certain type of these, others another kind, and then, as imagination is a force of propulsion, with it one begins to act, and then ﬁnally one makes a novel of one’s life, if he is in the least imaginative.... This has absolutely nothing to do with the true consciousness, with the psychic being, nothing at all, but people come and talk to you in ﬂowery language and tell you stories — all these are wandering imaginations. If one could see, that is, if could see this mental atmosphere, that of the physical mind, which is circulating everywhere, making you move, making you feel, making you think, making you act, oh, good heavens! You would lose many  of your illusions about your personality. But indeed it is like that.


The Mother: Whether one knows it or not, it is like that.  There are many souls upon earth, human beings.... Obviously, those who have a certain culture, a certain development, a certain individualisation come together usually: instinctively they get together, form groups. And so one can ﬁnd in space and time a number — not considerable but still sufﬁciently large — of cultured people who are united, but one must not believe that this gives the exact measure of the culture and development of human beings. It is only like a kind of foam that has been brought up and is on the surface.


The Mother: But even among those people who are already a selection, there is hardly one in a thousand who is a truly individualised being, conscious of himself, united with his psychic being, governed by his inner law and, consequently, almost if not totally free from external inﬂuences; for, being conscious, when these inﬂuences come, he sees them: those that seem to him to harmonise with his inner development and normal growth he accepts; those which are opposed he refuses.  And so, instead of being a chaos — or in any case a frightful mixture — they are organised beings, individual, conscious of themselves, walking through life knowing where and how they want to go.  Of these, if you like, we may say that they are men. That is, they are what Nature may produce of the best as far as men go — they are still men. But this is the summit of man.


The Mother: They are ready to become something else. But unless one is, one is still to a great extent an animal and a very slight beginning of a man. Only can be called man. So there you are, you have only to look into yourselves and know... whether you are men or not.  .


The Mother: I am saying this in the hope that you will become that.   You have asked some questions. Now you are going to put questions on your questions. Yes?  Yes, “follow”, but not instantaneously.


The Mother: It takes time. Only if the Divine descends into the physical consciousness — or rather, to put it more precisely, if the physical consciousness is totally receptive to the Divine — the transformation follows naturally.  But transformation does not come about by waving a magic wand. It takes time and is done progressively.  I shall tell you this a little later!


The Mother: No. It is not what call the ﬁnal aim. But transformation  follow, it must follow automatically. But what I mean is the degree of totality, so to speak, of integrality, which is not assured, in the sense that probably there are many stages in this transformation.


The Mother: We speak of transformation vaguely, in this way; it gives us the impression of something that is going to happen which will see to it that all is well — I think it comes to that approximately. If we have difﬁculties, the difﬁculties will disappear; those who are ill — their illness will vanish; and again, if there are physical shortcomings, these will disappear, and so on. But it is all very hazy, it’s just an impression.  There is something quite remarkable: the physical consciousness, the body-consciousness, cannot know a thing with precision, in all its details, except when it is of being realised. And this will be a sure indication when, for instance, one can understand the process: through what sequence of movements and transformations will the total transformation come about, in what order, in what way, to put it thus?


The Mother: What will happen ﬁrst? What will happen later? — all that, in all its details. Each time you see a detail with exactitude, it means that it is on the point of being realised.  One can have the vision of the whole.


The Mother: For instance, it is quite certain that the transformation of the body-consciousness will take place ﬁrst, that a progress in the mastery and control of all the movements of the body will come next, that this mastery will gradually change (here it becomes more vague), gradually, into a sort of transformation of the movement itself: alteration and transformation — all that is certain. But what must happen in the end, what Sri Aurobindo has spoken about in one of his last articles in which he says that even the organs will be transformed, in the sense that they will be replaced by centres of concentration of forces (of concentration and action of forces) of different qualities and kinds which will replace all the organs  of the body — that, my children, is much more distant, that is, it is something which... one cannot yet grasp the means of doing it. Take, for instance, the heart: by what means is this function of the heart which makes the blood ﬂow through the whole body going to be replaced by a concentration of forces? By what means will the blood be replaced by a certain kind of force, and all the rest?


The Mother: By what means will the lungs be replaced by another concentration of forces, and what forces, and with what vibrations, and in what way?... All that will come much later. It cannot yet be realised. One can have an inkling of it, foresee it, but...  For the body, to know is to have the power to do.


The Mother: I shall give you an example that’s just at hand. You do not know a gymnastic movement except when you do it. When you have done it well, you know it, understand it. But not before that, don’t you? Physical knowledge is the power of doing.


The Mother: Well, that applies to everything, including transformation.  A certain number of years must pass before we can speak with knowledge of how this is going to happen, but all that I can tell you is that it has begun. If you read attentively the next issue of the which you will get on the 24th of April, you will see that it has begun. But in fact we shall see later if I can explain to you what it means.  Another question?


The Mother: Explain when? I don’t know, my children!  You don’t know what activity and passivity are? Do you know what the two words mean?   Yes!


The Mother: So, when you are active, what does it mean?  Work? Good! And when are you passive, when you sleep?  (


The Mother: )  No, my child, not necessarily. Passivity is not laziness. An active movement is one in which you throw your force out, that is, when something comes out from you — in a movement, a thought, a feeling — something which goes out from you to others or into the world. Passivity is when you remain just yourself like this, open, and receive what comes from outside.


The Mother: It does not at all depend on whether one moves or sits still. It is not that at all. To be active is to throw out the consciousness or force or movement from within outwards. To be passive is to remain immobile and receive what comes from outside. So it is said here...


The Mother: I don’t know what is written... ( ) It is very clear! “Activity in aspiration”, that means that your aspiration goes out from you and rises to the Divine — in the tapasya, the discipline you undertake and when there are forces contrary to your sadhana you reject them. This is a movement of activity.


The Mother: Now, if you want to get true inspiration, inner guidance, the guide, and if you want to have the force, to receive the force which will guide you and make you act as you should, then you do not move any longer, that is — I don’t mean not move physically but nothing must come out from you any more and, on the contrary, you remain as though you were quite still, but open, and wait for the Force to enter, and then open yourself as wide as possible to take in all that comes into you. And it is  this movement: instead of out-going vibrations there is a kind of calm quietude, but completely open, as though you were opening all your doors in this way to the force which must descend into you and transform your action and consciousness.  Receptivity is the result of a true passivity.  Not necessarily, that depends upon people. An effort?


The Mother: One must, yes, one must want it. But is the will an effort?... Naturally, one must think about it, must want it. But the two things can go together, you see, there is a moment when the two — aspiration and passivity — can not only be alternate but simultaneous. You can be at once in the state of aspiration, of willing, which calls down something — exactly the will to open oneself and receive, and the aspiration which calls down the force you want to receive — and be in that state of complete inner stillness which allows full penetration, for it is in this immobility that one can be penetrated, that one becomes permeable by the Force.


The Mother: Well, the two can be simultaneous without the one disturbing the other, or can alternate so closely that they can hardly be distinguished. But one can be like that, like a great ﬂame rising in aspiration, and at the same time as though this ﬂame formed a vase, a large vase, opening and receiving all that comes down.  And the two can go together. And when one succeeds in having the two together, one can have them constantly, whatever one may be doing. Only there may be a slight, very slight displacement of consciousness, almost imperceptible, which becomes aware of the ﬂame ﬁrst and then of the vase of receptivity — of what seeks to be ﬁlled and the ﬂame that rises to call down what must ﬁll the vase — a very slight pendular movement and so close that it gives the impression that one has the two at the same time.


The Mother: ( ) This is one of the things one discovers gradually as the body becomes ready for transformation. It is quite a remarkable instrument in the sense that it can experience two contraries at the same time. There is a certain state of body-consciousness which brings things together, adds up things that in other states of consciousness alternate or even in certain others oppose each other.


The Mother: But if one has reached up there, in the vital and the mind, a development sufﬁcient for harmonising opposites (that of course, is quite indispensable), when one has succeeded in doing this, there are moments when it alternates, you see, one thing comes after the other; but what is remarkable in the consciousness of the body is that it can feel (“feel”, can we say “feel”? — “experience” — the word “aware” expresses it best) all things simultaneously, as though you were hot and cold at once, as though you were active and passive at once, and everything becomes like that. Then you begin to grasp the totality of movements in the cells. It is something much more concrete naturally, but much more perfect in the body than in any other part of the being. This means that if things continue in this way, it will be proved that the physical, material instrument is the most perfect of all. That is why perhaps it is the most difﬁcult to transform, to perfect.


The Mother: But of all, it is the one most capable of perfection.  That’s enough for today, isn’t it?  So, my children, if we go at this rate, we shall ﬁnish the book in three or four lessons, and we must already think about what we shall take up next....  The Mother


The Mother: Ah! You want to take up? Good, we shall read   That is decided.  Good night!


The Mother: Acute? Acute is used in a ﬁgurative sense. Acute describes something pointed, don’t you know? — and perhaps this means an aggressive, sharp resistance which sinks deep like a claw.


The Mother: Ah! Yes.   You see, I think the question has been put badly.


The Mother: I believe the one who asked the question wanted to say “the effect of aspiration” and he put “power”. That is, aspiration in everyone, no matter who it is, has the same power. But the effect of this aspiration is different. For aspiration is aspiration: if you have aspiration, in itself it has a power. Only, this aspiration calls down an answer, and this answer, the effect, which is the result of the aspiration, depends upon each one, for it depends upon his receptivity.


The Mother: I know many people of this kind: they say, “Oh! But I aspire all the time and still I receive nothing.” It is impossible that they should receive nothing, in the sense that the answer is sure to come. But it is they who do not receive. The answer comes but they are not receptive, so they receive nothing.


The Mother: There are people, you know, who have a lot of aspiration.  They call the force. The force comes to them — even enters deeply into them — and they are so unconscious that they don’t  know it! That indeed happens quite frequently. It is their state of unconsciousness which prevents them from even feeling the force which enters into them.


The Mother: It enters into them, and does its work. I knew people who were gradually transformed and yet were so unconscious that they were not even aware of it. The consciousness comes later — very much later. On the other hand, there are people who are more passive, so to speak, more open, more attentive, and even if a very slight amount of force comes, they become aware of it immediately and use it fully.  When you have an aspiration, a very active aspiration, your aspiration is going to do its work.


The Mother: It is going to call down the answer to what you aspire for. But if, later, you begin to think of something else or are not attentive or receptive, you do not even notice that your aspiration has received an answer. This happens very frequently. So people tell you: “I aspire and I don’t receive anything, I get no answer!” Yes, you do have an answer but you are not aware of it, because you continue to be active in this way, like a mill turning all the time.


The Mother: That depends on the point of view... I don’t know!  You may aspire that this part may open — let the part that is open aspire for the other to open. It will open after a certain time; one must continue, persist. That is the only thing to do.


The Mother: There is something that does not want it, an acute resistance there, which does not want it. It is like a stubborn child: “I don’t want it, I shall remain what I am, I won’t move.”... It does not say, “I am pleased with myself”, because it does not dare. But  the truth is it is quite self-satisﬁed, it does not budge.


The Mother: Ah! Yes, but if one is sincere, one will know it. If one looks at oneself sincerely, one is sure to know. It is only when one plays the ostrich that one does not know: one shuts one’s eyes, turns one’s head to the other side, and says, “It does not exist.”


The Mother: But if one looks at oneself straight in the face, one knows well where it is — hidden somewhere in a corner quite nicely, turned upon itself, shut in, close-set. But then, when you go and ﬂash a light like that, straight upon it, oh, it suddenly hurts, doesn’t it?  It depends ﬁrst of all upon sincerity — on whether one really wants to receive — and then... yes, I believe the principal factors are sincerity and humility. There is nothing that closes you up more than vanity.


The Mother: When you are self-satisﬁed, you have that kind of vanity of not wanting to admit that you lack something, that you make mistakes, that you are incomplete, that you are imperfect, that you are... There is something in the nature, you know, which grows stiff in this way, which does not want to admit — it is this which prevents you from receiving. You have, however, only to try it out and get the experience. If, by an effort of will you manage to make even a very tiny part of the being admit that “Ah, well, yes, I am mistaken, I should not be like that, and I should not do that and should not feel that, yes, it is a mistake”, if you manage to make it admit this, at ﬁrst, as I said just now, it begins by hurting you very much, but when you hold on ﬁrmly, until this is admitted, immediately it is open — it is open and strangely a ﬂood of light enters, and then you feel so glad afterwards, so happy that you ask yourself, “Why, was I foolish enough to resist so long?”   One is not made all of a piece, don’t you know?


The Mother: There is something in the being which can aspire. There is always something in the being which is conscious exactly of what is not all right, at times vaguely, imprecisely, but yet sufﬁciently conscious that still, after all, one is not perfect, you see, that things could be better than they are. That’s enough! That part can aspire.


The Mother: Ah! Once again I have to give the impression that I don’t know.  () Nolini, explain this. ( )


The Mother: As for me, I understand nothing at all of this, it does not correspond to any inner experience for me, I have never had this experience; consequently, I cannot speak about it.    (Laughter)  The Indian concept I know theoretically, and it is enough to read books to know it — that is not what I call knowing. I can speak to you only about things I have experienced.


The Mother: Well, this does not correspond to anything in me. I have not had that experience. I have had very clearly the experience of a witness looking at things, completely detached from everything, who knows all and does not move, who allows everything to be done and who... I have also had the experience of a will which decides.  Naturally, everybody has the experience of a moving force — the force in Nature, in its obscurity, and all that — everybody has that experience.


The Mother: But as for making a clear-cut division in this way and calling one Purusha, masculine, and the other Prakriti, feminine , no, I refuse to do that — I have always objected to it and shall always object. And that is why I prefer not to speak about it.   This seems to me an Asiatic version, or perhaps more particularly Indian, I don’t know, of the Chaldean conception of a single, masculine God: you know, the Christian God. This is for me something that comes (pardon me) from a masculine mentality that’s a bit warped.


The Mother: That is how I feel about the subject.  Now, if you had not asked me, I would never have spoken to you about it!   Ah! I don’t know.


The Mother: ( ) Purusha, if you like. But I did not ﬁnd it particularly masculine! You understand, what...


The Mother: what I object to is the male element and female element. Well, I ﬁnd that it is not true, and I shall always say:. There is an element like this and another like that ( ). There is an activity like this and an activity like that. But why on earth do you want one to be masculine and the other feminine?


The Mother: It is not like that. This, this masculine-feminine business is a trick of Nature, it has arranged things here like that. Now, let me tell you: when one descends from above, well, right up there one has no idea of masculine and feminine and all that nonsense; as you come down and arrive here, it starts to become something real. So you tell yourself, “Well, well! That’s how Nature has arranged things.” Good!


The Mother: But what I say is that these conceptions — these very conceptions which make one element masculine and the other feminine — this is a conception which has come from below, that is, has come out of man’s brain which cannot think otherwise than of  and — because he is still an animal. There you are! And that’s how I feel — I have always felt this, I have said it from the beginning and will repeat it till the very end, and if you don’t want to hear me say so, don’t speak to me about it!  ( )


The Mother: That’s all.  Good night.   The psychic condition? That means being in relation with one’s psychic, I suppose, being governed by one’s psychic being.  But Sri Aurobindo has given the full explanation here.


The Mother: If you don’t understand, then...  The whole being, yes. Faith, that’s the whole being at once. He says that belief is something that occurs in the head, that is purely mental; and conﬁdence is quite different. Conﬁdence


The Mother: — one can have conﬁdence in life, trust in the Divine, trust in others, trust in one’s own destiny, that is, one has the feeling that everything is going to help him, to do what he wants to do.  Faith is a certitude without any proof.   Probably on Divine Grace. Some people have it spontaneously.


The Mother: There are others who need to make a great effort to have it.  Through aspiration, I suppose. Some have it spontaneously...  You see, it is difﬁcult to pray if one doesn’t have faith, but if one can make prayer a means of increasing one’s faith, or aspiring, having an aspiration, having an aspiration to have faith... Most of these qualities require an effort.


The Mother: If one does not have a thing and wants to have it, well, it needs great, great, great sustained efforts, a constant aspiration, an unﬂagging will, a sincerity at each moment; then one is sure, it will come one day — it can come in a second. There are people who have it, and then they have contrary movements which come and attack.  These people, if their will is sincere, can shield their faith, repel the attacks. There are others who cultivate doubt because it is a kind of dilettantism — that, there’s nothing more dangerous than that. It is as though one were letting the worm into the fruit: it eventually eats it up completely.


The Mother: This means that when a movement of this sort comes — it usually comes ﬁrst into the mind — the ﬁrst thing to do is to be very determined and refuse it. Surely one must not enjoy looking on just to see what is going to happen; that kind of curiosity is terribly dangerous.  It is perhaps more difﬁcult for intellectuals to have faith than for those who are simple, sincere, who are straightforward, without intellectual complications. But I think that if an intellectual person has faith, then that becomes very powerful, a very powerful thing which can truly work miracles.  Usually it is in those who have a will and bring their will to bear upon their actions.


The Mother: Faith is something much more integral — that is what Sri Aurobindo has written — much more integral than trust. You see, you have trust in the Divine, in the sense that you are convinced that all that comes from Him will always be the best for you: whatever His decision and whatever the experience He sends you or the circumstances in which He puts you, it will always be what is best for you. This is trust. But faith — that kind of unshakable certitude in the very existence of God — faith is something that seizes the whole being. It is not only mental, psychic or vital: it is the whole being, entirely, which has faith.


The Mother: Faith leads straight to experience.  Not necessarily. Well, there is a shade of difference — however, I don’t know, it is not the same thing.  One has given oneself totally to the divine work, one has faith in it, not only in its possibility, but faith that it is thing which is true and which must be, and one gives oneself entirely to it, without asking what will happen. And so, therein or thereon may be grafted a certitude, a conﬁdence that one is capable of accomplishing it, that is, of participating in it and doing it because one has given oneself to it — a conﬁdence that what one is going to do, what one wants to do, one will be able to do; that this realisation one wants to attain, one will attain.


The Mother: The ﬁrst does not put any questions, does not think of the results: it gives itself entirely — it gives itself and then that’s all. It is something that absorbs one completely. The other may be grafted upon it.  Conﬁdence says: “Yes, I shall participate, realise what I want to realise, I shall surely take part in this work.” The other one has faith in the Divine, that it is the Divine who is all, and can do all, and does all... and who is the only real existence — and one  gives oneself entirely to this faith, to the Divine, that’s all.


The Mother: One has faith in the existence of the Divine and gives oneself; and there can also be grafted upon this a trust that this relation one has with the Divine, this faith one has in the Divine, will work in such a way that all that happens to him — whatever it may be, all that happens to him — will not only be an expression of the divine will (that of course is understood) but also the best that could happen, that nothing better could have happened to him, since it is the Divine who is doing it for him. This attitude is not necessarily a part of faith, for faith does not question anything, it does not ask what the consequence of its self-giving will be — it gives itself, and — that’s all; while conﬁdence can come and say, “That’s what the result will be.” And this is an absolute fact, that is, the moment one gives oneself entirely to the Divine, without calculating, in a total faith, without bargaining of any kind — one gives oneself, and then, come what may! “That does not concern me, I just give myself” — automatically it will always be for you, in all circumstances, at every moment, the best that will happen... not the way you conceive of it (naturally, thought knows nothing), but in reality. Well, there is a part of the being which can become aware of this and have this conﬁdence.


The Mother: This is something added on to faith which gives it more strength, a strength — how shall I put it? — of total acceptance and the best utilisation of what happens.  There is a state in which one realises that the effect of things, circumstances, all the movements and actions of life on the consciousness depends almost exclusively upon one’s attitude to these things. There is a moment when one becomes sufﬁciently conscious to realise that things in themselves are truly neither good nor bad: they are such only in relation to us; their effect on us depends absolutely upon the attitude we have towards them. The same thing, identically the same, if we take it as a gift of God, as a divine grace, as the result of the full Harmony, helps us to become more conscious, stronger, more true, while if we take it — exactly the very same circumstance  — as a blow from fate, as a bad force wanting to affect us, this constricts us, weighs us down and takes away from us all consciousness and strength and harmony. And the circumstance in itself is the same — of this, I wish all of you had this experience, for when you have it, you become master of yourself.


The Mother: Not only master of yourself but, in what concerns you, master of the circumstances of your life. And this depends exclusively upon the attitude you take; it is not an experience that occurs in the head, though it begins there, but an experience which can occur in the body itself. So much so, that — well, it is a realisation which naturally asks for a lot of work, concentration, self-mastery, consciousness pushed into Matter, but as a result, in accordance with the way the body receives shocks from outside, the effect may be different. And if you attain perfection in that ﬁeld, you become master of accidents.  I hope this will happen.


The Mother: It is possible. It is not only possible, it is Only it is just one step forward. That is, this power you have — already fully and formidably realised in the mind — to act upon circumstances to the extent of changing them totally in their action upon you, that power can descend into Matter, into the physical substance itself, the cells of the body, and give the same power to the body in relation to the things around it.  This is not a faith, it is a certitude that comes from experience.


The Mother: The experience is not total, but it is there.  This opens new horizons to you; it is the path, it is one step on the path leading to transformation.  And the logical conclusion is that there is nothing impossible. It is who put limitations.


The Mother: All the time we say, “That thing is possible, that other, impossible; this, yes, this can be done, that can’t be done; oh yes, this is true, it is feasible, it is even done, but that, that is impossible.” It is who all the time put ourselves like slaves into the prison of our limits, of our stupid, narrow, ignorant sense which knows nothing of the  laws of life. The laws of life are not what you think they are nor what the most intelligent people think. They are quite different. Taking a step, especially the ﬁrst step on the path — one begins to ﬁnd out.


The Mother: It is harmless. You can do it if it gives you pleasure! Fundamentally, if it sets you at rest and allows you to progress, if you feel you must do it in order to progress, it is very good.  I think in a case like this, he is no longer insincere, he is wicked; for if one knows that one is insincere and persists in one’s insincerity, it is wickedness, isn’t it? It means that one has bad intentions, otherwise why would one persist in one’s insincerity?


The Mother: Then how can one be conscious and unconscious at once? It is just this that is impossible. If one is conscious of one’s insincerity, one can’t be unconscious of it. It is impossible. The two can’t exist simultaneously.


The Mother: Oh! One doesn’t know?... That is because one is not sufﬁciently sincere and doesn’t look at oneself. For, I guarantee this, if you are conscious that you are insincere, you know where it lies.


The Mother: Otherwise you could not be aware of your insincerity. For instance, in a certain circumstance one knows, knows that one should do this: “I should do this”; and at the same time one does not wish to do it, eh! And so, within oneself one ﬁnds a means, a sort of way of deceiving oneself and not doing it, because one does not want to do it — ah, that happens often! ( )


The Mother: And then, if at that moment, the moment when you are doing this little inner work to ﬁnd an excuse for not doing what you don’t want to do, if at that moment you become aware that you are insincere and still continue to do it, this means that you are perverse. If you ask me, this is what I call being wicked, bad.  But if you realise that you are insincere, this means that you are conscious that you are insincere, and how can you say “I am not conscious of my insincerity”?... Ninety times out of a hundred one does it without knowing. That indeed is the misery.


The Mother: It is that one deceives oneself with such facility, ﬁnds good tricks for not doing what one doesn’t want to do, or the contrary: for doing what one wishes to do when one knows very well one shouldn’t do it — it is the same thing. So you give yourself good reasons, and, unhappily, as I said, most men are so unconscious that they do it without even realising it. They think they are sincere: “No, sincerely, I thought I had to do it” — like that, quite innocently. But that’s because they are not sincere, not at all because they are quite unconscious. But if one is just a little conscious of what is happening within, one perceives very well the little trick one has played and how one has found — has somewhere been so cleverly unearthing, an excellent excuse for doing what one wanted to do.


The Mother: Even when one knows very well one ought not to do it. It is these two, you see: a play between unconsciousness  and insincerity, insincerity and unconsciousness, in this way. But if you tell me, “I am conscious of my insincerity”, then naturally at that moment this fact faces you: Have you decided to remain in the darkness or do you want to progress? There, the problem comes up. If you are conscious of your insincerity, you have only one thing to do: that is to put a red-hot iron on it and make yourself sincere.


The Mother: That is the feeling. You must take a red-hot iron: it burns well, and then... ouch!... that’s the way.  For a moment it hurts a little, afterwards one is left in peace.  It is a literary image, my child, an imaged, ﬁgurative, literary way of expressing the fact that with sincerity one can attain everything, even the Divine. If one wants to open a door, a key is necessary, isn’t it?


The Mother: Well, for the door separating you from the Divine, sincerity works as a key and opens the door and lets you in, that’s all.  Good night.    What does he exactly understand by Purusha?... The ego?


The Mother: (Nolini)  But then each inner being has its Purusha? Or is there one Purusha in all the beings?  (Nolini)  It is what we call consciousness?


The Mother: The conscious being in its continuity?  But how can one do the sadhana if the conscious being within does not consent, for it seems to me that it is this being which must take the resolution to begin.   ( ) It is I who am asking questions!


The Mother: (A child)  Resigned? What does that mean, “resigned”?  I don’t know what you mean. He is asking for the sign which shows that his surrender is perfect.


The Mother: There is no question of active or passive surrender there. He says that the determination to surrender brings certain results. The ﬁrst result is simply to be obedient without questioning, and the second is to have the power of rejecting all inﬂuences except that of the Divine. These are great results. When one has attained these, one is already quite advanced.


The Mother: Do you know how to distinguish between an inﬂuence coming from the Divine and one coming from elsewhere?... When you feel an impulse in you, can you tell whether it comes from the Divine or from elsewhere?  A little! Ah!


The Mother: That’s good, and tell us why, and how?... That indeed is interesting.   And then?... Someone?... That is to say, you feel there is a person telling you: “Get up and go quickly to do your work”?


The Mother: An inﬂuence?  But you know from where it comes? ... Do you know from where it comes?


The Mother: Ah! That is an interpretation. If, for instance, in your mind there is a formation, an idea, that you ought not to be lazy and should work — that you should be on time, should not waste your time sleeping — that is enough for this idea or formation to come up at the moment of awakening like an inﬂuence (for it is a part of your mind which has remained awake) like an inﬂuence telling you: “Hurry up, let’s go, go and work, don’t be lazy!” But it is perhaps just one part of yourself trying to act upon another. Or else, if you have to go to class or do some work with somebody, this may be the active thought of that person saying: “Isn’t she perchance still sleeping and going to be late?” — that sufﬁces.